Fans of the Portal series may be familiar with the name F-Stop. On one hand, it’s the number denoting the size of the aperture opening in photography. But on the other, it’s also the title of a cancelled Portal prequel. While the game was conceived – and cancelled – all the way back in 2007, recent leaks have allowed those with pieces of the game to assemble it in a mostly playable fashion.
F-Stop was one of five games designed during a three-month video game jam at Valve that Gabe Newell dubbed the Directed Design Experiments. As the name suggests, puzzles are solved using a camera to play with perspectives. While it was well received internally, the same can’t be said for playtesters, who asked things like why a Portal game does not have the portal gun or GLaDOS. The game was shelved as a result, with some elements being reused in the sequel, Portal 2, instead.
Despite the shelving, Kotaku reports that recent leaks have led to pieces of F-Stop making their way to the public, allowing them to finally be assembled into a mostly functioning game. The bulk of its assets came via the Steam2 Teraleak from just a few months back. That being said, the game’s source code and mapsrc (map source code) data were still missing, until they were leaked via the Valve Cut Content Team Discord server at the very tail end of last month.
The report cites server mods who say that the person who leaked the F-Stop mapsrc initially asked for US$1,000 (~RM4,075), but ended up letting them go for free. With the source code and mapsrc now available, the community has combined all three parts into a playable version of F-Stop. Some assets and dialogue lines are still missing, likely marking the bits that did not get made in time before the game was ultimately cancelled.
PC Gamer reports that with all the attention it’s getting thanks to the game, the Valve Cut Content Team Discord server has gone private. So there’s no easy way to get access to the compiled game. The silver lining is that there’s probably a playthrough video out there on YouTube if you desperately need that itch scratched.
