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How Speedrunners Beat Portal Without the Portal Gun | Msushi | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: How Speedrunners Beat Portal Without the Portal Gun
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Video Summary
Summary
Core Theme
This content details how players have discovered and exploited game-breaking glitches in Portal to achieve a "zero portal" run, meaning the game can be completed without ever shooting or passing through portals, by manipulating physics objects and save states.
[Music]
on january 10 2022 portal was beaten in
zero portals with no cheats no weird
technicalities and some of the most
broken glitches you've ever seen portal
can be beaten in just about an hour
without the game's titular feature
well actually you do still need portals
the run is technically zero portals no
passing through portals so we don't
shoot any portals or travel through any
portals the game places for us but we do
still use the portals and we'll get to
that in a bit
since the game's release leased portals
has always been a point of discussion
for portal enthusiasts it begs the
question of how efficient you can be
with your portal placement to solve the
puzzle in the least amount of portal
shots or in some cases how creative you
can be to solve puzzles without portals
altogether it kind of goes side by side
with glitch hunting and speed running as
people really try to push the boundaries
of what is possible within the game and
the developers essentially recommend the
player to attempt least portals runs as
after beating some of the main levels
you unlock the challenge maps where the
game challenges you to beat the dual
portal chambers in the least amount of
time steps or of course portals
within the challenge maps there are
recommended amounts of portal shots for
bronze silver and gold completions some
of these are pretty cool like in chamber
14 where with a clever fling you can
solve the chamber in just two portals
however on other levels like chamber 15
the gold completion is an outrageous 14 portals
portals
but of course speedrunners and glitch
hunters can solve the puzzle with much
less instead of using portals physics
objects can be used to complete the chambers
chambers
more specifically there are some
glitches with physics objects that are
quite overpowered
prop flying is a glitch originally seen
in half-life 2 where by mashing grab and
jump the player can repeatedly jump off
of a physics object and essentially fly
being able to reach almost anywhere on
the map
however prop flying is patched in the
version of source that portal is on as
valve changed prop mechanics so that
physics objects are at a fixed distance
from the player when they are picked up
so that when the player tries to jump
the object will be too far in front of them
them
but there is still a variant of the
glitch that we can do in portal because
if you perform a prop climb against a wall
wall
the wall pushes the prop below the
player in such a way that you can jump
off of it
this is called a wall climb and using
this glitch you can scale basically any
wall in the game all it takes is a
physics object like a radio cube wall
camera or turret and a lot of mashing on
the grab and jump buttons
this glitch can completely break some
chambers like 17 and 18 where you can
pretty easily solve these chambers
without portals by just wall climbing
over any obstacles
wall climbing is by far the most broken
glitch for leased portals but there are
still some other glitches that can help us
us
accelerated backwards hopping or abhing
is the standard movement glitch in
portal whereby repeatedly jumping
backwards we can exploit a faulty speed
cap to exponentially gain speed we can
use abhi to cross most horizontal gaps
in the game like the one at the start of
chamber 18 and in chamber 3.
accelerated backwards hopping can also
single-handedly solve chamber 8 without
any portals by performing a trick titled
abh over goo
but there's one trick that trumps them
all that basically allows for any
chamber to be solved in only two portals
and that's the save glitch and camera fly
fly
the save glitch is one of portal's most
broken glitches by saving and loading
the game while stuck in the edge of a
portal the player can maintain a portal
collision state it's quite complicated
and there are many side effects to it
but all you need to know for at least
portals is that while save glitched most
surfaces in the game that aren't next to
a portal become non-solid such that the
player can just walk through walls and
fall out of bounds
then there's the camera fly glitch which
utilizes faulty collision with the wall
mounted cameras
by detaching a camera on the wall and
jumping on it in a certain way you can
gain a ton of speed like a stupid amount
of speed you can use this to basically
fly through an entire level by combining
this with the safe glitch you can fly
through walls and ceilings to
essentially go from the start of the
level to the end of the level almost
instantly manipulating the speed from
the camera fly is incredibly challenging
so this strategy is only used when necessary
necessary
but with just two portals you can detach
a camera from the wall and activate the
safe glitch making basically every level
in portal solvable in just two portals
combining a lot of these glitches and a
couple more small ones glitch hunters
pretty quickly figured out that you
could beat all of portal with just 15 portals
portals
the portals in the least portals run
looked a little something like this
one portal was used as a seamshot in
chambers 4 and 5 which is basically
shooting the super small space between
two walls one portal in chamber six to
solve the puzzle
another portal in chamber 10 to get up
to the main part of the level
one in chambers 11 and 12 to get the
safe glitch
2 in chamber 15 to do the safe glitch
and camera fly combo
2 in chamber 16 to get past the great at
the end of the level
2 in chamber 19 to do the safe glitch
and camouflage combo
2 and escape 0 to get past the fence
near the end of the level
2 in escape 01 to get past the vent
and in escape 02 one portal is preserved
from the previous map so you only need
one portal to get past the great at the
start of the level
and that's it it was thought that 15
portals was the game's limit
in 2016 a group of speed runners made a
segmented speed run of the lease portals
route which beat the game with 15
portals in under 15 minutes
it had a ton of cool strats like in
escape 02 where a turret is used as a
ramp to do an accelerated backwards hop
off of
it's a super impressive run
but let's face it it's not the reason
you clicked on this video so how exactly
do you improve upon this and beat portal
without shooting any portals
it's one of the more broken glitches in
the game that completely breaks the
