HALF LIFE 2 LEVEL
CONTEXT: Student project in 4th semester
GENRE: Stealth Adventure
ENGINE: Hammer Editor
TOOLS: Hammer Editor
TIME FRAME: 5 weeks
TEAM SIZE: 3 Artists
PLATFORM: PC
WHAT IS HALF LIFE 2 LEVEL:
This project was developed as a part of the 'level design' seminar. The given task was to create a level with the Hammer Editor that could be integrated into the story of Half Life 2. The level starts at the beginning of the actual game. Here's the original backstory:
About twenty years after the events in Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman is awakened from his stasis chamber by the G-Man. He tells him that he is once again "the right man in the wrong place" and that he has a new job to do. The image changes to a moving train arriving in City 17. From this point on, the player controls the protagonist Gordon. Soon Gordon arouses the interest of the Combine and has to flee. In the original story, he climbs into an open window on a rooftop, gets trapped, and is rescued by Alyx. Our Half Life 2 level starts at the same place, but the open window is closed by wooden planks so Gordon has to take another way. On the run, he falls from the roof, lands in a container and passes out. How the story continues from this point on is shown by stages 1 - 12 on the level design map.
MY ROLE:
My main role was the level design of the Half Life 2 Level. I was responsible for the environment design, the narrative and the dialogs for the cutscenes.
LEVEL DESIGN:
1
The player wakes up in a locked container. He looks for a screwdriver to open the grate and leaves the container.
2
He sees that there are combine soldiers patrolling the streets and goes into an alley. There he meets a man from the resistance, through whom he gets to know that Alyx has been captured. To save her, he must take the path through the cellar.
3
Arrived in the cellar, the player stands in front of a locked door but notices red light behind a stack of boxes. The light comes from a hidden shaft, which the player takes to move on.
4
In the following room he looks for a key through which he opens a door and gets into the next corridor.
5
The player observes a combine soldier through the shaft who accidentally kicked a bust from a socket, which closes a secret path. This is a hint which the player will recognize later.
6
The player continues to crawl through the shaft and watches a combine soldier interrogating a man.
7
He climbs out of the shaft and has arrived in a corridor. A combine soldier is standing in front of the door. The player turns on the radio and attracts him to leave the door so that he can move on to the following room.
8
There are two switches in this room. If he presses the switch on the wall, the light in the interrogation room turns on, which is supposed to scare the player. The second switch tortures the interrogated person on the chair with loud music and strobe light.
9
In the following room, the player observes another brutal interrogation.
10
The player must sneak to a combine soldier to steal the key and open the next door.
11
After walking up the stairs the player ends up in an office. There is an empty socket that looks like the one in part 5. In the toilets beside the office, he finds a bust. After placing it on the socket a secret passage opens.
12
The player gets to the roof of the building and enters the dome. There he finds Alyx and frees her from the cage.
PLAYTHROUGH:
© 2022 Youssef Jammoul
