The Half-Life: Alyx Mapping Contest, and What it Can Teach Us

halflife Alex really has proven to be the gift that keeps on giving I was having a lot of trouble with this video I was so excited to go in deep and talk about all of these maps from the contest in detail what I wasn't mentally prepared for was the utter embarrassment of riches that this contest turned out to be trying to play through all of these maps in the span of four days while simultaneously starting my new pandemic friendly job was frankly a horrible idea between the threat of motion sickness headaches from our spins and VR messing up my sleep schedule having to put off all sorts of flatscreen games I've been looking forward to playing and some more hands-on stuff I've been doing with this very modding community there were a ton of obstacles to getting this video out on time but I managed to pull through all because I wanted to go in depth on each map what I didn't realize while planning this crazy week for myself however was that in a game as featured light as halflife Alex there would be a lot of overlap in the best and worst qualities of these levels and to go over each map and depth would include a whole lot of me just saying the same thing over and over again just with different backing footage for each repetition I don't mean to say that these maps all felt samey but there definitely was some say meanness given that the theme of the contest was simply the combines presence and that there were 22 different Maps for me to play through so rather than look at each map or even my top five favorite maps in depth we're going to clump the whole set of maps together or treated as a single experience and talk about what that experience can teach us about VR game design going forward however I know some of you are just watching this to see which maps you should try out and a Steam Workshop flooded with joke maps so for the sake of those viewers let me just say that my absolute favorite maps in the collection in no particular order are interference by MDD bulldog Club 17 by Dorman benefactors disturbance by socks quick stop by Yost King combine uni by ever and escape the apartments by I'm drinking cocoa and overcharge by hit you there are definitely other maps that I really liked but those are the maps that I think you absolutely need to play full stop so anyways onto our next item I'd like to point out that while the official level editor for half-life Alex is out now all of these maps were made with the bootleg tools created by the community and as a result it's not all that uncommon to see cars with hit detection on the windows strange lighting cabinets that don't open and I even saw one resin unit that I couldn't actually use or put in my backpack some of these maps have been touched up with the official tools but as for the rest I think it's most fair to treat them as betas even if development isn't necessarily going to continue any further for some of them I'll absolutely praise fantastic visuals but we can't judge broken visuals too harshly in this context one last thing I feel obliged to point out is that my headset the vive cosmos has absolutely horrible hand tracking so when you see something like this don't let it stop your interest in VR or half-life Alex things are much smoother on literally any other headset so onto that wild frontier of game design that is VR that I like to talk about so much unfortunately I feel compelled to start this video out on a negative that I didn't think of until this contest I think that this should be written on a sticky note on every single VR game developers monitor uneven floors equal motion sickness while I'm particularly prone to motion sickness I haven't had any and I mean any problems with VR after my first 2 or 3 days of playing in it that was until I played some of the maps from this contest we all loved the Zen floor aesthetic it's gross and creepy and really atmospheric but if you need to make your floors bumpy to accommodate this aesthetic you need to start implementing some workarounds the camera moving up and down as I traversed bumpy's and infested floors was the first thing that's ever made me have to cut a VR play session short and go lay down for a bit one simple thing you could do to alleviate this would be to make these displacements or models not collide with the player then put a flat floor underneath the displacement that we do collide with after all we can't see Alex's legs now I haven't got the first idea how to use the hammer map editor so rather than subject you to mspaint diagrams I'm just going to use Garry's Mod to show you what I'm talking about you see this bumpy piece of floor right here this is a displacement it's just a type of surface that you can dynamically add bumps and potholes to as you can see when I walk over this my camera goes up and down this isn't really a problem in a flat screen game but in VR it's a recipe for disaster so imagine instead if we made it said that the player wasn't actually affected by this floor and we instead have an invisible perfectly flat floor underneath that the player was true walking on then we could walk across bumpy floors like this and this is what it would look like no variation in the cameras Heights and we all get to keep our lunch I'd imagine it's difficult for VR developers to put themselves in the shoes of someone who's more susceptible to VR sickness but that's just one of the many challenges of VR game design so with that major warning out of the way let's move on to a happier lesson one which is perfectly summarized by looking at ever Anne's map combine uni the player is your best source of comedy and they're a prop comic this one actually applies to flat screen games too but there are some tricks that a VR game designer can use to capitalize on this fact if you set up a comedic tone in your mod you're silently telling players that it's okay to goof off a bit combine uni established this comedic tone immediately with its name but then it just furthered it by showing me the silly display cabinet only to have me get ambushed by a combine grunt who probably thought I was a total idiot well once i dispatched him with great dispatch i went back to look at this display and i found a friendly little rat this quickly led to this this is exactly the stuff I'm talking about the map told me it was comedic and so I naturally caught myself doing funny things and ending up in funny situations [Music] this in turn put me in an even sillier mindset and so I was even more open to comedic stuff the glitch in this clip would have pissed me off in any other setting but because this mod had me in such a comedic mood it was actually the hardest I'd ever laughed in the game at least up until this fantastic ending two benefactors disturbance by socks benefactors disturbance actually used the opposite method for comedy it was basically