The origins of Portal: Cooperative
In 2020 I found this mod named "Portal: Multiplayer", it was super buggy, so much so that respawning would almost always cause a crash, and seemed to support deathmatch more than anything else given that it had dm_lockdown from hl2dm in it. However, it was the only possible way at the time to play Portal without portals crashing in multiplayer and that heavily interested me.
I created 3 test chambers and the first 3 test chambers featured in Portal: Cooperative were created for Portal: Multiplayer, albeit, heavily modified and updated by now. These maps were kind of gathering dust because Portal: Multiplayer wasn't a popular mod and I wasn't really touching them, only deciding to update them occasionally throughout the years with my spare time.
Now we get to the origins, for those who don't know, in almost every source game there is a way to start a multiplayer server even if the game is singleplayer, I had recently discovered a month or 2 ago that Portal: Multiplayer was sort of obsolete by now because Portal got an update that fixed portals in multiplayer (this update happened over a year ago). That really made me pickup the pace and I created even more test chambers and overhauled the first 3 test chambers.
I had asked some others for feedback and was giving them information about bugs and other annoying stuff present in this unintended multiplayer mode. One of them suggested I put these levels in a mod instead of just creating a map pack where I had users follow instructions to mitigate the bugs instead of outright fixing them. At first, I was hesitant, but as time went on, I realized why they suggested that, and that's how we have Portal: Cooperative. Not only could I fix bugs, I could add my own features, such as what's seen in the screenshots.
Extra Info
- Discord: [[Link Hidden For Now]]
- Steam Group: Steamcommunity.com
This mod will be open-source once it's released and not only that, it should be fairly easy to create custom maps for the mod. For those interested, I can release beta content if asked since I know some people are interested in that sort of stuff.
I've also created a playground map, mainly for servers that have high amounts of players because this mod supports up to 32 players. This is what it looks like:
