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While I was getting the 'Transmission Received' achievement, I actually learned that Chamber 14 will trigger the 'door explodes' prevention if you throw the radio through the door. So either they only accounted for this one instance for some reason, or that prevention is just triggered by any physics object landing in that area.
My copy of portal on Orange box doesn't have the radios or the updated/retconned final cutscene where party escort bot drags you back into the facility :/
@@blackpete There's a radio in the Relaxation Vault in the original version, but the other radios to unlock the "Transmission Received" achievement weren't in the game yet.
31:34 the fact that glados does not detect the cube in the ratman hideout makes sense imo since its a space where she could not find a live human, nevermind a cube
The Stanley Parable is a game made in source engine about a man named Stanley, who follows the story given by a narrator. Or not. It’s up to you. If you choose the most disobedient path possible, The Narrator decides that if we hate his game so much, we should play a different game. So he takes us to Test Chamber 00 in Portal. This version actually has better softlock detection than the real game, as no matter what way you get the cube stuck behind the door, The Narrator will berate you for somehow failing the easiest puzzle in the world, and will decide to not give you a replacement cube. The only thing you can do now is restart the game. This is not available in the Ultra Deluxe remake, as the Portal section was replaced with one based on Rocket League.
@@TheRabbitPoet I never played the original mod, but I did play the demo. The Stanley Parable is just oozing with love and care. They made a perfect game.
Dude, when completing it the 1st time, I somehow jumped under the cube dispenser and pushed the falling cube back in so it got never dropped from there Accidentally got a softlock there and lots of jokes from my friends lmao
37:26 Funny story about this cube, The function that creates a new cube doesn't have a function to delete the old one, so if you send this cube out of bounds, it'll rapidly spawn hundreds of thousands of cubes in the pipe and they rapidly launch out of the pipe like an explosion. your game will crash.
also as funny as it was, iirc this was patched edit: not intentionally, apparently: from pr0tal's video on this "I apologize for causing some confusion about Fact #22. I forgot to mention that this glitch does not work on the current steampipe build of the game. Not because they patched it, but they actually broke the code that detects out of bounds props. So there's that I guess."
words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning
11:11 Player of that IL here. What makes this easier isn't just being good at timing the shot but more so understanding the crouch timing. If you uncrouch while on top of a floor portal you will be near instantly teleported to the other side because the standing hitbox has a lower teleport area than the crouched hitbox. This is what makes it possible to go through the portal before the new one lands, but it can still be made easier with some more crouch tech. Instead of needing to do a very precise uncrouch input, it also works using the uncrouching animation as you walk over the portal, which makes it play more as an easier buffered input and you will always go through the portal as early as possible too.
As a game developer it's uniquely frustrating but also relatable as to how over HALF of these softlocks could've been avoided if they simply extended trigger areas to encompass an entire room rather than an arbitrarily smaller space...
@@jamestonjes8263 Oh totally, I'm just talking about things like there being a gap between the cube and the fizzler in the exit hallways of certain chambers, it's just so strange to go the extra mile to add in that softlock protection, but then have a gap for seemingly no reason! I just find it amusing
@@arrowtongue i think it's very likely that, beyond some of the softlocks very much requiring the player to go out of their way to do them, some of the less than stellar anti-softlock triggers could be explained by potential older designs of the maps, like with the companion cube chamber example
It would have been really funny if they added gradually-progressing dialogue for if you activated all of the softlock failsafes throughout the whole game, like what they have for destroying the cameras. The last one could have been like "congratulations on your ability to ensure that the Enrichment Center will be required to discard your testing results as a statistical outlier. The Enrichment Center apologizes for whichever miscommunication is responsible for your misunderstanding the purpose of the tests, which resulted in a colossal waste of everyone's time."
@@andevy1 Well I mean... They don't have to be. They did the sort of thing I'm describing for destroying cameras, and that's only five lines total: 1st camera: "To ensure the safe performance of all authorized activities, do not destroy vital testing apparatus." 2nd camera: "For your own safety, do not destroy vital testing apparatus." 3rd camera: "Certain objects may be vital to your success; Do not destroy testing apparatus." 4th camera to 32nd camera: "Vital testing apparatus destroyed." 33rd camera: "At the Enrichment Center, we promise never to value your safety above your unique ideas and creativity. However, do not destroy vital testing apparatus."
6:15 Worth noting this radio only appears if you've beaten Portal at least once. The radio is one of several added in an update as part of an ARG for Portal 2 and is linked to the "Transmission Received" achievement. The radios are only present in the Steam and Switch versions of Portal.
28:20 I remember doing the least portals challenge and trying to stack all the cameras to get up there, and every time I got up the cube would just fling itself back. Thanks for revealing this mystery i’ve had for a long time
@@oliverbertrand this exploit worked upon release and still does today. i grew up on these games and i remember doing this cuz i couldn't figure out the regular puzzle lol
35:43 I would argue that the tube platform going back down in chamber 19 is another soft lock prevention. Riding the tube again isn't normal player behavior and without the platform returning the player would be soft-locked.
