Game/Half-Life 2
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Half-Life 2's Evolution : aaron/canals_01_15 (2002/12/12)
It’s been an incredibly long time since the last video, but the next one in the series is finally here.
Keep in mind that this ended up getting a little rushed in the end, as I wanted to get it out of the way so I could move onto other things. Turns out moving to Source Filmmaker ended up causing the video to take longer due to a few technical faults along the way, and then work got in the way, and it’s likely in future I’ll be producing these very differently to how I have been previously to save myself more time.
As usual, keep in mind that this series is solely focused on displaying the geometry of the levels rather than playing through each one individually. If you enjoyed this video and want to see more in the future then I highly recommend supporting me on Patreon, as this goes towards supporting the website, the archive and videos such as this.
This is part of a video series showing the gradual evolution of Half-Life 2. It’s not intended to demonstrate gameplay, as most of these levels, in their original form, weren’t playable. Because of the number of levels to cover and the amount of time it takes to clean them up enough to be viewable, these will be kept as quick glances.
This level is produced from the VMF, canals_01_15. The level was likely created by Aaron Barber.
The original VMF can be downloaded here.
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Let's Speculate! Half-Life 2 Lighting Zoo
The Lighting Zoo, otherwise known as ‘lightingzoo’, is a level included in the pack of development VMFs that was leaked with Half-Life 2 back in 2003. It’s one of the lesser interesting levels in the pack of levels, but we’ll be covering it anyway just to quickly get it out of the way. Obviously on this occasion I won’t be bothering to produce a video but expect a number of screenshots demonstrating the level.
The map is marked as being last modified on the 6th of May 2002 but it’s hard to be sure as to who the original author was but it was likely produced by someone within Valve who didn’t work primarily as a level designer, more likely the work of one of the programmers at Valve. We can pretty much conclude this as the map features incredibly simplistic geometry, though includes a few different sections that seem to test the capabilities of the lighting tool, VRAD, at the time; displacements, animated lights and normal maps are featured in the different sections of the level.
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Half-Life 2 Prison Evolution (10th October 2002)
This is part of a video series showing the gradual evolution of the Prison in Half-Life 2. It’s not intended to demonstrate gameplay, as most of these levels, in their original form, weren’t playable. Because of the number of levels to cover and the amount of time it takes to clean them up enough to be viewable, these will be kept as quick glances.
This level is produced from the VMF, prison. The level was likely created by David Sawyer.
The prison level you see here is huge and is one of the larger levels that was leaked in 2003. This level is essentially the prison in its entirety at the time, which includes a very different layout from that seen in the final game and also includes sections seen in previous videos albeit mostly iterated upon.
This level also includes an incredibly early version of the shower section seen in the final version of the prison.
While not covered in this video, the level is also unique in that it includes a scrolling cloud layer within the skybox.
Credits to H.Grunt for cleaning up the level so this video could be produced, without his help this video would probably have taken far longer to finish than it should have.
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I'm not dead.
This is a quick update and firstly I’m not dead, and secondly the next video is still on its way. A lot has happened recently which has meant I have less time to focus on my personal pursuits, namely I’m working at a software company now and this means I’ve been pretty much occupied with work.
This also means I’m likely to take the Patreon offline.
To bring you guys up to speed, the map being featured in the upcoming video was giving me a lot of grief and because I was struggling to find the time to work on it, in the end I asked a friend to take a look at it for me. That map is now ready to be filmed and now it’s just waiting on me to finish, which will either happen over this week or by the weekend. The new video is also using Source’s demo smoother, rather than how I was previously doing it, but let’s just say it can be a little unreliable at times and there’s a lot to cover in this map and I’m also using Source 2013 to preview the maps, rather than trying to do it within the leaked 2003 build.
Additionally, there’s still about 40 maps left for me to cover just for the prison alone… Obviously I’m questioning how much I can retain my sanity at this rate, so we might cover random levels in the future instead and I might move onto covering different games for a little while too.
In the meantime here’s a few random screenshots I apparently captured without realising it. This version of the map is starting to gradually shape up to what we saw in the final game though there are some pretty obvious differences in the design of some areas, plus the layout is still very much incomplete and it very much still feels like a cluster of areas just slammed together.
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Half-Life 2 Prison Evolution (25th September 2002)
This is part of a video series showing the gradual evolution of the Prison in Half-Life 2. It’s not intended to demonstrate gameplay, as most of these levels, in their original form, weren’t playable. Because of the number of levels to cover and the amount of time it takes to clean them up enough to be viewable, these will be kept as quick glances.
The level you’re seeing here is from a VMF named cafeteria, which appears to have been produced by David Sawyer; who was a designer at Valve, who produced most of the iterations of the Prison that we’re going to see.
This is a relatively small level, which seems to be an early version of a cafeteria portion of the Prison. The purpose of this level was likely to establish gameplay dynamics and general themes.
The control room is unusual, as it features a glass panel embedded in the floor, of which the player can look through. This was likely to show the result of pulling the switch but it’s difficult to tell.
There’s also a control room hidden in the middle section of the level, which isn’t accessible typically. It’s not clear why this is.
A few of the models and textures used in this level were missing and hence had to be replaced. Obviously this means that this isn’t 100% representative of what the levels may have looked like back when they were originally created, but it’s probably pretty darn close.
Music was produced by Chris Jensen as part of “Mishaps in the Reactor Chamber.” A collection of songs originally intended for Opposing Force that went unused.
