On Monday, November 9, 1998, at about four o'clock in the usual office complex, somewhere in Seattle, a man in a blue shirt picks up the mount. He holds her with both hands and stands in the pose to attack. This is followed by a savory blow to the celestial head. Loaded with play money from “Monopoly” and clockwork toys with characters from South Park, piñata falls to the floor. Under the glee of the crowd, the crab is finished off by another person. This is Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, the founders of Valve Software, celebrating the release of their first half-life game for replication.

On Thursday, October 14, 2004, at 12:15 pm, after much persuasion of the crowd to destroy the target, the ceremony is repeated earlier. This time, Gabe in red polo is defending himself against a scanner attack from Half-Life 2. The screenplay for Mari Leidlow, the scriptwriter of the game, performs the control strikes for the pieces of pinata hanging on a string. On the "gold" came the second game of the series.
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Between these dates - almost six years. About delaying any development time likes to joke and Valve itself. The official wiki has a Valve Time page with a fun table full of comic inconsistencies. Any promise - from minutes to months - easily turns into hours and years.

Not an exception Half-Life 2: the game has been in development for almost 6 years. By the standards of the gaming industry - this is the era. For six years, game consoles have time to update once. How was it possible to tighten everything up and disrupt the release period again?

1999 year

The original Half-Life was released at the end of 1998 and was named the game of the year more than 50 times. Half-Life was sold in millions. She changed the perception of the genre of first-person shooters: it was no longer interactive rooms with enemies, but at least some kind of whole story. Half-Life gave out its plot without cut scenes, completely from the position of the silent protagonist. The download maps stitched by screens today are ridiculous, but then this was astonishing.

In Valve, there was no doubt: there must be a sequel. Yes, it would be possible to quickly concoct some continuation on approximately the same technologies, with the same techniques. Something similar was Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2001), developed by Gearbox Software. These two games speak exactly the same language as Half-Life. Is that the player is not called Gordon Freeman , and Adrian Shepard or Barney Calhoun .

No, the new game should once again change the genre. Therefore, at first, the development team was told that they have an almost unlimited budget and no time pressure. In the iron project management triangle, the two vertices were completely released. Only quality remained.

Repeat the success of the first game was under the guidance of only one of the co-founders. On January 15, 2000, Harrington finished writing his last lines of code in the studio and left Valve. He had long wanted to swim with his wife around the world on his own yacht and decided to make the dream a reality. For Gabe, Newell Harrington was a soul mate. Before Valve, two had worked for Microsoft for many years and understood each other.

The development of the second Half-Life began in June 1999. In the summer, Valve was brainstorming, offering any ideas that could move the genre forward. Perhaps the game should have speech recognition so that the player can communicate with the characters? What if there is a partner system in the game, in which some guard Barney will constantly follow Gordon?

Gradually loomed the principles of building a future masterpiece. In the first game, users liked a lot, but especially noted the storyline with the characters. As Newell recalls, at the time the idea sounded silly, but Valve decided to expand the range of emotions in games. We needed characters that the player would love or hate, which would not leave him indifferent.

Emotions

The characters in the first game evoked a good response: for example, the players really sympathized when the same guard at all levels, Barney, died. The graphics and animation of the time were primitive. For the second part, something new was needed, except opening and closing mouths to the beat of the speech. Emotions had to be transmitted not only by the play of voice actors, but also by the facial expressions of the characters.

In those years, the creation of a computer model of a realistic person was a problem even for the cinema. For video games, the question was even sharper. If the animator can catch the mistake before the release and re-render something, then video game designers need to consider everything in advance.

Ken Birdwell, who worked on Valve technology for a while, learned from Ken Pearlin, a computer science professor at New York University. Perlin was one of the leading experts in the field of computer graphics: for the film “ Tron ” he developed the Perlin noise algorithm. Valve was interested in the development of Perlin in the field of facial animation .

A person must not demonstrate impossible movements. One of the first experiments of facial animation of 1974 suffers with this. A real person cannot bend his face like a bunch of triangles.


Birdwell stumbled upon the work of the psychologist Paul Ekman , a specialist in facial expressions for law enforcement officials and lawyers. Later Ekman was a consultant to the TV series " Lie to Me ."

In the seventies, Ekman was looking for a way to diagnose mental illness on facial expressions. And for this he needed a map of people's emotional states. The researcher has developed a set of about 40 different "units of facial action" - simple emotions of the level of raised eyebrows, gathered at the point of the lips, wide-open mouth, and so on. In addition to the clinical descriptions of how each of the emotions looks, he wrote the rules for how they fit together.


