Play Half Life 2 With Portal

[NFC_Pickard]

I found instructions on how to enable the Portal gun in Half Life 2.

Enjoy



* First off, backup up your entire Portal directory in a safe place. It’s the folder marked “portal” in ..\Steam\steamapps\(your_steam_id)\. We, nor Valve, take any responsibility in the unlikely event of you hosing your game files. Worse comes to worse though, you could always just redownload from STEAM.

* Next, download and install, if you haven’t already, GCFScape. This handy program will allow you to access the cached game files for any Source-powered game, in addition to several other Steam games you may have downloaded.

* Once that’s done, browse to the directory ..\Steam\steamapps\. There, you’ll see all the available GCF archives. We’ll start with Half-Life 2.

* Open the GCF marked “half-life 2 content.gcf” You’ll see a directory tree in the left pane. Click the box to the left of the folder marked “hl2″ to see the directory listing contained within it. Then, right-click “maps,” select ‘Extract’ and extract the entire folder into the directory \Steam\steamapps\(your_steam_id)\portal\portal. This will merge it with the existing Portal map folder.

* Do the same with the ’scenes’ folder

* Fire up Steam and run Portal. When it’s done doing its thing, open up the developer console with ‘~’ (you may need to enable it under your keyboard options).

* At the console, type “maps” to list all the available maps. Now that you’ve imported the Half-Life 2 maps, this will be a fairly lengthy list and some of the names, like citadel and canals, should seem familiar.

* Type “map” and then the map name to open that map. For instance, “map d1_canals_01″

* When the map is done loading, pull up the console again and enable cheats by entering “sv_cheats 1″

* To give yourself all weapons, including the portal gun, enter “impulse 101″

* Depending on how far you got in Portal, you may need to upgrade the portal gun to fire both portals. Enter “upgrade_portalgun” to do so

* Go lay waste to some alien scum with the power of portals!


YouTube - Half-Life 2: Portal


source: Half-Life 2: Portal : Primotech


edit: A little more info

Here are some more thoughts on our experiences:

* Follow the same steps if you’d like to try it out with Half-Life 2: Deatmatch or Episodes 1 and 2.

* We actually highly recommend starting with the HL2: DM maps to give you a feel of how things operate and allow you to experiment with various techniques. You can spawn an enemy by first looking where you would like him to be placed and then entering, say, “npc_create_equipment weapon_shotgun; wait; npc_create npc_combine_s” to create a Combine soldier with a shotgun. (Visit this HL2 Filefront page for more details)

* Sorry, but we’ve racked our brains and can’t figure out a simple way to get multiple people into a game of HL2: DM this way. We’re sure some enterprising group of modders will come up with something in the coming weeks, though.

* We did not attempt to do this with Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, or Day of Defeat: Source. As fun as it might sound in theory, we would like to dissuade you from trying it as well, as it probably won’t yield any real satisfactory results.

* All the same basic concepts of Portal apply here, including realistic momentum and gravity. You’ll also automatically regain health very quickly as in Portal. We’ll try to find a fix for this and post it soon.

* It may take some time to figure out which surfaces work and which don’t, since obviously this is no longer clearly indicated by the textures. Generally speaking, shoot only for flat walls, floors, and ceilings and not objects like rocks or boxes.

* Sadly, NPC’s and enemies cannot pass through portals. However, almost all ammunition, from bullets shot to grenades tossed to objects flung with the gravity gun, can and will make their way through smoothly.

* You’ll also probably notice a weird, floating colored cloud that follows you around (it appears a few times in the video above). We couldn’t figure out a way to disable this, but thankfully it’s only a minor annoyance.

[NFC_Pickard]

Wow. I thought ppl woulda been all over this. It's fun as all hell.

[AdmiralHocking]

heh, interesting.

I'll take a look at this tomorrow.

[imfree]

how do i fix the sound because when i play level 1 of hl2 with portal i gey no sound from the start to the end

[>Omen<]

Originally Posted by imfree

how do i fix the sound because when i play level 1 of hl2 with portal i gey no sound from the start to the end

Scroll through the comments on the 2nd link in the original post above and you will find a fix for the sound. Also one person that commented said the strange light that follows you around is fixed by disabling the sun as a light source, which should increase performance as well. the only command I've seen that may apply to turning off the sun as a light source would be r_dynamic.

From Tweakguides.com:
"r_dynamic [0,1] - If set to 1, enables dynamic lighting. If set to 0, disables dynamic lighting which can boost performance without a dramatic impact on realism."

NOTE: MAKE SURE you have all your HL2 and Portal files uopdated via Steam, then startup in offline mode BEFORE using GCFScape.

I have not yet tried this mod, I was hoping someone would package it in one simple solution, but I may give it a go.

[>Omen<]

Originally Posted by imfree

how do i fix the sound because when i play level 1 of hl2 with portal i gey no sound from the start to the end

After extensive research and testing with a tool I found to create gcf files, I've concluded that there is no way via Primotech's method to get sound while playing HL2 with the Portal gun.

