Valve's Kim Swift talks about designing Portal
by Ross Miller 
{ Mar 8th 2007 at 6:57PM }
At the Experimental Game Design lecture (where, among others, we heard from Crush's Alex Butterfield), Valve's Kim Swift, one of the designers of Portal, talked about the challenges of creating a first-person mind-screw puzzler, which is packaged with the oft-delayed Half-Life: :Episode 2, Black, and Orange sets, and concluded with a video demonstration solving one of Portal's crazy door-opening puzzles.
"Doing something new can be a really big risk and adding something innovative to something already exists can often disrupt and create new games," she said. Swift told the crowd that she and the team approached Portal problems as small gamelets in isolated environments. To her, trying to innovate too much at one time can lead to failure. Jurassic Park: Tresspasser, she quipped, is an example of a title that "tries a lot, and fails at all." Swift's mantra is to try one thing and polish it to the best of your ability.
Following her talk, Swift started a video of one level of portal to explain the depth of the puzzle. In Portal, you can make a blue and orange-rimmed portal that interact with one another. You can attach a portal to most surfaces, although reflective and glass surfaces will not take a portal, "just to make your life more difficult," Swift notes.
"Doing something new can be a really big risk and adding something innovative to something already exists can often disrupt and create new games," she said. Swift told the crowd that she and the team approached Portal problems as small gamelets in isolated environments. To her, trying to innovate too much at one time can lead to failure. Jurassic Park: Tresspasser, she quipped, is an example of a title that "tries a lot, and fails at all." Swift's mantra is to try one thing and polish it to the best of your ability.
Following her talk, Swift started a video of one level of portal to explain the depth of the puzzle. In Portal, you can make a blue and orange-rimmed portal that interact with one another. You can attach a portal to most surfaces, although reflective and glass surfaces will not take a portal, "just to make your life more difficult," Swift notes.
The demonstration begin with the computerized female voice assuring the crowd that "if you feel light-headed, feel free to pass out." To solve the puzzle, which involved having two buttons pressed down to keep a door open, the character placed a portal in the path of an energy ball to make it pass through onto an activator which started a platform that helped you to shoot a portal near a crate to fall onto a switch, whereby you portal yourself onto another switch and proceed to create a portal behind the now-open door so that once you get off the button you will be in the clear. Still with us? Good.
Then came the goofy part of the demonstration. Swift's character placed the portals perpendicular from one another and sent a crate continuously moving at an angle between the two. Then two portals side by side, so as the crate can bob between the two. Then the character created a portal above and below one another, recreating the infamous "infinite portal abyss" move.
We'll have more from yesterday's Experimental Game Design lecture later today.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wulkar @ Mar 8th 2007 7:18PM
Wulkar want pictures, or video. please, if it is accessible.
steve17 @ Mar 8th 2007 7:20PM
well as much as most of that confused the hell outta me. it sounds pretty cool. but is it a puzzler a FPS or a FPS puzzler?
steve17 @ Mar 8th 2007 7:22PM
and i cant understand what they mean. is this going to be a whole new game in itself or a little addition packaged with half life 2:episode 2?
cheesebanana @ Mar 8th 2007 7:24PM
This game is without a doubt me biggest wet dream of recent years in pc gaming.
It really just...appeals to everything that i love in a game.
+The sturdiness + undeniable quality of the source engine.
+A simple, yet infinitely expandable concept.
+Most likely easily created user puzzles with as much depth as original levels.
+Physics/environmental oriented gameplay.
It just looks So.Good.
Really cant get over how much i want this game
dwhit @ Mar 8th 2007 7:31PM
there is demo video on youtube if anyone would like to see it, it sounds great, and from what I've seen, it will be great. Also, it is a full game, or at least as big as episode 2. it is a pure puzzler and it does fit in to the half life storyline.
Jon-Angelo @ Mar 8th 2007 7:57PM
I'm an engineer major, and, we also have to have a degree in physics, and this game sounds like "teh awes0me" to me. Granted, it's not exactly following quantum theories (or even general relativity), but it's the closest us physics geeks will get in a videogame. I can't wait to start trapping some of you in an endless void of constant motion!
(grabs geek trophy)
Zachary Hinchliffe @ Mar 8th 2007 9:38PM
I really, REALLY, would love to get this as a stand-alone game. WHY are they making me buy Half Life 2, then Episode One, then Episode Two? (Unless you can buy it alone, and I'm just missing something)
Arturo @ Mar 8th 2007 10:23PM
@7 i wouldnt be surprised if it came out on its own through steam.
Fierce360 @ Mar 8th 2007 11:13PM
@7
for pc it is packaged with team fortress 2 and episode 2.
for xbox 360 it comes with hl2 (ep1 and ep2) and team fortress 2.
Patrick @ Mar 9th 2007 9:14AM
@9
I think it's more of a statement saying that the things packaged in the new orange/black packs deserve more money and should be able to be bought desperately.
Eric Ward @ Mar 9th 2007 4:28AM
I noticed that you wanted to see the video, but here's better: play the original game. Narbacular drop was created, I belive, by some studnets (nuclear Monkey Software, including the aformentioned Kim Swift) as a senior project, and later got licensed by Valve. You can download the game for frees at their website.
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardrop.html
trent @ Mar 9th 2007 12:45PM
@4 you forget to mention that it will be an uber throw my keyboard across the room challenge!
GCNH87 @ Mar 9th 2007 9:45PM
Here's a trailer, gotta love it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWzmL05OlYA