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Teebo & Kai [Xbox, PC – Cancelled Prototype]

Teebo & Kai was to be an online cooperative, Sci-Fi, 3D platformer developed by Escape Factory and commissioned by Valve. Escape Factory is not a studio many have heard of, and for good reason. The company never released any major games on consoles, just a few casual games like Overball and STX for the PC. Founded in 2000 by Ed Allard and James Gwertzman, the company only lasted 3 years before the company was shut down. Throughout their short existence, the company worked on only 2 major projects, Teebo & Kai and a cancelled entry in the Space Quest franchise.

Very little is known about Teebo and Kai, and the information available contradicts one another. A now delisted video by Tyler McVicker claims that the project was in development for the original Xbox and explains his story for how the project came about’:

Microsoft approached Valve Software around the year 2000 in order for Valve to create an exclusive title for the then upcoming Xbox. Quickly following the first couple of meetings and contract signings between Microsoft and Valve, Valve put together a team.”

This claim contradicts various sources such as James Gwertzman’s LinkedIn profile and the Escape Factory website (which was updated multiple times during the early 2000s), the latter of which provides a timeline of the entire company’s life and claims that the studio was in fact an independent developer doing contract work for Valve. Not only do the sources claim that they were independent, these sources claim that Teebo and Kai was in development for the PC and was actually a “cooperative platform game prototype” and not a full game.

Another illusive aspect of Teebo & Kai is the gameplay. It was to be an action platformer with online components running on the GoldSrc engine, but very little is known about the moment-to-moment gameplay beyond that. The project would have taken place on an alien planet, with many strange and unique locals that players can visit. Temples, towns, and strange rocky areas are a small fraction of what the supposed game could have had players visit.

Teebo & Kai also would have featured very unique enemy designs for the time. 3-eyed monsters with mouths on their stomach, giant frog creatures with cameras, and gummy bear-like aliens would have filled out the project’s lush planet. Another piece of concept art for the game features flying machines that seem to be enemies, which could be evident of other enemy types in the project.

Another major deviation between the Tyler McVicker video and other sources is the outcome of the project. The previously stated claim that the project was only a prototype and was worked on for a year is further supported by a Powerpoint presentation given by Gwertzman called What to do When it All Goes to Hell: Escape Factory Post-Mortem which gives a detailed timeline of Escape Factory.

While the timeline states that the project was only worked on for 8 months, and was the project only ended because the demo was completed, the Tyler McVicker video also went on to explain their version nature of the project’s cancelation:

About 2 years in Gabe Newell walked into the office at Valve headquarters that this team was working in, cancelled the project, fired the entire team, and decided that porting Team Fortress to the Xbox was the better option.”

Despite these contradictions, all information on the project confirms that Escape factory then went on to use the tech and progress made on Teebo & Kai to work on a revival of Sierra’s Space Quest franchise. This project was also cancelled later on, after a series of developmental problems.

Article by Alex Cutler

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Videos:

 

Portal 2 [Beta & Unused Content]

Portal 2 is a first-person-shooter-type-puzzle game. Developed for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and released by Valve sometime in April 2011. Some beta information were shared thanks to interviews and by fans of the game, but sadly no screenshots are currently available.

At some point during the development, the player would have been allowed to use a type of gel that could give the ability to walk on walls. The gel was cut due to the fact it could have cause motion sickness.

Quoting the article from www.escapistmagazine.com:

Portal 2 writer Erik Wolpaw has revealed that Valve originally planned to include a gel that let you walk on walls in Portal 2, but dropped it after it made people queasy.

Wolpaw said that the gel had added a nice gameplay twist, but that it was incredibly disorientating. He added that nausea was a constant concern when developing first person games, so the decision was made to drop the gel. He added that Valve was so concerned about the possibility of Portal 2 making people nauseous in general – a very real threat in a game that has so many rapid changes in position and perspective – that it adjusted the frame rate and movement to try and minimize the effects. Wolpaw said that this action on Valve’s part should help even people who normally do suffer from FPS motion sickness to enjoy the game

Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … als-Writer

Another piece of information comes from an interview with Chet Faliszek and Jay Pinkerton about portal 2’s early story scripts.  Originally portal 2 was to be a prequel rather than a sequel and Cave Johnson was amuch more important character in the game originally. GLaDOS wasn’t in the early scripts of the game.

Quoting the article from www.escapistmagazine.com:

Portal 2 writers Chet Faliszek and Jay Pinkerton revealed in a recent interview that the game nearly included nothing that we knew and loved from the original Portal, because none of it existed yet.

Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Pinkerton said that Cave Johnson, founder of Aperture Science featured in Portal 2, was once a much more important character in the game. “At one point two years ago some Cave Johnson dialogue got leaked – so I can now tell you, two years ago Cave was the bad guy in Portal 2 and GLaDOS wasn’t in the game,” he said. “It was a prequel. We liked the character enough that we snuck him into this.”

Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … -a-Prequel

Also, as linked to us by Robert Seddon, kotaku published a story about a removed competitive multiplayer more:

“Along with co-op, [we had] the idea of sort of a competitive Portal multiplayer,” Valve’s Erik “Old Man Murray” Wolpaw told 1UP.

“We went down that path, actually, for a little while and had something up and running — the best way to describe it is sort of Speedball meets Portal. You know, a sports analogy. And it quickly became apparent that while it’s fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos. It lost a lot of the stuff that was really entertaining about Portal, which was puzzle-solving. Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path.”