I would disagree on account of the fact that the "tube platform" is just an invisible technical solution for something and isn't actually supposed to be related to the player's understanding of what is happening in the tube
The platform going back down after 4 seconds is the default behavior of func_door entities. Since the level designers didn't have to configure anything to make this happen, I didn't count it - but this is definitely subjective on my part.
@@Marblr Thanks for replying; that makes a lot of sense! The way it was phrased in the video, "...it will move back down just in case the player rides the tube again," jumped out at me and made me wonder why it wasn't being counted. Now that I know it is default behavior, I completely agree with your decision.
31:56 This man is so dedicated to being softlocked that he went out of his way to retrieve _every_ physics-based prop in the chamber to dispose of so he can't wedge them in the door.
The section at 6:40 with the portal in Chamber 03 still being linked to the portals in Chamber 02 is really really good, I love those sorts of details.
My favorite Softlock prevention in the game is the one at 25:03 because, instead of just opening the doors, they instead made this entirely unique 'escape hatch'. Also, I learned on my own that, in Chamber 14, the 'door explodes' prevention at 23:45 also triggers if you throw the chamber's radio through the door; no cube required (I learned this while I was getting the 'Transmission Recieved' achievement).
16:18 "This portal copies the data it already had. This is completely pointless, but allows this softlock" I can GUARANTEE that during testing with multiple fixed portals (and maybe even just player portals), there were nightmarish bugs early in development due to portal link detection not being robust. This reeks horribly of spaghetti having been ironed down flat into non-existence, and it's likely the devs got used to making maps in ways that avoid the bugs before the safety net code even runs.
27:40 technically, if you leave the cube in the hallway like in the video, the orb will continue to slightly push it until it reaches the trigger. it just takes like 10 minutes at host_timescale 200 lmao. luckily you can balance it on the stairs just before the trigger at the end of the hallway to avoid that and still softlock. or you can get the orb stuck in an infinite portal loop somewhere to prevent it from respawning
There's actually one more softlock in Escape 02, although it technically happens after beating the game/the speedrun ends. If you defeat GLaDOS, then open the incinerator and jump into it, you die. But because the game doesn't reload an autosave until you press a key or mouse button, you can let the ending sequence play out. You end up outside, except everything is extremely overexposed and bright white. You never get dragged away and the credits never start, so technically it prevents progressing.
37:18 Wait, THAT's how you're supposed to get up into the vent?!? I have always brought over an office chair and jankily stood on it to get myself up 😂 I love that this video about a +15 year old game has over a million views just two weeks after publishing. A testament to the excellence of both the video and the game! I also appreciate that you explore a lot of prospective soft locks rather than just ignoring spots where people who aren't speed running ninjas might assume you can get stuck.
11:20 an easier method to clear this room without a weird fling is holding the door open on the button and placing a portal directly underneath the door on the floor, so you can jump in one half and put the other
Partway through this video I realized I knew where some of your sound effects and music came from. I never expect to find another Blinx enjoyer _anywhere,_ so color me pleasantly surprised.
I am so excited to see you return to portal! Your videos are so well done and it's always an event when u upload. Thank you for making such wonderful videos :3
An astounding watch! I love seeing all the technical details 'behind the curtain', so to speak. I like how so many of these softlocks exist because Valve was like "but nobody would actually think to go there", but one gamer crazy enough to try it stepped up lol.
11:35 there is actually a far easier method to solve this chamber without the cube! by stepping on the button, opening the door and placing a blue portal below the door, you can step off the button and the blue portal wont be fizzled, and since the portal is longer than it is wide, you can jump into the blue portal from the inside of the chamber, and jump again into the orange portal to the exit.
This video was so well made. I like the graphics for counting the softlocks preventions and softlock counts. Also it was incredibly nice to be able to see the triggers and alternate camera angles
One of the best had to be not for the actual game, but a player created mod called The Gary Hudson Project. Gary created it for his then girlfriend, to propose to her. Aa far as I know, Ellen McClain actually recorded custom voice lines for it, dropping hints throughout. In one softlock that traps you in the middle of a ring of the launcher plate things, GLaDOS rescues you, saying that it woild be awful to be stuck with someone for the rest of your life.
Funny little fact related to Chamber 14. In the Portal Mod "ERROR" which converts the game into more of a horror game, there is actually a trigger preventing you from doing the fling to the elevator. It just teleports you back to the start of the chamber. It definitely wouldn't work in the original portal (and from what I know the devs knew and decided to leave it in as Portal is a puzzle game after all and allowing the players to find their own solutions is a big part of that) but its interesting to know none the less!
