The Xenian Portal, where is it?

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

Hey everyone, I’ve participated in discussions here… a little and I know how many cockroaches have been savagely destroyed for their noobness… so please be gentle?

I was going to put this in the suggestion box, but this late in development it seems kind of pointless to be suggesting anything at this point doesn’t it?

This is a question that has always plagued me since the original HL and only heightened after EP1. Where exactly is this dimensional rip the combine eventually “forced ever-wider” that was created by the resident cascade? I know it was created by the “sample” so I assume you would have seen some kind of distortion in the fabric of space time or something in or around the remains of the anti-mass spectrometer since that’s the origin of everything but you don’t. I remember when I was younger, before HL2, wondering if the little dot all the orange ‘lightening’ was coming out at the destroyed tip of the spectrometer was the rip… but was never sure.

I don’t know, I’m not a scientist… I only control one in the game, XD do I just not understand the science of how the dimensional rip is supposed to be represented as? Any ideas or scientific info people have that can make it clearer would be very appreciated. Also btw… I know it’s just the game… I just naturally over analyze lots of things… which isn’t a bad thing really is it?

The suggestion part of this, which will be completely irreverent if my idea of how the dimensional gash is completely wrong, would be this. Would people think it was cool if like… somewhere in the spectrometer’s room there was a small distorted portal created from the cascade? Maybe they could use the effect from the end of HL2 with the combine portal but on a much smaller level? That’d be kind of cool wouldn’t it? Maybe we could even see a very faint blurry view of Xen… kind of like a sneak peek before we get to go there.

Anyway… that’s call :expressionless: braces for the first senior member’s foot to come smash my roachy self :fffuuu:

#2

smashes roach

Anyway, I was always under the assumption that the “Dimentional Rift” referred to an area in space where there was some sort of interference, causing things to teleport at random.

#3

It’s in my pants.

#4

This might actually belong in the “Half-life” series forum but I’m a mere roach as well. As for the Rift, if it was just that, a rip in the border between Xen and our world it’d probably make sense if there were many small rips all over the place.

#5

Portal that spawn the sperm, never mind.

#6

It is unlikely that - if the rift was just at one specific place - it was in Black Mesa at all, considering the whole place got nuked, and the Combine would have to dig themselves out, even if the portal survived it.

#7

X.X …

Barney: “Well that’s one less horror in the world…”

#8

it’s not a fookin portal. it’s two universes grinding against eachother

I thought Stephen King’s short story Crouch End had a pretty apt analogy:

“this world is like a big leather ball, and outside the ball are other dimensions. There are scuffs, nicks in the leather that cause the thin spots…and every once in a while, the leather rips. it’s there that the other dimension pours in…”

#9

I understand, it’s just weird how Kleiner says in EP1, if I remember right: “even the relatively small fracture at BlackMesa gave our enemies and opening which they were able to force ever larger as they poured through in greater and greater numbers.”

By the way he says it, he sounds like he’s referring to a singular “fracture” which they were able to re-size much like the citadel portal… how they stretched it open.

#10

I think I’d like the verify that, big boy. :wink:

#11

Show me your I.D. first.

#12

We don’t know where it is but it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. It’s most likely someplace very open, and there has to be something holding the rift open soooo…imaginations run wild.

#13

My god the way you people are describing it I can’t stop imagining goatse. :fffuuu:

#14

I don’t think the portal to Xen should be thought of as a physical hole. Rather, the resonance cascade weakened the physical fabric of the universe.

Imagine an actual piece of fabric. Take a piece of plastic that’s the same size and place it underneath, then pick it up and fill it with water, like a bucket. Now, OMG RESONANCE CASCADE… take away the plastic, and suddenly the water is leaking through and getting everywhere. But there isn’t a physical tear in the fabric; it’s just lost its impermeability.

#15

so it starts out small, like the size of a quarter and by the time the combine arrives its got a two handed grip and traffic cones and fire extinguishers are passing through?

#16

That’s not science. That’s science fiction.

#17

Resonance cascades don’t work that way, cockroach! It’s obvious that you haven’t even graduated from high school because you would have learned about this in science class. The way it happens in the original Half-Life is actually pretty accurate. And it’s not “residence cascade”.

#18

Well seeing as there were multiple rips in the fabric between Xen and Earth (headcrabs and bullsquids and such teleporting all over the place), maybe the fabric is extremely stressed and being worn down, like an old piece of cloth. The Combine would only need to widen up one of them and eventually it would grow larger.

At any rate this is sci-fi, and especially with Half-Life, I’d try not to overthink this sort of thing…

#19

yeah man we had an entire class on fictional disasters don’t you know anything

#20

Black Mesa was about 7 on the RC Intensity Scale.

The RCs that people usually study in trans-dimensional physics class measure about 2.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.