Shebang's Road To Speedrun Success #1: First Portal Playthrough In A Year! 09-07-2014, 01:12 PM
#1
There you go. In glorious 1080p. This is myself trying to get back into the swing of things when it comes to speedrunning Portal. For those who don't know, Portal is a 2007 first-person puzzle-platform video game developed by Valve Corporation. The game primarily comprises a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using "the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device", a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The game's unique physics allows momentum to be retained through portals, requiring creative use of portals to maneuver through the test chambers. This gameplay element is based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal (source).
I will briefly list the tricks used in this speedrun, but it's too early in the morning to get in-depth
- Portal Bumping
- This is when a portal is shot up against a corner in a wall, and then another portal is shot 'into' that one, bumping it to the other side of the wall. You can see this happen on the test chamber where I get the full portal gun, as well as on Test Chamber 17. I also attempt this on one of the escape maps, however I did not realize that this had been patch (or it became really difficult).
- This is when a portal is shot up against a corner in a wall, and then another portal is shot 'into' that one, bumping it to the other side of the wall. You can see this happen on the test chamber where I get the full portal gun, as well as on Test Chamber 17. I also attempt this on one of the escape maps, however I did not realize that this had been patch (or it became really difficult).
- ABH
- This is used in a lot of the test chambers throughout the game. It stands for Accelerated Back Hopping. I won't explain why it works, but I'll just tell you that it essentially boosts your speed exponentially on each back hop (the actual math behind I don't know).
- This is used in a lot of the test chambers throughout the game. It stands for Accelerated Back Hopping. I won't explain why it works, but I'll just tell you that it essentially boosts your speed exponentially on each back hop (the actual math behind I don't know).
- AFH
- Accelerated Front Hopping is essentially the same as the previous one, but, as you may have guessed, is used when the character is facing forwards instead of backwards. However, this one is a little bit more difficult to pull off, so an ABH is safer most of the time.
- Accelerated Front Hopping is essentially the same as the previous one, but, as you may have guessed, is used when the character is facing forwards instead of backwards. However, this one is a little bit more difficult to pull off, so an ABH is safer most of the time.
- Re-entry
- This gets used when I go out of bounds on one of the maps. Essentially one portal is placed on the ground and one portal is placed on the wall of an outside area, and upon entering the portal in the wall, while moving through, the portal on the floor is moved to a spot on the wall. In doing so, the game recognizes that the portal you were once entering has moved/dissapeared, and it tries to bump you back in to the level. Happens to be extremely convenient. I might have that explanation wrong though .
- This gets used when I go out of bounds on one of the maps. Essentially one portal is placed on the ground and one portal is placed on the wall of an outside area, and upon entering the portal in the wall, while moving through, the portal on the floor is moved to a spot on the wall. In doing so, the game recognizes that the portal you were once entering has moved/dissapeared, and it tries to bump you back in to the level. Happens to be extremely convenient. I might have that explanation wrong though
- "The Turret"
- I don't know what this technique is called, so that's what I'm calling it. Essentially at endgame, you see me place a portal in the floor of that large building with the turrets, right infront of one. I then use my other portal on the pathway leading to GLaDoS. When I stand in front of this portal, the turret shoots and some of the shots go behind me and hit off GLaDoS' personality cores. This bypasses a long segment of the game where you have to try to get rockets to knock them off, while with this you can pretty much finish the game 30 seconds after that portal is placed, if not sooner.
- I don't know what this technique is called, so that's what I'm calling it. Essentially at endgame, you see me place a portal in the floor of that large building with the turrets, right infront of one. I then use my other portal on the pathway leading to GLaDoS. When I stand in front of this portal, the turret shoots and some of the shots go behind me and hit off GLaDoS' personality cores. This bypasses a long segment of the game where you have to try to get rockets to knock them off, while with this you can pretty much finish the game 30 seconds after that portal is placed, if not sooner.
Hopefully that was educational for those uninitiated to the world of Portal speedrunning. If you somehow got here early enough and the video is not finished processing (it's at 94% right now), sorry about that!
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I used to have a world record on Chamber 15, but when their new video came out and slaughtered my time I didn't even bother :p
![[Image: e91c9a58e5d941a600f8b4bda62894e9.298x125x1.png]](http://images.rapgenius.com/e91c9a58e5d941a600f8b4bda62894e9.298x125x1.png)
