Modular Portal Testing Chamber

Here are updated or finalized designs for some elements:

Lots of Characters!

The Rocket Turret from the first Portal game is being added! It features a missile that is easy to shoot (the old flick-fire style), and is very poweable! Even though it never appeared this way in-game, you can place it onto walls and ceilings. There is one Rocket Turret included, with three transparent eye colors (green, yellow, red).

Here are the Atlas and P-Body designs I’ve settled on, I don’t expect to modify these for some time (but if a brilliant idea strikes you, do let share it with me!)

PotatOS was suggested, so here’s what I’ve got! It’s eight parts, including the bird’s nest and the old colored table it’s on, and will be placed as an Easter egg behind the horizontal and vertical connector elements, just like the cake, radio, and water.

Turrets received a LOT of review, and defective turrets were requested. These are the designs I’m settling on for now. The regular turrets are white, pristine, and have a signature roundness, so they stay rather tall. Though the defective turrets have the same structure for their side panels, no combination of parts I found yielded a 4 stud long side panel while also looking skeletal. Therefore, the defective turrets will have smaller side wings. The defective turrets also lacked the top shell of the turret, which is why their bodies are shorter.

Other elements

While it may look nice, the toxic goo isn’t as playable as deadly pits (a minifigure can’t fall in), and it takes up an entire modular unit. Therefore, the set will not have goo included, as the functions of goo and deadly pits as hazards are identical.

I do not believe hard light bridges would add a lot of play, because they’re rather large and clunky, but here are some concepts. I really like the one that can extend, but this wouldn’t work so well with portals. Neither design would be spectacular with portals, but the clip-on simple one would be easier to make compatible (and of course the colors are able to change, I just demonstrated some concepts).

Emancipation grills wouldn’t be very playable, it’s hard to make them look solid and also pass minifigures through. And I’m unsure where they’d go, maybe in the test somewhere, but it would be very conceptual to play with them.

I have not been using Studio/Studio 2 for these renders, so I don’t have a parts list available for fans to order their own parts. However, rest assured if this doesn’t become a set, I’ll make sure to get the instructions out there (even if it means downloading and learning to use Studio ;D). I really want the community to have the resources to build their own custom chambers using the DosBrosComiX modular system, which is why I’m rendering so many models that may never be included. The modular system I’ve created makes it incredibly easy to add new tiles and designs.

I’ve been replaying Portal 2 to get a better look at the back of defective turrets (they have a pale blue tank on their backs), and I noticed something that would be really interesting to model, and possibly add…

Here are newer models for turrets. They’re smaller, more accurate, easier to knock over, and have defective variants!

I’d really like to include at least one defective turret, perhaps in one of the back areas (after all, in Portal 2 the humans converted turrets to protect the human vault, and they were stripped, similar to defective turrets in the main campaign).

Here's some defective turrets with a little bit of color (the two colors are actually different, I don't know which I prefer)

The entire time they were rendering I was hearing “Here in the Darkness We’re Free” (Portal The Unauthorized Musical).

Recently, a user named the_brixpert share their design for Atlas with me, which sparked a new wave of designs for the two robots. As seen below, their design is on the far left, and after that are the designs I’ve created from it. The difference in the two Atlases are the tiles on the sides of the head, while the three P-bodies have some difference in body structure. I feel the last P-Body is most accurate to in-game, because P-Body is much thinner than Atlas.

Major goals are: Arms above eyes, noticeable differences in height and width, and moveable wrists.

I don’t know that these are finished products, but they’re closer :)

Here’s two designs for the rocket turret from Portal (the first game). The rocket can actually be launched from the turret, and the turret itself is quite poseable. The only difference between the two is the head part, though both turrets have the same number of parts (14, including the round base they attach to).

I also rendered them from a new angle, and with a transparent eye.

Which of the four would you prefer, if any? Is it worth adding one to the set?

Here’s the most recent full parts list for this set. It has 1837 bricks, which at a conversion of $0.10 USD per part is about $180. Many of these parts repeat, something which should also lower the cost. Instead of listing all parts, I’ve rendered an image of them all:

The “extra” tiles near the bottom can be used to create custom wires, or change the background color of the Aerial Faith Plate, Cameras, Wheatley Screens, and Buttons.

I’m happy with how many parts we were able to reduce. The reductions in the panel bases and the modular units were most helpful, and other reductions contributed as well. However, I’ll keep reducing the parts count as much as possible, to make room in the budget for any more elements the community may want. :)

This Test Chamber is set in the beginning of Portal 2, featuring lopsided panels, Wheatley on his management rail, and dead cameras. It has deadly pits and aerial faith plates, which didn’t occur in-game at this time, but I think it shows the creative potential of the set. There’s a hidden Rattman Den in the corner.

I’ve rendered the black version of the non-portalable surfaces, and I think it’s too dark. I’m going to stick with dark gray from now on, still with a flat surface (no grills) to conserve parts.

As with all test I render, this one is solvable. You start under the door, can you figure it out? :)

Here’s an idea for an additional hazard, the toxic water/goo! I actually really like this design, because it’s only four parts, and yet adds a lot of potential as an obstacle. Obviously, it would look a little weird if you posed the panels around it, but at such a low parts cost and (what seems to me) a large increase in playing potential, I should include it.

I got a comment a little while ago suggesting to have the gels pop up above the surface of the panel. This was accomplished using only two more parts, and this is how it looks:

I’m also going to start rendering the designs for things I haven’t included in the set, but that I think would be a good fit for the modular system, and perhaps supporters can build on their own using bricks at home. The first of these is the Laser Field. The one utilizing the transparent antennae looks better, but I wasn’t certain if the antenna had been produced in this color, so solid red is also rendered. The little red square is the tiny red warning on each Laser Field end in the game.

Are popped out gels better? Should they be included at all? (Price increase for each part versus worth it?)

I’ve rendered how I would design the Propulsion and Repulsion Gels. The goal is to make a single surface for the gel that both shows a direction for the player to run/bounce and can be continued.

How would this affect the set? First, there still isn’t a source for cubes and gels, they would just have to appear. The gels would increase the number of possibilities for crossing gaps and deadly pits, and are iconic. Playability with gels would mean replacing the surfaces of panels rather than scattering small parts on them, because that would be annoying to pick up if any fall in the cracks.

Please share your thoughts! How useful would gels be? Should the surface “pop out” one stud higher? What do you think of the possibilities for rotation?

Stay tuned for an updated complete parts count in the near future. :D

Here are some possible darker surfaces. What do you think?

I have a concern about any surface with grills on it, because that’s 19 parts for a single 6 by 6, and that could add up very quickly. What do you think about the black color instead of the gray color for the 2 by 2 covered surface? Better or worse?

I rendered an image that includes the all-black version of the non-portalable surfaces, as well as the simple Wheatley screen with a smooth face, a deadly pit, and the new studded panel base. What do you think?

Thank you for your feedback! :D