Blue Portals: Post-Release News Article #5

A little over a month ago, we announced that in due time, we will be shipping out Blue Portals: Extended Play on Desura. Blue Portals: UP should follow after that. Since then, we've gotten a lot of people interested in Extended Play, but more concerned about Desura. In this article we first want to give a little more information about Blue Portals: Extended Play and then address some questions and concerns about Desura.

After we shipped out Blue Portals, the first offcial mappack that was announced was Blue Portals: UP. But then Blue Portals: Extended Play was announced with some media. So is UP canceled? No. Due to the fact that it's a mappack being made to continue the storyline of Blue Portals (and the fact that the WinstonSmith is busier than an airport full of terrorists), Extended Play will release before UP. So what's the story about Extended Play?

Extended Play is more of a show-case for doing the same things that were done in Blue Portals, except differently. Most things are powered by logic branches and logic gates to improve the reliablity of puzzle elements (such as portaling light, box droppers, and much more). Extended Play will have two new elements to the puzzles. One of them was shown off in the last article. The light cube.

The light cube was an thought of and tested during the development of the Blue Portals campaign. It was first made and tested for a Half-Life 2 mod and it consisted of a projected texture entity that was parented to the cube. The cube was developed more for Blue Portals, but finally did not make the cut due to time. But if you're the kind of person who reads all the walls, we did hint the light cube in the campaign. It works simple, you charge it up by crossing it with a light beam, then it's able to activate light catchers.

The other element is going to be a secret until we release. Why? Because it's a major 'experment' for the project and don't want to create an over-the-top amount of hype and have many disapointed. But, we did test it in Half-Life 2 before it was ported to Blue Portals.

So what else is going to be in Blue Portals: Extended Play? Well we're trying to advoid repeating our mistakes that were made during the campaign; but then again, we're making that better! One of the things that Blue Portals was credited for is the look of the maps and how different it is compared to Portal and other mods. We are going one step further in that direction with more detailed construction areas and improvements to the normal testing areas. Extended Play will also hint more at story, and most importantly feature the old elements with along with the fully operational Portal Device.

Again, Blue Portals: Extended Play will be released on Desura. When we first said that, people got a little upset about that fact and ask if updates could also be on ModDB. First off I can not and will not upload patches to ModDB due to the fact of the risk of forgeting files and my upload speed is utter crap, just to find out that a file is missing then having to reupload it. Infact, it took hours just for me to upload Blue Portals to Colossal so he could upload the it to ModDB.

That's where Desura is different. Unlike updating mods the old way where you upload a patch and wait for people to download it, you simply upload the newer version on Desura. After you made an update to your mod, you just make it public and Desura will actuall detect what was added or what is different then only release that in the patch.. Therefore, nothing is forgotten or lost and anyone's up-to-date and we don't get messages about bugs that were fixed weeks ago. We understand that Desura is fairly new and buggy for some people, but Steam was like that, too. If you have any issues with Desura, contact Desura support, NOT US! Although we highly support Desura (probably more then any other mod) we do not own or have control of it. We will upload the updates on ModDB, but not for a while.

And don't forget about the Blue Portals Mapping Competition hosted on PlanetPhillip.com, enter for your chance to win Portal 2! We are getting closer and closer to the deadline and the release date of Portal 2, so its not too late to hop in! Check out the site for more information.

Thanks, and hopefully next time we talk, Extended Play will be released.
~ Blue Portals Development Crew.