Half-Life: The 7 Hour War (Level 5) (download)
This was a massive project handled by an entire classroom full of people in April 2009. The goal was to create a seven level Half-Life campaign based on the 7 Hour War backstory. We were divided into eight separate teams–one team for each of the seven levels, and one team for handling cinematics–and also assigned a lead producer to manage all of us. I worked on the fifth hour of the story along with Matt Trussell, Ben Frazier, and Richard Martija. I wrote the script for our level, worked on propping, building architecture, lighting, enemy placement, scripting events…pretty much a bit of everything. We all kind of worked everywhere, save Ben, whom stuck on optimization, architecture, and skyboxes. Rather than crowding the front page here with details, I’ll post more after the break. Enjoy the video, too!
The project began with our team being provided with an outline of the entire campaign so that we’d have an idea how our piece connects with the bigger picture.
Level 5 – Facing the Enemy
Weapons: grenades, crowbar, USP Match handgun, .357 Magnum, SPAS-12 shotgun, MP-7, Combine Assault Rifle
Mood: Overwhelmed
Difficulty: intermediate – difficult
Focus: Massive Combat
Enemies: metro cops, manhacks, roller mines, (various) zombies, Combine Soldier, Hopper Mine, Combine Elite, stridersOutline: The lights return a bit – arguments ensue. Some survivors insist they should try to communicate rather than continue with the violence. Everyone decides they should work together to head up to the surface and take on the invaders. Barney wants you with him. Up top, there are tons of soldiers and the noise previously heard was striders. People fight, throughout the city, but it is clear the battle is a losing one as the striders pick-off the rebels. It is decided that everyone should retreat to a secure place in the woods, on the outskirts of town. The ones who can escape there do. You discover that a group of people got trapped heading for the radio tower to try communicating with the aliens. The host of the area – Eli, says he has a plan, but it’ll take a bit for the teleporter to warm up.
From there, we plotted out the plan for our level. I’ll say now that we overscoped, unfortunately. Our level consists of three different maps, the last of which is pretty darn big. We also encountered the problem that the Source engine is not particularly built for large, open combat environments, which caused us some headaches as time went on and we had to change a lot. Iteration and playtesting are always the best friends of designers.
7 Hour War – Level 5 – Pitch Presentation
We put together this presentation as a pitch for our idea in order to get the green light. It explains what our goals and plans were. Considering the lore and how late in it this battle takes place, my team decided pretty early to take the concept of the Alamo–hero’s fighting till the end, making the last stand, though they know it’s a battle they will lose–as the basis for our level. (You may notice Richard’s name missing from the credits in the presentation. He joined our group about a week in, after this pitch had been done.)
Gat310 S09 Final Project Documentation Level5
Three weeks later, we had a “finished” product. I’ll say that it is something I am very pleased with and it was an incredible learning experience. We learned a lot about how to use the tool–the Hammer World Editor–but also a lot about working in a team and as part of a larger group. What we did effect other groups, particularly levels 4 and 6 which we had to sync our intro and outro with, respectively. Lots of communication. Even with the cinematics team: they needed information and certain assets from us by specific deadlines in order to be able to get their work done for the entire project.