Here's my post from their site explaining why:

"OK guys, here’s the deal on the sound. You can locate where all the HL2 sound files are, and where the Portal sound files are via GCFScape. You can even extract all the folders within the portal content.gcf file, overwrite it’s sound files with the extracted HL2 sound fles from the source sounds.gcf file, create a shell folder named portal content, then turn it into a gcf file with this tool:

http://www.fileplanet.com/148080/140000/fileinfo/Half-Life-2—GCF-Editing-Suit

However, even though that theoretically should create a gcf that adds the HL2 sound files in with the Portal sound files, Valve monitors changes within gcf files so even if you thoroughly udate before editing and launch in offline mode, you’ll get a “Portal is not ready to be played in offline mode” error.

Furthermore the gcf file you just created is automatically deleted! You will see in the readme of the version of GCFScape in the above link that the creators of GCFScape have not yet found a way to nor do they recommended creating or changing .gcf files because of Valve’s monitoring of them.

Even if someone does find a way to circumvent the HLLib.dll file that reads the gcf files, you may risk losing your Steam account doing so. The HLLib.dll file cannot be found in the game files, but you WILL see it in GCFScape files. This may mean that Valve uses such a file (or something similar) server side to read your gcf files when updating your game."

This is why others have chosen to not use this method and instead make a mod that uses the Gravity Gun as the Portal Gun. Here are those other mods:

Exite Mod
HL2: ExitE Mod: Real Portal Gun Model (v2.1) - FileFront.com

Half-Life 2: Garry's Mod Portal Mini-Mod, Half-Life 2 Downloads, Half-Life 2 Addons

Note that none of these allow you to play the HL2 sp story with the Portal Gun. As far as I know there's no way to do that with sound.

[Banach]

Originally Posted by NFC_Pickard

I found instructions on how to enable the Portal gun in Half Life 2.

Enjoy



* First off, backup up your entire Portal directory in a safe place. It’s the folder marked “portal” in ..\Steam\steamapps\(your_steam_id)\. We, nor Valve, take any responsibility in the unlikely event of you hosing your game files. Worse comes to worse though, you could always just redownload from STEAM.

* Next, download and install, if you haven’t already, GCFScape. This handy program will allow you to access the cached game files for any Source-powered game, in addition to several other Steam games you may have downloaded.

* Once that’s done, browse to the directory ..\Steam\steamapps\. There, you’ll see all the available GCF archives. We’ll start with Half-Life 2.

* Open the GCF marked “half-life 2 content.gcf” You’ll see a directory tree in the left pane. Click the box to the left of the folder marked “hl2″ to see the directory listing contained within it. Then, right-click “maps,” select ‘Extract’ and extract the entire folder into the directory \Steam\steamapps\(your_steam_id)\portal\portal. This will merge it with the existing Portal map folder.

* Do the same with the ’scenes’ folder

* Fire up Steam and run Portal. When it’s done doing its thing, open up the developer console with ‘~’ (you may need to enable it under your keyboard options).

* At the console, type “maps” to list all the available maps. Now that you’ve imported the Half-Life 2 maps, this will be a fairly lengthy list and some of the names, like citadel and canals, should seem familiar.

* Type “map” and then the map name to open that map. For instance, “map d1_canals_01″

* When the map is done loading, pull up the console again and enable cheats by entering “sv_cheats 1″

* To give yourself all weapons, including the portal gun, enter “impulse 101″

* Depending on how far you got in Portal, you may need to upgrade the portal gun to fire both portals. Enter “upgrade_portalgun” to do so

* Go lay waste to some alien scum with the power of portals!


YouTube - Half-Life 2: Portal


source: Half-Life 2: Portal : Primotech


edit: A little more info

Here are some more thoughts on our experiences:

* Follow the same steps if you’d like to try it out with Half-Life 2: Deatmatch or Episodes 1 and 2.

* We actually highly recommend starting with the HL2: DM maps to give you a feel of how things operate and allow you to experiment with various techniques. You can spawn an enemy by first looking where you would like him to be placed and then entering, say, “npc_create_equipment weapon_shotgun; wait; npc_create npc_combine_s” to create a Combine soldier with a shotgun. (Visit this HL2 Filefront page for more details)

* Sorry, but we’ve racked our brains and can’t figure out a simple way to get multiple people into a game of HL2: DM this way. We’re sure some enterprising group of modders will come up with something in the coming weeks, though.

* We did not attempt to do this with Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, or Day of Defeat: Source. As fun as it might sound in theory, we would like to dissuade you from trying it as well, as it probably won’t yield any real satisfactory results.

* All the same basic concepts of Portal apply here, including realistic momentum and gravity. You’ll also automatically regain health very quickly as in Portal. We’ll try to find a fix for this and post it soon.

* It may take some time to figure out which surfaces work and which don’t, since obviously this is no longer clearly indicated by the textures. Generally speaking, shoot only for flat walls, floors, and ceilings and not objects like rocks or boxes.

* Sadly, NPC’s and enemies cannot pass through portals. However, almost all ammunition, from bullets shot to grenades tossed to objects flung with the gravity gun, can and will make their way through smoothly.

* You’ll also probably notice a weird, floating colored cloud that follows you around (it appears a few times in the video above). We couldn’t figure out a way to disable this, but thankfully it’s only a minor annoyance.

If you can do it so well, maybe we'll see it in episode 3?