Let’s take a look at all the other pretty cheat codes that I didn’t find in Portal RTX last time.
Look, here’s one just underneath the radio! This one scans as ‘Blackmesa’,
being the rival company to Aperture Science in the Half Life universe.
In a later slideshow we see that they’re competing for DoD and government-wide contracts- both,
seemingly, with disastrous results! Anyway, using the cheat code ‘black
mesa’ activates a skin called ‘iso black mesa’. This puts a jacket over the cube, featuring the
Aperture Science logo… so not the Black Mesa one, and the background is this stitched orange
pattern, which as far as I can see, has no relation to Black Mesa in the slightest, other
than to be… orange in colour? I’m sure people in the comments section will enthusiastically explain
this to me because I don’t get it. Here, have a nice clip of this cube obstructing a light source.
And now let’s move on.
Before leaving this first room, check out this camera. Yes, it has a QR code on its back. But
I already covered that one in my first video. What I want to point out is its shadow. S. It’s
got 2 of them! From 2 different light sources. I think there’s something already beautiful about
the seeming simplicity of this- although the rendering challenge is anything but! Multiple
shadows will quickly overwhelm conventional lighting methods, especially with the task
of drawing 5, 10, or 100 shadows on everything. But raytracing, although already very demanding,
doesn’t really care how many lights you’ve got. In fact in some ways, more lights is easier,
since the result gets less grainy! For this example, I’m using a cheating console command
called ‘fire_energy_ball’, which launches bright spheres across the level. It’s a
really cool way of lighting things up… but to best showcase it, we need a darker map.
Here’s one from Half Life 2. You probably don’t recognise
it just yet. But you will! Because it’s the best one! And to light it,
I’ll be using those beautiful, bouncy, DEADLY balls. How deadly, you ask?
And this is the ideal place to showcase it. There are no pre-lit lights,
there’s lots of debris strewn about, and plenty of space and dark corners
to allow for the raytracing to stretch its legs. Now I kind of like it when there’s just one light
bouncing about. Notice how the environment takes on the colour of whatever’s currently
being lit up by the ball. But why limit it to only one of these terrifying things?
I haven’t seen anything this realistic since 3Dmark 2001!
The future is here, people! And it looks strangely like I imagined it would in 2003.
Beautiful.
Let’s take a break from all this excitement to stare at this milk carton,
which contains ANOTHER QR code. This happened to be the second hardest QR
code to scan. But I eventually managed it by dangling the milk carton between
two cubes like this. And this code reads ‘themoreyoubuythemoreyousave’, which is
a reference back to GDC 2018 where Jensen said: ‘themoreyoubuythemoreyousave’ quite a few times.
‘That’s right-‘
Using this code turns the companion cubes to ceramic. Why? Maybe you pour the milk
in your tea? Ew. Don’t get me wrong- it still looks nice. But I still this one was a bit of
a missed opportunity to not have a far more reflective or materially… interesting cube,
but I guess anyone who’s ever wanted to be friends with a glorified teacup can rejoice.
Did you know that you can disable the new models and materials, and use the old ones instead,
but still lit with raytracing? No matter how you go about it though,
it’s impossible to create a comparable before and after shot. For instance:
here’s a Portal button lit with real life so you can see for yourself which does it best. What’s
that? The materials are different so they’re impossible to compare? You’re goddamn right.
Anyway, these comparisons in real life proved to be a mistake because I then got side-tracked with
real life raytracing until the sun went down. Of particular interest to me was this example
at the very end of the day, where I trapped a Portal button model between two doors,
and then opened and closed them to watch the bounce lighting illuminate its surroundings,
and then to darken them again. If I saw this happening in a game then I’d swear it was
doing it wrong. But this isn’t a game… I don’t think. This is real life! … I mean, just ‘cos
there’s a portal model here and… scrawlings from a previous test subject here, doesn’t mean anything!
Valve, pls fix.
This code inside the incinerator proved to be the most difficult one to read. I
saw many comments saying they found this one but couldn’t get in a position where
they could view it- and I can see why. The whole thing appears blurred, and once you
get close enough to finally see it… you die. Now I think that using cheats is a valid way to…
use cheats in this game. And doing so, I was able to scan this one as reading ‘directillumination’,
which is -conveniently- the thing that stopped most people from scanning this one in the first
place! But don’t worry, you’re only missing out on a digital skull design- which looks to be a
close relative of the digital companion cube that I covered in the last video.
Hidden within the projector slides is THIS QR code, which scans as Deliciousandmoist,
which is referencing YOUR MUM. Or possibly this cake from Portal. But the skin it unlocks
is dark hard wood, coated in rubber and surrounded on all sides by garish pulsating
love hearts. It’s definitely very different from the other cubes we’ve seen so far. I’d
imagine this cube in a Deus-Ex-y universe. One interesting question I was asked was:
do these lens cubes I showed in the last video actually CONCENTRATE the light like a magnifying
glass would? Absolutely fascinating! I thought, and I set out to test it.
And the answer is no.
Underneath the keyboards in Portal are two amusing things. The first is this warning
about the keyboard becoming explosive if flipped. And the second is this QR code saying ‘Caroline’.
Thank GOODNESS I finally saw that movie the other week, cos everything since then seems
to have been in reference to that movie in one way or another. This cat keeps appearing and
disappearing into various cupboards and crevices around my house, and I’ve had this ever-growing
desire to sew buttons onto everything. I think this being found on a keyboard
references the Dad in the movie who’s always typing away on his keyboard, and the resulting
PILLOW cubes this code unlocks seems to hint at the dream-like world Caroline visits at night.
