This page details pre-release information and/or media for Portal 2.
| This article is a work in progress.
...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.
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| This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion.
Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?
Notes: This page is missing a huge number of pre-release videos and content, alongside some bad grammar and next-to-no referencing or sources for information. |
After the release of The Orange Box, Valve took a break from working on games to experiment with other projects, at the request of Gabe Newell. Some of these projects included potential sequels and spin-offs of Portal.
Development Timeline
| To do:
- Try to start expanding this timeline and provide specific dates for when much of this happened (if possible), provide details and preferably not "eras".
- F-Stop during earliest days was something else than prequel.
- The Development Limbo apparently happened, between the end of F-Stop and start of Core Hub
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2007
- August - Directed Design Experiments: Various experiments were conducted over a span of 7 months to improve the Source engine. This stage is not really related to Portal 2 development.
- December - F-Stop: Valve's fifth experiment featuring a camera. This would end up as a prequel to Portal. F-Stop continued development until August 2008, only to be scrapped between 22-27 October 2008.
2009
- January-October - Valve's first attempt at a sequel to Portal. The story would have been about the Personality Cores taking over Aperture Science and using them to repair GLaDOS. Portal fans named this stage Core Hub after the hub (Central AI (GLaDOS) Room).
- January (up until 2010) - Experimental: When Valve began work on an actual sequel to Portal, this stage was focused on creating new features for the game, many of which (light bridges, excursion funnels, aerial faith plates, and lasers) remained in the retail game.
- Summer - The developers of Tag: The Power of Paint were hired by Valve. Paint (gels) development had begun, although in separate game, based on Portal 2.
- November? (confirmed late 2009) - Gels were merged into the main game.
- November-June 2010 - Storyline rework began, making the hub concept to be scrapped. The storyline was closer to retail, but there are still differences. Overgrown chambers style development has started. Portal fans named this stage Multi-Core after the idea of multiple cores that would be merged into Wheatley later.
2010
- June-August? - The team merged all the other cores into Wheatley and had him survive his supposed death. He was immediately set to become the new antagonist of the game. The underground was a good candidate to suit the origin of the gels in the game.
- September 3 - The Full Co-Op Trailer was shown off at PAX 2010.
- September-December - The underground was rapidly finished and Act 4 began getting crunched on. Only Chapter 8 gets completed. PotatOS was rewritten to be nicer to the player. The sp_aX_ convention was fully introduced.
- December 11 - The intro to co-op was shown off at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards.
- December 17? - The Content Lock was established. Optimizations began across the whole game.
2011
- March 9 - Preload PC build got compiled.
- March 16 - Xbox 360 Gold build got compiled.
- March 25 - The first of the Aperture Investment Opportunity promotional videos called "Panels" was published on YouTube.
- March 29 - The second installment of the Aperture Investment Opportunity videos: "Bot Trust" was published.
- April 6 - The third installment of the Aperture Investment Opportunity videos: "Turrets" was published.
- April 13 - The fourth and last of the Aperture Investment Opportunity videos: "Boots" was published.
- April 18 - Portal 2 was digitally released for Windows and Mac via Steam.
- April 19 - Portal 2 was released to retail in North America.
- April 21 - Portal 2 was released to retail in Europe.
"Want You Gone" Demos
Various demos and pre-release versions exist for the end-credits song "Want You Gone".
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Early Acoustic demo. Comes from the sound folder in The Final Hours of Portal 2.
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Early Arrangement demo. Comes from the sound folder in The Final Hours of Portal 2.
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Pre-release version. Comes from a playtester.
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Sub-Pages
| F-STOP
Valve's fifth game experiment. |
| Core hub
Now a sequel to Portal, this went from one core to multiple cores before returning to one core. |
| Multi-Core
This is where the game and its storyline get similar to the retail one, but it's still different. |
| Pre-Retail
This game is starting to look more closer to the final game, albeit with some differences. |
References
| To do:
Information below is yet to be incorporated into article |
- The Wikipedia article of Portal 2 contains tidbits of information that are needed here.
- The Final Hours of Portal 2 by Geoff Keighley
- Countless promotional videos and trailers, many of which are on Valve's YouTube.
