Homebrew Portal DS (in 3D !)

[Foxi4]

This is literally godlike for a DS game, smealum. Hell, quality-wise it's close to retail. I'm quite amazed that this is all made just by you and lobo alone - a very professional product.

 

[Aeter]

Wow, this looks amazing. Nice job!

 

[loganino]

I actually would like to make levels for it, I spent alot of time making levels in FPS maker.

 

[nintendoom]

*Speechless*
That's just... wow.

 

[googlebot]

will you release sources to public? it's quite interesting for educational purposes

 

[KingAsix]

This looks really nice! I'd break out the DSTwo for this

 

[stinkoman]

Once again smealum proves himself to be the best fuckin' ds homebrew developer of all time.

 

[TheDan2430]

Here is what it looks like on the ds:


This is an old version that doesn't have the newer features

 

[DroRox]

DSCraft then this. I mean... this is some really ambitious for the DS and damn does it look amazing.

 

[Öhr]

looking fantastic. thought nintendo ds wouldnt even be capable of running something like this smooth at 30fps. or is it only like that on an emu and the actual hw currently suffers with all those physics and multiple viewports?

As for the name, here is my suggestion: Portable Portal. Real nice homonym that might catch on. Definitely better than "Portal DS" or basically any game title ending (or starting) with the consoles name.

 

[smealum]

Thanks for the encouragements everyone ! Let's just hope the final product gets as warm a reception.

I'm always amazed at the homebrew quality you can produce !

I wish I knew as much as you do.
I never made anything better than splash screen, animated sprites, and sprite moving with the stylus *go hide somewhere*

Keep working on it, it looks great.
And nice to see you decided to make its own thread.

Yeah the FPSM thread was getting a bit crowded and I wasn't sure who was talking about what so I figured it'd be better for me to just finally create a dedicated thread heh.

what the game really needs is challenging, well thought out, levels with creative puzzles. my biggest issue with portal 2 was how easy it was. i blew through the game in under 6 hours and that was because i spent a lot of time playing around. the offer has been made for the community to build levels. if you got what it takes step up and get involved. a game like this is only as good as its challenges.

-another world

couldn't agree more. and the thing is, I'm quite honestly a terrible level designer, so I hope I can find some more talented ones when the time comes.

will you release sources to public? it's quite interesting for educational purposes

I might ? not sure yet tbh. it depends on a lot of things. but most likely if people want to have a look at specific things i won't mind sharing a few snippets at least.

looking fantastic. thought nintendo ds wouldnt even be capable of running something like this smooth at 30fps. or is it only like that on an emu and the actual hw currently suffers with all those physics and multiple viewports?

As for the name, here is my suggestion: Portable Portal. Real nice homonym that might catch on. Definitely better than "Portal DS" or basically any game title ending (or starting) with the consoles name.

no the game runs just fine on an actual DS too, constant 30fps. the way things work anyway, the physics can't actually bring the framerate down so that's pretty neat.

as for the name, i'm not sure, but your suggestion does remind me of this article about my project : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122064-Porter-Ports-Portal-to-Portable
(also I don't remember who but I'm pretty sure some people suggested Portalble as a name)

 

[Rockhoundhigh]

Yeah, the quality you throw out there as a hobbyist is pretty incredible besides thanks to your avatar I always picture you, Calvin and lobo, Hobbes losing their shit behind a computer trying to make this.

 

[totalnoob617]

amazing looks great, but i have a question how can we see such great 3d homebrew games for DS ,but all the homebrew games for ps3 look like pong?
i know DS has been hacked for much longer, but still , they have the SDK's for ps3 and pslight ,also no fancy managers like wiiflow on ps3 either

 

[Öhr]

as for the name, i'm not sure, but your suggestion does remind me of this article about my project : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122064-Porter-Ports-Portal-to-Portable

