Portal with RTX

If it wasn't for the fact I got like 8 or 9 years outta TF2 lol Portal would have been the best thing in the Orange Box IMO especially not knowing anything going in at the time and finding out it takes place in HL universe
 
polonyc2 said:
the reason I never bought it when it came out was that I was not really a fan of the puzzle box/platform genre...but I am a huge fan of visuals/RT/path tracing so for that reason I'm now interested even if the gameplay is not really my thing...plus the game will be super cheap now as it's 15 years old
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I think it is worth trying, also because it is an expample of a very GOOD puzzle game. I'm not generally a puzzle game fan because I find at some point I just hit a wall and am confused by the puzzles. They are too hard to figure out. The problem comes from the fact that most of them aren't play tested by a big group, if at all. It is the devs and maybe their friends. Well when you know how the puzzle is designed, it can seem easier than it is.

Portal was play tested to death. They iterated it tons when they found things people got stuck on. They basically made sure that everything you needed to figure out the puzzle was obvious and discoverable to you in the game. So the puzzle solving experience is much better than what you are probably used to.
 
CAD4466HK said:
I think it's highly overrated.
I got it with the Orange Box years ago which i bought for HL2:E2, and even back then I didn't find it spectacular.
I've only played it once, and I usually replay all my games numerous times.

Now that it has RT, I'll for sure give it another go.
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I also think it's highly overrated. But I still think it was a great game.

It's great the first playthrough, but it just doesn't have any replaability. The entire gameplay is puzzles, once you figure out the puzzles there's no point to playing it again.

I gave it another go with my 4090 and RT enabled. I admired the RT for a few levels, but I remember how to do all these puzzles and it just isn't very fun. I played less than an hour before I had enough.
 
staknhalo said:
Resource intensive thing easier to implement in non resource intensive games, not really that shocking
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I don't know that that's true. The performance cost of RTGI seems pretty constant regardless of whether the game's low-complexity (Quake 2; Portal), geometrically-complex (Minecraft), or asset-rich (Witcher 3).

But that "asset-rich" one requires remaking a whole lot more art, which means your "free update" ends up being awfully expensive.

Like, if NVIDIA hadn't had to pay devs to massage 3x as much art, would the performance cost on Portal 2 be enough to change the calculus? Performance-wise, it's not the amount of assets; it's the number of rays cast.
 
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on sale during the Steam Winter Sale for .99 cents (the ray-tracing update is free but you need to own the base game)...can't beat that price...I think I'm finally going to pick it up...is Valve also planning on updating Portal 2 with RT?
 
I was getting black screen with sound on startup w/launch version - I'll give it another go now

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2012840/view/3604600153040756411?l=english

Portal with RTX 1.05 Patch Notes

We are rolling out a patch to address certain stability issues, bugs, and performance. We’ve introduced several new graphical settings, and optimized graphical presets based on user hardware. These changes should improve performance for the majority of RTX GPUs (RTX 20 series and greater).

To align with these new settings, the default settings are set to “Ultra” for RTX 40 Series GPU, “High” for RTX 30 Series GPU, and “Low” for RTX 20 Series GPU.
We advise users who would prefer to maintain their existing custom graphics settings to save them locally before updating Portal With RTX.

Users looking to further customize their experience can use the RTX Remix’s graphics menu, found by pressing Alt+X in-game–please note,
we strongly recommend against altering any “video-advanced” settings within Portal’s original settings menu,
as attempting to adjust these will not yield a better experience and will lead to instability.

To view our recommended graphics settings for specific RTX 20 and 30 Series GPUs for improved performance and quality, click here.

Updates:
  • Fixed some issues that could cause a crash on startup
  • Improved stability for lower resolutions
  • Changed “Fullscreen” mode to non-exclusive, which will improve stability; True fullscreen exclusive mode can still be enabled in the developer settings if desired (found in the Remix graphics menu via Alt-X)
  • Added Medium and Low graphical setting presets to improve performance on lower spec GPUs. Tuned up the High setting preset to include better volumetric lighting and particle lighting.
  • Presets now influence DLSS quality level when DLSS is set to “Auto”; custom DLSS quality levels can still be set, same as before
Known issues:
  • Possible crash during or after the final level
  • In the final cutscene, there are visual artifacts present when volumetrics are set to “off” (as is the case in the medium and low graphical presets)
  • Occasional stutter frames can be encountered when HUD is not visible (ex: during starting and ending cinematics)
  • Crashes on startup and when changing settings can still occur.
  • Please report issues in our Tech Issue Report Form
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polonyc2 said:
on sale during the Steam Winter Sale for .99 cents (the ray-tracing update is free but you need to own the base game)...can't beat that price...I think I'm finally going to pick it up...is Valve also planning on updating Portal 2 with RT?
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Looks like it won't work.

Portal 2 dropped their old fixed function renderer, which is the part of DirectX that Remix hooks and relies on.
 
1672626167688.png


Getting ~45 FPS (edit: a weak 45 more like ~40) with these settings - lows in the ~36 and highs in the ~50

Looks pretty though

20230101212000_1.jpg
 
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DogsofJune said:
I'm holding out for Zork with ray tracing..... Should be amazing
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fingers crossed. ;)

also, youngest is a big portal player right now (doing the steamworks puzzle maker stuff). He REALLY wants portal RTX (has a 5700XT right now). Given the screwed up pricing right now, I can only afford a 3060. is it even worth it or will the performance still be so bad, it is unplayable?
 
sc5mu93 said:
fingers crossed. ;)

also, youngest is a big portal player right now (doing the steamworks puzzle maker stuff). He REALLY wants portal RTX (has a 5700XT right now). Given the screwed up pricing right now, I can only afford a 3060. is it even worth it or will the performance still be so bad, it is unplayable?
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For Portal? No, I can't see it being very worth it. Portal is just brutal since it is fully path traced, meaning EVERYTHING is RT, not just RT augmenting traditional rendering, and since it is bolted on to an old engine which is not so efficient at taking advantage of modern systems. There are certainly games out there that a 3060 could give some OK RT performance with, this isn't one of them.