27:00 You're telling me that in chamber 16, for the least portals challenge, I could have just portaled past the second to last turret, instead of making _cube stairs_ over the gate?
very nicely edited and explained. Love how much information you gave on each aspect instead of just doing the softlocks, laughing a bit and then moving on
I'm just chillin' enjoying your video when my ears perked up and I lifted my head from my pillow to listen to the music in the background at around 8:00. Blinx The Time Sweeper music q.q you're goated already
I love this whole topic, from all the ways you can get yourself stuck in levels, to the ways the developers tried to mitigate the issue. I also love the crazy ways you can get out of situations that look like softlocks, like at 11:07. It reminds me of Pikasprey's "softlock picking" series on the Pokemon games. I'm sure it's a big task, but hopefully you tackle Portal 2 at some point. My friend and I found a softlock in co-op course 6 chamber 5 (the one with conversion gel). Get to the end of the level and place the cube just before the fizzler. In front of the cube, place one or two turrets facing away from it, and then dispose of all other turrets/objects. That's it. You have to cross a long catwalk with no portalable surfaces and no cover while getting shot at by the turrets. Even dying doesn't help, as you just get rebuilt in co-op and the level doesn't reload.
the combo of artistically placed camera shots in slowmo giving us the best idea of whats going on- cut to chell A posing through the air and muffled softlocked portal gun noises in the elevator had me rolling, lovely touches
Fantastic video, my guy! I like how you covered the softlock prevention systems already in place. I thought that more softlocks would've been because of unintended mechanics, like portal standing/boosting, but it makes sense that a good few of the softlocks were due to changes in level layout between beta and release versions. All things considered, the dev team did a pretty fantastic job remove the potential for casual players to soft lock
In the companion cube incineration room, I managed to break the cube's physics by sticking it into the incinerator and letting it glitch through the door thing. The cube's physics in general were intact, but the player was not able to collide with it and it wouldn't interact with the button.
its interesting to see the difference in how different gaming communities define softlock and hardlock. or more accurately, how many group the latter category into the first. coming from borderlands speedrunning, there were many cases where a save and quit would fix a lock in progression, and those were softlocks. then there were other ones where you would be in a state where you couldnt do anything to fix the issue and we referred to those as hardlocks. (for example, saving and quitting during the dialogue section when freddie betrays you, you will not be able to progress no matter what)
seems like a case where "hardlock" is basically jargon in a vocabulary that's already jargon to begin with, seeing as i've never once heard of it in my _decades_ of being in gaming spaces and that kinda tracks considering it just seems to be for games where there's enough common states that are _effectively_ softlocks in the context of a popular ruleset. which in and of itself isn't _that_ uncommon in the grand scheme of things, but the community then needs to feel the need to distinguish these run-killing states from true softlocks, _then_ decide that they'd rather keep calling the former "softlocks" ( fair, since they _are_ those for the players' intents and purposes ) and from there it's just kinda natural to spin the latter as _harder_ locks than softlocks, hence they're hardlocks it's funny, you'd think "hardlock" would be just as common as "softlock" given they sound like natural counterparts ... but, no, a softlock is just a soft form of a _program lock._ so you've either got a game that's running its code with an issue but the player is effectively locked from play in a softlock, or the game's just flat-out locked down in an infinite loop or something in a lock. there's not really way to get locked harder than getting, well, _locked,_ so there's no real room in the possibility space for a hardlock to exist unless some external rule allows
I always learnt it as "softlock" meaning that you can still move and perform actions, but progression is blocked in some way. And softlocks could be temporary or permanent, usually based on if you saved or not after setting up the softlock. Hardlock wasn't a term I heard of. Going by the definition of softlock I had, that would be more like a crash.
@@Rainbro359 the distinction is this: if reloading your game fixes the issue it's a softlock (like the ones in the video), but if the save file is permanently locked and cannot progress no matter what, it would be a hard lock. The distinction came about because hardlocks ruined borderlands speedruns, but softlocks didn't. (Also the prefix "soft" implies some form of impermanence, which is why I was always confused when it was applied to hardlocks, or locks that were permanent)
@@hi-i-am-atan From how I understand it, originally, a hardlock is where the game completely locks up and freezes. Basically like a crash. You can no longer interact with the game or the character, and the only way to move forward is by shutting down the game entirely and even that might not fix it if the save file itself is bugged so you'd also need to start a new save file if you wanted to continue playing the game. The line between softlock and hardlock is somewhat blurred... since most people just refer to any kind of lock as a 'soft lock' from what I can tell now-a-days.
I have a vivid memory of getting soft locked in the side room in chapter 11, and the door DID do exactly what you showed - opened and then re-closed itself. This was way back, closer to Portal 1’s launch in 2007. I wonder if straight out DELETING the door was something that was added in a later patch as an emergency fix that nobody ever went back and revisited.
This video was very well-made. I myself encountered the softlock that causes the game to crash on the final escape chamber in my first playthrough so many years ago and always wondered if there were any others of similar stature. Thank you for taking the time to compile all of them into one place!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Videos like this take a lot of effort to produce, so thank you to all the channel members for supporting me and to Raycon for sponsoring the video!
Go to buyraycon.com/marblr for up to 30% off this Black Friday.
happi happi happi!
Warning to all that there’s a reason raycon is ‘half the price’.
