Portal 2 developer commentary: Difference between revisions
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{{Quotation | Joel Shoop | {{Quotation | Joel Shoop | ||
| There was a lot of debate over how to properly punish Wheatley at the end of the game. Killing him seemed too severe, given how much we’d grown to love the character. On the other hand, simply letting him out of the GLaDOS body with a slap on the wrist seemed unacceptably anticlimactic. Having him sucked out into space with the Space Sphere seemed like a happy middle ground that everybody could get behind. | | There was a lot of debate over how to properly punish Wheatley at the end of the game. Killing him seemed too severe, given how much we’d grown to love the character. On the other hand, simply letting him out of the GLaDOS body with a slap on the wrist seemed unacceptably anticlimactic. Having him sucked out into space with the Space Sphere seemed like a happy middle ground that everybody could get behind. | ||
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{{Quotation | Tim Larkin, PotatOS | {{Quotation | Tim Larkin, PotatOS | ||
| The newer and older versions of Aperture show their distinct personalities in sound as well as visuals. The doors, floors and buttons, as well as soundscapes, reflect the aging, outdated 70’s feel. The sounds contain hints of the decaying metal and wood. The newer but unstable Wheatley chamber soundscapes become more foreboding and perilous the further you venture into them. The atmosphere of uncontrolled destruction continues to intensify till the end. | | The newer and older versions of Aperture show their distinct personalities in sound as well as visuals. The doors, floors and buttons, as well as soundscapes, reflect the aging, outdated 70’s feel. The sounds contain hints of the decaying metal and wood. The newer but unstable Wheatley chamber soundscapes become more foreboding and perilous the further you venture into them. The atmosphere of uncontrolled destruction continues to intensify till the end. | ||
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{{Quotation | David Feise, Three Gels | {{Quotation | David Feise, Three Gels | ||
| With the gel sounds for Portal 2 we wanted to create something whimsical that would add to the player’s enjoyment of the mechanics, without crossing over the line into ludicrousness. For example, our initial pass at the blue gel 'bounce' sound included a rubber playground ball, a pitch-bent harp string and a processed mouth harp. The resulting sound captured the idea of fun, but was off the charts on the goofy scale. After several iterations we settled on the current, less over-the-top sound which features a piece of metal bar bouncing like a diving board and a heavy dose of synthesis. It’s not as wacky, but hopefully it’s still fun. | | With the gel sounds for Portal 2 we wanted to create something whimsical that would add to the player’s enjoyment of the mechanics, without crossing over the line into ludicrousness. For example, our initial pass at the blue gel 'bounce' sound included a rubber playground ball, a pitch-bent harp string and a processed mouth harp. The resulting sound captured the idea of fun, but was off the charts on the goofy scale. After several iterations we settled on the current, less over-the-top sound which features a piece of metal bar bouncing like a diving board and a heavy dose of synthesis. It’s not as wacky, but hopefully it’s still fun. | ||
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{{Quotation | Chris Chin, Cave Johnson | {{Quotation | Chris Chin, Cave Johnson | ||
| The lake map marks a total reset to the aesthetics and scale of the environments up to this point in the game. You come into the underground cave compressed and as you progress further into the map, your eye is drawn upwards by the elevator tower, sparking cables, falling debris, and finally the test spheres which recede vertically into nothingness. This looking upwards gives the player sense of the vastness of Aperture before GLaDOS and a visual sense of the daunting climb they will have to make to get back to Wheatley. The open areas encourage the player to explore their surroundings and take a break from the intensive puzzle solving of the test chambers. | | The lake map marks a total reset to the aesthetics and scale of the environments up to this point in the game. You come into the underground cave compressed and as you progress further into the map, your eye is drawn upwards by the elevator tower, sparking cables, falling debris, and finally the test spheres which recede vertically into nothingness. This looking upwards gives the player sense of the vastness of Aperture before GLaDOS and a visual sense of the daunting climb they will have to make to get back to Wheatley. The open areas encourage the player to explore their surroundings and take a break from the intensive puzzle solving of the test chambers. | ||
