Some Guys Get “Portal” Running On The IPhone

The logo at the bootup of the game is the Unity logo http://unity3d.com/. So if it is running its not a port of Source. I'm really skeptical though, having programmed games for the iPhone myself and used Unity a bit I don't think its possible. The portal rendering specifically is pratically impossible on iPhone and Unity iPhone has not been updated yet to take advantage of OpenGL ES 2.0 on the 3GS. Without that there is no shader support with Unity, which means no portal rendering. And that load time was also impossibly fast, Loading that much geometry and textures into Unity iPhone takes over a minute, not seconds. You can play video in Unity though, so I'm guessing they are just running a pre-recorded video in Unity.

Cybexx

You know, I'd actually hate to play that. Sure it's a cool idea and a cool test of what the iphone is capable of, but the platform doesn't allow the responsiveness as a keyboard and mouse that was crucial to the original game. Personally I think I would just die from frustration.

hanulbada

First of all everyone with just a little sense of game programming and the specifications could by just looking at the first 5 sec of this movie clearly tell that it is all being "not" rendered on the iPhone.

Im sorry to say to people who do belive so that the iphone simply can't do that. But yes, this is possibly just a "PC remote" app and a few grapichal tweaks to the original portal.

malu05

Uh, yeah, I'm late to the game here, but it's Unity, a game engine for Mac and PC that can publish to Mac, PC, Web Player, iPhone/iPod Touch, and Wii (with a special license for those last two).

I've been using it for a few years, it's really awesome.

Two thoughts:
1) Very impressive!
2) I'm officially sick of "The cake is a lie" as a "joke."

LeepNasty

I would have to say it's a imitation, I thought that the box looked.......... weird. The portals seemed smaller as well.

@jasoncourt: Yeah, pretty soon, AT&T will have apple drop the iPod Touch, and AT&T will have complete control over the gaming market!
/endparanoia

I was expecting this to be streaming oriented.

@BritBloke916: *golf claps*

@Windburn: I cant see them getting the go ahead for this, if its real, but if not no-doubt you'll see it on every hacked-iphone. :)

@sereal: Seriously. I keep seeing these posts and asking "How did this gold star come about???"

@sereal: Maybe. Some of you sure can make trollin' comments better, fo sho.

@roxaskey: Read the other comments. This is Unity we're talking about here. Ever heard of it? It's pretty powerful on the iphone ...

www.unity3d.com

@BritBloke916: Another reason why the new commenting system the family of blogs is using is pretty bleh. At least it's easier to read though.

pressstart

@xybur: So true. I think alot of people probably don't even bother to comment anymore because they just assume in won't contribute to the discussion because no one will see it.

@Dillinger23: Good point. I hadn't considered resolution at all. That does make this seem more believable.

@Methusalah: What you are missing is resolution. You are trying to run portal at minimum 1024x68 this is running at 480x340. HUGE difference. Knock the textures dow to fit the right size and its no problem.



Scaling is the biggest performance hit you can take in a game. If you have a computer with crysis, crank everything up to max and run it at 640x480 you will get a hell of a lot better framerate than you would out of 1920x1080.

Dillinger23

@jasoncourt: Ill take a professionally developed iphone game over ANYTHING ive seen come out of the DSi

Dillinger23

@kiddoblivion:

Is it just me or are gold stared people just as stupid as non gold stared people?

sereal

@xybur: You make an excellent point. Thread promoted!

If you read the youtube video this originally came from, you'll see that it's a port of Portal into the Unity engine, and apparently one done in 3 weeks.



What's being demoed isn't any of the levels that I remember from Portal. What I believe they've done is successfully imported all the original Portal assets and successfully built in the physics engine too to construct a bit of a Portal-iPhone sandbox at the moment. Unity does support Agis PhysX, so it is no big surprise that it can actually handle this.



I bet if they get the green light to develop this, levels will be hand crafted to better suit the iPhone-- after all, as some of you have posted, some of the latter levels that require feats of dexterity would be almost impossible to pull off on a touch screen.

@kobeashi: most valve games can run under really low requirements. the source engine doesnt rly need alot of power to run. im pretty sure tf2 and l4d can do the same.

timestep

@OW-Holmes:Enemy of R.O.A.C.H.:



It's difficult to exaggerate my contentment.

Greg Spruce

@xybur: Haha also I think it's hilarious that so many informed people mentioned Unity in the comments, but since we all have greyed out text none of the comments show up immediately. And the ones who have no idea what's going on have precedence with their comments.

@rich8606: So this is the type of comment you reward with your insidious little gold stars, Kotaku?

kiddoblivion

This doesn't look so much like a port of portal as it does a clone of the game. He loaded up Unity at the start of the video, which is a custom developing kit and graphics rendering engine designed to run specifically on ipod/iphones (and any number of platforms really, hence the name "Unity") and be easily developed on PC/Mac. It can accept objects from other programs (3ds max for example), so it's possible he took assets from Portal and then wrote up a bit of code to make Portal like stuff happen. I used Unity for a bit in one of my online visualization courses before I graduated from college.



