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Welcome to Project 64!

The goal of Project 64 is to preserve Commodore 64 related documents
in electronic text format that might otherwise cease to exist with the
rapid advancement of computer technology and declining interest in 8-
bit computers on the part of the general population.

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The Project 64 etext of the Portal help file. Original Windows(R) help
file obtained from the Activision C64 15 Pack was supplied by Fandango.
Converted by the Basic Bombardier. Some of the information in this
etext is assumed to be close enough to the original hardcopy version
until an orginal can be converted, which is likely to be called
PORTL10B.TXT.

PORTL10A.TXT, March 1996, etext #28

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Portal

Contents

 General Description   [ 1.0 ]
 How To Play           [ 2.0 ]
 Hints                 [ 3.0 ]
 Game History          [ 4.0 ]
 Troubleshooting       [ 5.0 ]



[ 1.0 ] General Description

Homer, a biological computer.  The final link to the past and the only
conduit to the future.  But Homer is dying and access grows weaker
moment by moment.  Will you discover where everyone has gone or will
the doorway to humanity close forever, leaving you totally alone?

It is the distant future.  The 21st Century has long since come and
gone.  Returning from a failed 100-year voyage to 61 Cygni, you
reenter the earth's atmosphere to find that the world is not as you
once knew it.

Where once there was teeming humanity, now there is quiet.  The empty
shells of mile-high skyscrapers stand at rest in the awesome silence.
The vista, nothing but forests and meadows, rivers and lakes, is
beautiful but eerie, for there are no people...

Finally, you discover an on-line computer terminal that you can
operate.  Through it you contact Homer, the ultimate achievement of
man's technology -- A living computer.  Together you and Homer must
unravel the mystery of the vanished civilization before it's too late.
If not, you face an eternity of total solitude.



[ 2.0 ] How to Play

Basics

How to Start

Enter your name and the game begins.

Objective

The goal of Portal is to discover the fate of humanity by working your
way through computer files.

In the upper left section of the screen is a scrolling window which
allows you to see several icons for the 12 dataspaces.  To begin the
game, use the joystick to center this window on the icon representing
Central Processing, which has a "CP" label on it.  Press the joystick
button to enter the dataspace.

Once inside Central Processing, pull the joystick down to move your
"cursor" to the menu bar along the bottom. Then, move the joystick to
the right, until the "Help" button is selected.  Press the joystick
button to read help for further instructions.

IMPORTANT NOTES

1) When you select the second icon from the right (the yellow HOMER
MESSAGES icon), you will be presented with a message with white text
on a blue screen. An inaccuracy occurs after you exit this screen, and
takes the form of wrong text being displayed in the top section of the
screen. This is a cosmetic bug only, and is easy to fix. Simply choose
the EXIT TO INTERFACE icon, which is the rightmost icon on the bottom
of the screen. This will take you to Portal's dataspace interface.
This will NOT affect gameplay and you will be able to continue with
the game as normal by pressing Enter or the joystick button to re-
enter the dataspace.

2) The original Portal on the Commodore 64 used the "Data Crystals"
within the game to save and load games. This has been disabled.  To
save and load games, you should use the File menu.



Joystick

The joystick can be used to navigate through the dataspaces, or to
control options on the menu bar along the bottom of the screen.



[ 3.0 ] Hints

There is an order to the game -- that is, you must read certain pieces
of information before new messages will appear in the dataspaces.  At
times, there will be messages that are not central to the story, but
are side-plots that you can explore if you desire.

Check with Homer frequently.

Think of Portal as an interactive book, not as a game.  Enjoy the
story and plot.



[ 4.0 ] Game History

Brad Fregger, Producer

The idea for Portal was born one day when "David Crane and I were
having an argument.  David said that 'in order for a game to work on a
computer, it has to have some interactive gameplay.  The player has to
have a direct impact on what's happening.  Literature, for example,
would never work on a game.'  Dragon's Lair, with it's really
primitive branching, as far as most game designers were concerned, was
awful.  I argued that we could bring literature to the computer in a
non-linear way that could be very exciting."

The first step Brad took in creating Portal was to call San Jose State
University and inquire about a writer to help him with a new computer
game project.  They referred him to Rob Swigart, a writing teacher who
had a keen interest in non-linear literature.  In fact, he had already
written some non-linear works which were in a very "CyberPunk"
futuristic theme.

For Portal, Rob came up with the idea of an astronaut who went away,
came back, discovered an empty planet, and explored the main computer
system to find out what happened.

Once the story was started, they needed a programmer.  They found
Gilman Louie and his company, Nexa.  At the time, Nexa was a very
young computer software company being run out of Gilman Louie's
parents' home.

"So we had the team.  The original concept was mine, Rob wrote the
story, and Gilman was the one who brought the life to Portal.  It was
Gilman who really created the look-and-feel, invented the 'dataspace'
scheme, and so on. In the end, we found that we had developed a
masterpiece that was way beyond anything done before."

There were 2 sequels planned as follow-up in the same genre.
Unfortunately Portal was not a huge commercial success, and it was
decided that the sequels would not work, despite the fact that "Portal
got more reviews than any other product that Activision made at the
time."

Rob Swigart, Author

"I had written a few non-linear books, such as Little America.  My
writing is very influenced by Robert Altman, and when Brad [Fregger,
Portal's Producer] called me about the idea for Portal, I thought it
would be a tremendous opportunity and a lot of fun."

The thing that draws Rob to the futuristic, non-linear genre is that
it "moves around in both time and space, and makes linguistic
connections to provide cohesiveness.  A great example is Kurt
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5."

Rob is currently working on a CD-ROM project and novel.  He also works
for the Institute for the Future, in the Emerging Technologies group.
The institute, a non-profit think tank with its roots in the RAND
corporation, specializes in tracking and forecasting technology,
especially in the communications arena.



[ 5.0 ] Troubleshooting

How to Start

Enter your name and the game begins.

Portal Game Specific Notes

To get started go into the CP folder and select help.  This will help
explain things.  Most importantly, remember that Portal is more of an
interactive novel than it is a game.

IMPORTANT:  When you select the second icon from the right (the yellow
HOMER MESSAGES icon), you will be presented with a message with white
text on a blue screen. An inaccuracy occurs after you exit this screen,
and takes the form of wrong text being displayed in the top section of
the screen. This is a cosmetic bug only, and is easy to fix. Simply
choose the EXIT TO INTERFACE icon, which is the rightmost icon on the
bottom of the screen. This will take you to Portal's dataspace
interface. This will NOT affect gameplay and you will be able to
continue with the game as normal by pressing Enter or the joystick
button to re-enter the dataspace.

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End of the Project 64 etext of the Portal help file.

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