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Portal 2 (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

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Title Screen

Portal 2 (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

Developer: Valve
Publisher: Valve
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Released in US: April 19, 2011
Released in EU: April 21, 2011


AreasIcon.png This game has unused areas.
CharacterIcon.png This game has unused playable characters.
CodeIcon.png This game has unused code.
DevTextIcon.png This game has hidden development-related text.
GraphicsIcon.png This game has unused graphics.
ItemsIcon.png This game has unused items.
MusicIcon.png This game has unused music.
SoundIcon.png This game has unused sounds.
TextIcon.png This game has unused text.


PrereleaseIcon.png This game has a prerelease article

SOMETIMES I SEE A TEXT BOX AND I JUST CAN'T HELP MYSSDFGFFDHFGDJGGFSHGDFH
This page sucks.
If you could make it suck less, that would be awesome.
Specifically: This is a really good game and deserves better than this horribly-formatted todo-filled piece of trash.

Portal 2 doesn't have any cake, but there's plenty of space to move around and find unused things in. The game's ending leaves several questions unanswered, although one was eventually answered as a DLC in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.


Hmmm...
To do:
A whole bunch of stuff.
  • Interesting things in scripts.
  • Unused music and other interesting script things.
  • Other unused music?
  • There's more stuff on various Wikis: Valve Developer Community, The Portal Wiki, and maybe the Combine OverWiki or Half-Life Wiki.
  • Is the source code officially released somewhere (via the Source SDK or some other version of the game)?
  • Revisional differences between ports (Windows, Mac, Linux & potentially PS3)
  • Internal comment node names.
  • PTI unused content was removed in later updates, although these files are still available online.

Sub-Pages

Blank.png
Unused Lines
Cave Johnson has a lot of unused lines.

Unused Speech

Hmmm...
To do:
More unused GLaDOS taunts, referencing Chell by name, Portal leftovers, and some clip about Cave Johnson talking about Spider-Man-like powers (trope Actor Allusion). Also, upload the dialogue files separately, not merged into one.
Listen Line Summary
These are from an unfinished scene in which you'd hear a recording of Caroline getting forcibly turned into an AI.
Extended unused speech of Wheatley talking about nanobots. The dialogue is shortened in the final.
An alternate version of meeting potato-ized GLaDOS. In one version of the script, she continued being a snarky jerk at you even while impaled on your Portal Gun. This got on testers' nerves very very quickly.
From an earlier version of the co-op plot, in which GLaDOS sent Atlas and P-Body out to find "artifacts" of the long-dead Aperture workers (coffee cups and such) to make them more human. Here, they've found a certain newspaper comic strip, presumably Garfield.
This appears to have been just for a demo done for the PAX event.
A snippet of dialogue from Dr. Kleiner in Half-Life 2. It's listed as error.wav in the game files, and it plays when the game fails to load a required file, something that doesn't really happen unless the game is tampered with.

Unused Sounds

Listen Sound Summary
Entering adhesion gel.
Entering adhesion gel 2.
Entering adhesion gel 3.
Exiting adhesion gel.
Exiting adhesion gel 2.
Exiting adhesion gel 3.

Unused Music

Listen Music Summary
This is supposed to play after jumping a second time trying to say "apple", but another track is used instead.
A fragment from "Self Esteem Fund" from the previous game.

Unused Textures

Mel

Oh, it's you.

Mel was originally to be the main protagonist of Portal 2 before being moved to multiplayer and, unfortunately, eventually cut altogether. Her only valid instance of her appearance (physically) is from a retexture of a Chell model from the original Portal. Her appearance was that of a blue-eyed, blonde haired woman with a light blue jumpsuit, pink gripped Advanced Knee Replacement units, and a Caucasian skin tone. Though she and Chell were meant to appear in multiplayer, they were eventually replaced by Atlas and P-Body.

When Mel was still the main protagonist, it was found that playtesters became disappointed at the fact that GLaDOS didn't recognize them, and after being changed to a multiplayer character, the consequence of dying without respawning often made playtesters afraid of experimentation. Thus Chell was re-introduced as the main protagonist, and Atlas and P-Body were used for multiplayer, and were shown being taken apart and re-assembled in different areas to help players (and playtesters) overcome any fear of not being able to respawn, also creating a reasonable excuse for being able to respawn.