physics objects
despite the name the glitch actually has
nothing to do with the normal save
glitch but rather a really weird
interaction between portals and physics
objects can impose a safe witch-like
state onto the props causing them to
float around skid on the floor pass
through walls out of bounds and
essentially defy all known laws of physics
physics
activating the item save glitch is
really hard and somewhat random too but
once it's activated the glitch is so
powerful that it persists between playthroughs
playthroughs
the only way to turn off the item save
glitch is by restarting portal in its entirety
entirety
for a while isg became one of the
biggest gag glitches in portal something
that wasn't incredibly useful but was
really funny to show off at one point
runners started realizing how isg could
be used for leased portals in just about
every chamber in the game there's an
emancipation grill at the end of the
level which will fizzle any physics
object the player tries to preserve from
the previous test however with the item
save glitch you can push an item out of bounds
bounds
around the fizzler and then bring it
back inbounds effectively allowing you
to circumvent the emancipation grille
and preserve physics objects between
chambers which is pretty powerful
combined with all of our physics object
glitches in 2014 user margin 67 showed
off an alternative leased portal strat
for chambers 4 and 5 that only used one
portal to get the item save glitch
margin preserved a cube from chamber 4
into chamber 5 and then after restarting
their game to cancel the item safe
glitch they were able to solve chamber 5
in xero portals by using the extra cube
but it would take another discovery for
the item save glitch to find its true
potential and that being an older patch
of the game you see on most modern
versions of portal the player will get
stuck in out of bound space unless they
are in close proximity to a portal
however on version 3420 this is not the
case as the player can freely move out
of bounds this is huge because there
really aren't any obstacles out of
bounds so if we can move around freely
it's really easy to just get to the end
of the level without using any portals
the item save glitch also easily allowed
players to clip out of bounds by
stuffing a prop into the player and
saving and loading you can effortlessly
clip through the ground
in fact with the item safe glitch in
version 3420 of portal the game was so
broken that there was essentially one
technique that could solve every single
level in the game with zero portals it
went a little something like this
get item save glitch
using item save glitch get a physics
object stuck inside of you
then save and load to get both yourself
and your prop out of bounds
once out of bounds make a save and then
restart the game to cancel the item save glitch
glitch
then reload your save and using your
prop wall climb to the top of the level
now you can navigate through the level
fairly easily out of bounds and once you
reach the end you can clip back into the
level by saving and loading and then by
loading a previous save to reactivate
item save glitch you can bring your prop
back inbounds this strategy is quite
silly as it basically circumvents
solving the puzzles altogether and just
abuses source engine witchcraft to get
to the end of the levels the zero portal
run would truly become possible in
january of 2021 when a runner named
uncrafted name would find an item save
glitch setup inside of the vault right
at the start of the game
it involved placing the radio in a very
precise way so that the radio's hitbox
clips into the floor a little bit
then you could move the clipboard around
inside the radio until the game entered
an item save glitch state
dinos would be the first one to tackle
the zero portal run as he started
labbing out some strats in 2021 but
would finally attempt the run in 2022
funnily enough dinos used the speedrun
strats for the first two chambers which
uses a glitchy radio launch instead of
solving the puzzle which uses zero
portals anyways
since the speedrun strat doesn't travel
through any of the portals the run is
simultaneously a zero portals run and a
no passing through portals run
but we do still need portals to beat the
game as the vault portals are still
required to get save glitch and item
save glitch
before doing the speed run strat dino
sets up the item save glitch in the
vault and crucially makes a quick save
right after setting up the radio
dinos will come back to the save many
many times in the run as it basically
lets him trigger the item save glitch
whenever necessary dinos also makes sure
to take the radio with him from the
vault into the next levels while under
normal circumstances it's impossible to
take the radio out of the first level
dinos will end up bringing this radio
with him all the way until chamber 15.
it's worth noting that dinos did come
into some problems when routing mainly
because clipping out of bounds with a
physics object will always push the
player downwards and in some levels it
didn't seem possible to get on top of
the level after clipping down
dinos fixes this by clipping out of
bounds in very specific spots near pits
that actually extend a bit downwards in
out-of-bound space
with some quick reactions the player can
wall climb on these out of bounds walls
to get on top of the level other than
that the run mostly rinses and repeats
the same strat
get item save glitch clip yourself and
your physics object out of bounds wall
climb to the top of the level navigate
the level in out of bound space and clip
you and your physics object back in bounds
bounds
there are some smaller details like in
chamber 16 dinos replaces his trusty
vault radio with a turret because he
finds it easier to wall climb and clip with
with
this turret of course is kept for the
rest of the game until the glados boss fight
fight
escape o2 is also quite technical since
there are no pits in this level you have
to be really creative to get on top of
the chamber out of bounds
dinos loads the level while partially
stuck inside the wall
doing this you can barely break free
from the wall out of bounds and climb
back up which is a lot more tricky than
it looks
overall dinos has to restart his game a
whopping 36 times throughout this zero
portal run
and he has to wall climb over a ton of
massive walls which makes the run quite
annoying if you want to watch the run in
full it's linked in the description
below to this day only two other runners
have completed a zero portal run so it's
definitely not an easy feat to
accomplish but it's absurd that this
zero portal run is possible in the first
place as nearly 15 years after the
game's release we're still finding new
ways to break this timeless game who
knows what will be possible in 15 more
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