As noticed by user caseyfam, wheatley has a different voice in the E3 demo. It was also noticed that wheatley says something different in comparison to the final, same context, just different wording.

From Shacknews we can read some more beta differences:

a rare look at the game’s canned competitive multiplayer mode. “While it’s fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that,” Wolpaw explained. “It quickly just devolves into pure chaos.”

The original concept for Portal 2 featured a different main character, but the concept behind how the game would start was largely the same. Here, the player is waking up in a gorgeous environment designed to look like paradise–but it quickly falls apart in The Truman Show-fashion, revealing that the player has been trapped in a relaxation chamber for an unknown period of time.

Beta images:

E3 Beta Demo:

E3: Hey, hey lady! Over here. Aw good, you’re back. I thought maybe you’d tried to escape without me. Pop a portal over there. Oh thanks. Now they told me, I’m never never ever to disengage myself from this rail or I’ll die. But, we’re out of options here, so get ready to catch me on the off chance that I’m not dead the moment I pop off these things. On 3 ready? 1,2,3…

Final: Hey, Oi oi! I’m up here! Oh brilliant. You did find a portal gun! Aw, you know what? It just goes to show: people with brain damage are the real heroes in the end aren’t they? At the end of the day. Brave. Pop a portal on that wall behind me there and I’ll meet you on the other side of the room. Okay, listen, let me lay something on you here. It’s pretty heavy. They told me NEVER NEVER EVER to disengage myself from my Management Rail, or I would die. But we’re out of options here. So get ready to catch me, alright, on the off change that I’m not dead the moment I pop off this thing. On 3 ready? 1,2,3…

Finally we have a cut character from Portal 2. The characters name is MEL (as seen to the right of this paragraph). Mel can be found in games files and she was originally meant to be used/controlled by the PC in co-op. Instead the co-op mode featured two robots (ATLAS & P-Body) and the human test subjects were cut from the co-op mode entirely. The player can only control the human test subject, Chell, in the single player campaign.

Source of the image and info: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Mel

Update: May 23, 2011:

Thanks to user Eris, it has been discovered that within the games files there is unused dialog of GLaDOS. The video below mentions garfield the comic book cat and how GLaDOS tweaked it to help make the robots more “human” (which was the co-op plot before it was changed to just finding humans). You can view the unused dialog in the video below:

The other video of GLaDOS unused dialog mainly consists of garbled messages, gibberish really. You can video the below:

Additionally, there are several functional prop items that didn’t make the final cut but remained in the code, including a set of collapsible furniture and several light-up indicators.

As pointed out by: bari, In one of the video, as posted on VALVe’S youtube channel, there were going to be a diversity vent. The vent would suck objects up into tubes. The diversity tubes were cut from the game. You can watch the diversity vent in action in the video below:

In addition, unused dialogue for Caroline can be found in the game’s files. Some of the lines were removed; Ellen McLain cried while recording them, and J.K. Simmons refused to record his lines because it “seemed too much like rape to him.” You can view the video below:

Thanks to Eris & bari for their additions to this article.

 

[New Article] Left 4 Dead 2 Beta Analysis

Left 4 Dead 2 was built from the ground up and used material and ideas (used & unused) from the original left 4 dead. Left 4 dead 2 remained the same over the course of its development with few to no changes made until the games release. In a nut shell, most of the concepts that weren’t incorporated into the original Left 4 Dead has been incorporated into Left 4 Dead 2. >> Read the full article! 

Left 4 Dead 2 Beta Analysis

<< More Articles

Left 4 Dead 2 was built from the ground up and used material and ideas from the development of the original Left 4 Dead. Left 4 D ead 2 remained largely the same over the course of its development with very few changes made until the game’s release. In a nut shell, most of the concepts that weren’t incorporated into the original Left 4 Dead were incorporated into Left 4 Dead 2.

Disclaimer: What is documented in this analysis is quoted from left4dead.wikia.com. Most of the images are from IGN.com and the beta & leftover item images are from www.Left4dead.wikia.com

[Article by DCodes 7, corrections by Nate Edwards]

The Survivors:

The survivors changed (somewhat) over the course of Left 4 Dead 2’s development, but didn’t change as much as the survivors from Left 4 Dead 1 had. Left 4 Dead 2’s survivors changed solely in terms of color scheme and back-story.

For example, the developers changed coach’s shirt from a yellow & turquoise color scheme in the beta to a purple & yellow color scheme in the final.


Rochelle also received a color change as well. In the beta her shirt was a bright orange T-Shirt, whereas in the final version, her shirt was a pink Depeche Mode T-shirt. 

[Project] The Axel Project: Half Life 2 beta restoration

Founded in 2009, The Axel Project aims to recreate the original Half Life 2 beta leak story line as envisioned by VALVe circa 2003. Their upcoming binary patch features numerous fixes to engine stability as well as the addition of retail engine features (such as background maps, bloom). For a full list of features and fixes, see The Axel Project blog!

Some key highlights:

* Updated water shader

– Fixed blackness

– Improved refraction

* Fixed several engine exploits

* Improved rendering performance

* Updated VGUI (transition effects and improved stability)

* Added FP16 HDR

– With luminance-based bloom

– Controllable via ConVars

* Fixed terrain morphing

* Added background map support

* Updated post processing shaders

* Fixed all reproducible bug reports from Alpha 1

* Fixed BSP V19 and V20 loading algorithm

* Improved overall security of engine and closed several exploits