I appreciate you for making Marble it Up
If that's the case then I wouldn't feel pressured to make videos on one specific thing, especially overwatch
cant wait for every softlock in portal 2
note that the radios werent in the game on release, so a lot of these softlocks weren't possible back then
While I was getting the 'Transmission Received' achievement, I actually learned that Chamber 14 will trigger the 'door explodes' prevention if you throw the radio through the door.
So either they only accounted for this one instance for some reason, or that prevention is just triggered by any physics object landing in that area.
My copy of portal on Orange box doesn't have the radios or the updated/retconned final cutscene where party escort bot drags you back into the facility :/
@@brekreney5734 hell, They're not there on your first playthrough either. They only appear after you beat the game once
Sure? I bought Portal pretty early, there was definitely a radio in the first room.Maybe my sense of time is wrong, I'm older than HL1...
@@blackpete There's a radio in the Relaxation Vault in the original version, but the other radios to unlock the "Transmission Received" achievement weren't in the game yet.
“If you think about it, elevators are just vertical trains”
…
This may be my new favourite quote of all time
i wastet 2h to go down that hole.
Discord status material for sure
Judging by your profile pic, you would know a lot about trains that go between floors.
Fun fact: in the neapolitan language (Naples, Italy), elevator can be literally translated to "wall mounted tram" (as in trolley/streetcar)
Fun fact: There is a type of subway stations in Saint Petersburg (Russia) that are literally called "Horizontal Elevator".
31:34 the fact that glados does not detect the cube in the ratman hideout makes sense imo since its a space where she could not find a live human, nevermind a cube
Lore accurate soft lock...
Valve is truly in a league of their own...
It's very amusing to imagine Chell being so petty that she shows every flaw in GLaDOS's test chamber designs
"Let me test your chambers for soft locking instead 😠"😆
@fouzanium lmao
The Stanley Parable is a game made in source engine about a man named Stanley, who follows the story given by a narrator. Or not. It’s up to you. If you choose the most disobedient path possible, The Narrator decides that if we hate his game so much, we should play a different game. So he takes us to Test Chamber 00 in Portal. This version actually has better softlock detection than the real game, as no matter what way you get the cube stuck behind the door, The Narrator will berate you for somehow failing the easiest puzzle in the world, and will decide to not give you a replacement cube. The only thing you can do now is restart the game. This is not available in the Ultra Deluxe remake, as the Portal section was replaced with one based on Rocket League.
the original hl2 mod version of the game had a similar ending where the narrator took you to the beginning section of half life 2
@@TheRabbitPoet I never played the original mod, but I did play the demo. The Stanley Parable is just oozing with love and care. They made a perfect game.
Mine takes me to minecraft
@@reservoirfrogs2177 after exploring the minecraft part little bit, the narrator will put you into portal test chamber 00.
Dude, when completing it the 1st time, I somehow jumped under the cube dispenser and pushed the falling cube back in so it got never dropped from there
Accidentally got a softlock there and lots of jokes from my friends lmao
I love the sight of Chell getting launched through portals and flying around in an A Pose. It is truly beautiful.
No mid-air/falling animation :)
@@tsthunderbird yeah, she flies like an eagle... with a balloon
"Look at you. Sailing through the air majestically. Like an eagle. Piloting a blimp."
@@reptarien weird, since they could've just made one animation for jumping and then used it for falling without jumping
A
37:26
Funny story about this cube, The function that creates a new cube doesn't have a function to delete the old one, so if you send this cube out of bounds, it'll rapidly spawn hundreds of thousands of cubes in the pipe and they rapidly launch out of the pipe like an explosion. your game will crash.
That’s extremely funny
@@Lunarcreeper well it crashes so it's not a softlock :shrug:
@@shiptoster Well yeah, they said it was a funny story, not a softlock.
@@shiptoster they never said it was. plus the video is going by glitchless rules so out of bounds would disqualify it immediately
also as funny as it was, iirc this was patched
edit: not intentionally, apparently: from pr0tal's video on this "I apologize for causing some confusion about Fact #22. I forgot to mention that this glitch does not work on the current steampipe build of the game. Not because they patched it, but they actually broke the code that detects out of bounds props. So there's that I guess."
Sticking out your cube for the fizzler
words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning words have meaning
Your so wheatley
@@TheRealGaminYtube so potaDOS
One day you will punished for your crimes
@@enbybunny9940 today is not that day
11:11 Player of that IL here.
What makes this easier isn't just being good at timing the shot but more so understanding the crouch timing. If you uncrouch while on top of a floor portal you will be near instantly teleported to the other side because the standing hitbox has a lower teleport area than the crouched hitbox. This is what makes it possible to go through the portal before the new one lands, but it can still be made easier with some more crouch tech. Instead of needing to do a very precise uncrouch input, it also works using the uncrouching animation as you walk over the portal, which makes it play more as an easier buffered input and you will always go through the portal as early as possible too.
Can't you just shoot a portal half under the door half on your side half on the other to skip that chamber?
@Voidling242 that is currently banned under the glitchless ruleset for speedruns. It probably shouldn't be, but it's slower so not many people care.