A possible early version of Mel is seen in Portal 2: The Final Hours as a random character in an early jumpsuit design for Chell in Portal. This character had a different face and overall younger appearance than Chell, and is therefore assumed by many to be Mel. Her placeholder texture is still in the game and separate from those of Chell, but lacks animations (although they are specified, they don't exist anymore).

(Source: Portal Wiki)

Adhesion Gel

Adhesion Gel

A purple gel which, when used with portals, would allow the player to walk on the walls and ceiling of test chambers. While this may sound neat it proved to be disorienting and cause motion sickness among playtesters. You also could not use portals while the effects of adhesion gel were taking place (while you were walking on walls/the ceiling). This led to it being cut from the game, and eventually be replaced by reflection gel, although the textures are still in the game.

Because the textures are still in game, several community map-makers have tried (with varying success) to implement it in their maps. A video of it (albeit after the effects were removed) can be found here.

Reflection Gel

Reflection Gel

An unused gel type that reflects lasers. Added in the PTI update, and can be added into a map by turning off SmartEdit and setting the gel type to -1. It replaces the Adhesion Gel that was dummied out before the PTI update was released, but all effects of it are still on this gel.

The gel uses the textures for conversion gel. Due to this and the fact that it is still usable (to some effect), it has been used by some community map-makers in their maps, with only minor problems with animation and textures. A video of the gel can be found here.

Unused Entities

Hmmm...
To do:
  • Parts of this section could use more information, and a good rewrite.
  • Get better/more pictures of the furniture models, as they don't look like the ones in the final version.

Hover Turret

Hover turret

A turret that reused the model of the curiosity core from Portal. It shot a laser, much like other turrets, with the difference of the laser causing damage to the player and having a light blue colored laser. The laser, unlike the Thermal Discouragement Beam, does not impede the player's movement, and does not effect the game environment or game mechanics. It can still be spawned with cheats, and can be found in-game by using noclip and flying behind the level sign of level 1/19 and looking left. If you go near it, it will give off a blue effect and any captions enabled will scroll left.

Prerelease screenshots show that at one time the turret didn't hover, per say, it was attached to the ceiling via a wire. It's also shown (in prerelease screenshots) that it could be carried around like a normal turret. Unfortunately, when spawned today the lack of a model means that it shows up as a bright blue "ERROR" sign, although it still retains its laser function.

Mannequin

A mannequin

Very early in development, when Portal 2 was still F-Stop (circa 2007), mannequins were prominent where turrets are now. The F-Stop device and mechanics were apparently different, and have been elusive. The mannequins were to be used during F-Stop testing as turrets are used in Portal Gun testing. According to Portal 2: Final Hours, the mannequins were sentient robots who were to rise against Aperture Science.

Along with the F-Stop mechanic, the prequel idea, and the F-Stop device, the mannequins were ultimately cut, although one remains in a deactivated state for testing of turrets.

Betty

Betty!

Back when the game was in early development, Mel was still running around Aperture as the protagonist, and Cave Johnson replaced GLaDOS, the Gyroscopic Liability Absolver and Disc Operating System (otherwise known as Betty) was to introduce the player to new test chambers. She would "roll out after [Cave Johnson] had described the test" and void Aperture Science of any liabilities that may be found during testing. As shown in the image, the early model for Betty was a small morality core attached to a desk lamp with wheels.

Interestingly, the acronym of her name (GLAaDOS) was to be the only reference to GLaDOS, the antagonist from Portal and the final version of this game.

Early Furniture

The furniture.

Some of the items in the motel room at the start of the game could fold out. Likely a leftover from the aforementioned F-Stop. As seen in this demo intro, furniture would fold in order to reveal the room being a simulation.

broken_tube_suck

The particles used for the cut Pneumatic Diversity Vent, seen in a prerelease demonstration video, still exist in the final game under the name broken_tube_suck.

The tubes are not set up to suck up in the final game, but the tubes are used to dispense some objects and to carry the player in plot sequences.

The testing apparatus can be recreated using the used tube props, standard Source engine entities, and the unused particles. That said, it is not known how Valve used it to suck away pieces of the wall as seen in the video.

Futbols

The glass futbol.
The bomb futbol.