I blame the 'P's


I have some suggesstions for the game:
I wonder if it's really the best course of action to implement all the objects from the PC Portal in the DS version...
There are basically two reasons for that: Very limited screen size and a more difficult control scheme.
Quick action puzzles (eg. requiring quick consecutive portal placing and jumping) and objects (such as Aerial Faith Plates) might not be suitable for the DS version. Turning around and placing a portal at the correct position while moving probably wouldn't make the players happy
Also small objects like energy balls or thin lasers are also difficult to distinguish on the small screen (especially at a distance), so this might become another issue.
But my biggest concern is orientation: Since the screen is so small and one has a small field of view, figuring out the current puzzle might become much more difficult than it should be. I suggest using a 45° view (call it a pixelart map if you will) on the second screen, similar to the view generated by Portal 2's map editor:

And as for the story, I got an idea:
Why don't we relive the glory days of GlaDOS reign. The main protagonist could be a former Aperture employee, trying to escape while GlaDOS shuts down the whole facility, flooding it with neurotoxin.

In case you like that idea, here's how it could start:
You are asked (by another scientist, not GlaDOS) to participate in the testing of the newly invented portal gun. This could be the first testchamber, which can help the player to get familiar with the controls and cause and effect of portals. Thus the player continues to do tests for the (still human) personal... In the meantime GlaDOS gets activated. She instantly takes over the facility, sealing doors and heating up that deadly neurotoxin. Since it's her first time using it, plus having control of the vast complex is a strain on the supercomputer, it'll take a long time for her to kill everyone. So there won't be a timelimited imposed on the player from the very beginning of the game. But, at that very moment, regular chambers and happy testing will be over once and for all and instead time to escape!

I doubt you can put much story in there, as voice over is highly doubtful, so you should limit reading to a bare minimum... But you could introduce characters, which the player encounters. Employees such as Doug Rattmann might work pretty well. He's the artists of the graffiti in Portal and also a former Aperture employee, one of the few survivors of the GlaDOS' great purge. Read up on him here: http://sectorw.wikia.com/wiki/Doug_Rattmann

Thats it for now. Good Night!

 

[smealum]

amazing looks great, but i have a question how can we see such great 3d homebrew games for DS ,but all the homebrew games for ps3 look like pong?
i know DS has been hacked for much longer, but still , they have the SDK's for ps3 and pslight ,also no fancy managers like wiiflow on ps3 either

To be honest I don't really know but I guess it has something to do with the general lack of interest in the PS3 as a platform for homebrew. I haven't looked at the tools that have been made, so maybe they're the problem, maybe noone's motivated enough to make as good tools for the PS3 as there are for the DS (the PS3 probably being a vastly more complex system not helping). So yeah, I don't really know but it's not that surprising I suppose.

I blame the 'P's


I have some suggesstions for the game:
I wonder if it's really the best course of action to implement all the objects from the PC Portal in the DS version...
There are basically two reasons for that: Very limited screen size and a more difficult control scheme.
Quick action puzzles (eg. requiring quick consecutive portal placing and jumping) and objects (such as Aerial Faith Plates) might not be suitable for the DS version. Turning around and placing a portal at the correct position while moving probably wouldn't make the players happy
Also small objects like energy balls or thin lasers are also difficult to distinguish on the small screen (especially at a distance), so this might become another issue.

Oh I agree actually; the idea isn't to implement every item in the PC games. Right now I'm only trying to get elements from the original portal game and a few extras I thought of. I think the original portal was more slow-paces (no aerial faith-plates, no gels...), so it should work better. As for energy balls, the ones in our game are blue and orange, they kind of stick out so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

And as for the story, I got an idea:
Why don't we relive the glory days of GlaDOS reign. The main protagonist could be a former Aperture employee, trying to escape while GlaDOS shuts down the whole facility, flooding it with neurotoxin.

In case you like that idea, here's how it could start:
You are asked (by another scientist, not GlaDOS) to participate in the testing of the newly invented portal gun. This could be the first testchamber, which can help the player to get familiar with the controls and cause and effect of portals. Thus the player continues to do tests for the (still human) personal... In the meantime GlaDOS gets activated. She instantly takes over the facility, sealing doors and heating up that deadly neurotoxin. Since it's her first time using it, plus having control of the vast complex is a strain on the supercomputer, it'll take a long time for her to kill everyone. So there won't be a timelimited imposed on the player from the very beginning of the game. But, at that very moment, regular chambers and happy testing will be over once and for all and instead time to escape!