From the upper left corner clockwise: rage, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise.

As it turned out, if you collect all these rules of the muscles in the code and pull on the character's head, the face in the game will never make impossible movements.


Emotions Alix Vance in the demo for E3 2002.

To create scenes with facial expressions, movements of skeletal animation and synchronization of lip movement in Valve created the Faceposer tool. Today it is the standard Source engine SDK tool.

Physics

Not only characters should be alive, but the whole world of Half-Life 2. The times when interactivity was limited to pressing the buttons of a vending machine and flushing toilets in the past. At the stage of collecting ideas, Valve decided to use AI, the physics engine, and the card design itself to create interactivity. In the sequel, the player wanted to provide freedom of interaction with objects. Scenarios of the level “to raise the radiator and as a shield to defend them from enemies” quickly appeared.

You shouldn't think that, before Valve, there were no attempts to add physical interaction to the game. Bold experiments were, albeit not always successful. For example, “physics” was in the 1998 Trespasser game. Critics scolded senselessly complex physics engine and bugs.


In Valve, they wanted to add "physics" outside the scripted scenes - such interactions that would assert about the involvement of the person behind the keyboard and mouse in the game world, which would be used in the gameplay. They wanted to turn the usual level into a playground, where any task has several solutions with object manipulation.

No other third-party product was suitable for what was conceived in Valve. By the end of the summer of 1999, the need to write their own game engine did not raise questions. And even then it was clear that it would take at least three years to develop a game with a new engine. It was necessary to write a new network code (with "physics", working in multiplayer), new forms of AI, improve sound processing, raise the level of graphics.

The experimental Source engine programmed from the GoldSrc programmers added new functions, a physical interaction code licensed from the small German company Ipion Virtual Physics (later purchased by Havok), and improved the graphic component.

Plot searches

The first and second games are significantly different in scope. Speech is not about length, but environment and described events. The first part is not at all interested in what is happening outside the walls of the Black Mesa research complex. In the end, the player finds himself in the bizarre marginal world of Zen, but most of the game is all the same corridors as in the predecessors of the mid-nineties.

In Half-Life 2, they wanted to create a set of diverse gaming environments. This is not just some kind of premises and laboratories, but something global. At first, the writers wanted to teleport Gordon from the planet to the planet, where he would destroy the hordes of Xena aliens from the first game. The idea was dropped - between the levels need a sequence.

The action moved to the Earth, captured by the Alliance, a paramilitary totalitarian alien empire. How much time has passed between the actions of the first and second parts, the player is not informed. To prepare for creating realistic landscapes and textures, more than 50 thousand photographs were taken in the USA and Europe.



In the final scenario, the starting and ending point of Gordon's journey is the city. During the development process, it was heavily revised. Some options are located on the East Coast of the United States. The Alliance captured the city, but prefers to recycle its structures and materials, rather than create something from scratch. Huge skyscrapers, dark color palette, gothic architecture, humidity of precipitation and fog, metal, brick and glass - all this disappeared.



Victor Antonov, who was born in Bulgaria, proposed moving the scene of action to the urban neighborhoods of an Eastern European city and its surroundings. The idea went into action. Gradually, the City-17 moved to another point of the globe and found its bright colors. The dystopia from Orwell's novel remained: scanners fly everywhere, and propaganda comes from the screens.


Station City-17.


Nyugati Station, Budapest.

The game was great, even exhaustingly huge. Like the first, it began with a long journey by train, during which Gordon was introduced into the course of what was happening. From the windows of the car, the player observes the dangers of the Wastes. Upon arrival at the walled City-17, Gordon wanders for a long time and studies his surroundings, stumbles upon Dr. Isaac Kleiner's laboratory. Teleport knocks, Freeman in a hurry leaves the city.

After traveling through the Wastes, Gordon comes to Ravenholm. This is followed by a landfill, Eli Maxwell with his robot-foot, which gives Gordon a gravitational cannon. Freeman goes to the ant-lion caves, gets on the train to the prison and arrives at the air exchange station. Next - the Arctic locations, the ship "Borealis", the base "Kraken", the weather control station, the flight to the City-17 by plane, street fighting, the defeat of the Citadel and the Consul.


Map of one of the options script.