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{{Quotation | Marc Laidlaw, Turret Intro | {{Quotation | Marc Laidlaw, Turret Intro | ||
| Project Lil is our codename for an internal push to make our comments more accessible to the whole Valve community. It was pointed out to us in mail from a fan that in some of our previous commentary, the designers referred unfailingly to the gamer as a 'he.' Although in natural speech, most of us normally tend to say "they" and "their" rather than "he" and "his," some stuffy overactive minion of the grammar police went through and revised all those usages to make them conform to an oppressive gender-biased rule. However, research shows that "they" and "their" is a perfectly acceptable and even older form, and we are happy to fall back on it and let people talk the way they normally talk, and screw the so-called rules that alienate our fans. Thanks, Lil. | | Project Lil is our codename for an internal push to make our comments more accessible to the whole Valve community. It was pointed out to us in mail from a fan that in some of our previous commentary, the designers referred unfailingly to the gamer as a 'he.' Although in natural speech, most of us normally tend to say "they" and "their" rather than "he" and "his," some stuffy overactive minion of the grammar police went through and revised all those usages to make them conform to an oppressive gender-biased rule. However, research shows that "they" and "their" is a perfectly acceptable and even older form, and we are happy to fall back on it and let people talk the way they normally talk, and screw the so-called rules that alienate our fans. Thanks, Lil. | ||
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==Co-op commentary== | ==Co-op commentary== | ||
1. [[Portal 2 Co-op Course 2 Chamber 5]]: "Confidence Building"; {{code|mp_coop_catapult_1}} | 1. [[Portal 2 Co-op Course 2 Chamber 5]]: "Confidence Building"; {{code|mp_coop_catapult_1}} | ||
=== Gesture Wheel === | === Gesture Wheel === | ||
{{Quotation | Andrew Burke | {{Quotation | Andrew Burke | ||
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{{Quotation | Iestyn Bleasdale-Shepherd | {{Quotation | Iestyn Bleasdale-Shepherd | ||
| Most players don't realize that the ping tool is context sensitive. When they are playing voice enabled, players usually rely on the look portion of the ping tool. Without voice, icons such as 'press the button' or 'stand here' become much more important. | | Most players don't realize that the ping tool is context sensitive. When they are playing voice enabled, players usually rely on the look portion of the ping tool. Without voice, icons such as 'press the button' or 'stand here' become much more important. | ||
}} | |||
=== Hub Design === | |||
2. [[Hub]]: "The Hub"; {{code|mp_coop_lobby_2}} | |||
{{Quotation | Matt T. Wood | |||
| In laying out the structure of our Hub, we had a number of challenges that were new and specific to co-op play. We have to assume that each player has made different progress throughout the game, playing with different partners, and starting in the neutral center of the hub was a way of making sure that they had a chance and place to coordinate. Players needed a way to agree on where to go, and way to visualize each other's completion data. As they played, they needed concrete feedback on how much progress they had made. In seeking solutions, we felt it was important to keep the player in the gamespace rather than resorting to menus and UI that would take them out of the game. Therefore, players can clearly see their status over the doors, and they navigate by walking the course in the 3D space. GLaDOS is there to connect the experience to the singleplayer game, while holding the player's hands a bit to keep the co-op goals and feedback clear. | |||
}} | |||
=== Robots Visual Design === | |||
{{Quotation | Tristan Reidford | |||
| Visual design of robots began with lots of concept art. The initial round of concepts explored all kind of forms from human to the more abstract. We found ourselves gravitating toward shapes that reminded us of the sphere and turret in the original Portal. Whilst keeping with the established portal design aesthetic, we were keen to create all new characters, and, being a duo, it was important that they were their own separate designs, rather than identical copies of each other. Unlike, for instance, Team Fortress 2, where a clean silhouette is essential for communicating the nature of a character, we had an opportunity here to play with designs that were a bit messy, with things sticking out of them, so they looked half manufactured, half improvised. Once