I doubt you can put much story in there, as voice over is highly doubtful, so you should limit reading to a bare minimum... But you could introduce characters, which the player encounters. Employees such as Doug Rattmann might work pretty well. He's the artists of the graffiti in Portal and also a former Aperture employee, one of the few survivors of the GlaDOS' great purge. Read up on him here:http://sectorw.wikia.com/wiki/Doug_Rattmann

Thats it for now. Good Night!

That's actually the basic idea. As mentioned in the original post, the game's protagonist *is* ratman (we already have a model for him and everything) and yeah he will most likely be trying to escape glados's test chambers. voice acting is definitely a no go, but we should have text dialogues between ratman, his companion cube and glados. maybe even glados voices but I'm not sure about that. (the main difficulty being writing stuff glados would actually say...)

also, here are a few of the models lobo made for the game :

 

[Öhr]

That's actually the basic idea. As mentioned in the original post, the game's protagonist *is* ratman

That's what I get for only looking at the pretty pictures and ignore those black letters on white ground... haha, guess i could have saved me some time writing that idea down...


I like to break games, but since theres no public demo, I just gotta ask: i know the game isn't ready, but, what happens if you look through an endless portal loop?

also, I will definitely miss the console on the DS, as one just can't do the same crazy stuff without it:

 

[loganino]

Create a glados voice, Right here.

Looks Time consuming but i couldn't find anything else.

 

[Cyan]

I like to break games, but since theres no public demo, I just gotta ask: i know the game isn't ready, but, what happens if you look through an endless portal loop?

There's no loop effect at all. At least currently, maybe it can be added later.

I think it can be edited in Portal/Portal2 using a setting file too, Smea told me it's like if it was set to 0.

 

[Öhr]

There's no loop effect at all. At least currently, maybe it can be added later.

I think it can be edited in Portal/Portal2 using a setting file too, Smea told me it's like if it was set to 0.

r_portal_stencil_depth 1 (0 would show no portal look through at all)

also, for portal 2, you need to set this r_portal_fastpath to 0 for r_portal_stencil_depth to have an effect

Portal 2 is more efficient with the display of endless portal loops as it just reuses the previously rendered view and replicates it somehow in the portal, making it a "cheap" but sufficient loop. this can be disabled with r_portal_fastpath 0. dunno how this exactly works, but it might be an option for the DS version: First portal view gets rendered as usual but those within that portal display the same rendered view of the first portal, but as a texture transformed (rotated/stretched and resized) to fit the perspective. Repeat for 1-2 times for portals within portals.

 

[smealum]

Create a glados voice, Right here.

Looks Time consuming but i couldn't find anything else.

to be honest the problem isn't so much generating the voices as writing down stuff she'd say (because yeah, writing genuinely funny lines that fit in context isn't that easy) and figuring out a good way to stream them in game. so short answer : we'll see.

r_portal_stencil_depth 1 (0 would show no portal look through at all)

also, for portal 2, you need to set this r_portal_fastpath to 0 for r_portal_stencil_depth to have an effect

Portal 2 is more efficient with the display of endless portal loops as it just reuses the previously rendered view and replicates it somehow in the portal, making it a "cheap" but sufficient loop. this can be disabled with r_portal_fastpath 0. dunno how this exactly works, but it might be an option for the DS version: First portal view gets rendered as usual but those within that portal display the same rendered view of the first portal, but as a texture transformed (rotated/stretched and resized) to fit the perspective. Repeat for 1-2 times for portals within portals.

as Cyan said, there are no infinite loops currently (or even non-infinite ones for that matter). i'm not ruling out "cheating" in the way you described but unfortunately I'm already stretched for resources, so again, we'll see i guess.