The game has coded and modeled entities for small fragile spheres called "futbols". It comes in two versions: glass, and bomb. There are special spawner entities, with models, for both. The bomb version was reused for the redirectable bombs in the final game. These are very likely remains of the Competitive Multiplayer Portal 2, which was reworked into Co-op very early on as the matches quickly became hectic and confusing. The objective would have been to redirect a bomb of sorts into other players using portals.

Devtest PeTI Puzzle

Hmmm...
To do:
Was the editor version "9" when the DLC first came out?
Portal 2-devtest.png

Present in SteamApps\common\Portal 2\sdk_content\puzzles is devtest.p2c, a Perpetual Testing Initiative custom puzzle made by the developers to test the editor. You can play and edit it by copying the file into SteamApps\common\Portal 2\portal2\puzzles\your_steam_id. It appears as a nameless entry under Create Test Chambers. It has no image, and appears to have every object available in the editor placed in a room the same size as, and obviously based on,- the blank template. The line "Version" (which is the version of the editor the puzzle was made in) has the value "9", rather than "14".

Three of the Cube Droppers are missing connections. This is either because the level was only meant to test the editor rather than gameplay, or Cube Droppers had different settings in earlier versions of the editor.

Unused Bitmaps

Chicken Icon

This may have been a leftover from the early days from Portal 2's development, in which you'd fight a Chicken.

Hmmm...
To do:
Upload the image.

Scrapped Paint Gun

During development, the developers used a paintgun for gels. The gun was from a student game called Tag: The Power of Paint, in which the player could paint the environment to add and remove paint with various effects. The Repulsion and Propulsion Gels are two of the paints actually used in that game. Developer commentary mentions that the player would be given the gun so they could paint the grounds and walls to complete test chambers, but it would cause confusion towards players not knowing exactly where to place what paint as well as destroy the aesthetic of the game.

It was ultimately removed in favor of keeping the game simple by using only the Portal Gun to manipulate puzzles. It was then reused in the standalone release of the mod Aperture Tag in 2014, which was approved by Valve themselves and is available through Steam.

Unused Content?

Elementary, my dear Cactus.
This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: What is its purpose?

There is a text file called unusedcontent.cfg which appears to be a list of directories, with some commented out or removed.

unusedcontent
{
	"dir"		"maps"
	"dir"		"materials"
	"dir"		"models"
	"dir"		"scenes"
	"dir"		"sound"
	"ignore"	""
	"ignore"	"reslists"
}

Unused Challenge Mode Map Names

All Single Player mode maps have proper map names, including ones not normally playable on Challenge Mode. These maps and their names are listed on below. The map names are stored in Steam\SteamApps\common\Portal 2\update\resource\basemodui_tu_english.txt.

Map Name Translation Token Challenge Mode Name
Chapter 1
sp_a1_intro1 SP_MAP_NAME_CH1_MAP1 Container Ride
sp_a1_intro2 SP_MAP_NAME_CH1_MAP2 Portal Carousel
sp_a1_intro7 SP_MAP_NAME_CH1_MAP7 Secret Panel
sp_a1_wakeup SP_MAP_NAME_CH1_MAP8 Wakeup
Chapter 2
sp_a2_laser_intro SP_MAP_NAME_CH2_MAP1 Laser Intro
sp_a2_catapult_intro SP_MAP_NAME_CH2_MAP5 Catapult Intro
Chapter 5
sp_a2_bts6 SP_MAP_NAME_CH5_MAP4 Tube Ride
sp_a2_core SP_MAP_NAME_CH5_MAP5 Core
Chapter 6
sp_a3_00 SP_MAP_NAME_CH6_MAP1 Long Fall
Chapter 8
sp_a4_intro SP_MAP_NAME_CH8_MAP1 Test
Chapter 9
sp_a4_finale1 SP_MAP_NAME_CH9_MAP1 Finale 1
Chapter 10
sp_a5_credits SP_MAP_NAME_cH10_MAP1 Credits
NOTE: Do not appear in Challenge Mode menu even with hacking

In addition, if the player adds those maps to the Challenge Mode map list (Steam\SteamApps\common\Portal 2\portal2_dlc1\challenge_maplist.txt) the game makes use of those map names in the Challenge Mode menu (except the Credits map). They are fully playable although they lack dedicated goal points. The "Level Completed" screen will come up when the player hits the level transition trigger. The Steam server correctly records the player's best scores. Community Data chart is also available on these maps with somewhat expected number of Fewest Portals records.