I was searching for this answer :)
6:42 bro dropped the hardest transition ever and thought we wouldn't notice
As a game developer it's uniquely frustrating but also relatable as to how over HALF of these softlocks could've been avoided if they simply extended trigger areas to encompass an entire room rather than an arbitrarily smaller space...
While that is the case, most of these are suuuuper rare edge cases if the players aren't actively trying to break the game, or just screwing around
@@jamestonjes8263 Oh totally, I'm just talking about things like there being a gap between the cube and the fizzler in the exit hallways of certain chambers, it's just so strange to go the extra mile to add in that softlock protection, but then have a gap for seemingly no reason! I just find it amusing
honestly. I think the fact you can softlock it and the game acknowledges it adds to the immersion.
@@polocatfan the game doesn't acknowledge it when you really softlock yourself though, those are the oversights
@@arrowtongue i think it's very likely that, beyond some of the softlocks very much requiring the player to go out of their way to do them, some of the less than stellar anti-softlock triggers could be explained by potential older designs of the maps, like with the companion cube chamber example
Little known fact: The entire development on the sequel to Portal was completed by simply turning every instance of the variable at 15:00 to true
This is such a beautiful comment
@@MonkeNeuronActivated It took my breath away I agree
fake
@@Zemedicfromtf2 whooosh
@@PeaNUTFERRET please let my family go, i did everything you asked bro please
It would have been really funny if they added gradually-progressing dialogue for if you activated all of the softlock failsafes throughout the whole game, like what they have for destroying the cameras. The last one could have been like "congratulations on your ability to ensure that the Enrichment Center will be required to discard your testing results as a statistical outlier. The Enrichment Center apologizes for whichever miscommunication is responsible for your misunderstanding the purpose of the tests, which resulted in a colossal waste of everyone's time."
@@graysongdl if they were to do that they would have to make 400 voice lines if the voice lines were chamber specific
@@andevy1 Well I mean... They don't have to be. They did the sort of thing I'm describing for destroying cameras, and that's only five lines total:
1st camera: "To ensure the safe performance of all authorized activities, do not destroy vital testing apparatus."
2nd camera: "For your own safety, do not destroy vital testing apparatus."
3rd camera: "Certain objects may be vital to your success; Do not destroy testing apparatus."
4th camera to 32nd camera: "Vital testing apparatus destroyed."
33rd camera: "At the Enrichment Center, we promise never to value your safety above your unique ideas and creativity. However, do not destroy vital testing apparatus."
Softlock George is an outlier and should not be counted with the rest of the normal people.
@@graysongdl man I can hear this in her voice and I love it!
@@not_umbre _Gorge._ It said Spider _Gorge._
The door EXPLODES
has to be my favorite part of the video I was not ready for that lmao
29:17 the trademark in the captions 😭
That's hilarious omg
6:15 Worth noting this radio only appears if you've beaten Portal at least once. The radio is one of several added in an update as part of an ARG for Portal 2 and is linked to the "Transmission Received" achievement. The radios are only present in the Steam and Switch versions of Portal.
@Stevoisiak
They were also added way later as a teaser for portal 2, so none of the level design was made to account for them.
Is there any way to get the radios without fully finishing the game? (Without dev panel)
37:20 Huh, i didn’t know you were supposed to do that, I just used a chair instead.
That's amazing 😂
Same haha then I realized on my 3 playthrough how your suppose to do it
Haha! Was about to write the exact same thing! 😅
@@Idiota_Profissional yeah, it wasn't very clear to me either
@@Idiota_Profissional SAME i had to pause the video in shock thinking of how long i sat finicking with a chair to get up in the vent
28:20 I remember doing the least portals challenge and trying to stack all the cameras to get up there, and every time I got up the cube would just fling itself back. Thanks for revealing this mystery i’ve had for a long time
@@oliverbertrand this exploit worked upon release and still does today. i grew up on these games and i remember doing this cuz i couldn't figure out the regular puzzle lol
Reminding me of the pain I had doing the least steps challenge
@ i think i broke my f9 key quick loading so much
28:54 Gotta appreciate how he timed the music with the trick, amazing.
amazing video! your editing style is incredible, always love to see stuff from you like this
Shayy?
@@ShayyTV I didn’t expect to see you here lol, hi Shayy
Now you’re tasked with covering all the softlocks in Portal 2
I'd watch that
35:43 I would argue that the tube platform going back down in chamber 19 is another soft lock prevention. Riding the tube again isn't normal player behavior and without the platform returning the player would be soft-locked.
no because then there would be 26 preventions instead of 25 and the universe would no longer be perfectly balanced
@@Pcat0 idk i could imagine riding the tube again just for fun
I would disagree on account of the fact that the "tube platform" is just an invisible technical solution for something and isn't actually supposed to be related to the player's understanding of what is happening in the tube
The platform going back down after 4 seconds is the default behavior of func_door entities. Since the level designers didn't have to configure anything to make this happen, I didn't count it - but this is definitely subjective on my part.
