Aperture Desk Job

Aperture Desk Job is a tech demo created to show off the features of Valve's Steam Deck. Taking place in the Portal & Half-Life expanded universe, the player finds themself working at Aperture's Testing and Calibration Department.

Sub-Pages#

Unused ModelsThat thing is called an elevator.

Developer Tools#

To access the developer console in this game, the player must open the game's Properties and type -console in the launch options. Unlike other Source games, however, this will not show the developer console when launching the game. The player still has to manually press the tilde key to bring up the console. (The keyboard needs to be set to English, otherwise it will not work).

• The player can use noclip to move around, it does not require a controller. However, since the whole game takes place on one map, you must start the game before you're able to move, as the main menu blocks movement input.

After activating cheats with sv_cheats 1, pressing TAB will bring up a debug menu displaying benchmarks and performance information.

Unused Audio#

A Cave Johnson voice clip from Portal 2, without any of the "PA system" filter effects.

Unused Textures#

Two textures intended to be used as portraits.

Cave Portrait#

A texture featuring a new, more detailed rendition of the frail Cave Johnson portrait seen in Portal 2.
The image appears to be a painted-over photograph of developer Bill Fletcher, who is mentioned in the credits with the special message, "Thanks for letting us use your face."

• Notably, in the new version, Cave Johnson has significantly more hair loss compared to the original painting.

Aperture Desk Job	Portal 2

Death Is Marching#

A texture of a painting which depicts a frail man with a cane, supporting himself against a wall as he enters a brightly lit room.

Sticky Notes#

In the final chapter "Back to Work", your desk can be seen decorated with several stickers.
One of them is a sticky note that reads, "Remember, you’re CHARLIE". However, the files contain several other textures for the sticky note, which go unused.

Unseen Details#

Cave Johnson's Office#

Because of the narrow FOV, some parts of the office cannot normally be seen without using noclip.

• There is a potted plant and a deer head on the right side of his portrait. The deer head is later seen on the conveyor belt during the shooting gallery. The cobwebs and potted plant also foreshadow Cave Johnson being stuck in his office, as the plant has died from not being watered for a very long time.
• The left side of the room features a staircase leading to a room under construction, with a pneumatic pipe running through it. A cardboard Companion Cube can be seen being moved around from time to time.
• The coffee table features a stack of magazines for "Parts Illustrated." The bottom of the magazine features a string of binary code: 011010110 0101001 101 100101011 01101 01010 01010101 01001 110. The spaces in the code do not correspond to 8 or 7-bit integers, so it is currently unknown what the string is supposed to translate to, or if it is merely gibberish.
  • The back of the magazine features a barcode with the numbers 0 56000 29145 2.

Clipboard Texture#

Grady's clipboard contains a piece of paper with text that is actually legible. However, none of what he reads aloud matches the text on the paper. It's actually an Orientation Process form, containing the following text:

NEW EMPLOYEE ORIENTATION PROCESS
Manager: Grady

DO...
[ ] Greet new employee at elevator.
[ ] Escort new employee to desk.
[ ] Ensure correct pre-recorded Cave Johnson message is playing.
[ ] Obtain verbal and visual confirmation that employee understands and
    is capable of fulfilling their responsibilities at Aperture.
[ ] Obtain verbal and visual confirmation that employee understands
    concept of firing light.

DO NOT...
[ ] Tell new employee your name.
[ ] Engage new employee in small talk.
[ ] Share intimate personal details with new employee.

• The clipboard mentions "greet new employee at elevator", which does not happen in the final game. The player instead takes a lift directly from Cave Johnson's office down to the offices, eventually arriving at their workstation. However, an unused elevator model does exist in the game files, which is likely how the game was originally intended to open before the sequence was scrapped.
• This also counts as a hidden gag. Since Grady does everything on the "DO NOT" list, which highlights the things he is supposed to avoid doing.

Hidden Developer Message#

In your workstation, during the toilet inspection sequence, there is a box with an open book on top of it.
The book has two pages featuring QR codes that are not visible during normal gameplay. When scanned, the one on the left reads Hello :), while the second one reads bad coffee.

Offices#

The player never has the chance to get a good look at the Aperture offices while touring through them, as the lift moves quite quickly. As a result, some details may go unnoticed or are inaccessible without the use of cheats.

