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".
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