we had agreed on rough designs in 2D, we began to build the shapes in 3D, and this is where the next level of improvisation and experimentation occurred. Usually, a model will be designed and built in 3d and then rigged for animation, but here we allowed the rigging process to inform the models. We wanted to celebrate the mechanics of robots. We allowed function to dictate form, and in terms of detail they started to design themselves once you start thinking about motors, ball joints, actuators, and all that sort of thing. The classic duo is often made up of the two contrasting body types--short and squat next to tall and wiry, and it's not hard to see Laurel and Hardy, C3P0 and R2D2, in these characters. Even though we had the freedom to make our silhouettes a bit untidy, it was still important that they remain readable as anthropomorphic bipeds. We wanted players to feel free to make mischief for their partners, in a typically human way, but without creating any kind of gore. The robots were perfect for this. | |||
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=== Return To The Hub === | |||
{{Quotation | Gautam Babbar | |||
| Our initial goal in designing the hub was to provide players with a lot of choices, so they could to sample a variety of game types. The idea was that if they got stuck or needed a break, they could pick another test chamber or another mechanic to explore. In reality, this prevented us from doing sufficient training and limited the overall scope of the puzzles. With such a flat structure, it was much harder to layer old mechanics onto new ones, because we couldn't guarantee that players understood what they needed to know to solve a puzzle. By going linear, we could guarantee prior knowledge and provide a much better experience, more satisfying pacing and a story that gathered momentum over a long period of time. | |||
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=== Robot Whimsy === | |||
{{Quotation | Mike Belzer | |||
| In our original robot designs, and the first animation tests, we started with the premise that, being robots, their movements should have limited 'personality' and be a bit more mechanical. The feedback of our game testers, and the reaction of fans through the trailers, convinced us that a more whimsical approach to animation would lead to a better experience. So we moved away from a sterile approach and found a whole new range of possibilities, as we began to explore their personalities and gestures. | |||
}} | |||
=== Disassembly Device === | |||
Inside the Team Building entry room. | |||
{{Quotation | Danika Wright | |||
| Since the co-op characters can die at any time, we needed a way to rebuild them quickly and often. Therefore in co-op, we replaced the elevators that connected test chambers in singleplayer, with disassembly machines. These are meant to reinforce the idea that since the robots are disposable, being destroyed is no big deal. In the robot world, it happens all the time! | |||
}} | |||
=== Orange Bot === | |||
Inside the Mass and Velocity entry room. | |||
{{Quotation | Keith Lango | |||
| The orange bot has been described as finicky, and you can see elements that are somewhat birdlike and even reminiscent of the Odd Couple's Felix Unger. The 'gotta pee' idle dance was born out of the idea that current bipedal robots are constantly needing to readjust in order to find their balance. Because Orange's design is rather unstable, the motion design solution was kind of a perpetual motion needed to maintain his balance. | |||
}} | |||
=== Blue Bot === | |||
Inside the Excursion Funnels entry room. | |||
{{Quotation | Christen Coomer | |||
| If the Orange bot is the Odd Couple's Felix, then Blue is Oscar. Blue was meant to be an early and rather rough prototype robot--representing GLaDOS’s first attempt at making a bipedal testing bot. Compared to the sleek lines of Orange, he is much less elegant. For motion inspiration, we looked to some of our favorite real life robots, such as the Big Dog robot from MIT and the towel-folding robot from Hitachi. | |||
}} | |||
=== Voicing the Bots === | |||
3. [[Portal 2 Co-op Course 3 Chamber 8]] : "Security Room"; {{code|mp_coop_wall_5}} | |||
{{Quotation | Bill Van Buren | |||