Whole fragments and characters either go under the knife, or later appear in the episodes. You can combine not only two locations, but also make one of two people. For example, Eli Vance, father Alix and one of the leaders of the Resistance, is Captain Vance and Eli Maxwell. In the original, Eli Maxwell lives in a scrap yard. Perhaps that is why for the face of Eli they used photos of the nameless homeless person.


The references of some characters. Valve doesn’t use professional models, but hunt for normally-looking people with memorable details in appearance. For example, Isaac Kleiner is an accountant from a company located in the same building as Valve.

TV distribution

However, the above is a long way to the final game. For 2000, the plot was already formed, but mostly on paper: in text descriptions and concept art. Work in a situation where the engine is not really finished, it is difficult.

By the summer of 2001, physical interactions had just earned in the game. Gradually, the engine grew to such an extent that it was possible to make sketches of maps. Inspired by the success of the program part, a small group of level designers made the “Get your free TVs” test level. It was only a frivolous experiment, there were never plans to add it to the game.

Rioting citizens and metrocops arrange street battles. In the process, rioters throw in incendiary bottles with incendiary mixtures, explosions demonstrate the success of the physics engine. Marauders, taking advantage of the panic of the situation, begin to rob shops and shout out a funny remark, which has become the name of the level: “Get your free TVs!”


The only official level screenshot.

In the same 2001, Newell left Half-Life 2 completely and went head over to Steam development - the very Steam that will be released in September 2003 and will terribly annoy users with frequent updates and instability. At the time, Valve did not have an online content distribution system. After each patch of Counter Strike, that part of users that the client did not update fell off for several days.

After seeing the trial card about the theft of consumer electronics, Gabe asked developers to prototype some gameplay for internal needs: assess the feasibility of the project and demonstrate to the rest of the world at the 2002 Electronic Entertainment Expo. At the end of 2001, the team begins to prepare fragments of what should be ready by May next year.

E3 2002

Although usually Newell is directly involved in the development, he moved away from participating in the creation of the game and worked on Steam. Therefore, he could judge the readiness of the trailer for the E3 2002 as an unbiased arbiter.

In March 2002, at the Game Developers Conference, Gabe first told the world about Steam. In the game world, there was a real Robin Hood, who wanted to do away with the dominance of publishers. According to Newell, most development companies receive around $ 7 per game sold. The online distribution system by type of Steam, promised Gabe, will reduce the cost of an intermediary and bring the developer's income to $ 30 from a copy. Valve talked about plans to keep making physical copies of games, but also to start releasing them on Steam.


Officially, the original video was never released. Thanks to the leaks, there are a few minutes of that trailer.

On arrival with GDC, Newell was shown a demo. The main piece is a nearly 20-minute demonstration of Dr. Kleiner's laboratory with Isaac and Alix himself. A long dialogue showed the emotions that Valve had been working on for so long. The demo showed the future world and how the physical component will work.


Children work in factories. There are no children in the final game - the Alliance has for many years suppressed reproduction with a special field.

Newell's verdict said that although much work had been done, something more fascinating was needed. The characters were interesting, but the dialogue dragged on and quickly bored. Physics was present, but it was impossible to understand what was so revolutionary about it. Half-Life 2 did not appear at E3 2002.


Demonstration of oppression of citizens by the Alliance in the City-17. The citadel is noticeably different from the final version.

The mood in the group sagged. For some time, the developers were in a depressed state, but still straightened out. Next year it was necessary to prepare a new demonstration. Something the situation was reminiscent of autumn 1997, when the development of Half-Life came to a standstill. Then, in Valve, everything started from scratch, but it was worth it.

By September 2002, the new prototype of the future game had taken shape. The level and character design tools improved significantly, which helped the process. There was a buggy ride along the coast of City-17, a meeting with the gazebos, a strider attack in the city. Some of the gameplay was borrowed from the original, and a fragment in the Kleiner lab was cut to minutes. New set of scenes showed Newell.

Only now Gabe was satisfied with the quality of the idea. A full-scale development began with the involvement of tips on the Cabal method of Balv and complete planning of the process. Announcement of the beginning of development for the outside world was not. In October, Newell assembled the staff and set the deadlines: a demonstration at E3 2003 in the spring and an exit at the end of 2003.

Cabal

In her first game, Valve worked out a scheme with "conspiratorial advice," named after the " bonded " council under Charles II. "Bonded" tips come up and throw on paper the design of future levels and plot. Such groups can be convened to resolve any other issues on the game. The same scheme was used for Half-Life 2, except that they took into account that now there are three times more employees in the studio.

