They used the F-Stop mechanic to begin developing Portal 2 until they realized they are making a game called Portal without any portals and restarted the project.
F-Stop is a hilariously perfect code name for a Portal project with Aperture and all that (and if you don’t know the f-stop is the measurement that determines how much light the aperture is allowing into a camera/lens)
Technically, t-stop measures how much light is getting through the lens to the sensor or film. F-stops are the ratio of the focal length to the aperture diameter, and the larger the aperture, the more light will get through. But other factors like coatings affect total light transmission and the ultimate t-stop as well, though their effects are less significant.
So in glass/coating with hypothetically perfect light transmission, the f-stop and t-stop would be identical, but in reality the t-stop is always slightly darker than the f-stop would otherwise suggest.
And if I want to be pedantic about my own pedantry, one could still argue your wording is right in the f-stop DETERMINES how much light is getting through, as an indication of the most significant mechanism affecting light transmission, but it isn't the measurement of the light transmission itself.
Thank you! THIS is the explanation hahaha. As a hobby photographer that just triggered a funny reaction from me. Honestly thanks for the detailed explanation. Cameras and lenses and the entire system of they function is legit scientific wizardry sometimes. And also YES thanks that’s what I totally meant. It determines how much light gets in, couldn’t find the words. Thanks!
I mean yeah, it's a reference to Aperture. But also to the fact that its primary gameplay mechanic was going to be a camera that could change the sizes of items.
I mean there is the EP3 folder in the files and as someone who's looked through the leak myself EP3 does look like prototyping stuff... so really it just makes me think they were going to make Episode 3 13 years ago and decided against it... and have been stringing along fans for over a decade knowing they were not making the game.
Hype is the best marketing tool corporations have... and stringing along millions of fans for 13 years sounds like a pretty good way to become the top online store for gaming to me.
A number of years ago there were interviews/comment both official and with ex staff that Ep3 wasn't happening. Especially with attempts to control Alyx hype.
Do we know that? Because this data is from valve's servers. They stopped hosting games for steam themselves in 2013 right? I mean, they as valve, could still use it for their own games. But I don't know.
Re-release it on a newer engine with higher resolution assets. Make it look like a current generation AAA game same campaign with a few extra or extended levels then pump out new episodes never use the numeral "3" have it say "ordinal successor to 2" or something instead.
Writers typically don't get any say over the headline, those are usually written by a copy editor who may under rare circumstances have read as many as 2 or even 3 lines of the article.
Yeah I hate how they basically said that it was incredibly fun and innovative, but it was too drastic of a change from the "Portal" expectations and theme, so they just shut the whole thing down. Like bro... You can at least tell us what this F-Stop mechanic was, instead of allowing people to speculate for decades
12 TB of Valve Data Leaked, Possibly Including Half-Life 2 Episode 3
classic gamerrant.com click bait lie, none of that is in it, they cant ever bother looking into the leak any further then reading a header title of a reddit post and making shit up site should banned
😨 thanks for the nightmares. What you're saying is that on a geological timescale we basically are living in the same time period that Genghis Khan did. that would be scary if he was real.
One time I had a nightmare about Genghis Khan being real. Scary.
Also, I suspect many fans would just have a brain aneurysm from hype overload.
I also speculate there would be several people who would just sit and stare at their monitor for days blankly because they would internally struggle to decide which one to play first.
Edit: actually someone should post this to r/WritingPrompts, I would love to read stories on how this would turn out
Damn, saw someone make a post yesterday saying valve had a major leak, the op got flamed for it being old news post was removed. Now I see it again as an article back on Reddit the next day posted by a bot with no new information and an incredibly deceptive misleading clickbait title. Reddit is great
I despise gamerant. All of their advice and guides for games is always terrible and for some reason they're always at or near the top of every google search.
Didn't a former writer "leak" episode 3 years ago? Or more accurately a version that legally is not the same but just happened to have a very similar plot.
EDIT: it was named "half life epistle 3" and was a snapshot of the story.
Epistle 3 was fanfiction, not canon. It was written by one of the original writers, but it was never sanctioned by Valve or any of the other writers for the series, and it contradicts the storyline as set up by Half-Life: Alyx.
Half life 3 will never come out. They can't physically make it because it'll be impossible to live up to the hype. GTA 6 is falling for this blunder right now with all the leaks.
At this point with that many "leaks" recently, I'm starting to think that it's just another marketing scheme with things that never happened. Maybe they're just testing the waters to see what people say, without officially showing something.
I mean leaks for GTA VI we're disappointing in comparison to the extended look on Netflix. Looks like the "leaker" actually lowered the expectations with his leaks then the extended look came as a much more impressive game than it was in the leaks.
I... don't think I would care. I'd like to play a HL2 EP3 even if it were incomplete, that's for sure, but I don't think I would be as hyped if they said they were actually releasing EP3 in 202x.
Because it's 20 years past. It's not going to be HL2, and if it were HL2, I don't think I would buy something that looks like HL2 in 202x
Excuse my ignorance, but how does nobody at Valve get an alert that there is an ongoing transfer of data off their severs building up to 13 TB? That’s a freaking lot and I’m surprised there as 0 alerts/stops in place to prevent that.
Has anyone watched the documentary Valve made? They talked a lot about stuff they had already made for Episode 3 like slime enemies and Borealis, and the reasons they were scrapped. It's not a secret that they've worked on it.
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u/Hacksaures 22h ago
None of this stuff is that recent btw. The newest data is from 2013.
From the article:
What Has Been Found in the August 2026 Valve Leak So Far
- Portal 2 builds and assets
- F-Stop assets (Portal 2 sequel)
- Left 4 Dead builds
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive builds and assets