Design + Production Presented 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".