Friday, July 4, 2008

The Device HAS been modified, yo!

So some students from the Digipen Institute of Technology Had an idea for a game. Of course, it's an idea stolen from a book series I never wrote in high school -- specifically; what would happen if you could create planar portals in pairs (doorways if you will .. Monster's Inc did this too!) that both physically and visually linked two locations in regular space?

My treatise explored what such power would do to society (security, construction, travel, etc). Monster's Inc explored the concept as a doorway to alternate worlds (back and forth between Earth and Monstropolis). These folk weaponized their portals and built a couple of FPS: most notably "Portal" which twists and tortures the celebrated HL2 Source/Havok engine.

Critical reception was strong. The quirky game mechanic melded wonderfully with an OCD story line and cast of characters so short as to be virtually non-existant. Fans went wild (in spurts), sometimes fan game maps were made. Sometimes fanart. VGCats made a Comic Strip and an AMV based on the credits song "Still Alive". Penny Arcare envisioned an infinite slide using this tech. Randall Munroe gave villian GlaDOS a boyfriend.

A music group with no website who appropriately named themselves "Victims of Science" remixed sounds from the game and some of the dialog by GlaDOS and the turrets to make a song called "The Device has been Modified". It became popular enough to rival the following of the original end-credits song "Still Alive" by Jonny Coulton.

TDHBM is actually really fun to AudioSurf to as well. One day I found a video someone made of them playing AS to TDHBM. I felt like whipping that link out into chat today, so I did's a video search.

But I found this first.



Apparently this thecybercat dude is one of the best Portal players in the world, with record speed runs posted on Youtube.

Also, he can swing himself some visual effects. This is some kind of AMV he's got here.
But the link underneath that in Youtube says "Go check out my NEW version of this! It's way better" and then that leads you here:



...

er,

...

Sorry, this just makes me mentally blue screen and I can never remember what I just saw. But check out the Youtube comments on that sumbitch! The response is unanimous and uncontested (as of this blogposting); thecybercat now has an undead army at his command.

Now I'm wondering where you can get higher res versions of these videos for mah media center? :3