Day Three: Knock knock, it's Valve

25 comment(s)

Posted by Nicolas (permalink)

Today, my boss started to wonder why I look so tired when I'm at work. Sure it's a really intense thing to do marketing and communication stuff. I slept 6 hours since monday, replying to your messages all night long. Sorry if I can't follow every website that newsed us anymore, we were astonished with the speed at which it spread up. Google results for "portal prelude" quadrupled since yesterday. I had a talk with Marc yesterday, and I can't even count how many times we said "mon dieu" (Oh my god) and "je flippe à mort" (I'm so f*cking scared).

Yesterday, we got our first contact with the french community manager of Valve. Yes, Valve. The marvellous company that brought Portal and so much more to us for years. Don't take me wrong, I'm not trying to seduce anyone, but believe me, it was huge. I was so happy and so scared at the same time. For your information, they don't seem to bother about us doing a prequel for Portal. They're even sending us their congratulations and they seem to enjoy what we're doing. So, please guys, stop saying everywhere that Valve is going to murder us, or something.

From now on, we have more and more translation propositions coming along. So far we got translators for portuguese (Silvio 'moidsch' Ribeiro), dutch (Mart Vuurboom), spanish (Francisco J. Galdo), german (SirDregan), italian (comatrix), finnish (Mischa Sildén) and russian (HL-Inside.ru Team). That's another good surprise for us. We're not planning on releasing the translations at the same time as the game though. We'll release a package/patch with every translation later on (a week or two maybe).

On a more formal tone, we are currently discussing with staff from FilePlanet, ModDB, Vossey, Total Gaming Network and a few other sites that are REALLY friendly and honest with us. Another good surprise.

To conclude, please stop bitching about the Half-Life 2 Citizens, we're not going to replace their face with original ones, that's pointless. We did a skin with a white shirt and black trousers, and we know the screenshots are not up to date, but that's it.
And as a matter of anecdote, did you know that each time we need to compile the game, we need to waste almost 30 hours ? 25 hours of level compilation and 5 hours of cubemap generation (for the reflections), sure that's a long time to wait...

25 comment(s)

Comments

  September 17, 2008 11:03 PM,  Anonymous said :
100% looking forward to this!
(first)

  September 17, 2008 11:06 PM,  Mike Boxleiter said :
jaysus! you guys gotta get your hands on some rendering servers or sumptin!

  September 17, 2008 11:10 PM,  Pufje said :
Dude! I so totally hope I can get in contact with someone from Valve when I release my map-pack/mod. so jealous!!!

  September 17, 2008 11:35 PM,  Anonymous said :
For the sake of build times, could you not just let your reflective surfaces use a single temporary cubemap while you iterate on the rest of the game? It seems like an awful waste of time to be waiting 5 hours on cubemap generation...

  September 17, 2008 11:57 PM,  Zero1328 said :
I think whoever told you Valve is going to kill you doesn't have any idea on what Valve is like. They've always been open minded and friendly to the mod community. They've even turned the best ones into official games, and hired the crew. Just look at Day of Defeat, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress.

  September 18, 2008 12:27 AM,  Anonymous said :
I'm sure you've already heard the numerous places this has been posted at, but I just saw it on Kotaku. I love the look of it. It seems you have created some fun looking puzzles. I have bookmarked your site and intend to be anxiously watching now.

And Zero1328 above me is right. Valve have always been supportive of those that mod their work. It's great to see they have contacted you and extend their congratulations.

Valve made a wonderful game with an intriguing story. It seems you are going to give us more of that with another interesting story. I cannot wait for this to be released.

Best of luck to you all.

  September 18, 2008 12:29 AM,  Cheesey said :
Wow. Guys, you are really awesome! I'm really curious about this mod and all of my friends are too! It looks like, you've done a very nice job. Everything seems done so professional: the trailer, the website, the articles, everything!

Keep on doing this great work! Maybe you also can get in contact with www.filefront.com, would also be nice!

  September 18, 2008 12:34 AM,  Nicolas said :
Anonymous said:
For the sake of build times, could you not just let your reflective surfaces use a single temporary cubemap while you iterate on the rest of the game? It seems like an awful waste of time to be waiting 5 hours on cubemap generation...

Don't worry, we didn't build the cubemaps each time we wanted to know how it looked. We didn't even put the cubemaps in the game until a few weeks ago. But now, we must compile with a full detailled procedure, to track the most insignificant bug that could occur.

  September 18, 2008 1:27 AM,  Andy B said :
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if you found yourself working at Valve sometime in the near future.

