Portal's Weird Beta Maps

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Hey everyone, the name’s Ossy Flawol. Portal is a game, shockingly, and it’s one that went through a pretty fascinating development cycle due to the amateur nature of the developers. When developing games, the development team behind it can always be found conceiving new ideas for it. Whether it’s a location, a gameplay concept, or even just testing the game at its bare minimum, the first Portal is no different to the typical development cycle of video games. In order to implement ideas into the game, developers make what are called “test levels”, done to ensure the game functions as expected after code changes by testing the bare essentials, or to test a specific new feature. These levels are made for trialling these ideas, and aren’t intended to be seen by the public’s eye. In the case of Portal though, we have practically every single level that existed during two specific snapshots of development, of which having leaked online a few years back, meaning that it is now possible to see these levels with our own two eyes. In this video, we’ll be checking out a small handful of these beta levels, ones that most people would consider weird. I won’t be discussing every single development level here. For instance, there are levels that were made for demo showcasing purposes, ones that are incredibly obvious in what their purpose is, or levels that are just… not worth talking about. So, let’s begin. We’ll be going through these maps by year on Portal: Project Beta, which is a December 2006 build of Portal 1, unless I specify otherwise. Now these first three maps are interesting, since they’re actually maps from Half-Life 2’s development, having been copied over into Portal’s repository. testroom_point_camera is for testing the point_camera entity, who would’ve guessed? This entity specifically is a camera that projects a live feed from itself in the map to a screen elsewhere within. This technology was used in Half-Life 2 in various scenarios, most notably the Breencasts. Why this map is in Portal’s folders will make sense once we see the other point_camera-related map in here. testroom_point_camera_teleport. This map is nearly identical to the previous, but with one key difference. There is a citizen from Half-Life 2 here who will walk out from the camera’s end of the live feed, and now you can see why the Portal developers grabbed these maps in particular: this was likely them wanting to see if portals existed in Source already. While this iteration is a lot more limited in comparison, since this is solely made out of map logic, you could probably consider these to be one of the first portals ever made for Portal, if you ignore the fact these maps have a “last edited” date of June 20th, 2004, meaning they were made prior to Half-Life 2’s release, and were made for Half-Life 2 itself. This map, zoo_combine, is the first of the “zoo” maps for Portal. These maps are not exactly style guides, but rather a collection of assets the developers can reference — hence, a zoo. This map, as the name implies, is a zoo of practically all Combine-related models and assets from Half-Life 2. The existence of this map in Portal may seem a little weird if you’re not in the loop, but one of the most well-known Portal beta facts is that Aperture as we know it did not exist. Originally, it was a Nova Prospekt-styled facility run by the Combine. We refer to this era of development as the “Prospekt Era” for this reason. Anyways, despite this being a map of Combine-related assets that the Portal developers likely copied over from the Half-Life 2 repository, it has some bizarre oddities of its own. For example, this APC right at the start of the level is not a model — It is an actual vehicle entity that you can… well, “get” into to try and drive. It’s not functional and you can’t do anything, but it’s still really fuckin’ weird. Another weird entity oddity are these two Combine soldiers, named soldier_ar2 and soldier_shotgun respectively. They’re not actually models in the map, but are a unique entity known as a cycler_flex, an ancient entity in the Source engine. By dealing damage to them, they will cycle through every single animation sequence in the chosen model. You can see what animation is being played via the ent_text command. And the shotgunner Combine here is not wielding a real weapon, but rather it’s a prop_dynamic_ornament, which, in incredibly simplified terms, lets models be attached to other models via bone parenting. The shotgunner is not using the unique skin added in Episode 2, due to this map being from 2004. There’s functional health and suit chargers, some working thumpers which will scare off spawned Antlions, and nearly all the gates and doors will open if you go near them. This dropship container is a physics prop for some reason, and some eagle-eyed viewers would have already noticed the fact that this map features four different Citadel models in the skybox. There’s even a barely-functional sequence of some Combine walls smashing down some rubble. As for mapping anomalies, there’s these binoculars that are apparently named combine_gate_large, with a trigger around it like gates in this map. Let’s move on from that map. zoo_lab is a bit more of a unique zoo map, showcasing the assets to be used in the “Lab” section of Portal. For reference, the escape levels were originally referred to by lab_lvl in their internal map files, while the