Hey everyone!
Today marks the 10 year anniversary of Portal Stories: Mel.
It's been an incredible 10 years, and I would like to thank each and every one of you, for your amazing support over all these years. In the decade since release, we've split up as a team, but still are in contact with each other. We've found jobs in the gaming industry: AAA, AA and indie. But also in education, communication and more.
I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved. At the point of writing this, 50 people are still playing our mod. With a decade of hindsight, there are certainly things that I'd like to tweak and adjust, and I had hoped to be able to release a small remaster. This would’ve been mostly focused on better support for modern hardware. Unfortunately this proved more challenging and time-consuming than first expected. So it's on hold for now - maybe I will return to it in the future, maybe not.
I'd like to thank all of you, players of the game, who've followed us since the humble beginnings on ModDB, and those who have only recently found our mod. The amount of fan art, recommendations, and people who have called us inspirational has been humbling. And the fact that you all rallied together to vote for us as "Best Fan Creation" at the 2015 game awards, and "ModDB Mod of the Year" is still unreal to me. Thank you all so much, your support has meant a lot to us all. Thank you for being such an amazing community!
Lastly, I would like to say a personal thanks to some of the people who made this mod a reality:
Stephen, thank you for being an amazing level designer, a great collaborator and most of all an incredible friend. This game couldn't have happened without you! I'm sorry that my request for "a bit of help with a little project" ended up with you moving countries, a decade later!
Chris, thanks for being such an enthusiastic, hard worker, just getting stuff done. For being so incredibly receptive to feedback, and to be willing to learn and teach your incredible skills. I'm very sorry that even after 10 years, we're still teasing you daily in our game with your "statoion" typo!
Tamás, thanks for your awesome work on the portalgun particles, in pushing us to improve our lighting, and all the other fun particles you've made. I'll never forget the wonderful nights watching you play Alien: Isolation over Skype, that was a wonderful time.
Jacob Briggs, your wonderful posters really helped give our game character. And it's still really funny to see the reactions of people when the credits roll in when they first see the Rattman drawing of me. Maybe the brief of "make it look like we completely lost our marbles from working on the game" might've been followed maybe a bit ***TOO*** well!
Rachel, thank you for being an incredible artist, with amazing eye for detail, and for being such a great friend! Your portal gun in particular is still an absolutely wonderful model to look at, especially the little paperclip gives so much character. Every time I see someone post a picture of their real-life replica of the fun, it fills me with joy.
Ian, thank you for creating the wonderful story, and getting the right man to voice Virgil. "Time and Time again" is still a joy to listen to after all these years. Our conversations over the years have always been great fun, and hopefully we can meet IRL next year!
Stig, your performance of Virgil is superb, and really brought the story to life. The hours upon hours of cutting dialog might've turned Stephen slightly insane. But his vengeance with stitching together the most awkward takes for the Raingil sequence made it only better.
Harry, your videos, PR, and music have been hugely influential, and made the game that much more enjoyable. Can I finally reveal, after 10 years, that during the elevator scene at the end, the "gel blobs" are just blue painted rocks, and the wind sounds are just you going "woosh woosh"?
Jacob Anders, whenever we get a bug report of someone crashing the game, I always expect it to be someone noclipping in sp_a3_transition. The amount of detail you managed to get into that level is incredible, and it makes the level one of the standouts visually. Also let's never talk about how embarrassingly long it took me to solve that little destroyed chamber of yours.
To everyone else: thank you once again for your support!
I’m off to the shop to buy some cake to celebrate.
-Anna.