| It took a while for us to dial in the right approach for the co-op bot vocalizations. Initially we recorded some in-house vocal performances and processed them heavily with the resulting sounds being very robotic. However, as the animations being created for the bots were so broad and expressive, we soon realized we were going to need to try a different sonic approach. After a few more in-house experiments, we brought in Dee Bradley Baker, who we had worked with to create the voices for some of Left 4 Dead’s Special Infected<!--Spitter, Jockey, and Charger-->. We worked with Dee to come up with two distinct vocal and character approaches for the bots and recorded a range of responses for each. Afterward, two of our sound designers each took on one of the voices and came up with a unique sound-processing approach to create a distinct sonic personality for each bot, that still allowed the energy and expression of Dee’s performances to shine through. In the following samples you can hear what they sounded like in Dee’s original performance, and the result after the sound designers got through with them. | |||
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=== Sync Up === | |||
{{Quotation | Brian Jacobson | |||
| It is important to give co-op players a way to coordinate their action. Seeing how our players naturally wanted this ability, we decided to support it with the ping timer, and ended up designing some puzzles around it. Due to lag and other issues, syncing up actions over voice chat turned out to be rather difficult. Therefore we created the countdown timer as a way for players to keep in sync. It's completely predictable. Both players see the GO at the same instant, and the clocks run in sync even if they are on different systems. | |||
}} | |||
=== Bonk Heads === | |||
{{Quotation | Jeep Barnett | |||
| This puzzle requires one of Portal’s trickiest logical leaps. Early playtesters often took longer than their patience would allow, and were nearly ripping out their hair by the time they’d finally solved it. But almost everyone insisted that the payoff was by far their favorite moment in all of co-op. We significantly reduced the average solution time by adding a puzzle just before this where two cubes repeatedly collide, but this almost completely robbed the appeal from what was once a high moment. So, instead we decided to make a few subtle adjustments and leave players with the responsibility to make the final leap. First we added a puzzle four chambers earlier, to teach players to fling by cutting their hard light bridge and falling into a surface directly below. We then subconsciously prime the thought of midair collision by having players repeatedly ricochet weighted spheres against a hard light bridge. Finally, we designed this room’s layout, lighting, and decals so that players would see the entire space as a symmetrical whole and visualize the bots' fling path. By planting shards of the idea in their heads, we allow players to own that exciting dual collision epiphany while keeping their sanity intact. | |||
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=== Hugs === | |||
{{Quotation | Keith Lango | |||
| For a while, we were on the fence about whether to keep the team taunt 'hug' in the game. Some felt it wasn’t suitably robotic, while others had a concern that it perhaps showed too much emotion for these characters. But once it was animated for a trade show trailer, many of our concerns were washed away by the positive reaction of the fans. It was a huge success. | |||
}} | |||
=== Predicting With Portals === | |||
{{Quotation | Dave Kircher | |||
| The levels in Portal 2 are much more complex than in the first game, and as a result we’ve had to beef up the player movement algorithms. The player is represented as an axis-aligned box in the world, which creates a problem for portal teleportation because portal teleportation is almost never axis-aligned. To improve how we handle this, we trace the player as the axis-aligned bounding box they would use on each side of a portal simultaneously and merge the results into something usable. We have to predict quite a bit more than previous Source Engine games because portals and projected entities change the way the player moves through the world. Prediction itself is a mind bending headache when dealing with portals. We’re already dealing with a non-linear space. Now we also have to deal with non-linear time in a non-linear space. | |||
}} | |||
=== Writing for Co-Op === | |||
{{Quotation | Chet Faliszek | |||
| Writing GLaDOS for co-op introduces some interesting problems. In single player you can count on players paying attention and being caught up in important moments. In co-op, you can count on the two players chatting about what they just did as GLaDOS delivers an important line. To help with this issue, we broke up the story beats into smaller sections so players don’t become impatient. We also repeat the points multiple times to insure the message sinks in even if you missed it a few times. Lastly, we also give players room to talk. For example when you die, there is a two second beat for you to laugh or yell before GLaDOS speaks. It is important to give those places for players to speak because the best part about co-op is the shared experience. | |||
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