@@Marblr Thanks for replying; that makes a lot of sense! The way it was phrased in the video, "...it will move back down just in case the player rides the tube again," jumped out at me and made me wonder why it wasn't being counted. Now that I know it is default behavior, I completely agree with your decision.
In terms of softlocks that would actually happen? Less than 10, maybe even less than 5. From that perspective, bravo Valve.
Fun fact, it should be "brava Valve" since in Italian "Valve" is female ^-^
@@NHCHthat.. Doesn't work when this is an English company, a term that exists in the English language, and the English language is not gendered.
@@HeatherComputer bro, I'm Italian, i know what I'm talking about
@@NHCH my point is - _we're not speaking Italian._
@@HeatherComputer reading this comment makes me hear the facepalm you had when you read NHCH's comment 😂
Damn, I didnt expect a video about something so specific and niche to be so well-researched and presented! Mad props, subbed
Perfect piece for procrastination 🥲
31:56
This man is so dedicated to being softlocked that he went out of his way to retrieve _every_ physics-based prop in the chamber to dispose of so he can't wedge them in the door.
Wait I assumed this was an Msushi video at first. BLESS!
@@ARavingLobster Honestly, same
same
14:33 To understand why, we need to talk about parallel universes.
Thought about that too.
@@saikitonia where did this meme come from
@@suitcaseofsmarts it’s a meme on a Mario 64 video, one of the speedrunning ones, I forget who made it, summoning salt perhaps?
@@poub23 Alr thx
@@poub23 Pannenkoek2012
The section at 6:40 with the portal in Chamber 03 still being linked to the portals in Chamber 02 is really really good, I love those sorts of details.
Your voice is like if the old How It's Made narrator had a baby with the movie trailer narrator and it was blessed by an angel.
you said "softlock" in this video 142 times
counted 141, liar
Unemployed activitys
hell yeah
Welcome back Marblr and with a WHAM one!
"Oh awesome, Marblr made a- FORTY THREE MINUTES!!??"
Fuck didn't even know it was that long his pacing so good it made time fly
And 7 seconds :3
THE KING IS BACK
19:50 Seeing Chell A-pose through those portals was amazing.
I lost it at the A-Pose flight at 29:04 during the portal jump to the hallway
My favorite Softlock prevention in the game is the one at 25:03 because, instead of just opening the doors, they instead made this entirely unique 'escape hatch'.
Also, I learned on my own that, in Chamber 14, the 'door explodes' prevention at 23:45 also triggers if you throw the chamber's radio through the door; no cube required (I learned this while I was getting the 'Transmission Recieved' achievement).
PLEASE MORE BIG VIDS OF ESOTERIC VIDEO GAME KNOWLEDGE I LOVE MARBLR
16:18
"This portal copies the data it already had. This is completely pointless, but allows this softlock"
I can GUARANTEE that during testing with multiple fixed portals (and maybe even just player portals), there were nightmarish bugs early in development due to portal link detection not being robust. This reeks horribly of spaghetti having been ironed down flat into non-existence, and it's likely the devs got used to making maps in ways that avoid the bugs before the safety net code even runs.
27:40 technically, if you leave the cube in the hallway like in the video, the orb will continue to slightly push it until it reaches the trigger. it just takes like 10 minutes at host_timescale 200 lmao. luckily you can balance it on the stairs just before the trigger at the end of the hallway to avoid that and still softlock. or you can get the orb stuck in an infinite portal loop somewhere to prevent it from respawning
The effort to record all of them in-game is nuts. Crazy good video my man.
Portal was one of the first games I got really into trying to break it as a kid. Absolutely love this video
1:10 CAR 🗣️🐱🐱🐱
CAR🗣🐱🐱🐱
CAR 🗣️🐱🐱🐱
CAR🗣🐱🐱🐱
CAT🗣🚘🚘🚘
ELAVATOR 🗣️ 🚂🚂🚂
There's actually one more softlock in Escape 02, although it technically happens after beating the game/the speedrun ends. If you defeat GLaDOS, then open the incinerator and jump into it, you die. But because the game doesn't reload an autosave until you press a key or mouse button, you can let the ending sequence play out. You end up outside, except everything is extremely overexposed and bright white. You never get dragged away and the credits never start, so technically it prevents progressing.
37:18 Wait, THAT's how you're supposed to get up into the vent?!? I have always brought over an office chair and jankily stood on it to get myself up 😂
I love that this video about a +15 year old game has over a million views just two weeks after publishing. A testament to the excellence of both the video and the game!
I also appreciate that you explore a lot of prospective soft locks rather than just ignoring spots where people who aren't speed running ninjas might assume you can get stuck.
Excellent
I could listen to you talk for hours. ♥
And I'm always just bewildered by the quality of your editing. Its amazing.
the segue at 6:39 was so cool, i liked it a lot. it was very clever! i bet it must've taken some work to set up too.