Test Chambers were referred to as intro_lvl. Prerequisite information aside, this map is divided up into three distinct sections, two of which have names, being the Prop Room and the Decal Room. There’s also this unnamed third area that has a bunch of pipes and support structures in it, so I can only presume this is the Pipe Room(?) This map has many, many text messages laid about it, detailing every little bit about this map, ranging from the textures used, to all the decals seen on every surface. While there’s nothing too interesting from the Half-Life 2 side of things, this map appears to feature some unique assets: Wall Decals F, G, and H. These are missing textures when you load up the map, which should indicate the obvious. Luckily, the map also lists filenames, so we can see their names are decal_graph, decal_equation, and decal_drawing. The 2016 leaks of Portal’s development repositories actually have the textures for these, so here’s the textures ported by Wolfcl0ck and in the map proper. decal_drawing is the weirdest one out of the three. It has the word “Quanta” in it, under what seems like a theoretical model of a wormhole. Exactly what this means is a topic for another day, but moving along... Aside from the obvious, there doesn’t seem to be much more to talk about — but there are some deeper oddities within the internal mapfile. There is this strange collection of vents chilling in the void that don’t seem to fit any room in the map. There’s a lighting entity here that references the lab2 level, and a receiver cart model and rope that both reference an rm6. The rm naming format was possibly one of the first ever that was used for Portal’s maps, so seeing a mention of it here is… peculiar. Let’s move onto the final zoo map. zoo_testarea is, as you might guess, for the Test Chambers back in early Portal development. The first room features a whole heap of wall destruction props, rubble, this weird spiral staircase, and a Combine logo on the wall. This area, I can only presume, was for the devs to have an easy reference of every destruction-related prop they might use. The second room of this map is strange: it features a toxic goo pit, two platforms, a catwalk to the side and… yeah... that’s... yeah... exactly what it looks like. This is a ragdoll from Half-Life 2 of a citizen in toxic goo, so you could probably imagine what the Portal developers were thinking of saying with this one. This ragdoll entity actually is named, being floating_body_lvl5, which tells us that it comes from the Prospekt Era version of Test Chamber 8. The third and final room in this map is the most interesting. We can see a lot of early versions of test elements from very early on! For one thing, the original Unstationary Scaffolds take up most of the space. Before the platforms travelled on rails of light, the developers originally had them be instant-kill scaffolds that would electrify the player. This is mentioned in the developer commentary for Portal 1. We can also find the early Prospekt version of the Energy Pellet catcher on the floor here. No launcher, weirdly, but right nearby is something pretty interesting: one of the first portal gun pedestal designs! This design is made purely out of brushwork, and... yeah, we’ll ignore the way the gun is floating on this thing. This is obviously due to the fact that the Portal Gun has changed models many times throughout development, and with this near-retail version of the gun, you can tell the origin of the model has changed since 2005. We have a few more tests for the Unstationary Scaffold rails, and then something very interesting: incredibly early versions of the Cube and Buttons. Interestingly, this cube is a func_physbox, a brush-based entity, and is actually lighter than normal cubes. Anyways, that’s about all there is for this map. There is this room outside the normally accessible area as well, but this is something present in a lot of maps to handle Energy Pellet catchers, so it’s not really as bizarre as you might think. testroom_trigger_portal is located in the exact same room from the point_camera tests, being reused from those maps. This is a test level for a trigger entity known as a trigger_portal, though the entity doesn’t seem to function anymore. There’s also these textures, simply called PORTAL_1… ...yeah, they’re both just PORTAL_1. They’re actually the very first Portal texture ever made, being what are known as the “Noise Portals”; they’re literally just Photoshop noise with a big “1” across it, though in this map they’re cut off. The textures are on a monitor brush, most likely to have an actual projection through the portals themselves. They don’t work here, though, since they use an invalid shader that doesn’t exist anymore. While nothing in this map actually functions anymore, there are still some peculiar oddities to point out. For one, this map seems to build off of what was seen in the point_camera_teleport test, using point cameras as well. There’s also a cactus pot here, I presume for testing physics objects through portals. I believe with this map, we can certifiably say this might be some of the first portals ever made for Portal... if they functioned. This map also contains even earlier versions of the portals. Hidden in the VMF file are two visgroups; enabling them shows portals using the “ShaderSlab” models from Valve’s shader testing. Pretty wack. Now here’s something arguably as interesting: lab_lvl1. This map is possibly one of the