In general though RT has the issue of needing a beefy GPU. We are in the phase where it is just barely possible in realtime. As such it just needs powerful hardware.
 
sc5mu93 said:
fingers crossed. ;)

also, youngest is a big portal player right now (doing the steamworks puzzle maker stuff). He REALLY wants portal RTX (has a 5700XT right now). Given the screwed up pricing right now, I can only afford a 3060. is it even worth it or will the performance still be so bad, it is unplayable?
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ortal-rtx-optimal-settings-chart-article-3840x2160.jpg


Source: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/portal-with-rtx-full-ray-tracing-december-8/

The optimal settings for the 3060 prescribed above will make it playable.
 
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staknhalo said:
View attachment 538874

Getting ~45 FPS (edit: a weak 45 more like ~40) with these settings - lows in the ~36 and highs in the ~50

Looks pretty though

View attachment 538875
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Just got my 4070 and tested this because it's the only DLSS 3 title I have lol

Settings were set same as above but with Default for Super Resolution Mode and Reflex set On - and then Image Quality Settings maxed which is same as above but Min Light Bounces 2 and Max Light Bounces 4 and Denoise set to High

I was getting around low 89FPS-110FPS high IIRC

Portal with RTX Screenshot 2023.04.25 - 21.40.12.84.png
 
Captain Newmackwa said:
GFE one-click optimization exists for those people...
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Only if GFE has an entry for your video card. The profiles haven't been updated for Lovelace, so GFE recommends the lowest settings for my 4090 when I can run with everything on the highest, max light bounces set to 4, and DLSS set to quality with no frame generation.
 
RTX IO loads textures in up to twice as fast on a SSD compared to off. Note that there are two separate builds of the mod you choose to install. The RTX IO build is 33% smaller thanks to additional compression of assets being used with no degradation in performance. This is still a relatively simple mod, so I'll be excited to see it in Ratchet & Clank next week. I'd also like to see some more testing with an HDD.

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polonyc2 said:
on sale during the Steam Winter Sale for .99 cents (the ray-tracing update is free but you need to own the base game)...can't beat that price...I think I'm finally going to pick it up...is Valve also planning on updating Portal 2 with RT?
Click to expand...

It would be awesome for Valve to actually do it themselves. Because as cool as these nVidia projects are... they can't help them selves but to do stuff that is skewed to them. Which makes sense, they are footing the bill to make was is essentially a tech demo. But I don't want a tech demo, I want Valve to use some of that big pool of steam money, to do a proper in house remaster with RT. Would also be a great excuse to update the source engine to a new level of fidelity as well.
 
TrunksZero said:
It would be awesome for Valve to actually do it themselves.
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Valve just likes to tinker with VR and make piles of money on Steam. They aren't so big on the doing of the projects. It is actually a curse of success and their "no bosses" management structure. Since Steam just prints money, to the tuns of tens of millions in profit per employee they have absolutely no financial need to release new games or remakes or anything. They can literally goof around on whatever they want, and there is just no pressure at all because they have all the money in the world. Well you then combine that with a structure where there's no real management, no structure setting explicit goals, and you get what you have now where there is little to no output. They just goof around on whatever project catches their fancy, drop things when they get bored, etc. The good part is it means that they can spend as much time as they need on a game, the bad part it is means there is just no motivation to have to work on things.

It would be nice if they'd hire teams to work on remaking old classics, and to do more new development, but they don't have to care, and so they don't.
 
Sycraft said:
Valve just likes to tinker with VR and make piles of money on Steam. They aren't so big on the doing of the projects. It is actually a curse of success and their "no bosses" management structure. Since Steam just prints money, to the tuns of tens of millions in profit per employee they have absolutely no financial need to release new games or remakes or anything. They can literally goof around on whatever they want, and there is just no pressure at all because they have all the money in the world. Well you then combine that with a structure where there's no real management, no structure setting explicit goals, and you get what you have now where there is little to no output. They just goof around on whatever project catches their fancy, drop things when they get bored, etc. The good part is it means that they can spend as much time as they need on a game, the bad part it is means there is just no motivation to have to work on things.

It would be nice if they'd hire teams to work on remaking old classics, and to do more new development, but they don't have to care, and so they don't.
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Yup and thats is fair. It has ups and downs, notably it allowed the Steamdeck to be the awesome piece of hardware it is.

Likely the only way a remaster of a game like Portal 2 would happen is if a modder got hired at Valve and managed to rally enough of a team to see it through to completion. Not sure Valve hires people like that anymore though, given that we haven't seen much of anything mature out like that despite them saying they are "always hiring" :(
 
TrunksZero said:
Yup and thats is fair. It has ups and downs, notably it allowed the Steamdeck to be the awesome piece of hardware it is.
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The downside is, if they get bored of the Steamdeck, it'll just get abandoned as they have with many other things. Like if you look at someone like Nintendo, they have to make a good system, and good games, because that's how they make money. When they've fucked up (looking at you, Wii U) it hurts. Even if it isn't great, they still can't abandon it, they still need to support it and make games because again, they have to make money. Valve though can just get bored and say "We don't wanna do Steamdeck anymore, we have a new toy we wanna play with." Will that happen? No idea, but it could and for anyone who says it can't that just means you haven't looked at Valve's history.

In general I think it is good they don't have to worry about money, but the flat-no-bosses thing can mean that things don't get the focus and support they should.
 
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