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Ahh yes, I noticed this when playing TAG: The Power of Paint (the game the gel ideas came from, team was hired by Valve) I agree, it's quite dizzying on that game, I doubt it'd have worked well in Portal 2 | |
Interesting... I wonder -if the rumors of a portal 3 are anywhere near accurate- what they'll add next... It's pretty cool when your developer decides to adjust the frame rate so that you don't feel incredibly sick to your stomach | |
man, i haven't felt dizzy playing a game since Okami. now i know it's thanks to guys like the VALVe testing department. Thanks guys! | |
Despite I play FPS games a lot, there are instances where I do feel sick while playing an FPS game. I felt sick when I played Quake 3 the first few times. | |
Nice to see Valve taking all spectrums of interest into account when designing their game, although it is a little disappointing to hear; I think it would have made for some interesting puzzles. Optional DLC, perhaps? | |
Anyone else here play the game TAG? made by the people who were hired to do the Gels in Portal 2; It involved all 3 of the Gels (called paints) and it was very very hard to keep my head on during the wall walking parts. | |
Says a lot about Valve really. Look at this scenario and think of some Dev houses would be thrilled by this: Play tester starts going white after 20 minutes of wall walking/jumping and bouncing. 5 minutes later..... BLUUUURGH!!! | |
bummer one of the best things about alien vs predator 1 was the seamless wall walking | |
The Tag guys ended up contributing Gel to Portal 2? Did not know that. Thank you for that factoid | |
Does anyone else think that nausea is the last thing any developer should seriously be worrying about? Granted, I don't really care about this particularly feature one way or the other, but I'd like to believe that the people who are sensitive to that be sort of thing aren't all that likely to be into these games in the first place, and they should just worry about if it's good for the game, not if motion sickness susceptible people have issues with it.. | |
I know I haven't had motion sickness problems with FPS since they switched to polygons instead of sprites. | |
Tag - the game about using liquids (bouncy, speedy, and sticky) that was developed as a student project for DigiPen Institute of Technology, then incorporated into Portal 2 after valve hired the team behind it - had this feature. I'm glad they dropped it in favor of having the white gel (at least that's my theory :) ), it was a little vertigo inducing. Anyone interested in seeing it in action can visit https://www.digipen.edu/gamers/ to download Tag for free (and Narbacular Drop if you're interested as well - the student project that became the original portal after valve hired that team as well). | |
ah man, that would have been awesome. maybe they should have put it in for people that wanted it, and gave an option to skip such chambers involving it. | |
They're now part of Valve, the same thing that happened with the Narbarcular Drop team | |
Thanks for cutting that out of the game Valve, and all the levels for the spheres too. Thanks a lot. | |
I think it's a great thing to worry about. If someone buys portal, they should be able to take it home and enjoy it - not get sick from all the movement in the game. People can have motion sickness to some degree and still like FPSes. It doesn't sound like valve was catering to people with extreme motion sickness. I played Tag (mentioned in the above post), and it was fairly disorienting (and I play mostly FPSes). It wasn't extremely terrible, but when you combine that with portals I can see a lot of problems arising. | |
Someone mentioned the similar system in Prey (which apparently did not cause nausea), by which I infer the main problem with the Portal 2 gel was the suddenness of turns. Prey had wall-walking conveyor-belt things, yes, but they always had gentle sloping curves to change orientation. With Portal 2's environments, and gels, you'd have sharp corners, sudden attachments, and fast turns. Hence the difference. On the subject of the vacuum tubes, I can only assume they made the levels too linear. Portal 2 tends to be all about player agency (even though that agency is mostly limited to the small portal-placing spots); with a static, inert vacuum tube, you've got a very limited, environment-focused solution. You can't exactly do much with it except suck down turrets in interesting ways; hence its removal. | |
"These games", though, isn't referring to first-person shooters here. Most FPSes are shooty, with the high-intensity action being the main draw. Portal, however, is a thinky game. Even feeble RPG-players with three second reaction time can enjoy Portal's thinkiness. | |
... I really want the wall walking gel now!.. found I completed portal 2 too quickly! | |
"These games", though, isn't referring to first-person shooters here. Most FPSes are shooty, with the high-intensity action being the main draw. Portal, however, is a thinky game. Even feeble RPG-players with three second reaction time can enjoy Portal's thinkiness.[/quote] If anything, that just makes it worse. Portal isn't just an FPS, it's a physics based puzzle solver. For something that is entirely about dealing with crazy concepts involving motion, this is exactly the type of thing that shouldn't be excluded. I'd understand if it simply didn't test well as a game mechanic, but if it genuinely made for some interesting puzzles, screw the people who can't handle a little disorientation, that's where the concept of portal excels. Can't say I'm surprised anyways, it's been a while but I remember the first Portal as being a far more challenging game in general, Portal 2 was enjoyable, but geared utterly and consistently to your average joe This is just another example of them mainstreaming the game as much as possible. Good business decision for them, disappointing game for me. | |