the only joke in the map as far as I know it set me up with this fantastic sense of momentum as I just tore through the combine and then after one particularly hard fight I opened up this door to find my fate sealed the sheer panic of seeing this is something that couldn't really be brought across in a flat screen game it even plays off the classic half-life trope of a room filled with lasers one which this very map used earlier if you're aiming for blunt to unexpected comedy you can't get much better than this moment low tier weapons doesn't have to equal low to your combat in my last video on custom half-life Alex Maps I talked about how tiresome it was to go through every map with totally on upgraded weapons and maybe finding enough resin to get one or two low tier upgrades well looking at the excellent police station raid by kuna we see that there's another way to make the player feel like a badass and let them take down tons of enemies without needing upgrades to their weapons there are two main ways that it does this firstly we find a ton of guns in the beginning who are easy as hell to killed and super aggressive and pushing us and secondly it gives you plenty of shotgun ammo the effect of this is that we feel like we can afford to be super aggressive because if we ever do have to duck down to reload we have plenty of shells loaded in our shotgun to take down enemies who breach our cover when grunts are rushing you they aren't shooting that combined with the way that this corridor is open means that we can confidently shoot at these approaching grunts with our pistol and we'll see when they get close enough that we need to pull out our shotgun and make sure they either keep their distance or drop dead again we have unupgraded weapons but thanks to the elegance with which this combat encounter was designed we can feel like a real badass in spite of that fact I'll admit though I might be a bit biased in favor of this map because it was the first one I played on medium difficulty whereas I'd been on hard for all of the prior maps regardless of that the way that this encounter design encourages a more aggressive play style is such a breath of fresh air when most of the other maps I've played have you hiding behind covers so much more moving forward we got access to the police station's armory and as fantastic as this moment was it would have been great if this map gave me a fully upgraded pulse SMG rather than a stock one it gives you so much more ammo for the SMG than we usually get so being able to use the extended magazine mod would have been fantastic the final fight on this map is where we really get to use the pole system G to its fullest this particular encounter actually encouraged me to use the SMG to force these approaching shotgunners to deploy their shields giving me time to run past them and get shot gun hits on them from behind since they couldn't attack moving forward into this fight we get to one final section that as exciting as it was sort of felt like a letdown with the momentum that the rest of the map had me on suddenly it was about waiting behind cover whereas if the SMG had come fully upgraded I would have had more freedom to fire blindly from cover and that combined with a couple more grenades would have given me the Liberty to control the pace of this fight a bit more as I had with the earlier encounters that I loved so much ensure unupgraded weapons can be used in high-octane fights but you need to level an encounter design to back it up and if you are doing this and emitting resin collecting it wouldn't hurt to reward the players perseverance with unupgraded weapons by giving them a fully upgraded weapon before the final fight so you don't necessarily need to start me out with a ton of resin if you want to have the most intense combat you just need the level and encounter design to encourage aggression from both the player and the enemy don't be afraid to encourage retreating while there are lots of examples of combine encounters that you can get through just by sticking to your cover and attacking everyone who gets close in between blows on distant support enemies these are generally lower - your fights that you might find in earlier phases of your map for a fittingly challenging final battle a little bit of retreating by the player is sort of inevitable if the player is low on health they're going to be much more cautious and trying to take out the enemies one at a time in a super methodical way for treating draws them out of cover and gives you this opportunity however as we see in this fantastic final battle from overcharged by hIgG you the decision to retreat can actually be much more interesting in a much more tactical decision if you have the level designed back and up this fight is tough especially on hardmode you're going to desperately want more grenades and you will absolutely be retreating to give yourself some more time once this first shot gunner appears and breaches your feeble cover you can use the pulse SMG to force him to deploy a shield thus giving you time to escape but more than that you'll quickly notice that there are all sorts of gaps through which you can see enemies that lie ahead of you deep into the enemy side of the arena this of course gives you the opportunity to attack them from a much more advantageous angle but that means that they can attack you too rather than being a mindless response to danger as it is in many other firefights for treating is actually a much more tactical decision in this arena the danger is in a unique way coming from both sides retreating makes you vulnerable to different enemies than holding your ground does so you have to be very careful about when and how you do it especially when you're taking on this Combat Commander in the final stage of the first phase of this encounter your map design is the foundation that you build your encounter design off of and an arena like this presents much more interesting challenges than a simple piece of cover with enemies on the other side of it this brings me to lesson number five make your firefights as unique as possible let's face it half-life Alex can get a tad repetitive which is why I encouraged giving us high tier upgrades right off the bat in my previous video on Alex this contest in particular was again themed after the combines presence so there were a lot of combine encounters in these Maps things like that final arena I praise from overcharge and that parking garage fight I praise from police station raid are fantastic examples of mixing things up in your fight but for me the firefight that took the cake was actually according to the Creator and unintended consequence of the way I went about playing through cranial femurs map contact confirmed see I was immediately thinking I needed to conserve ammo so I only bothered taking down one of these zombies in the beginning