Incompleteness of the engine added problems. If for Half-Life, the finished engine was licensed and fashionable beauty was added to it, for the second part the parts that were crucial for the gameplay changed as the game was created. For example, to the beginning of the development of transport did not work. How wide can a break be if the buggy’s behavior is unclear? It was necessary to go on assumptions, but they often turned out to be wrong.

Three independent “indentured” councils took part in the development of Half-Life 2. In each of the three is 4-6 people, about half - the designers, half - programmers. Everyone on the board is a consumer of the rest of the services. Level designers are consumers of the work of programmers, programmers rework the code, so they are customers of level designers. Physically, each of the Cabal groups was seated in one room so that they would not disperse to solve third-grade tasks.

Half-Life "enslaved" advice included an artist and screenwriter. The "three-cab" architecture of the development of Half-Life 2 required that artists and screenwriters become common. In addition to the three tips, three teams appeared: artists, plotters, and sounds.

The first team was engaged in the appearance of monsters, entourage and characters in the early stages of development and artistic decorations, when the finalized levels began to appear. Level design has been completely separated from art design. In other words, “enslaving” councils produced rooms with orange walls. Artists arranged textures and objects.



One of the levels of the prison "Nova Avenue" at the prototype stage and in the final form after taking into account the test results.

Orange cards helped to avoid criticism of the decoration in the stage when criticism of the level design was needed. Another plus: the artists took care of their strength and did not begin to work on the design until the end of playtests. In their work, they had more freedom to experiment with visual styles.

For the passage, the artists were given a successfully tested prototype and style guides. The latter were non-playable levels created exclusively for the demonstration of visual design. The gameplay prototype geometry was implemented in the final models. At the level appeared lighting, auxiliary materials and effects. Additional playtests of the finished level helped to avoid situations when the playtesters refused to walk along the flimsy bridge, which in the orange prototype was a stable structure.

Instead of scripted scenes, Cabal added text stubs. For example, instead of a future scene with an elegant overcoming a cliff, there could be a text: "Someday it will be possible to jump over a cliff in a jeep." Narratives helped with the implementation of some of these stubs: animations and interactions appeared on the levels. In complex scenes with an abundance of plot development (Kleiner's laboratory, Eastern Black Mesa, Bryn's office), the team of plotters became the fourth "enslaving" council.

How to connect the limitations of Cabal groups that make gameplay design with the plot? In the prototype levels, the gameplay changed rapidly, and the plot line had to be maintained. To this end, “bonded” advice was given two pivot points, for example, the exit from City 17 and the end of the journey to the Eastern Black Mes. The plot elements between these points were intentionally left in a vague form. The council worked on level design, guided only by the most important limitations. Then the plot team met with the council and set important elements. For example, it could be reminders of the goal or learning a new game mechanics.

Each of the “bonded” councils had its own strengths and weaknesses, caused by its composition. Someone better left to create puzzles with the physics engine, someone is well placed enemies for battle. Tips shared good ideas. For example, the Ravenholm team was inspired by the advice on the Citadel working on the enhanced version of the gravush gun.

Change of some elements threatened to disturb the order in the area of ​​responsibility of other councils. To prevent this from happening, Cabal was formed on arms, convened from representatives of the three councils. The skill level in the shooter genre in the weapon board ranged from high to low to accommodate all groups of players.

Nevertheless, even this flexible work scenario was not always enough. Ravenholm was originally from the Eastern Black Mesa, but it was moved to suit the strength of the game mechanics of the gravity gun.

At the end of February, Newell with a confident tone from somewhere got the release date accurate to the day: September 30, 2003. The team quickly appreciated the difficulty of meeting this deadline and began to prepare for work in an emergency mode.

E3 2003

How to show the game so that the fans immediately fall in love with it? The original plan included a 30-minute demo in the laboratory. In it, Alix shows new technologies, and then suddenly the laboratory is attacked by the forces of the Alliance. Alix and Gordon are forced to flee. But a few weeks before E3, it was clear that everything that will be shown at the exhibition should be present in the final game.


Demonstration of the game at E3 2003. Interesting comments from someone from the audience after the appearance on the screen of the beauty of physical interactions: “Will it work on my 486th ?”

What the fans saw looked like a few technical demonstrations and a bit of gameplay. Disappeared uncertainty that the successor of the first game does not surpass its success. The game received an exhibition award. However, skeptics questioned whether Valve would have time to finish work by the fall. Their logic is clear: why wasn’t anyone allowed to play a new game at an exhibition if it was about to be ready? Competitors have been saying that such a “physics” is unlikely to be in the game: creating levels for it is a real nightmare.