that didnt help! around chapter 6/7 (i dont remember) there was this section where i walked on about 60 degree rotating wall. after a while i had no idea where ceiling was. i got a bit nauseous. it was a funny expe.... test though :P (i was pretty surprised though, the last time i had problem with that was during MDK2 final boss fight. and i was just a little kid back then) | |
I'm in the minority here I guess. I've always likes simulator rides that threw perception / orientation out the window. Has anyone ever been to simulator rides before (ex.. theaters that show a first person view of falling off a cliff and winding through caverns)? Even though the seats didn't move(though some had that feature), your body reacted as if you were on a roller coaster. Maybe they'll have nausea inducing dlc... the good kind. | |
Interesting I thought they didn't included it because to me it seemed a bit redundent when you could simply place a portal high up a wall than have any need to walk up it. half the games i play are fps so im glad that i don't get sick from that perspective | |
Valve's like some amorphous blob that absorbs all those who it deems worthy. It just sucks up every developer in it's wake. LOL | |
Ah screw you Valve, wall-walking was going to be one of the awesome features in that FPS I would like to design in the future but probably won't. | |
For someone that has been gaming all my life, this has never been a problem for me. As such, this is really disappointing, that would have been epic!! DLC plz? | |
it's funny cuz I really only experience some motion sickness (runs in my family on my dad's side, altho while passed down to me it's only minor) in certain FPS games Portal...funny, only when I'm just running around aimlessly and confused (it happens). when I'm actually doing puzzles flipping and flying around like crazy, I'm good | |
The fact that this seems to be so considerate/nice of valve probably says a bit about the industry | |
I think it's good that they they're concerned about the players wellbeing, works on restoring their image after the dlc rage, still, wall-gel as an optional dlc for those who want it would be nice. | |
so a 90° camera twist is more sickness inducing than a 180° camera twist(which are quite common in portal) now you HAVE to make a sequel and give me my wall walking gel | |
Every time I see you it sounds as if VALVe personally killed your first born son. Seriously, stop acting so god damn entilted, they had their resoning of getting rid of this perticular gel that many would agree with as seen in some comments above. Shit, it's already disorenting playing as the Alien in AvP, what would make this any different? | |
Nausea has never really been a problem for me in games. Would be nice to have seen this though :\ | |
What do you mean "says a lot about Valve"? That they'll cut content that has a negative effect on the audience? Wow, that's an amazing feat. Well done Valve! | |
I admit I did get mild motion sickness playing Portal 2. Luckily I couldn't do the testchamber so I went back a while later and as always I completed the chamber on the first attempt (that happens for everyone else right? you get stuck, stop playing then when you start playing again you get the problem on your first go) | |
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Valve Cut Nausea-Inducing Wall-Walking Gel From Portal 2, Reveals Writer
Zipping through portals is tricky enough if first person games make you feel sick, and doing it while upside down could only have made it worse.
If you're one of the poor unfortunates that experiences motion sickness and nausea when you play first person shooters, then you probably owe Valve a pretty big thank you. Portal 2 writer Erik Wolpaw has revealed that Valve originally planned to include a gel that let you walk on walls in Portal 2, but dropped it after it made people queasy.
Wolpaw said that the gel had added a nice gameplay twist, but that it was incredibly disorientating. He added that nausea was a constant concern when developing first person games, so the decision was made to drop the gel. He added that Valve was so concerned about the possibility of Portal 2 making people nauseous in general - a very real threat in a game that has so many rapid changes in position and perspective - that it adjusted the frame rate and movement to try and minimize the effects. Wolpaw said that this action on Valve's part should help even people who normally do suffer from FPS motion sickness to enjoy the game
Of all the different kinds of stories that you could tell about videogame development, quirky ones like this are probably the most interesting. It's one thing to know that a feature was removed because it had memory glitches or something mundane like that, but it's quite another to learn that something got ditched because it was making people feeling sick, or making them sleepy, or something else equally bizarre.
Source: EA via Joystiq
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