only scrapped puzzles from Portal, period. While this map was technically last modified on March 14th, 2006, it’s from the Prospekt Era of development, so I’m sticking it in this section for brevity. This is a puzzle wherein many infinite health Energy Pellets would bounce around on the inside of a cage, and there was a button you had to put a cube on. When you load up this map with zero edits, the cube is already on the button. Who knows why... probably for testing? It’s speculated that lab_lvl1 is the mysterious and lost testchmb_a_12, but we don’t really have enough evidence to suggest the map even existed at any point in the developer repositories for Portal 1. If a more updated version of lab_lvl1 exists in the form of testchmb_a_12, it’s probably stuck on some Portal developer’s old hard drives, rotting away. This isn’t actually where the tale of lab_lvl1 ends. Located in a maps/custom directory from the 2006 build of Portal is custom_example.tga, an image that shows lab_lvl1. Yes, the image is this low-resolution. Note the early cube and button designs present. This was probably intended to be an example of a custom map to show off the “custom” folder system that Portal had in place. Interestingly, this map is given a proper name, “Cage O’ Balls”, and credits it to Jeep Barnett, a developer on Portal. Let’s now move onto 2006. ragdoll_test is a giant, empty room that features two cube droppers. As the name implies, this is a test for the ragdolls used in the escape sequence with the cube dropper that you break — and, yes, those are ragdolls! They’re just attached to the dropper so they don’t go flailing around on the floor, which is exactly what this map is testing. Like mentioned, this room is… abnormally-sized, and just completely empty, which is really, really weird. Kind of gives me the creeps in all honesty... Uhh, the random hallway in this map that exists for zero purpose doesn’t help either, nor the lack of lighting. Let’s just move on already. bonus_longjump is incredibly interesting. This map was an idea for a post-game bonus map where the player would try to fling as far as they can and see the distance that they could reach. The distance is measured in yards for some reason; each ten yards is represented by an alternating pattern of normal floor tiles and checkered tiles. This map also just inherently looks bizarre. Having any form of Portal content that features a bright sky being contrasted with the concrete aesthetic of Portal emanates a super, super weird vibe. The fact this is all in fullbright mode, too, just adds to it. Now, there’s nothing actually stopping you from continuing to double fling over and over again to reach a further distance. I could guess that this is what might’ve been intended, but it’s hard to gauge what the developers might’ve been thinking for this bonus mode. I can certainly see why this idea was scrapped. It’s a cool concept on paper, but there’s not much replay value to it. liquidportal_test… Ohh, boy, Liquid Portals. These are kind of an anomaly in what exactly the purpose of them was, the main idea being that they are a liquid… that happens to be a portal. This map first utilises the end part of Chamber 9 snipped off, and by standing on the button, you activate the liquid portal to flood the area, and when it fully encompasses you, you get teleported to here. Hello, Xen ending! Didn’t expect that, did you? If you’re not sure of what I mean by this, go watch the collab video I did with RichterOvertime on this cut ending concept from Portal 1. It’s super bizarre to see this liquid portal concept make an appearance in conjunction with the Xending area. It could indicate an idea the developers had to replace the hole that appears in the wall with a liquid portal later down the line. Liquid Portals did see an inclusion in the ending later in development, specifically the iconic December 2006 iteration of the GLaDOS fight, where once you defeat the broken, glitchy GLaDOS, a liquid portal rises to teleport you to a cavern that leads outside. bts_styleguide! No, not the K-pop band. It’s an acronym for “behind the scenes,” which is how the developers for both Portal games referred to the backstage industrial areas of Aperture Science. This map features a pretty interesting old version of Aperture’s industrial regions. You spawn in a very simple test chamber environment, and have to crawl into the industrial backstage through a broken grate. This is seemingly ripped directly from Test Chamber 16 and mirrored. Maybe it was the other way around? Regardless, let’s actually analyse what we can see here. For one, these comically long pistons, and these giant Half-Life 2 fans being used here. There’s also this block of pure light tied to one of the pistons, which I presume was meant to show what the white holes in test chambers were? You can also find Doug Rattman’s gaming setup in the corner of the room, and a few metal blocks thrown around. Though, that’s not the weird part of this map. Turn your attention to these grated-off areas and you’ll notice the peculiar presence of giant mechanical gears turning. Yeah, apparently one of the original concepts for Aperture’s backstage was to feature giant gears, that would be, presumably, powering the facility and controlling the motor functions of things like pistons. I’m personally glad they cut this idea. The giant gears are kind of comical, even for Portal 2’s standards. The atmosphere they went with for the final game with all