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In March 2020 I collaborated with level designer Kim Riswick on a Half-Life 2 level for the Map Labs #8: Companion Piece 2 mapping competition. We evenly split the work of both the level design and the environment art.
Over the course of 27 days, we created what I consider to be our best work in the Source Engine together. The result was RESIN-ATOR, a short but tightly packed map full of classic Half-Life 2 shooter gameplay and and a fun character chatting in your ear all the way. We were directly inspired by the then-unreleased Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's most recent entry in the Half-Life series.
Our in-ear character was heavily implied to be Russell from Half-Life: Alyx, where he fulfills a very similar role of guiding and teasing the player as they go through the game world. The dialogue was written collaboratively by Kim and I.
This was the level where I felt we really tried to perfect our vision of the Half-Life 2 shooter formula, leapfrogging eachother creating different small segments of gameplay and piecing them together over the course of development.
Here is a spotlight on a small section I made for the level:
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My original concept for this sequence started as a standalone "action block" created in a seperate file. I wanted to have the player get surprised by a set of two emplaced turrets that couldn't be taken down by small arms fire or the Gravity Gun. The turrets also couldn't be bypassed by rushing them due to the Combine Forcefield. The player would then be incentivized to toss a grenade into the obvious vent right above the turrets, or into the slightly open door behind them. Either method would successfully disable the turrets. I placed an infinite grenade ammo box in a cover spot near the turrets, in case the player ran out of them or didn't have any yet. This also served to created the connection in the player's mind: that grenades must be used to pass this section. To alert the player to the turrets in advance, I had a pair of hapless zombies walk out into the turrets' line of sight and get killed just before the player saw them. When the sequence seemed to work well in testing, I started integrating it into the main level and then did a lighting and art pass. From there it was a relatively simple job of bookending the sequence so it felt like it belonged in the level we were creating. |
This level also represents one of our best uses of lighting in the levels me and Kim made together. We were very deliberate in guiding the player's attention with cold Combine interior lighting contrasting with the bright sunny day on the surface.
Here is a video of me playing the level. It doesn't quite capture a first time player's experience, but it shows what we made, at any rate:
Our level ranked 3rd place out of 12 entries.