16 May, 2011
I love knowing how things work. Why and how they’re put together a certain way, why some ideas make the cut and others never see the light of day. Absorbing director commentaries on DVDs are my idea of a truly awesome night in and while I know this nudges me closer to nerdom than I’d probably care to admit, it doesn’t negate the fact that I love any chance to peek behind the scenes.
I’d like to chalk this up to a love of academia and healthy curiosity. Truth be told, it’s probably more likely that I’m just bloody nosy.
Consequently, you can just imagine how twitchy my curious nose gets when given the opportunity to know more about GGS’ current obsession of choice, Portal 2.
Valve’s Erik Wolpaw relinquished a good portion of his vacation time to sit with in a class of NYU students and talk in detail about Valve’s latest offering from the crazies at Aperture. And even though I’ve worked my way through every portion of the developers’ in-game commentary, Erik’s ninety minute presentation provides even more of an insight behind the heart and mind of one of this year’s finest games.
Intrigued? You should be. Go on: grab yourself a cuppa and the obligatory slice of cake and settle down for this …
Game Center Lecture Series- Erik Wolpaw from NYU Game Center on Vimeo.
My IQ went up 25 points just from watching this. True story.
So while you’re here, with your new-found academic persuasion, how about testing yourself a little further? Last week Valve released the initial release of Portal 2‘s Authoring Tools, a nifty little pack that provides gamers with pretty much everything anyone would need in order to re-create the game themselves; sound effects, models, skins, maps, music … you name it.
Well. If you own the PC version, that is.
“The mod tools have to stay on the PC side just because there’s a bunch of dependencies that require the Windows platform,” Chet Faliszek said. “But the content that comes out is agnostic, and so we will be seeing that on all the platforms. Depending on the platform you’re on I should say, will depend on how we’re delivering it.”
So while 360 and PS3 players don’t yet have an opportunity to create demented test chambers of their own, Faliszek suggests that this may be possible in the future. Fingers crossed.
For more details on the mod pack, check out Portal 2‘s official blog. Let us know if you create any chambers yourself!
Wow! Excellent post Vikki! I will watch this while I mop up the last of the achievements on the PS3 version :D