  September 18, 2008 2:18 AM,  Jaknet said :
Glad to hear the good news from Valve. Only just found this site, all the very best with this and looking forward to seeing it.

Thank you in advance for all the work everyone here has put into this.

  September 18, 2008 5:25 AM,  Anonymous said :
Nice.
Let's hope you don't get to much work with the game, and stay up all night. You might start passing out at work :P
Any ETA so far?

  September 18, 2008 6:11 AM,  agentsdighans said :
Awesome that you are doing this. I am showing this to everyone one I know that liked Portal. Stories using this official or not are always a great addition. Keep up the great work!

  September 18, 2008 7:59 AM,  Anonymous said :
Nice that there is finnish subs too :D

  September 18, 2008 8:33 AM,  Anonymous said :
Avec l'encouragement du leader de la communauté francophone, tu as du avoir un pic d'adrénaline suivit d'un soulagement terrible!!! Je me demande presque si ton travail qui semble colossale (avec les captures et la vidéo tout le laisse croire!) ne risque pas d'être publié directement sur Steam! Se serait une opportunité à explorer avec le leader de la communauté francophone!

  September 18, 2008 10:33 AM,  64fanatic (Greg H) said :
I tipped Kotaku and it made front page, on there now too, lots of positive comments.

http://kotaku.com/5051178/prelude-proves-portal-is-still-alive

Its also on Digg, Babyman got it to front page.

http://digg.com/pc_games/Portal_Prelude_Day_Zero

Man this mod is getting attention now, there is a HD trailer on gametrailers under Orange Box even now!

Can't wait for the game, I'm glad the hype build is working out!

  September 18, 2008 1:23 PM,  Thomas said :
Bravo! Tout le boulot que vous y avez mis a produit quelque chose d'exceptionel! J'ai vraiment hâte à la sortie! :P
Grâce à vous je pense que de nombreuses personnes reprendront portal (perso ça fait très longtemps que j'y ai pas joué) et retrouveront le bonheur de passer dans les portals!
Ah, dors quand même Nico! Faut pas arrêter de dormir maintenant sinon tu risques de craquer...
En tout cas, c'est super encourageant que Valve vous soutienne, d'avoir tous ces traducteurs, et que les mirrors arrivent de tous les côtés (vous avez demandé à clubic.com aussi? C'est la dessus que j'ai vu un lien vers vous)

Bonne chance! Et Merci encore!

  September 18, 2008 5:18 PM,  phlyingpenguin said :
Congrats! It's really good to hear Valve and others working with you. When I saw the video the other day, I was absolutely speechless. Following that, people in the office had to calm me down. Don't take this lightly: I want to have your children.

  September 18, 2008 6:03 PM,  Shadowsand said :
I just stumbled across the thread on Facepunch and came to see what was going on. In three words:

You are EPIC

It looks awesome, and waiting to tell everyone about it until now was definitely a good idea. One request though. I was just wandering if the 'end of september, start of october' release date was still the same. Putting a release date on the FAQ page and updating it if/when it changes could be a good idea.

Just a thought

  September 18, 2008 6:54 PM,  Jonathan said :
Wow, this looks exceptionally well, really looking forward to this.
Just wanted to say hi and I'll be sure to read your blog :D

  September 18, 2008 7:47 PM,  Lolgar1010 said :
nice! really looking forward to it

Lets see what parts you get right with portal 2 :P

Congrats!

  September 18, 2008 7:57 PM,  Anonymous said :
Hey, I'm from Portugal and can help with the Portuguese translation. E-mail me at theeskimo@live.com.pt if you want the help. I'm willing to work together with Silvio of course. Though it's probably something one can do alone I'm just saying :P

  September 18, 2008 8:46 PM,  Blaske said :
VALVe is K now,
But I want to see VALVe face when the MOD KICK VALVe's ASS.

Im totally looking foward for this mod.

  September 19, 2008 1:54 AM,  1337 said :
This was a triumph.

  September 20, 2008 8:23 AM,  FvKey said :
First of all, the best of luck on this big and incredible project.

Second, if Mr. Francisco J. Galdo (translator to spanish) need a hand, I can (and I want to) help to translate Portal: Prelude.

Seriously. My e-mail:
fvkey87@gmail.com

Fernando Vivar Vargas (FvKey).

  October 10, 2008 9:10 AM,  Maarten said :
Nice work guys. You already have a dutch translation, but if you need some help in the near future let me know. I have lots of respect for the effort you put in the game.

Keep up the good work.

Muppet99 (gmail)

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