Of the Valve variety, naturally. It’s not often we just post an entertaining video here, but some stuff goes beyond the pale. Realising that there is code within Portal 2 to make Portals capable of moving, YouTuber CrowbCat decided to investigate with a moving platform above, a portal below and a button to make them touch. When the overhead platform crushes down on poor Chell and the portals are touching – what happens? The answer: an infinite abyss that warps reality.
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The video speaks for itself, and does cross the line from entertaining to disturbing more than once. Those with a fear of body horror or staring into a horrifying blue and orange infinity may wish to stop now.
The physics of videogames. Feels like it should be in the Tate. I like the soundtrack Crowb put over it, but discovered thatGodspeed You! Black Emperor’s Dead Flag Blues, my go-to ‘something disturbing is happening’ song, fits very well. 10 second delay’ll sort you right out.
As way of basic explanation: Chell is falling at whatever the hard-coded maximum velocity is, the real life equivalent being about 200 km/h. She’s doing so across an infinitely small space, which now surrounds her entirely as her head is always between portals and, simultaneously, at every point in the loop. It’s a good job she can’t vomit or things would get even stranger.
Wherever she looks, the portal reflects on itself as close to infinitely as the engine can handle, causing stutter. That it holds together at all and doesn’t simply dump you out with an error message telling you to stop trying to play god is fairly incredible.
It’s odd that so much of it is static while other parts move in strange ways, as well as the portal gun itself not staying reliably on-screen. With no points of reference it makes sense that you wouldn’t be able to tell you were falling, but I’d have expected it to be a lot messier. Still, fairly incredible. One for Portal 3 perhaps, eh Valve?