Portal (2) is my absolute favorite game, and I remember being blown away by builderboy's incredible Portal Prelude when I first discovered it. I recently got a Playdate console and decided to try and port it. So far I've just got basic movement working. I'm not sure how much effort I'm actually going to put into it, but it would be fun to make a complete port.

I have a few other playdate projects in mind, and might post updates on those too. The whole console very much has old calculator game vibes.



(apologies for the massive image)

Looks really cool! I've never heard of the console before, but I loved playing Portal Prelude on my 84 se.

Interesting! The resolution reminds me of the original Gamebuino and even the Meta, which had slightly lower resolution similar to the TI-80. I'm glad to see this game in particular ported to other platforms.

The resolution is actually a lot higher than what it looks like. The playdate’s resolution is 400x240 so I quadrupled the original sprites. Maybe once it’s finished I’ll update the sprites too to take advantage of the higher resolution.

Impressive!. I do have a playdate myself, so I'll give it a try once it releases if you will .

Never seen one of those devices but it looks cool, as does your port progress thua far 😀

I actually like the current sprites. It seems to fit well with the device. You could do what I did in one of my color games and have an option to choose between two sprite sets. Kinda like in Square-Enix and Nihon Falcom JRPG remasters and remakes where you can usually choose between original audio and new tracks.

Oh if I made updated sprites that would definitely be how I approach it. I have a fondness in my heart for the originals and would want to make them a (probably default) option.

This is such a cool project. I remember being enamored with this game when it came out and playing it in an emulator a little bit. Though I never found myself overly fond of the sprites, I even mocked up a whole new set as a evening exercise one night, not that it ever went anywhere but still.

Regardless of that, I am so excited to see this game getting some love, on such a cool platform too! Are you planning on using the analog crank for anything?

I don't have any plans for it yet, though I could probably incorporate it into an alternate control scheme.

The child in me wants to use it for aiming and then crank it around enthusiastically while firing, even though I know that would require three hands, luckily I grew an extra one when my cousin got an N64 back in the day.

That was what I had in mind, and honestly I don't think it would be too bad to control that way.

Small update: I added a walking animation, and the shoot animation. I took CDI's suggestion about using the crank for aiming, and it works pretty well! All this animation work is really just procrastinating on implementing actual portals.

New features: portals, buttons, and level transitions! Portals and buttons still don't do anything, but they at least look correct for now.

Copying all the levels was tedious, though made slightly easier with some creative use of a ViewScreen calculator and a tablet connected to my laptop via VNC.

This is looking so awesome so far! Makes me wish I had a Playdate to help test things out on! But all in all this is a proper fun looking port!

That sleek usage of the Viewport calc is super clever!

Thanks for the kind words! If you want to give it a spin you can download the playdate devkit which includes a simulator. I attached the current build so far in my post on the playdate forum here.

EDIT: I also put the source up on GitHub: https://github.com/Ivoah/PortalPlaydate

There're definitely some bugs to work out still, but I've got portals starting to work now!



It feels great to have things working enough to solve the first few levels correctly

Looks very smooth and nice. I'm glad to see new progress. I also like the TI-73 running a TI-83 Plus OS.

That looks great, and true to the original - nice job! I'm tempted to be a stickler and moan about the high-resolution portal gun in the midst of the low-resolution graphics, but it seems to make the game more fun to play, so more power to you.

I agree that the gun doesn't fit with the rest of the graphics. It's mostly just a placeholder for now, though I'm not sure there's much better way to indicate the direction you're aiming.