---
title: "Portal support"
description: "How far Evil Engine's passthrough modding support for Portal gets today. Mounts from your own install with Half-Life 2's content it shares. Nothing converts or shows on screen yet."
url: "https://evil-engine.com/games/portal"
modified: "2026-11-01T19:00:00.000Z"
site: "Evil Engine"
about: "Evil Engine, the passthrough modding engine"
---

[← All games](https://evil-engine.com/games) 

Mounts Source 

# Portal

Mounts from your own install with Half-Life 2's content it shares. Nothing converts or shows on screen yet.

- **Ticket**: #002
- **Checked on**: Steam, Linux
- **Last checked**: November 1, 2026
- **Files**: 34,059
- **Mount**: `portal/pc/1745010`

## Mounting

4 of 4 done

- Done  

**Finds your copy**  
Picks up the install on its own, from Steam or wherever it lives.
- Done  

**Reads every file**  
Every file reads straight from your copy, in the order the game itself looks them up.
- Done  

**Matches players' copies**  
Your copy is fingerprinted from its own files, so a server can check everyone's match without sending any game content.
- Done  

**Brings its mods**  
Folders and VPKs in custom/. Checked on test installs, since the checked copy had none.

## Converting

0 of 4 done

- To do  

**Models**  
Source's model converter works for Garry's Mod. It isn't hooked up to Portal yet.
- To do  

**Textures and materials**  
Waits on Portal's own shader table.
- To do  

**Maps**  
Its levels turn into Evil Engine maps.
- To do  

**Sounds**  
Its sounds turn into Evil Engine sounds.

## In game

0 of 3 done

- To do  

**Shows on screen**  
Converted content actually draws in Evil Engine.
- To do  

**In the spawn menu**  
Its props and models land in your spawn menu, no Plugin needed.
- To do  

**Maps you can visit**  
Pick one of its maps from the menu and fly around inside it.

## Where it stands

Evil Engine finds Portal on its own and reads it the way the game does, in the order its own `gameinfo.txt` lists: Portal’s archives first, then its share of Half-Life 2’s, then the loose files under both. That’s seven search paths and a little over 34,000 files, and it takes about 20 ms.

Your copy is fingerprinted as two parts, `portal` and `hl2`, so a server running Portal’s chambers only asks for those. Every file in both matched Steam’s own checksums.

## Known issues

- Portal’s `gameinfo.txt` names an English voice archive that Steam doesn’t install. It’s noted on the mount and skipped.
- The order of folders in `custom/` comes from a comment in `gameinfo.txt`, not from the game itself, and hasn’t been checked against the game’s own `path` command yet.

## Next up

- Checking the search order against Portal’s own `path` command, with something in `custom/`.
- Hooking Source’s converters up to Portal, with a shader table from Portal’s own shaders.

## About Evil Engine

Evil Engine is a **passthrough modding** engine by Pushbar Interactive. Modding through the games you already own instead of around them: the content comes from each player's own copy and is never extracted, ported or redistributed. The term took off in September 2026 with mods that run two games at once and wire them together by hand, one pair at a time. Evil Engine comes from that lineage and makes the process repeatable: it learns each engine once, maps each game onto shared vocabularies once, and gives mods one API, so every mounted game works with every other. More: https://evil-engine.com/passthrough-modding

- Every page, for agents: https://evil-engine.com/llms.txt
- Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3731310/Evil_Engine