when I opened this door I quickly found myself in this arena with a combine suppressor up top suppressing me and two or three grunts on ground level trying to breach my cover this is a fairly standard half-life Alex situation but because I let those zombies in the beginning live they followed me out into this arena putting me in a very sticky situation where ranged enemies were advancing on me from Wonder and melee enemies were advancing on me from the other direction as a result of this I had to move as much as I could which required paying close attention to every combine soldier and slightly less close attention to every zombie and this led to me actually using the combine suppressor to my advantage coaxing him into taking down the zombies for me giving me a bit more breathing room of course the negative consequence of this strategy was that they were now headcrabs coming for me which are much faster and much more difficult to stay away from than zombies it was a really interesting and unique firefight and that simple bit of emergent gameplay was actually one of the highlights of this whole contest for me there was also a fantastic moment in the highly atmospheric escape the apartments by I'm drinking coca it was my first firefight against the combine and it took place in this classic half-life 2 style environment which was loaded with precariously placed explosive tanks which could be used to send debris toppling down under the combine standing below as a little anecdotes I had another mapper asked me for suggestions for his next map and I told him that taking inspiration from the original half-life to reveal events would make for a great time in VR using physics to kill unsuspecting combine without just using the gravity gun and this is exactly what this firefight and escape the apartments delivered and I wasn't disappointed at all the creator even tells me that you can stealth your way through this section which is cool and all but with all of these explosive barrels here I couldn't help but go in guns blazing it was a great time and it was memorable and that's all because it was unique stress is a great thing lastly I want to talk about what is probably my favorite encounter in the entire contest the finale two quick stop by Yost King the final fight of this map takes place on the roof of the maps namesake the quick stop gas station during this fight there was just a single combine suppressor on an opposing roof a decent distance away but there was so much combat going on between the soldiers actually getting onto the roof with me that grunts constantly throwing grenades my way from street level and man hacks to serving my timing that I wasn't able to take down the suppressor for the longest time in other words the suppressor was fulfilling his role perfectly even from the super aggressive position and as a result of so many constant threats every time I noticed a new enemy had made it onto the roof I was fighting for him I thought to myself this is going to be the one that kills me and yet somehow by really being careful with my positioning I was able to survive this entire encounter on my first attempt even on hard there wasn't one second of this fights middle section where I wasn't convinced I was going to be dead in a couple seconds but I kept doing my best and somehow I managed to stay alive even with that suppressor keeping my nose in the dirt and the man hacks grenades and pushing soldiers trying to encourage me to get up and run this was an incredibly stressful fight but I managed to pull through and it was just a fantastic feeling this is absolutely top tier encounter design the kind that I've hardly seen matched outside of Metal Gear Solid 3 in half-life 1 so let's talk about an easier and more Universal way to put the player in an exciting and stressful situation the very first map I played was the funny and empowering shakedown by Johnny the first combine encounter in this level has you hiding behind a luggage car where your only cover is physics objects which can be quickly knocked away by combine attacks my cover was constantly degrading meaning that I was heavily motivated to take down these enemies as quickly as I could a task which was made easier by the grenade dropped by this first oblivious combine grunt this was also attempted in that fantastic physics objects fight from escape the apartments that I mentioned earlier you might have even seen it in my footage this wall was designed to break apart if shot enough however in my conversations with khoka of the Maps creator he confessed that he never quite got it right and the wall was way sturdier than he intended still I think it's hard to not fall in love with that John McClane ramshackle firefight feeling you get from hiding behind an absolutely pathetic piece of cover which couldn't possibly hold up to enemy attacks for more than a few seconds it's really exciting stuff I could go on to talk about lighting and visual design in VR the way that the 3d puzzles can be used at pacing the maps emerging gameplay VR narrative design exploration resin and ammo placement or of course horror elements but I think I'll leave that for you all to discover as you play through these maps for yourself and get to see some of this stuff with your own two eyes in the meantime I just want to give thanks to the half-life Alex modding discord once again for creating this contest and motivating so many of these creators to really bring their best foot forward and resultantly giving us an absolute wealth of examples to draw from when talking about half-life Alex's design in particular and VR game design in general I've gotten to know some of these creators a bit more I've even been recruited as a play tester for something I'll talk about more in the future and the passion on display speaks for itself I unfortunately didn't get to mention all of these maps by name but I'm showing off some of my favorite things about them on screen now these guys aren't getting paid for this they're just doing it out of love for the game so they absolutely deserve to get some love back for a lot of these people this contest was their first step in becoming mappers and I can't state clearly enough how excited I am to see what all of this leads to for them some of these guys absolutely have what it takes to be professionals in this department and they're only going to get better as time goes on as I said before halflife alex is the gift that keeps on giving [Music] [Music]

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 36,099

Keywords: half, life, alyx, modding, mapping, custom, levels, content, analysis, review, explained, discussion, game, design, valve, hammer, editor, sdk, source, source 2, discord, server, stop, reading, my, tags, I know, im, liberal, with, them, steam, workshop

Id: VNil-WayMTw

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020