“Surely there’s nothing wrong with this detection trigger..” “Of course.” 29:26
Now this is the kind of content I come here for
10:27 and not only can chamber 8 be solved that way, glados acknowledges you did it
I can't begin to describe how much I want this continued into Portal 2
we love any and all videos from you mister marble man!!!! everything is peak, from voice, to editing, to content :D
@@spookiboys holy glaze
@@POTUSOfficial 12 yrs max
@@SimonFollin music act with under 400 subs, ngmi bros
@@POTUSOfficial proving my point
The linked fixed portal stuff feels like something the devs added in case they accidentally put in the wrong portal for something.
11:20 an easier method to clear this room without a weird fling is holding the door open on the button and placing a portal directly underneath the door on the floor, so you can jump in one half and put the other
Partway through this video I realized I knew where some of your sound effects and music came from. I never expect to find another Blinx enjoyer _anywhere,_ so color me pleasantly surprised.
I am so excited to see you return to portal! Your videos are so well done and it's always an event when u upload. Thank you for making such wonderful videos :3
i love the thought process behind room 18's softlock. "we can't put the cube in the goo... so we'll go to the other goo."
33:20 A-Posing Chell flying across the gap got me dying, no clue why
13:32 ive been playing and obsessing over portal for a decade now, and i never knew that the portals did that. that single-handedly won my sub
An astounding watch! I love seeing all the technical details 'behind the curtain', so to speak. I like how so many of these softlocks exist because Valve was like "but nobody would actually think to go there", but one gamer crazy enough to try it stepped up lol.
I literally played Portal again last week and tried to softlock myself as much as possible, neat coincidence
11:35 there is actually a far easier method to solve this chamber without the cube! by stepping on the button, opening the door and placing a blue portal below the door, you can step off the button and the blue portal wont be fizzled, and since the portal is longer than it is wide, you can jump into the blue portal from the inside of the chamber, and jump again into the orange portal to the exit.
2:42 Portal under chamber door 9 is considered a glitch in this 'challenge'.
@@icycloud6823 Oh, good catch i did not see that
Very clean in presentation, explanation & pacing.
I absolutely fell in love with this channel immediately!
This video was so well made. I like the graphics for counting the softlocks preventions and softlock counts.
Also it was incredibly nice to be able to see the triggers and alternate camera angles
This is the best video I've ever saw in my life.
Just take my money!
One of the best had to be not for the actual game, but a player created mod called The Gary Hudson Project. Gary created it for his then girlfriend, to propose to her. Aa far as I know, Ellen McClain actually recorded custom voice lines for it, dropping hints throughout. In one softlock that traps you in the middle of a ring of the launcher plate things, GLaDOS rescues you, saying that it woild be awful to be stuck with someone for the rest of your life.
the metal pipe falling at 32:06 is driving me fucking insane
oh god there's another one at 32:32
FINALY I FOUND SOMEONE MENTIONING IT, I THOUGHT I WAS GOING INSANE
Chel floating into the sky with the graph "1000 ups" made me chuckle. You're right, she is going up a thousand times
Funny little fact related to Chamber 14.
In the Portal Mod "ERROR" which converts the game into more of a horror game, there is actually a trigger preventing you from doing the fling to the elevator. It just teleports you back to the start of the chamber. It definitely wouldn't work in the original portal (and from what I know the devs knew and decided to leave it in as Portal is a puzzle game after all and allowing the players to find their own solutions is a big part of that) but its interesting to know none the less!
27:00 You're telling me that in chamber 16, for the least portals challenge, I could have just portaled past the second to last turret, instead of making _cube stairs_ over the gate?
😭 dude that's so sad but so smart I gotta do that on my next playthrough
"Hey I exist! Link to me!"
Best pick up line
32:30: I need this as a stand alone voice clip
Very interesting analysis. I like how you went to great lengths in order to figure out every possible softlocking opportunity in every level.
very nicely edited and explained. Love how much information you gave on each aspect instead of just doing the softlocks, laughing a bit and then moving on
Peak dropped
WE ARE SO BACK.
Edit: Elevators are just vertical trains. Man I missed you, Marblr.
31:26 “or did they?” VSause theme starts playing
DUN DUN
I'm just chillin' enjoying your video when my ears perked up and I lifted my head from my pillow to listen to the music in the background at around 8:00. Blinx The Time Sweeper music q.q you're goated already
I love this whole topic, from all the ways you can get yourself stuck in levels, to the ways the developers tried to mitigate the issue. I also love the crazy ways you can get out of situations that look like softlocks, like at 11:07. It reminds me of Pikasprey's "softlock picking" series on the Pokemon games.
I'm sure it's a big task, but hopefully you tackle Portal 2 at some point. My friend and I found a softlock in co-op course 6 chamber 5 (the one with conversion gel). Get to the end of the level and place the cube just before the fizzler. In front of the cube, place one or two turrets facing away from it, and then dispose of all other turrets/objects. That's it. You have to cross a long catwalk with no portalable surfaces and no cover while getting shot at by the turrets. Even dying doesn't help, as you just get rebuilt in co-op and the level doesn't reload.
25 vs 25 is just perfectly fitting for a sublime game like Portal.
