ZDoom Portal Gun

From ZDoom Wiki

A screenshot from the Complex in ZPortal.

ZDoom Portal Gun (ZPortal)
Author	Cutman
Port	GZDoom
Status	V2 Released
Link	Download from CutStuff

1 About
2 ZPortal
- 2.1 Dropped Concepts
3 Reception
4 External Links

About

The ZDoom Portal Gun is a weapon created by Cutmanmike inspired by Valve's Portal Gun demo. The portal gun is a weapon which simply transports the player from A to B using two different colored "portals". The idea was taken from Valve's Portal trailer, before the game was actually released.

Included is a test map, where you can fully experiment with the portal gun to see how it could be used in a real map.

ZPortal

ZPortal is an expansion of the ZDoom Portal Gun. It is a 4 level wad connected by a hub map, which you will have to visit several times in order to unlock the final level. The levels include the Grey Complex, the Canyon, the Sky Palace and The Castle, as well as the Dimensional Gateway which serves as a level selector.

In addition to the maps are new "weapons", inventory and obstacles. The two new portal guns are the sticky portal gun and the mobile portal gun. The sticky portal gun allows players to "stick" to walls when teleporting through a portal, making it possible to get around corners with a pit. The mobile portal gun fires a slow moving projectile that can be teleported into and out of while it is in mid-air. The inventory items include the Portal removal device which destroys any open portals, and the red portal camera which is to be used with the mobile portal gun. There are also droids, which have different purposes. The nullify droid destroys any open portals in sight and stuns the player. The override droid prevents the player from firing his weapon. Finally, the plasma turret fires a projectile at the player which pushes him around. There are also blocks in some levels which the player can push around, jump on and block doors from closing.

The story of the WAD is very vague, but exists. The title screen shows a glowing strange device in a lab of some kind. There are no cutscenes in game apart from the ending, which makes things slightly clearer. Because the WAD is based on a two year old trailer, there are little to none connections to the real Portal game. The credits also slightly change when finishing the game rather than picking it from the title screen.

There is also a time trial mode. In this mode the player must race to the finish to get the fastest time possible. The only map that is available is the Grey Complex due to it's simple design (and familiarity for anyone who played the demo). The map is slightly edited to make it easier to get better times, and to prevent extreme short cuts. There are also bonus clock items scattered around, which reduce the time by 3 seconds. There is no par time or current record set by any player.

In each map (and the Dimensional Gateway) are easter eggs. Most of them contain a room with a joke or just a small cameo. When you find one, you'll get the "You found a secret!" message and a health bonus. One in particular grants access to something completely different, but is the hardest to find.

Dropped Concepts

Although most ideas made their way into ZPortal, there were a few things planned that got cut for various reasons:

Fast Portal Gun
The first idea for a second portal gun was the fast portal gun, which would have simply done the same thing as the portal gun but fired faster projectiles. Would have been used for shooting portals into quickly closing doors. The idea was stale and never added.

Bounce Portal Gun
This portal gun would have been the same as the original portal gun but bounced once off walls. This was redundant when the sticky portal gun was invented.

No portal/No player barriers
While the last level features barriers that portal projectiles cannot pass, the second version of the demo had these. They were dropped due to a way to bypass them easily (walking into them and firing through them).

Bounce droid
A droid which remained stationary but bounced you away if you touched it. Was going to be used as a helpful and not so helpful droid. Was cut due to the way Doom's physics worked with it (not very well at all).

VLaDos
In the spirit of Portal, a robot would talk to you through the whole game and eventually betray you. It was a great idea but it never happened simply because it wasn't worth the hassle. The V would stand for "Virtual".

Difficulty settings
An idea was to make certain things harder for more advanced players, but never happened due to laziness.

A "Space" level
Originally the final stage was going to be in outer space. The idea changed into the castle, which is actually in space.

A "System" level
The final stage was going to be after the castle, and was going to be very mechanical which machines everywhere. This map would have been a semi-secret to give you a better ending.

Portal Suit
Was going to be obtainable on the system level. This would have removed all your portal guns in exchange for the ultimate portal gun. The Portal Suit's first fire would be a regular portal which shot faster and teleported you as soon as it hit something. The alternative fire would have been a boost jump, and you could only do one after the other. This idea, while still possible and might be done, was scrapped along with the system level.

An end boss
An idea was to have a boss at the end, which would have been a giant creature wearing a mask with the Aperture Science logo on it. The creature would have been a model which tried to hit you with his hands and fire projectiles at you trying to knock you into a game ending void. Killing it would have involved collecting items around the arena and using them somehow to fire a laser at it. The idea died along with the previous two ideas because of the effort that would have had to have gone into it.

Reception

While the first release of the demo WAD was extremely well received by players (currently highest rated WAD on Doomworld's /idgames), ZPortal could be considered a flop in comparison. The WAD was heavily criticized for its lack of detail in maps, despite that the WAD was supposed to fully focus on the game play. People also disliked the awkward automatic teleporting from the sticky portal gun.