Disruption

E3 is over, and Valve continued to create a future masterpiece. Even then, the feeling of delay was in the air. He will be noticed much later, when the company began to look for mistakes in past actions. For example, as Newell recalls, it would be time to prepare the localization of dialogs into other languages, but they still have not finished.

In order to be in time, they wanted to give up part of the game. The jet ski did not work, so the levels with him wanted to remove at all. On the plot scenes took a lot of resources, so they also wanted to cut. When Gabe was asked to approve these changes, he said that the team did not need to make compromises. Finally, it became clear that the game will not be released on September 30th.

However, Valve was silent about the timing shifts. On July 29, the publisher of the game Vivendi Universal Game informed the companies selling the games that Half-Life 2 will be released not on September 30, but somewhere during the holidays of 2003. The Internet reacted violently.

Today, Newell, in terms of both body and behavior, is reminiscent of Santa Claus. This is a kind grandfather with a white beard, who responds to letters from children. Unless it is necessary to write not to Great Ustyug, but to an email address. And Gabe does respond sometimes. Most often these are quick one-line answers, although there are detailed comments. So it was and when Valve was a small studio, it remains to this day, when the company grew to the size of a giant.

But in the summer of 2003, Newell almost stopped contacting the community. After spreading the information about the timing, one of the fans wrote Gabe to the post office and asked if these rumors were true. “I hear it the first time,” Newell replied. Fans considered his answer a confirmation of the original term.


Early sketch of the movements in the locations of City-17. In the final game, these fragments were greatly simplified.

August 24, Valve said that the release date has not changed, and the game will be released around the world on September 30. Approximately the same statement was 27 August. In September, fans were waiting for confirmation of their exit to gold. On September 18, one of the fans visited the Valve office and again received the same answer: the game will be released on September 30.

Only on September 23, Valve recognized the state of affairs. A week before the proposed release, the company said that the release date is shifting. New possible date - winter holidays, but did not give a specific date. Over the next few days, Newell refused any interviews and comments about the state of the game.

Fans were amazed. They immediately recalled Valve Team Fortress 2 project. The first demo was shown at E3 1999, but nothing more was heard about the game. And what, Half-Life 2, too, will disappear to nowhere?

Where later Newell explained what really happened. Already by July it was clear that the sequel to Half-Life would not come out by the due date. But the delay was not announced because there was simply no new date. Gabe fell into a stupor and was silent until the very last moment.

On September 30, the manufacturer of video cards ATI (now a division of AMD) scheduled a large party on the occasion of the release of Half-Life 2. According to rumors, ATI paid $ 6 million for the support campaign and other marketing joys. At the party on September 30, ATI took Alcatraz - the very island-prison, the whole. Newell was supposed to appear at the party as part of these commitments.

On September 30, a red polo man boarded a ferry from Pier 41 in San Francisco. At 20:30, Newell went on an improvised scene in prison. This was followed by a speech in favor of ATI and the tiny benchmark of the Source engine. About any Half-Life 2 speech did not go.

Demo shows the work of shaders, High-Dynamic Range and high-quality reflections. On the roof of one of the city levels, d1_trainstation_04 placed guardians of ant-lions, who have absolutely nothing to do in City-17. The demo is done quickly and roughly.


A lot of surprised journalists tried to ask Gabe about a new release date, but he seemed to want to return to his Seattle. “I hate release dates. No matter how hard we try, always a puncture, ”he said in response to one of the questions, went out and caught the first ferry to the mainland at 21:30.

HDR effects in the release version of Half-Life 2 are missing. They appeared in the demo of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, which came out only a year after the original HL2.

Breaking into

Fury of fans and ridiculous demonstration is nothing compared to what fell on Valve in the future.

Something wrong began in September. In unexpected periods of time, the hard disk drive LED blinked on Gabe’s computer. The problem remained after formatting and reinstalling the system. An internal check revealed nothing.

This was followed by events that began to inspire real fears. A copy of the internal letter between Gabe and one of the Valve programmers appeared on the Internet. Nothing special was said there, just some working question on Counter Strike.

After a more detailed study, Newell discovered strange programs on hidden volumes on his machine, and unexpected spikes in activity on the Valve corporate network. At least 13 more cars were infected. Newell rushed around the offices and demanded to disconnect computers from the Internet, tore out the cables from the sockets and turned off the equipment.

