Portal 2, Valve’s decade-old puzzle-platform game, has been treated to a brand-new update. As spotted by the beloved game’s community on Reddit, the new update is pretty jam-packed considering the game’s ten years old, and ushers in Vulkan support, some additional controller support, a new movement action, as well as a whole host of bug fixes.
Marking the first new patch for Portal 2 since July last year, the game’s latest update has “implemented a Vulkan render backend (currently accessible through the -vulkan command line parameter)”. It seems, then, that Portal 2 now supports the Vulkan cross-platform API, which means players should be able to see the game’s performance and visuals dialled up following the update. Sweet. Other performance enhancements added with the patch include “improved compile time for Perpetual Training Initiative puzzles” – those included in the popular community creation-based mode – and “smarter default video settings”.
Controllers get some attention with “button text contrast and padding [having] been improved when using a controller”, and players can now be invited to hop into co-op play while using a controller.
A stand-out in the list is also a new “360° spin action”, which – though unclear from the description alone – sounds like a fun new way to twist and whirl around the Aperture Science labs.
A whole bunch of bug fixes detailed in the patch notes reach across a variety of aspects, from removing the “Trading Coming Soon” button, to fixing “Cave Johnson’s lines not progressing when playing queued workshop levels”, “a memory leak that could occur when changing levels”, and “a bug where you could no longer ping/taunt via mouse/keyboard if you have ever used a controller”.
There are plenty more, with a good few improving aspects of the game when played on Linux, which you can check out in full on the Portal 2 blog site at that link.