the pistons everywhere was a much better choice. Speaking of, you can actually find a piston in the corner of the giant room this style guide exists in. There is actually a later iteration of a BTS style guide we’ll be checking out later in this video. Speaking of, let’s move onto 2007. Before anything, keep in mind I’m still playing these 2007 maps on Portal: Project Beta, so visual differences may exist. devtest_01 is weird. Its only purpose was originally to serve as a way to check if level transitions worked, since the original devtest map has an elevator to devtest_01, of which originally contained nothing, aside from this “YOU WIN” text on the wall when you exit the elevator. But here, in a later version, a vacuum tube transporting cubes was added, and a Rocket Turret was also added. Presumably, this was done to easily test the sequence of the Rocket Turret activating and breaking the tube for a cube, but that’s kinda bizarre... why not load into the map that has this stuff directly? This isn’t a consistently repeated manoeuvre in Portal 1; it’s used once and once only. Surely it’d make sense to test the map these come from and not need to stick it into the devtest, right? Well... who am I to question the developers for trying to keep themselves organised? When you do blow up the vacuum tube transporting the cubes, you can actually hop into the tubes yourself. Go to the right, and there’s that goddamned “YOU WIN” text again! Seriously, no, I gotta talk about this text because it’s weird as fuck. Source has numerous entities that can display text, like game_text, or point_message. What use was there out of making this thing out of brushwork? I get that it was probably a developer being bored and whipping it up in a few seconds, but it’s still really, really weird to see any form of text in the physical level like this, especially in Portal. It has the same vibes as old custom maps that would make signs out of brushes, rather than models or custom textures. Really goddamn weird. So, test_fling is kind of interesting. You start in this very tall room, and you can portal up to find what is a giant flinging section, similar to Test Chamber 18’s ending area. Now, Test Chamber 18 didn’t actually originally have that giant fling area, and this map seems like it would have been testing the concept. It has a bit of an interesting layout, with you alternating between both sides of the chamber, and these walls separating each respective fling platform as you rise up, before ending with the angled fling onto an ending platform. It practically is the same concept as Test Chamber 18’s ending area, just obviously more primitive. Not much more I can say, really; there’s some giant pistons in this map holding up the platforms, and you can survive in the goo if you keep yourself swimming to the top — they didn’t extend the hurt trigger tall enough. Now, the final map we’ll cover: portal_bts_styleguide is bts_styleguide’s younger and cooler cousin. This shows the Portal developers clearly transitioning towards the industrial Aperture style we know and love, but still not quite perfect. We’ve got the panel setups of the walls, the catwalks, the green support trusses, generators... Practically everything is coming together here, but the lighting is just that bit off, and so are the texture choices. There’s this room of props over in the distance, showing what examples of what assets to use, much like the zoo maps covered earlier in this video. It’s super fascinating to see this map, as it’s a transition away from the beta state towards the retail one, but it’s not quite there yet. This industrial backstage area is actually not the only location in this map. By heading through this pair of doors, you can find an incredibly simple office hallway. Zero decals on the walls or anything. It’s just... blank. The office lights seen throughout Portal 1 are present here too, but seem to be using the white version of the plastic textures, which I’ve never seen before in this context. Actually looks pretty nice! There’s even a little observation room here. It features some retail assets in the form of these chairs and this table, but the brush-based monitors are unique. In retail Portal 1, they appear once in Test Chamber 16, in this observation room, and seem to be left there entirely by mistake, as if the developers forgot it existed. The observation window looks out towards… nothing, just a wall. These doors all also seem to open and close in sync with each other since they all share the same entity name. Pretty funny. Anyways, I believe that’s all the time we have today! Thank you all for sticking around to the end of this video. If you enjoyed it, go ahead and subscribe! I talk about these kinds of topics constantly on this channel, and I’d love to have more people who want to learn. If you wanna support the channel further, I’ve got a Discord server you can join, a Twitter you can follow, and if you’re generous, a Patreon page! Stay safe, y’all. Thank you for watching. Peace. [♫ Portal 2 OST: You Will Be Perfect ] Caption enhancements by Reese Rivers (@ReeseTheRivers)

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Channel: Ossy Flawol

Views: 196,806

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Keywords: portal, portal beta, portal turret, portal cube, portal 2, valve software, valve beta

Id: h7I58q7kw0A

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Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2022