On October 2, files stolen from the Valve internal network began to appear on the Internet. There were: the source codes of the Source engine, half-life 2 developments, counter strike and several other games, including abandoned projects. On October 7, a launch version of the game appeared on the Web. It was attended by what was shown at E3 2003. It was clear that Half-Life 2 was still very far from the release.

Users began to make indecent images from game resources, for example, oral sex between Kleiner and Alix. But Valve's reputation and self-esteem especially hurt the comment of Osama Bin Leaker, who issued the files: he said that E3 was a fake. For several months, Newell was hiding the real state of the game, and now anyone could appreciate its “dampness” with their own eyes. Indeed, shown at E3 was in part a Potemkin village.


The scene with the hydra is fully scripted. Monster cut from the final version: it is difficult to fight with him.

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At the other end of the world, in a tiny (slightly more than two thousand people) town of Schönau in Germany, lived with his father, 22-year-old Axel Gembe, a hacker, who was prepared to play a major role in this play. The hacking world tightened the gamer by accident - once he downloaded and installed the sdbot virus program disguised as a Warcraft III key generator. Instead of cleaning the system and forgetting about the Trojan, Gembe reversed the product and studied the principles of its operation.

The program was controlled by an IRC server, and Axel tracked down his operator. Again, instead of passing it to law enforcement agencies, Gembe began asking questions about malware. Gembe created his own malware, stealing CD-keys in order to gain access to the games that the cracker was eager to play. Over time, his Agobot became one of the most dangerous Trojans of that era.

Gembe's criminal activities were fueled not by the desire to make a profit or damage, but only by his passion for video games. Half-Life was among the favorites. Like all her other fans, in 2002, Axel suffered from the absence of any hints of a sequel, which prompted him to break the Valve corporate network.

As the hacker says, everything happened by chance - in the process of scanning the network, Gembe discovered that there was a weak spot behind the external impenetrability: the Valve domain name servers allowed anonymous AXFR requests, thanks to which all subdomains of the name ValveSoftware.com were received.

In the port scan logs, Axel found a server that was not filtered by a firewall outside the Valve network, which belonged to the Tangis company, which was involved in wearable computing devices. It was publicly accessible to write the root of the site to which the attacker unloaded the ASP scripts. Thus, Gembe gained access to the inside of the corporate network from the first attempt. Axel dumped the hashed passwords of users of the system, and thanks to the technical base of the Swiss Higher Technical School Zurich, passwords were quickly restored.

Inspecting the environment, Gembe ran into documents, design requirements, notes on the creation of the game - exactly what he came for. On the other hand, even after weeks about the fact of penetration into Valve, so no one suspected, so the hacker emboldened. On one of the machines, he discovered the source codes of the game, in which he was impatient to play. Due to the performance of the Perforce version management system, uploading did not cause much trouble.


The main menu of Half-Life 2 samples of 2003.

The game, however, did not run on Axel’s computer. He turned off the shaders, which made it much more boring. The hacker remembered that the code had several forks, which Gembe began to check in a row.

Later, Axel will tell you that he did not lay out the code in public access, but only gave it to a friend of his boast for the sake of it, thinking little about the consequences. The acquaintance promised not to allow leaks, but did not keep his word. It was impossible to stop the distribution after getting into file sharing networks.

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Gabe contacted the FBI, but decided to take advantage of a good relationship with the community. On the Half-Life 2 forum (now ValveTime.net), the head of Valve posted the post “I need help from the community” , where I asked the players for information about the hacker. The players reacted ambiguously. Some of them believed that this was all - a beautiful PR campaign, the purpose of which is to demonstrate the demo version of the game. Someone tried to help, but to no avail.


Comparison of one of the leaked cards with its final version. Here you can see what the sketch of the “bonded” board looks like: a lot of empty textures and text instead of events.

On February 15, 2004, the hacker contacted Valve and explained the unintended nature of his actions. Newell suppressed the desire to take the mount and buy a plane ticket. Instead, he began to elicit details. The young man showed a typical cracker mentality: if I don’t have anything for it, then my victim deserved a hack.

At the same time, every hacker has pride in his penetration, which they wanted to use. It was enough just to recognize the commission of unlawful acts recorded on tape. Hacker was “offered” a job at Valve as a security consultant. The interview with the hacker was conducted by Alfred Reynolds, the developer of Counter Strike and Steam.

