Development

The development of Portal:Access All Areas was long and tedious for the mod team.

Alpha Stage
During the alpha stage, which was very long, the storyline was mapped, features were planned and rough drafts were made.

At the start of the mod's drafting development, the work was of very poor quality: it was fullbright, had leaks, and generally didn't work. Later, more areas were made, the massive "hubs" were drafted. Portal:Access All Areas was planned to have eight levels and eight elevators, making a massive amount of 64 possible rooms. It also included the lobby from Portal: Prelude, which was hastily removed.

The combination of these two blunders so early into the project made a huge amount of controversy, most notably on the Portal-themed site ThinkingWithPortals.

Later on, after many delays, a beta chamber "KCtestE04" was released. However, due to the previously mentioned problems, it was received with mixed reactions.

The alpha stage ended sometime after KCtestE04.

Beta Stage
During this stage, Portal 2 was announced, ruining Portal:Access All Areas' original storyline and multiplayer idea. However, it was recovered.

Also, during this stage, Portal:Access All Areas was separated from the forum/community it resided in, myApertureLabs, after the events of moderator arguments and various ping-pong discussions for nickworks to take action.

This stage also faced real major plot changes as the mod's facility suddenly moved to the Incipisphere, existing in Homestuck universe, and was said to be grown by one Kizzsprite. (Though, a Earth Ruby Hawkins also has some Access All Areas business going on.)

The beta stage was expected to end on the mod's release date, 9th October, 2010, but that release date was delayed by Portal 2 announcement. What was known about the development then is that it was near frozen until Portal 2's release date (which was delayed on its own to April 18, 2011) except for the fact that the trailer was being made. This trailer is not out yet, since Kizzycocoa is working on another video relating to Session #257, but several updates regarding the androids have been made.

Pre-release Stage / Gamma Stage
A separate "pre-release stage" has started on Portal 2's release date and is expected to end on the mod's release date. This is the real development stage as all the work done on Portal 1 version (KCtestE04, the Aztec Ruin chambers) has to be ported to Portal 2 engine.

A whole new engine branch was announced for this mod, since there is no possibility of making "Sourcemods" for Portal 2, and instead they take shape of "campaigns" much like in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.