Does anyone on here still have the old Portal 1 VR beta?

[Marulu]

Back in June Valve accidentally released a beta update for the original Portal which added Oculus Rift support to the game. The beta was pretty buggy and because of that they removed the support using an update.

Someone who didn´t update Portal and who was opted into this beta should still have the official Portal 1 VR support on their PC. If you still have it on your PC, you could check the files of your Portal installation and based on the file changing date determine which files were part of the VR update. Using those files someone could make a VR patch for the community.

I really would love to replay Portal 1 in VR, I sadly lost my VR beta because of this update. I hope someone gives this a shot and makes a VR patch.
Just releasing these files in a zip file, with instructions on where to place them would re-enable us to play the game in VR.

-Marulu

P.S. I don´t think doing this would be illegal, because there are many websites distributing official patches for games that are no longer available.

[TheVividLight]

I also would be really interested in this. Do you remember which patch it was, or around what time the vr patch was released?

[Marulu]

The beta patch was released some time around July last year.
The beta was first discovered in this Reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments ... rtal_1_vr/

[TheHolyChicken]

It was available only for a couple of days, afterwhich it was patched away - afaik because it had numerous problems and visual artifacts. I don't think it was a good experience?

[Marulu]

It was available only for a couple of days, afterwhich it was patched away - afaik because it had numerous problems and visual artifacts. I don't think it was a good experience?

I got to try it back when it still was available, there were only two problems in the entire game.
The portal would show up only on one eye and the reflections were not working.
Everything else was working fine.

[xhonzi]

I think I have it. I enabled Beta updated after it came out and turned them off before it was updated. I will check when I have some time this evening.

[Marulu]

I think I have it. I enabled Beta updated after it came out and turned them off before it was updated. I will check when I have some time this evening.

Awesome, I look forward to this evening.

[Marulu]

Do you still have it on your PC?

[xhonzi]

It looks like I downloaded Portal on 1 June, and the VR update was on the 13th? Which is the day of the Reddit post you linked to.

There are bunches of files that have the 13 June date, but these are the ones I think that actually matter:

In portal/portal/bin/
client.dll
server.dll

In portal/bin/
vgui2.dll
vstdlib.dll
stdshader_dbg.dll
stdshader_dx6.dll
stdshader_dx7.dll
stdshader_dx8.dll
stdshader_dx9.dll
GameUI.dll
ServerBrowser.dll
vaudio_miles.dll

Does that look about right?

[Marulu]

I think they are the ones that are important.
But we can´t know for sure until we try it.

Can you send them to me?
I will report back if it works, if it does not you just send me the remaining files.

[xhonzi]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/814 ... rtalVr.zip

Let me know.

[Marulu]

I think I will need more files.

When I open it using Steam it instantly crashes, if I open it using hl.exe it shows the following error message:

"Setup file "gameinfo.txt" doesn´t exist in subdirectory "hl2"
Chck your -game parameter or VCONFIG setting."

[xhonzi]

Anyway to get a log from why it's dying when it's started by Steam? There is no gameinfo.txt in my hl2 subdirectory.

[Marulu]

Anyway to get a log from why it's dying when it's started by Steam? There is no gameinfo.txt in my hl2 subdirectory.

No, there is no log. I think it would be best to test it with more files from your installation.

[xhonzi]

I get that same error from running HL2.exe, by the way.

[Marulu]

I get that same error from running HL2.exe, by the way.

Then I think that is some sort of Steam DRM. I have been looking a bit more for a crash log, but I was unable to find one.
I tried launching Portal with -autoconfig without success.
Do you know where this log could show up?

I have also tried Verifying the integrity of the game cache, and it removed all the files you have sent me.
My guess is that the update that disabled the vr support also downgraded the source SDK.
So there maybe there are some functions of the newer sdk being called from within these .dll files.

I still think I will need more files.

[virror]

Just changing the files is most likely a bad idea if you are using a newer version since those files have probably been updated again, so if you replace them you remove code that has been added and that will of course break your game. There is a chance that the only way to get it to work is to find out exactly what has changed in the files thats related to VR and somehow inject only those changes into the new files. Or just use a 3rd party VR driver.

[Marulu]

I messed a bit with the folders of TF2 and Portal and I got Portal to display the VR options in it´s menu.
The options currently do not effect the game play in any way, but Portal does detect the Rift and does read the tracker.

Here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJnIPV2KoGk