For forty minutes, the hacker inquired in detail about the details of hacking, network penetration, skills and experience. Gembe, having lost all guilt due to the presence of his idols, told everything. Axel received an invitation for a second "interview", this time on American soil, in Seattle, in the Valve office. But the hacker was detained not in the United States, but in Germany. American attention to the citizen of the country caused suspicion of the German authorities, and they took everything into their own hands.

On the morning of May 7, 2004, Axel was woken up in his own bed by armed men, charged with infiltrating the network of an American corporation and causing damage in excess of $ 250 million. Hacker has been arrested. The trial against Gembe was held in Germany in November 2006, 2.5 years after the leak. The cracker received 2 years of probation. He spent a total of two weeks in prison.

Alpha version

Development continued, although hacking and disrupting the timeline undermined the productive atmosphere. There were unpleasant processes inside Valve: the mood of the developers fell, and the release of the game was hard to imagine in the foreseeable future. In this case, each month of development costing a million dollars. One of the young designers once asked Newell, “Will it kill the company?”

But gradually the moral state went on the mend. If it is unlikely that you can play the leaked game of the September 2003 sample, then in March 2004 all 14 chapters of Half-Life 2 can be passed from beginning to end. The active playtests phase has begun. Played all Valve, even Gabe's father stopped by to evaluate and leave a review.

The first outline of the plot is very different from the resulting one. The game does not begin during a long trip on the train, not on the icebreaker "Borealis", but on a quick introduction, which takes a few minutes. Using a jet ski from the first person looked like a run. His levels were not removed, but replaced by a rusty air boat that was more suitable for Resistance.


Although the scenes shown at E3 2004 rarely differ from the final ones, in the spring of 2004 it was very far from release. It was necessary to carefully balance the density of interaction at each of the points, so that the game was not too boring or intense.

The first passages of playtests revealed significant tempo variations. Often transitions in chapters did not inspire any meaning at all, since one “indentured” council could not predict what would happen to another. From chapter to chapter, the level of complexity varied greatly. Part of the questions, for example, transitions between chapters, were removed quickly. It turned out to be the most difficult to solve the problem of quality throughout the game.

The Cabal Cabal, the “enslaving advice of the enslaving councils”, was convened. A representative of each of the three teams (artists, plotters, sound) and three “enslaving” councils entered it. One week passed daily meetings for team playites and critics. So chapter by chapter, the whole game was dismantled. The result was reviews for each team. How to take into account this information, decided "responsible" council responsible for the chapter.

Weak points were criticized: they were annoying, confused, too harsh, or exhausted. Some of these fragments were too difficult to fix, and they died in the last pass of deleting content. Such amputations were not without pain - at that time, the teams had been working on the game for a long time.

A second pass and further improvements followed. In general, as the development found, solutions in the end are always better than those in the beginning. For example, the levels in the Citadel began to create six weeks before the alpha version, and there were no ideas of the main game element. But prototypes of all levels in the Citadel appeared in just one day, and the first pass was completed in three weeks. At this point, Valve formed a good understanding of which mechanics work best, so Freeman finishes the final chapter with a grav gun.

So, by the end of July, the game was almost ready. The main objectives of the following weeks: fixes the physics system, eliminating bugs and minor level improvements.

Release

In September 2004, Club Zero was formed in Valve. To get into it is not easy, fly - elementary. Entering the club welcome, leaving - booed. A developer ends up in the Club if his bugs are fixed. If new ones are found, he again takes up work.


Track bugs chapter on the coast.

The first candidate for the release went to the publisher, Vivendi, on September 15, 2004, but returned for revision. September 30, after a year of the first torn date, the development is still underway. Ending bugs, and in the foyer of Valve already hanging scanner from papier-mâché. The day of the destruction of this piñata is getting closer.

On the evening of October 13, the final version is ready. After thorough tests, Valve and Vivendi are sure that bugs are over. In Club Zero are all programmers. Employees sent letters with a message about the completion of development. At noon on October 14, Newell stands in a threatening pose in the foyer, tapping with a baton in his left hand on the palm of his right hand.


Gabe studies the damage from the first pinata attack.

Only small detail inspired fear. After more than five years of development costing forty million, hacking the corporate network and leaking source codes, deadlines and a full range of fans' emotions - from joy to disgust - the fact is really insignificant. Studio Valve sued its own publisher.

Vivendi and her daughter Sierra publish games on the Sierra On-Line. New development Valve - a client of Steam - threatened the Asian market, where, due to difficulties with access to the Internet, Internet cafes were strong. Vivendi argued that the contract with Valve applies to including Internet cafes.