I really like this design, being one of the few to deviate from the cube’s shape
of… being a cube. And the various details and textures, although not reflective,
are some of the few in this game grounded in reality! Which I think can sometimes complement
the accurate raytracing lighting better than crazy neon pulsating love hearts do.
It's only fitting that I fired up Half Life 2 with RTX and to accompany button-eyed Alyx with these
Caroline-based cubes. This was also a great chance to light these cubes in a more life-like way. Just
a shame they’re still clearly made of metal. Alyx didn’t seem to mind, though.
What a wonderful reference to an iconic movie, homage to one that combines modern
techniques to push the boundaries of what would otherwise be yesterday’s effects.
And now, just like pillow Coraline did in the movies, this pillow companion cube can now follow
you on your journeys, aiding you through troubled times and spying on you when you least expect it.
They even went to the trouble of spelling ‘Coraline’, ‘Caroline’, again referencing
the way in which characters in the movie don’t pay full attention to the protagonist,
just like how, if you don’t pay full attention to your surroundings in Portal then you
wouldn’t have discovered this little Easter Egg. Such wonderful attention to detail that blurs the
boundaries of artistic mediums… it’s enough to make even Portal 2’s Caroline character proud.
And onto the last 3 codes, all of which have something in common!
Under the NON-ORANGE chair is this QR code, scanning as ‘Cavejohnson’, who is a guy
first mentioned in Portal but whose existence only really gets fleshed out come Portal 2.
This code unlocks ISO Wheatley, which is… sort of not a reference to Cavejohnson in
the slightest! And using this code activates this design, which -rather aptly- is sort of
not really a reference to Wheatley, either! But it still looks kind of cool, comprising
of interesting shapes and lights and stuff. And it does at least suit its metallic sound effects.
Now this got me thinking: how accurate can the raytraced lighting be? Yes,
these metallic grilles are very impressive. But what if we go even smaller still?
So I crawled inside the open computer, and wedged myself between the PCI-E slots to
really admire how raytracing scales all the way from the very big, to the very small. I mean,
it’s all the same to the raytracing, which cares primarily about how many pixels your screen has,
rather than how physically big the things it’s got to light are. But
it’s still impressive to zoom in this far and for the raytraced direct and
indirect lighting to still make things all look convincingly warm and glowy.
Speaking of which, under the ORANGE chair is this QR code, which scans as ‘physicallybased’. Ahh,
cos you’re physically based on one right now! Or possibly a toilet. I’m not one to judge.
But this code activates a very special cube indeed- being the ICE one! This is, literally,
the best unlock ever, since the ice refracts all the lighting coming through it in funky ways,
and contains inside itself a bunch of ivy- which would be more Portal 2-esque- and a rock,
which at first I thought was a reference to Aperture Desk Job,
but on second thoughts… it just looks like a rock. All these things inside the ice cast
delicate shadows across the ground. What I AM a bit disappointed to see- or rather- not see,
is the shadows of the ice itself. It doesn’t even get very faint ones! What a shame.
But you know what I’ve got to do now, don’t you? THIS.
Fire and ice. Still a better conclusion than Game of Thrones had.
But it isn’t the end of the video! For there’s one QR code left,
which as far as I can see, NOBODY has managed to find inside Portal RTX.
On this forum post, somebody known only as ‘Bekoha’ had ripped all of
the QR codes out of the game. And the QR code was titled ‘Furniture_Stool’,
so I went browsing about the many observation rooms in Portal until I stumbled across THIS,
featuring not 1 but 2 stools! And sure enough, the QR code beneath them read ‘Jensen’,
which unlocked a golden covering for the cubes. Now, Jensen is the CEO of Nvidia, which is a
company that just happens to be ever so slightly involved in the making of Portal RTX. So it’s got
to be referencing him, hasn’t it. But HE always wears a black leather jacket- presumably because
‘the more you buy the more you save’, and a black leather jacket this most certainly is not! So I’m
going to risk it all by saying that this is instead referring to Adam Jensen from Deus Ex,
who comes from a future where everybody loves wearing fancy black and gold style jackets.
But the fact it’s this vague makes this a rubbish unlock as well. I never asked for this.
One of the prettiest things I saw in Portal RTX didn’t require any of these cheat codes
at all- it involved simply stacking the standard cubes in front of a red light source until it was
all but obscured, plunging the room into blue, with really nice looking shades of purple where
the different light sources merged together. I mean, this is nothing to do with cheating
in Portal, but I just wanted to show you this cos I thought it was pretty.
Back in my day, graphics was something to be celebrated! When Crysis came out,
people who could run it, ran it and enjoyed it. Those who couldn’t, looked forward to getting
the next computer upgrade that would allow them to. And those who didn’t care about it,
didn’t talk about it. They didn’t jump on the forums and bitch or moan
about how rubbish it was, or how every one who likes it is a supposed shill.
Fast-forward to today and we have Portal RTX and it seems like everyone is trying
to find a reason to hate it. I don’t hate it! I like Portal. And I like technology.
So something that combines the two, in my opinion,
is something to be celebrated. Especially as a free mod. Sure, most people won’t be able
to run it that quickly -right now- but in a few years’ time the situation will be different and
OH MY GOD
And I don’t think I have to be an Nvidia shill to say that.
So on that note, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year… the cake is a lie.