31 October 2012 build

This is a sub-page of Proto:The Stanley Parable.

An early build of The Stanley Parable, uploaded to Steam on 31 October 2012, using Steam depot ID 221911 and manifest ID 3518211230088310331.

This prototype is documented on Hidden Palace.

General Differences#

Title Screen#

The title screen only has 3 options: Begin the game, Options and Quit. The background uses Portal 2 UI sounds, a different framed photo taken from Counter-Strike: Source, has different lighting, is in a different angle and there's more stuff on the desk compared to the final game. Note that the computer showing the game was finished by this point.

Prototype	Final

Loading Screen#

The loading screen in this build uses Portal 2's blue dots at the bottom-right corner with a background dependent on the map it is loading.

Prototype	Final

Game Icon#

The stanley.exe file reuses the icon from Portal 2.

Cheats#

The "serious room" that the player is sent to by the Narrator after activating sv_cheats is not present in this build.

Pause Menu#

The pause menu has a strange white box on it, possibly a remnant from Portal 2, as this white box is placed where the logo is in that game.

Texture Differences#

Slides#

The slides in the meeting room have text indicating that they are work-in-progress textures.

Audio Differences#

Early Narrator Takes#

To do: Find and Upload these early Narrator lines, and set up comparisons between them and the final takes. Maybe not all of them, but definitely the important ones.

The game uses early takes of the Narrator's lines in many areas. It's also notable that the final release splits the game's dialogue into multiple separate segments in the event that segments needed to be switched out, whether in-game (i.e. doing the Countdown Ending twice results in some lines being switched, to reference repeating the event) or during development.

Unused Maps#

trainstationalpha#

A dev-textured map that is supposed to be a replica of Half-Life 2's starting map, d1_trainstation_01. It has a lot of signs telling the player to imagine that this is, in fact, a real replica of that map.

At the end, where the drop after meeting Barney is supposed to be, there is a hole where the player can go through. Touching the glowing sprite sends the player back to the iconic starting offices, part of the same map file.

It's worth noting that the map this is referencing was used in the original 2011 mod for the Games Ending. It's possible that the developers intended to use it here, but decided to freshen things up by using Portal and Minecraft instead.

test#

A run-of-the-mill test map, consisting of nothing but flat white.

bosstest#

A test map for testing the boss's office, lit in fullbright. The keypad uses an earlier design and while the "2845" code works, it doesn't fully clear out the fireplace.

test_stai#

A dev-textured test map with a male citizen from Half-Life 2. The citizen's footsteps play the default Portal 2 error sound (Dr Kleiner's "Oh fiddlesticks, what now?" line from HL2), which plays when a sound file is missing.

death_machine_prototype#

A fullbright map that is a prototype of some sort of "death machine" used by the Narrator to kill Stanley.

NPCPortal#

A test map that is about testing NPCs walking through portals. The NPC in question is an early Half-Life 2 citizen, whose model can be found in the Source SDK. It is missing most of its assets.