*a moot point, not a mute point.

That looks great, very nicely done! Does this mean that all entrances have to be at the bottom left, and all exits must be at the bottom right? Or more generally, that all entrances must be on the left wall, and all exits on the right wall?

All entrances will be on the left and all exits will be on the right, but not neccessarily at the same level. There is going to be some code that compensates for that. (and thanks for the moot point I always get that one wrong! )

Ah, very nice. So does this mean that each level is one screen, or do you have any plans to make multi-screen levels, where the entrance is on the left of the leftmost screen, and the exit is on the right of the rightmost one? Also, comic made the same mute/moot error, so I think it's common.

Mmmm by mutliscreen do you mean smoothscrolling? There are some problems with multiscreen Portal, namely what happens if there is a Portal on screen 1 and another Portal on screen 2

Ooooh, I see. Even if you were to make a portal-destructing field between the different screens?

Mmmm that could work, but then the screens would be almost as separate as the levels themselves, unless i did something tricky like buttons and boxes working across the screens too.

Aye, that's what I was thinking. For example, you could force the player to use portals to launch themselves through an opening high on the right wall into the rightmost of two screens, press a button, then return to the left side to do something else, and finally return to the right side and exit the level. You could still force portals to be destroyed between screens, or if you wanted to be even more ambitious, you could try to retain portals between screens.

Hmmmm it sure would be possible but it would require a lot of rewriting in the current engine, which is fairly big as it is. Also, what happens if you throw a box off of one screen and onto another, without moving yourself? Or if a plasma ball passes through the two screens?

Would those be difficult to deal with? Either way though, if you say it would be a big engine rewrite, then I don't want to throw a spanner in the works. I'm sure you have tons of excellent single-screen levels.

Yeah it would be pretty difficult to deal with, since then you would have these objects that are behaving off screen. Not impossible, but I already have 25 designed levels, I think I'm sticking with what I've got

That sounds like a solid plan. Are you going to release an early beta of what you have at this point to testers at all, or did I miss a link somewhere?

Actualy there has been a demo out for a while Heh whoops. Here is the link, http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1653.0;attach=2620 Its an App, and should be signed and workable, if it gives any problems i have another unsigned version, but it only works on emulators.

Arrow keys to move, Up to jump, number pad to shoot Portals, and [2nd] to grab boxes.

Whoa, epic; I might have to load this on my hardware calculator to play while I'm waiting in line for the Engadget Show tomorrow, if I got! I can't wait for the finished game; it's gonna be the bee's knees.

*bump* Anything new and exciting on this? Since you've released betas, I guess it's not an Axe Contest entry, but it seemed you were aiming for an end-of-summer release, more or less?

Actualy i recently had some more free time so i worked on splitting all the code into subprograms (took forever ) , improved the object scripts, and cut 200 bytes of the level loading code

This isnt an Axe entry (Im one of the judges ) but i am hoping for a release this year

Haha, sounds like a plan. Congrats on the level-loading optimizations, nice job on the splitting (I know how painful that can be), and ah, who else are the judges? Kevin and Kevin?

Yeah i believe they are the judges

Good luck with that, I hope that the three of you have lots of entries to judge, and I hope Rivereye and I also have tons of entries to judge. I'm starting to think that BrandonW might win the ASM category by default again.

So about PortalX, I'm very much looking forward to this famous storyline I keep hearing about. Will you have a walkthrough-type-thing in the manual or readme, or will it be up to the user to go through and find out what it's all about?

The storyline won't be recorded anywhere in detail except inside the game, as there are twists and surprises i want to keep secret its more like an experience than a storyline. (At least thats what im going for )

Woot! finally got Plasma balls working Its complex, but it still takes up less code than the boxes o.O Physics really takes its toll on size. Right now boxes are the largest amount of code, followed by Plasma balls, followed by buttons. The plasma balls aren't completely finished, there is still some code to get it to work for every general case, and to add functionality for creating them into my level editor. But for now you can enjoy the lovely screenshot i have put together