ValveTime

Valve's Adam Foster has posted a fascinating article on Gamasutra about the creation of the Portal alternate reality game (ARG) that first revealed the existence of Portal 2. Adam shares his thoughts and experiences on creating ARGs in general, which I'll be briefly summarizing below.

For those of you who weren't around for the Portal ARG, the original Portal was updated out of the blue on March 1st 2010 with a mystery message in the changelog which read, "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations." Players soon discovered that a series of radios had been placed throughout Aperture Science's test chambers. When picked up and brought to certain parts of each level, the radios began to play morse code beeps and strange noises. Those noises turned out to in fact be encoded SSTV images, which players quickly began to unearth.



Some of these images contained a code, which eventually turned out to be the MD5 hash of a phone number for a landline. This landline happened to be plugged into an old modem hooked up to a PC in Adam Foster's kitchen. Dialling into this number via a terminal with a 56k modem gained access to a BBS which, when given the correct login, yielded several correspondences from Cave Johnson and screenshots or concept art of Portal 2 converted into ASCII images.



After the images were found, Valve released another update to Portal 2 on March 3rd 2010, which altered and extended the game's original ending to foreshadow the opening events of Portal 2 and the Lab Rat comic, which takes place in the interlude between both games. The following ARG, dubbed the infamous "Potato ARG", began almost a month later, even without assistance from Foster, who was too busy working on Portal 2 itself. If you're looking for more information on the Potato ARG, you can read more about it here.

In the main section of Foster's article (which I stress you should read in full), he details the correct way to build an ARG that is fun to solve and allows people to participate. He outlines his core design rules, which included:

• It must be clear that there is something to decode. In the case of the radios the morse code sounds were instantly recognisable which hinted at the noise in the other radio signals hiding something too.

• Similarly to the first, it must be clear what the boundaries are between what is part of the game and what is not. Some players tried to track down the physical location of the phone number to see if that was part of the game. The number was unlisted so they were unable to, but if they had it may have caused a bit of a shock for Adamn when they showed up at his house.

• It must be unambiguous when something has been solved. It would be very frustrating for players to think they had successfully found the correct message, only to later realise they had gotten it wrong and were spending their efforts on false leads. The SSTV images are very clearly correctly decoded when found, even if their purpose is initially mysterious.

• Using real encoding methods makes it easier and more fun for the players to solve the puzzle (and easier to create as well) and easier and more educational for players who may not initially know the encoding method to learn it. How many of you didn't know about SSTV until this ARG?

• Only a select few core enthusiasts will be the ones actually solving all your puzzles but others will want to feel like they are participating too. In the case of the Portal ARG this consisted of an update to Portal with a new feature (the radios) and a related achievement as well as an extended ending to the game.

• Have bottlenecks that will control the pace of the game. The MD5 hash hiding the BBS phone number had to be brute forced. The game could not progress until this was solved, giving a natural downtime that let other players and followers catch up with what was happening and stopping the game from ending too soon.

The actual article goes into a lot more detail, so we highly recommend that you read the whole thing, which you can check out here.

Another week, another fairly robust set of Valve news. This past week saw the reveal of Dota 2's release window, the introduction of the "de_mirage" map for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and the amount of money paid out to Team Fortress 2's content creators surpassed the $10m mark! Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to follow us on our Facebook, Google+ and Twitter pages to stay up to date with all the latest Valve news.

This week's Dota 2 patch has introduced the usual selection of gameplay bug fixes alongside some new UI additions and a pair of visual improvements for Brewmaster and Puck, who have both received higher quality models, which you can check out below. An update to the settings UI has introduced "Quick Cast", commonly referred to as "Smart Cast" by the community, which, when activated, will cause most magic abilities to immediately fire towards the player's mouse cursor, providing the option to streamline the casting process somewhat.


A series of audio improvements were also made, including the addition of distant tower destruction sounds, the introduction of new "Ownage" lines for the Axe, Juggernaut, Nature's Prophet, Storm Spirit and Pirate announcer packs, and sound effects for a brand new "Caution Ping" system. The new warning ping allows players to alert teammates to their impending doom by using "Ctrl + Alt + Right Click" to highlight an area, creating an "X" shaped icon in the game world and on the mini-map to warn of potential ganks, pushes, potentially dangerous areas and so on. A smaller Dota 2 patch earlier in the week introduced "Compendium Matchmaking", a new game mode accessible only by compendium owners, which allows players "re-write history" using the same professional game hero picks and lane setups found in a featured International 3 qualifier match. Featured matches will be updated on a weekly basis, so be sure to check it at least once a week by clicking the new option on the left hand side of the "Play" tab on the Dota 2 dashboard.


New cosmetic item sets were included for Axe, Lina, Pudge, Skeleton King and Sniper, while the recently released "Treasure of Incandescent Wax" chest was revealed to include a brand new Vengeful Spirit themed ward and a whole host of new cosmetic pieces for a wide number of heroes including Doom, Skywrath Mage, Necrolyte, Bristleback and many more. If you feel like you could use some new desktop wallpapers, you might be interested in checking out the new custom load screens which were added to several of the older HUD designs in this week’s update, including the Driftwood, Gear Tooth, Jungle Ruin and Menace skins, all of which appear as stylishly themed modifications of the original Dota logo. While Legion Commander is still strangely MIA at this point, unreleased hero Abaddon received a number of texture updates which, following the Dota 2 release window announcement earlier today, further hints that this upcoming Dire strength support will feature as the second of the two final heroes set to be released by Valve before the game's official release sometime between now and August 7th 2013. If you're looking for more information regarding this week's Dota 2 patch, you may want to head on over to Valve's official changelog, or maybe checking out CyborgMatt's full patch analysis is more your style. glhf!

Exclusive Update: Erik Johnson, senior project leader at Valve, was kind enough to respond to my inquiry about the validity of the author's claim in the PC Gamer article. Erik confirmed to us that the plan is indeed to release Dota 2 this summer! Click the image if you want to see my initial email.


Original Post: Dota 2 will be released prior to The International 3, according to the July 2013 issue of PC Gamer.



The International 3 will be held August 7 - 11 in Seattle.

As promised last week, Valve have released a reinvented version of the classic Counter-Strike map, "de_mirage", into Global Offensive in an update which shipped late last night. The new map, which previously appeared in both Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source, features all new visuals and a series of minor tweaks in order to improve the overall flow and readability of the map while maintaining the map's core layout, thus preserving the original gameplay fans have grown to love. According to an announcement blog post over on the Counter-Strike website, Mirage is available to play in all core gamemodes, which includes Casual, Competitive and Deathmatch.


The update has also introduced a new in-game sale for the Operation Payback pass, which allows access to a number of the community's highest quality custom maps on official low latency Valve servers. The pass, which was previously available for $5.99/£5, is now available for $0.99/£0.79 until Monday June 17th and be purchased by visiting the Operation Payback page on the Counter-Strike website, or via an icon on the CS:GO main menu.

If you'd like to learn more about the level design practices which were used to improve the map's visual theme and readability, head on over to last week's "The Mirage Process" blog post, for an in-depth insight into the development of Mirage. The update changelog is also available, as the patch is already live on the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive client, so what are you waiting for? Get out there and get fragging!