Design + ProductionPresented by Robin Walker

Design + Production

Half-Life 2 development process Half-Life

• The cabal.

Design + Production

HL2 • Massive

This talk:• Iteration & collaboration• Decentralized design• Game-wide passes• Symbolic links• Choreo scenes

HL2 Team Overview

~30-40 People, 5 years 3 Cabals

• Programmers & Level Designers

Art Team• Artists & Level Designers

Choreo Team • Artists, Level Designers, & Writer

Cabals

Goal: Chapter production Design (~3 months)

• Story• Brainstorming• Level Layout

Iteration (~3 months)• Playtest -> Revise -> Playtest

Art passes

Chapter Production

Constraints: schedule, story Better focus

• Faster iteration

He who designs it, builds it Driven to reduce dependencies

Problem: Consistency

More interactive Competing designs Bad design economy Assumptions about previous chapters

• Player training

Chicken & Egg: Chapter transitions

Solution

3 game-wide passes• First: Chapter production• Second: Experience density

• Cross-pollination & training• Story• Cuts

• Third: Game-wide quality

A better method for building games How?

Symbolic Links

A named link between pieces of content. Allows:

• Specialists.• Consistency.• Painless game-wide iteration.• Implementation abstraction.

Run-time links. Symbol saving.

Examples

Game sounds Materials Props Scripting Response rules

• Contextual link

Choreo scenes

HL1: Scripted Sequences

Animations for a set of NPCs, played in unison.• Monolithic animations.• Level placed sounds / dialog.

Costly to produce: • ~30 sequences (~10 minutes total running time)• Rarely re-usable.• Single owner. • Easily “stalled”.

Problem: Interactivity

Undefined world state• Player / NPCs• Objects

HL2 Choreo Scenes

A scene for a set of NPCs• AI commands, facial animation, game events,

sounds, etc.

HL2: Choreo Scenes

Robust• Independent content creation & iteration • Late features, scenes untouched

Powerful• Traditional, multiple character acting scenes

• Responsive

• Improved minor interactions• Gender independent speech• Model independent animation

• Emotional states

HL2: Choreo Scenes

Massive improvement: • ~1800 scenes (~3 hours total running time)• Re-usable:

• Code• Gestures

• Higher quality• Production rarely stalled.

In Summary

HL2: Iteration & collaboration• Multiple game-wise passes• Symbolic links

Future:• Code solutions, process solutions.

Questions?

Questions?

Methodology

3 game-wide passes• A better production method

Symbolic links• Iteration, consistency, abstraction

HL2 choreo scenes vs HL1 scripted sequences• Better & cheaper

Interactive Scenes

Scene timeline is flexible• Scene pausing to wait for game events• Faking NPC intention through event anticipation• Synchronisation between animations and timeline.

Physics Gameplay

Real work begins after integration of physics engine.

Every time we build a new physics puzzle, we write code.• Fan Puzzle

Balancing physics reality with player desires.• 180 turns with held items• Players think everything is "physics".