Best line in media “as you can see the trigger doesn’t cover the whole hallway” ( *destroys valves game* )
Sat through a double ad, went 0.2 seconds with no input from me, got another double ad...
the combo of artistically placed camera shots in slowmo giving us the best idea of whats going on- cut to chell A posing through the air and muffled softlocked portal gun noises in the elevator had me rolling, lovely touches
Fantastic video, my guy! I like how you covered the softlock prevention systems already in place. I thought that more softlocks would've been because of unintended mechanics, like portal standing/boosting, but it makes sense that a good few of the softlocks were due to changes in level layout between beta and release versions. All things considered, the dev team did a pretty fantastic job remove the potential for casual players to soft lock
@20:03 Glados casually going "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
39:44 Imagine you dying and your entire universe implodes
@@auzabraarreal life do be like that :c
* Universe cannot compute two conflicting physics laws simultaneously * blame the creator!
goat is back
You sound like the guy who narrates corporate training videos.
In other words, you’ve got a great voice for presenting.
In the companion cube incineration room, I managed to break the cube's physics by sticking it into the incinerator and letting it glitch through the door thing. The cube's physics in general were intact, but the player was not able to collide with it and it wouldn't interact with the button.
its interesting to see the difference in how different gaming communities define softlock and hardlock. or more accurately, how many group the latter category into the first.
coming from borderlands speedrunning, there were many cases where a save and quit would fix a lock in progression, and those were softlocks.
then there were other ones where you would be in a state where you couldnt do anything to fix the issue and we referred to those as hardlocks. (for example, saving and quitting during the dialogue section when freddie betrays you, you will not be able to progress no matter what)
seems like a case where "hardlock" is basically jargon in a vocabulary that's already jargon to begin with, seeing as i've never once heard of it in my _decades_ of being in gaming spaces and that kinda tracks considering it just seems to be for games where there's enough common states that are _effectively_ softlocks in the context of a popular ruleset. which in and of itself isn't _that_ uncommon in the grand scheme of things, but the community then needs to feel the need to distinguish these run-killing states from true softlocks, _then_ decide that they'd rather keep calling the former "softlocks" ( fair, since they _are_ those for the players' intents and purposes ) and from there it's just kinda natural to spin the latter as _harder_ locks than softlocks, hence they're hardlocks
it's funny, you'd think "hardlock" would be just as common as "softlock" given they sound like natural counterparts ... but, no, a softlock is just a soft form of a _program lock._ so you've either got a game that's running its code with an issue but the player is effectively locked from play in a softlock, or the game's just flat-out locked down in an infinite loop or something in a lock. there's not really way to get locked harder than getting, well, _locked,_ so there's no real room in the possibility space for a hardlock to exist unless some external rule allows
I always learnt it as "softlock" meaning that you can still move and perform actions, but progression is blocked in some way. And softlocks could be temporary or permanent, usually based on if you saved or not after setting up the softlock.
Hardlock wasn't a term I heard of. Going by the definition of softlock I had, that would be more like a crash.
@@Rainbro359 the distinction is this: if reloading your game fixes the issue it's a softlock (like the ones in the video), but if the save file is permanently locked and cannot progress no matter what, it would be a hard lock.
The distinction came about because hardlocks ruined borderlands speedruns, but softlocks didn't.
(Also the prefix "soft" implies some form of impermanence, which is why I was always confused when it was applied to hardlocks, or locks that were permanent)
@@hi-i-am-atan From how I understand it, originally, a hardlock is where the game completely locks up and freezes. Basically like a crash. You can no longer interact with the game or the character, and the only way to move forward is by shutting down the game entirely and even that might not fix it if the save file itself is bugged so you'd also need to start a new save file if you wanted to continue playing the game.
The line between softlock and hardlock is somewhat blurred... since most people just refer to any kind of lock as a 'soft lock' from what I can tell now-a-days.
@@icycloud6823 you must have played lots of cartridge games, as thats where ive heard that definition from
3:39
This explicitly disproves that one game theory episode
42:38 Perfectly balanced. As all things should be.
I have a vivid memory of getting soft locked in the side room in chapter 11, and the door DID do exactly what you showed - opened and then re-closed itself. This was way back, closer to Portal 1’s launch in 2007. I wonder if straight out DELETING the door was something that was added in a later patch as an emergency fix that nobody ever went back and revisited.
This video was very well-made. I myself encountered the softlock that causes the game to crash on the final escape chamber in my first playthrough so many years ago and always wondered if there were any others of similar stature. Thank you for taking the time to compile all of them into one place!
16:04 "hey, I exist, link to me" feels like how a lot of guys expect dating to go
So basically Valve accounted for Players but they didn't account for Pikasprey.
VALVe trying to fill the whole damn room with the softlock detection trigger (Challenge: IMPOSSIBLE)
Cool touch using Blinx music for the BGM, gold crystal pickup & bad time Crystal combo sounds for each softlock counter! Love those 2 games.
I love the diegetic anti softlock measures and would have loved to see a truly softlock proof Portal with all these details