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Comment by mappu | Hacker News Reader

The leak also includes most of something called F-STOP, a cancelled Portal project, that apparently looks like Superliminal: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/eebagv/gameplay_of_a...

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The F-STOP included in this leak, from my understanding, isn't Valve's prototype. It's just in-development fan-made game to try and replicate Valve's unreleased prototype.

Strong evidence that this is fan-made: there is Cave Johnson dialogue in the video [0]. F-STOP significantly predates Portal 2 and I presume the Cave Johnson character as well.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HboQWe3FYbg

Cave Johnsons name was referenced in portal 1. It could be they already had the character idea in mind

Hm, the linked video is a bit underwhelming considering all the hype that this secret mechanic had. The "polaroid effect" prototype that i saw some time ago is much closer to what i'd expect the game to be (and IMO has way more gameplay applications, though it can also be easy to break):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ran_yU65Xmg

Honestly, i expected something a bit more involved than copy/pasting and scaling objects. And even then, this old ldjam game (Tale of Scale) does it better IMO:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid...

(well, it doesn't do the copy part, just the scale part but still feels better)

Here's a gameplay video which I assume is from this leak on account of the upload date: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HboQWe3FYbg

I think it's obvious why FStop wasn't finished... It looks boring. The gist seems to be that you can use the device to move and resize objects. Kind of cool but looks hella tedious. I always assumed it was going to be about making different sized portals so you could change size of things (including yourself) by passing through.

Those non-euclidean rooms at the end of the video are sweet though. Honestly the most surprising thing is that we didn't actually see any of these in the portal games given that it's the same exact tech required to make it work as the portals themselves.

Edit: The concept looks boring, not the obviously unfinished tech demo

I don't think you can be confident that this is F-STOP, multiple indications support that it is fan made.
There is an obvious reason why F-STOP wasn't finished though: Valve never finishes anything. Episode 2 came out 13 years ago.

It could be fan made, but the camera mechanic seems to be from the source code, no? There could be MORE to the mechanic that isn't implemented but this piece at least looks lame
edit: and for completeness, nowadays I feel compelled to point out that the latest half life game came out just a month ago

Right, this why I mention the thirteen years. That's what it took to get a new half life.

One of the best uses of portals I've seen was on The Stanley Parable game with seamless brainfuck moments like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_UcYPaQWrI

Antichamber is a puzzle game that uses the same thing in a ton of extremely fun ways. I highly recommend it.

I second Antichamber, it's an overlooked gem. It combines the mind-bending puzzle platforming of Portal with the intriguingly interconnected world design of Metroid.

A really interesting side effect of this is you can do it in VR to make room scale maps which are really really big. If done properly, our brains don't notice it nearly as much as you'd expect. This video does a great job of making it excruciatingly obvious. I love it.

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