• The scientists seen on the catwalks are completely pitch black. There are three models: a bald man, a woman with tied-back hair, and a man wearing a baker's cap. It's possible that these models were repurposed from Half-Life 2, as their silhouettes resemble those of several NPCs from the game, although it's difficult to say for certain.

Unused Areas#

Outro Room#

A small grey room found out of bounds. It features a spotlight shining on an Aperture Science poster from Portal 2, along with floating red text that reads Outro. Given that it sits right next to the room where the actual ending that's place, it's likely that it's a leftover from development.

• The outside of the room features a black 2D texture with a gradient used to represent a vignette.

Cave Johnson's Office#

A very early model of Cave Johnson's office remains in the game files. It is completely untextured and has no animations associated with it, but is otherwise largely similar to the version seen in the final game.

Portal 2 Leftovers#

Many Portal 2 assets were ported and used during development, but a few of them go unused.

• Two model files found inside the models/turrets/input_test directory called input_test.vmdl_c and input_test_camera.vmdl_c, both containing the same model of the Portal 2 Turret. Both of the models have 48 animations available, but seem mostly broken. input_test.vmdl_c has mesh groups you can toggle, one of them being the laser. The other model does not have these.
• Two fully textured gib models that can be found in the models/npc/turret directory.

Unused Strings#

There are many unused strings and commands left over from Source 2. While many were removed during development, a significant number remained in the game files. The most interesting ones are listed below.

Paint Feature#

Several strings that mention "paint". They use the "SteamPal" prefix, which was the codename for the Steam Deck.

CSteamPal_PaintableProp
CSteamPal_PaintStream
CSteamPal_PaintStreamPathNode
STEAMPAL_PAINT_BOUNCE
STEAMPAL_PAINT_POWER_TYPE_COUNT
STEAMPAL_PAINT_SPEED
steampal_paint_speed_color
steampal_paint_stream
steampal_paint_stream_debug_draw_path_segment_length
steampal_paint_stream_debug_level
steampal_paint_stream_default_num_paint_blobs
steampal_paint_stream_default_speed
steampal_paintable_prop
steampal_projectile_targeting_bullet_life_timePaintSplatPink

Water Physics#

vphys2_angular_damping_in_water 
vphys2_linear_damping_in_water 
vphys2_water_density_multiplier

Glass#

Likely a leftover from Half-Life: Alyx.

shatterglass_break
shatterglass_cleanup
shatterglass_cleanup_max
shatterglass_debug
shatterglass_distort
shatterglass_edge_uv_scale
shatterglass_hit_tolerance 
shatterglass_restore
shatterglass_shard_lifetime
shatterglass_subdiv_size
shatterglass_voronoi_size

Oddities#

• Loading or reloading maps appears to be impossible. Attempting to load into any map will softlock you on a permanent black screen, requiring you to restart the game.
  • The game features a map named "error". It is unknown what the map contains, as it cannot be loaded in-game.

Missing Files#

• When starting the game or loading a map, the game attempts to load files that no longer exist. It tries to read from a file named cfg/skill1.cfg.
  The developer console will print the following error message:

[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "materials/sprites/purplelaser1.vmat_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/msg_fx/msg_damage.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/burning_fx/burning_character.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "models/gibs/hgibs.vmdl_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "materials/decaltests/runtime_decal_sheet_normal.vtex_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "materials/decaltests/runtime_decal_material.vmat_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "materials/decaltests/runtime_decal_sheet_albedo.vtex_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/weapon_fx/muzzleflash_smgs.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "materials/particle/smokestack.vmat_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)

Half-Life project leftovers#

Leftovers from Half-Life 2, or possibly from a different project that was in development at the time.

[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/strider/muzzleflash_strider.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/blood_impact/blood_impact_green_01.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/blood_impact/blood_impact_yellow_01.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)
[ResourceSystem] Error loading resource file "particles/blood_impact/blood_impact_red_01.vpcf_c" (Error: ERROR_FILEOPEN: File not found)

Notes#

Internal Name#

The game's internal name (used in various places throughout filenames etc.), "SteamPal", is the working name of the Steam Deck device itself.

• The internal Bug Reporter name as seen in gameinfo.gi is "SteamPal Demo".
• There are many leftover strings from Half-Life: Alyx. They all use the "VR" prefix.