Regardless, it's neat.

if it IS a fake, it's more convincingly put together than lionheads milo video with the woman in red.

gique

The icon they press at the start is the logo for Unity - a suite for developing 3d games for the web or for iPhone. It's what the Flashbang/Blurst guys use (Velociraptor Safari, Minotaur Chinashop, Crane Wars, etc.) If this were a fake, why would they use that particular icon?

[Edit: I just noticed that the video says "Test Build 3G Unity iPhone" at the start, which steals my thunder somewhat.]

@zwaldowski:I'm not sure I follow you. How would the SDK prevent you from creating media player software? I imagine most of those games are taking advantage of the iphone's included media player software, but why should that mean that it isn't possible to create an alternative? It sounds like VLC is being ported to iphone. If what you are saying is true, then this wouldn't be possible.

@rich8606:



I have an iPhone and I can tell you there is no way you will see games that need precise and or complex controls on this platform.

@rich8606:



that yawn fest ? ... che...

Julio Vasquez

Whether its real or not the iPhone can certainly do it. Look at rolando 2, terminatir, assasins credd, real racing, castle of magic, tiger woods, top gun etc etc etc



It can DO 3d!

apoc_reg

@OW-Holmes:Enemy of R.O.A.C.H.: So I'm proud I got torched, ponder all the stuff we've researched for the persons who are still not dead?



Whew...

Inzoum

All kinds of awesome!! That is one reason why i'd buy an iphone!

@Methusalah: The SDK doesn't allow you to do that with... erm, the SDK. You have to use QuickTime to play it; that's why all these games with professional prerended titles can be quit so easily by tapping to bring up the QT controls and hitting "Done".

If this is real, Sony can forget about PSPGo now... iPhone seems can do a lot more.

rich8606

All I can remember is the Halo ds fiasco, it did come out, but nothing compared to the videos that we first saw.

@Boom-Chicka-Ah: I do all the time when I know an app is going to launch sideways, or I was using Safari sideways.

@jasoncourt: I know that sifting through iPhones stories can be a pain, but scarring?



You must be really fragile.

High Speed Indeed

This actually isn't fake. Unity engine is the perfect tool for making this type of thing: www.unity3d.com



Now, as to whether it's a full remake? who knows, but since it's got to be a small team of enthusiasts making it themselves, that sounds like a lot of work for no release.

orionburcham

I hear that Apple frowns upon cake as a corporate policy.

This is a victory. I am recording this large accomplishment.

OW-Holmes:Enemy of R.O.A.C.H.

@jasoncourt: also also, Luke almost always gets a komment out of me. What kind of vudu you working with there. ;)

jasoncourt

If it is real (unlikely in my opinion) good luck withe the later levels. Meaning it would be pretty much a waste of time...you know, without those 'button' things.



Also, MAN, I'm starting to get scarred. More and more iPhone stories. I don't mind Wii stories or PSP stories even though I don't have one but for some reason iPhone taking significant room in gaming news does bother me. It is probably really hard to prevent because the people who use it most are the tech and gaming media ...(doh!)

jasoncourt

sorry but i gotta say this

the video is a lie

pneboy

@skittlespsp: He probably created a custom media player so he could add his own icon and avoid the playback options.

@Lokno: No way! I didn't know it would work with shader 1.0. That's nuts...

kobeashi

@simi510: "it's still a little buggy, because.....you know....I have school." That made me lol.

kobeashi

This isnt "fake" it clearly says they built it using the unity game engine. They have obviously just used the assets from the sdk and re written the game in unity for iphone. Which just shows how powerful unity can be for this platform.

ShuchitaHaemarrhoid

@simi510: That really does seem like the most likely case. I can't imagine that the game would run that smoothly unless they went through and completely reworked the game's code for the platform. The iphone is powerful for a cell phone, but my 5 year old laptop is more powerful and it doesn't have a chance of running portal with a playable frame rate.

Yeah, the controls and where he was pressing seem random-ish. I don't think it would work the way he was pressing.

collinc

he is using the unity 3d engine. which allows developers to make games and port it iphone, ds wii, psp etc



http://unity3d.com/

bluem4gic

@skittlespsp: Did you guys read the article? It's not official, they just have their fingers crossed that valve doesn't sue them.

@Boom-Chicka-Ah: It's can't be fake. This is the Internet! It's too hard to fake things here ...

@simi510: If it was a video, the playback options would come onto the screen. It seems to be an app, whether it's official or not is the question.

skittlespsp

@Boom-Chicka-Ah: If you've been beta testing your game I'm sure you'd hit the button enough times to have a good idea where it is sideways.

If you go to the original link you'll see it's just a clone built on the unity engine. Isn't a port.

GustavusKolder

It's not valve's engine portal running. Its just a recreation of portal's gameplay mechanics using it's assest however written entirely using the iPhone version of the Unity Engine.

Cauldie

@Boom-Chicka-Ah: this guy dose

simi510

I think it's fake. No one selects their icons sideways so normally like that.

delete plz

simi510

sorry

simi510

incredible. if this is real i hope they made the hl2 engine run on it so that mods are possible.

ttk2

i think its a video of portal and hes just touching the screen

simi510

Portal can run in pretty low-end pcs (minimum of shader model 1!) so it is possible.

Hmm... doesn't look that bad as other ports. If this were real I would buy it

Dangsterr

@High Speed Indeed: (lol) Yes, yes I am

jasoncourt