Seven Valve lawyers and millions spent on defense played their part: on November 29, the court disagreed with Vivendi’s assertion and sided with Valve. And on April 29, 2005, Valve will part with Sierra. Soon, July 18, the agreement to publish physical copies of games Valve announced Electronic Arts.

Closer to the release of the game Vivendi threatened to delay the release of Half-Life 2 for six months, but this did not happen. November 16, 2004 Half-Life 2 goes on sale and already working at that time Steam.

Today, the success of the second game about Gordon Freeman is forgotten. Critics and game publications gave Half-Life 2 top marks. HL2 earned 39 “Game of the Year” awards. In the 2008 edition of the “Guinness Book of Records” Half-Life 2 takes the position of the most highly rated shooter in the gaming press. On the aggregator of reviews Metacritic among all the games Half-Life 2 sits on the first line by rating with the result of 96%. By 2011, more than 12 million copies of Half-Life had been sold.

Episodes

Gabe appreciated the scale of damage to long periods of emergency operation. Emotional overload and tight deadlines are the quickest way to burnout. Team members can easily lose interest in the process and their productivity drops to zero. At the time of the release of Half-Life 2, Newell said that he would like to work at a quieter pace, in separate episodes.

June 1, 2006, the sequel to the series, Half-Life 2: Episode One. In addition to the development of the storyline and the updated graphics capabilities of the engine, the gameplay places even more emphasis on the emotions of the characters.The emphasis is so strong that it is no longer a game alone. In fact, the player spends all five chapters with Alix Vance. The AI ​​system has changed: it comments on the player’s actions, the items he picks up, gives advice and praises his actions. In this game it is possible not to overload the constant pressure of replicas. Alix as a character lives and experiences emotions.

On October 10, 2007, Half-Life 2: Episode Two is coming out. The Half-Life series has always been a shooter in the corridor, but here the corridor is well expanded. Gordon and Alix travel in large locations. The emphasis on the emotions of the characters brought to the final scene and open for the continuation of the ending. But still, this is a game on about the same engine as Half-Life 2. In some places episodes are ideas carved from the original game.

At this new game series ceased to go. On May 24, 2006, Valve announced plans to release the third episode and a tentative release date - Christmas 2007. More than 10 years have passed since the first announcement, but the game never came out. For 10 years, Valve’s current and former employees have touched on the topic of ending their first game several times. But the concrete promise to release the end of a series or at least a story arch never sounded.

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Valve continued to create unique game mechanics. Portal in 2007 was followed by Portal 2 in 2011. Both games forced the player to go through a series of puzzle rooms with the help of a portal gun. In several fragments of Portal 2, references to the Half-Life universe are given - a connection that is difficult to comprehend.

Portal 2 was the last single-player game Valve. Even in Portal 2, half the content is a cooperative mode. You need to play it together. Day of Defeat: Source, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike: Source and Global Offensive, Dota 2, Left 4 Dead and its sequel - you need a network connection for all these games. There are some substitutions for training or playing alone, but it is advisable to play with people. Half-Life Writer Mark Laidlow Gonefrom Valve in 2016. Maybe Valve just doesn't want to release games for one player? On the other hand, the Steam idea worked. Today it is a distribution system of thousands of games. Even the standard - the idea to download a third-party client of some Origin causes disgust. Regular discounts, a developed community, and, importantly, the ability to create content. Valve encourages players to add hats and other cosmetic items to their multiplayer hits: the company shares a portion of the proceeds from their sale.





A former employee of Microsoft wanted to create a video game, but it turned out that the environment was for launching new applications. From the first years of its existence, his studio produced tools for editing and creating game modifications. After the announcement of the free licensing terms of Unreal Engine 4 and Unity, the question of deductions from the Source 2 engine did not raise questions - it was clear that Valve would make it free.

In fact, Half-Life was a high-tech demonstration of what a masterpiece can be created on the GoldSrc. Half-Life 2 is a master demo of the Source engine. Half-Life 3 will probably require an even more technologically strong platform to justify its existence. Nothing else but a masterpiece, the game is not expected.

It's not even a slightly confused storyline or repeatedly overstated expectations of the audience. What new killer feature should give Half-Life 3 industries? For twelve years, gamedev has gone far ahead, hundreds of first-person shooters have been released. What can be given to single-player shooters, which no one has done before? Looks like Valve has no answer to this question yet.

Based on Gamasutra , Gamespot and the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar.