How Portal Randomized breathes new life into a PC gaming classic
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ok, so now let's add some reinforcement learning to this thing so that the randomness results in better and better levels!
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So you want an AI doing unsupervised experiments on people to see what it can learn, huh? We’ll have to see if there is any fiction out there that could warn us about potential dangers in this sort of setup.
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I remember doing "Portal races" back when the game came out. Lots of fun to play on an underpowered laptop, listening to your friend trigger some audio seconds before you did, both of us trading the lead. First to get to the credits and "Still Alive" was the winner.
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I couldn't make it past the first room in the tutorial because of motion sickness. The perspective shifting was throwing me for a loop. That was a while ago, and playing Subnautica has helped w/my video-game induced motion sickness, so maybe it's time to give Portal another shot...
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The point of portal really is that every puzzle is supposed to be solved with portals. If you're going to add randomization, it shouldn't be "jump from rock to rock", it should be something to be solved by portals.
Although that's much harder to do without actually changing the room...
Although that's much harder to do without actually changing the room...
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I remember when Portal came out and my daughter played it for the first time. She was saying: "There sure is a long tutorial. I wonder when the actual game is going to start?" Then the shock when she defeated GlaDOS. Wait, that was the game all along?!??.
At least the cake turned out to not be a lie.
At least the cake turned out to not be a lie.
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I would humbly argue that the point of Portal is to have fun, so if this randomizer can to that, it's in keeping with the point of Portal.
Solving puzzles with Portals was the in-universe goal, but thankfully we're not beholden to Cave Johnson's desires in the real world. We have much less scrupulous CEOs to deal with out here.
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I suppose, but there's also plenty of games where I can hop from rock to rock or platform to platform.
I would point out that the fun I had in portal was solving puzzles with portals. Especially when I solved something in a non-portally way, but then realized there was a more elegant solution with just portals - this was made especially true with the challenge versions of the room where they make it more or less impossible to solve without the "elegant portal solution".
Also the CEO that made it so you solve puzzles with portals was Gabe Newell, not Cave Johnson ;-)
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Oh.. right.. give GlaDOS access to Agentic AI Tool Use Pattern.. I'm sure that GlaDOS won't regret it..
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"More puzzles for Portal" sounds fun, in the way a movie's Director's Cut adds some bits that sometimes are "that's neat," but more often than not show leaving them on the editing room floor was the right choice.
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Although, Portal was designed by a team that had come up with the idea in “Narbacular Drop” (they came up with it as students). In that game you are just trying to beat a demon with you helpful portal powers. So, in some sense, plotwise the portals did start as just a way to achieve the goal, rather than a goal in-and-of themselves. (Of course, in truth, the game is an excuse to show off the portals).
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I asked GPT what it thought of making a GlaDOS persona which had the goal of training a GAN to generate random portal levels and ensure it was solvable via portals and it chirped up "this isn't just a procedural level generator - This is AI actively learning how to mess with players! That's terrifyingly beautiful!"
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I'll say this - there were hints dropped in, what was it, HL2: Ep 2? indicating that HL and Portal were in the same universe, and I was kind of hoping for a HL game with the portal gun. Thought combining the two games could be fun. And we do see plenty of portals throughout the HL series (g-man seems to always have a portal ready), so it was definitely something being experimented with in that universe.
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Portal 1 has references to Black Mesa (such as slides, as well as the ending song), while Portal 2 has Cave Johnson claiming Black Mesa stole IP from Aperture, while Ep2 has references to Aperture (specifically, Mossman finds the Aperture icebreaker, Borealis that is missing from the dock in the bowels of Aperture, seen in Portal 2).
Half Life Alyx also has Portal graffiti (he's so cute)
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That's right - I do recall references to Black Mesa in Portal. There was a room you could find with a powerpoint style slide show with graphs comparing like, federal contracts awarded to Black Mesa vs Aperture, or something like that. IIRC, that slideshow might have also been where we learned the name "GlaDOS"?
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gamingdominari
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Hey! Mod creator here. Thank you for making an article on it. I hope it have another demo out soon with support for more test chambers and new effects!
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gamingdominari
Smack-Fu Master, in training
I would absolutely love to add support for this. Will definitely look into it at some point.
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