PHLING Is Canceled news

Why I am Giving Up:

Unfortunately, I have decided to cancel this mod. My plans for it were too ambitious, and my free time is too scarce. I have uploaded an archive of the mod’s files in case anyone wants to continue the mod or use some of its assets. Just make sure to credit me, Evan Holloway (or Theevina) if you do.

Modding Portal 2 has been a pain to say the least. This game isn’t as flexible compared to HL2 and other old Valve games. The choreography system isn’t very functional, the scripts and resource files are confusing and break when changed, models from other games have to be recompiled before adding them in, and I run into strange bugs everywhere. Without access to the source code I don’t think there is any way to do a mod like this properly. (The closest I’ve seen to a similar mod is Portal Stories: Mel.)

The mod as I imagined is described in the TO DO file in the development files download. It is supposed to be a more of surreal art adventure than a puzzle game. It was meant to bridge the gap between the Portal and Hal-Life 2 worlds. (I know other mods have attempted this.) But this was far too ambitions to do alone.

Description of the Mod's Story:

Maps 1 and 2: It is a weird dream Chell has after she escapes the enrichment center. (See the demo)

Map 3: This is quite different from what is in the demo. Chell blows out candles on birthday cakes to trigger more memories (as puzzles) relating to her inner struggles and fears.

Maps 4 and 5: Chell wakes up facing a Combine soldier. He tells her that she must go back to the enrichment center and bring back Portal technology to them. They implanted a device in her skull. She goes into the old office areas and finds a way to break into the tests. (See the demo. The demo ends here.)

Map 6: Chell enters a co-op test and encounters Atlas and P-body. GLaDOS, who thought she was finally rid of Chell, begins to panic. The security system automatically neutralizes the Combine tracking chip. A substitute core is deployed to take over Chell’s new testing. This new core is Corona. She is kind but very chatty and inexperienced. (She is voiced by my sister.) She figures out a way to get Chell into a new testing track.

After all of that, a movie is played where the Combine figure out what to do next. Since they lost contact with Chell, they decided that an invasion is the best option. Soldiers storm the facility, unaware that it is far more dangerous than they imagined. They comically fall into traps, are flung through portals by the co-op droids, and shot by turrets. The Combine need a Plan B. They wait for Striders, Hunters, and tanks to arrive.

Maps 7, 8, and 9: Chell does some tests with Corona. It ends with a defective test. Chell escapes through the observation room into the BTS area and descends.

In the later maps, Corona catches up with Chell and warns her to stop going down. There are rumors that a dangerous, top-secret project was conducted in the lower mine shafts. Chell is forced to leave her behind after receiving some advice. She has to escape the Combine at all costs and the only way is down.

I had a whole lot of things planned for this section which never came to fruition. As Chell descends, things get scarier. I wanted a part where she attaches a flashlight to her portal gun and goes through some dark areas, maybe being chased by a rogue robot or something. Eventually, she reaches the old testing spheres and does some tests backwards to continue going down.

At the bottom of the shaft, in a corner of the mine, she discovers a sealed door that looks different from the others. She has to find a key and solve a puzzle to open it. Then she descends into the darkness.

Chell comes to a triangular shaped hallway (I made a test map of the concept. Equilateral triangles are harder to pull off on Hammer’s grid system than you might thing.) Each area goes to a different place. One area is offices for this lab called “Aperture: Project Midnight”. Other sections had tests and other things. Eventually, Chell must go to the center of the triangle. It is a large room with a nuclear reactor. Because this lab is separate from the rest of the facility, she must start the reactor to proceed.

Chell descends an elevator to the next level and finds an upgrade for her portal gun. This allows her to use “Ghost Mode”. Pressing “Q” on the keyboard allows her to pass through certain ghost walls for a few seconds. When the timer is up, ghost mode turns off. If she is inside a wall, she dies. Ghost mode also allows her to shoot portals though most objects, including most kinds of emancipation grills. She is also invisible to turrets. Following this upgrade, she takes the elevator to the lower level and is faced with the midnight puzzles, a series of puzzles that utilize the player’s knowledge of all puzzle elements from the previous games as well as ghost mode.

All of this is very difficult for me to describe because it would have looked completely different from the original game. I was going to have different models and textures for everything from the turrets, cubes, music, walls, and more. There was also going to be a lot more use of the seamless portal walls to give the feeling that this facility did not exist in Euclidean space.

Once all the puzzles are complete, Chell goes down the hallway to the final chamber, the bottomless pit. Seemingly suspended in the pit is a platform with a box on it. Chell portals to the platform and pushes some buttons on a console. A voice is heard. “I am Cave Johnson.” Using ghost mode technology, Aperture was able to bind the brain and consciousness of the company’s founder to a giant robot. Remember his line from Portal 2? He said if only they could pour his brain into a computer. The lights turn on in the cavern and the Cave Johnson robot awakens. It hears the explosions of the Combine invasion above and becomes enraged.

Chell flees the facility as it crumbles. There is no way to escape death from any direction, but she comes across a shaft with a bright light above. The only way to escape is for the player to fling themselves out of the facility.

Music plays as Chell flings herself out of Aperture. The Cave robot destroys the facility and emerges at the surface to fight the combine army. Chell enters the clouds and flies away with the birds, knowing that her troubles are over now. Even though none of this is obviously real and she has been dead for a long time already, she can rest now.

That is pretty weird, right? But that was the idea of my third mod. It would have been almost 20 maps long depending on how many tests I would put in-between. And now that I’ve gotten this off my chest, I can let it go. If anyone has taken the time to read this, thank you.

Sincerely,
Theevina

PHLING Development Files (Please give credit if you use anything):