{"id":506,"date":"2019-12-22T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/?guid=25903f54803d55617959a5b5d5d8d8a0"},"modified":"2019-12-22T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T16:00:00","slug":"the-race-to-create-half-life-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/12\/22\/the-race-to-create-half-life-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Race To Create Half-Life 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Half-Life is one of the most revered franchises in the world. Not only did it establish Valve as a premier developer, it redefined player expectations for first-person storytelling, world building, and enemy A.I. Half-Life 2 and its episodic follow-ups continued to push the FPS genre into bold new directions until Half-Life 2: Episode Two released in 2007. After Episode 2\u2019s cliffhanger ending, fans couldn\u2019t wait to experience the climax of Gordon Freeman\u2019s epic struggle against the totalitarian, multidimensional aliens known as the Combine.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re still waiting. (Sort of<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

As Valve\u2019s focus has shifted toward maintaining its digital Steam store and the online game-as-service Dota 2, the Half-Life brand seems to have been abandoned by its creators. Many fans wonder if we\u2019ll ever see another Half-Life game. Others feel that it is time to take matters into their own hands. If Valve isn\u2019t going to make another Half-Life, its fans will.<\/p>\n

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INSIDE PROJECT BOREALIS<\/h2>\n

On August 25, 2017, Half-Life writer and ex-Valve employee Marc Laidlaw wrote a blog post called Epistle 3<\/a>. The post detailed the exploits of a couple of scientists who traveled to the arctic in search of a mysterious ship that had begun to shift in and out of reality. Laidlaw didn\u2019t use the words Half-Life, Gordon Freeman, or Combine in his post, but the inference was clear: This was the outline for the missing episode in the Half-Life series.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was sort of vaguely cryptic, but everyone quickly realized that it was his interpretation of what Half-Life: Episode Three was supposed to be,\u201d says Sam Walton, PR lead for the fan-driven Project Borealis. \u201cThe Half-Life community took that as a signal that Half-Life 3 was probably not going to happen. Like, if the lead writer was happy to publish that kind of thing, maybe the game was never coming out. We had always thought, \u2018Maybe it\u2019s being worked on somewhere behind the scenes.\u2019 But a lot of people saw that post and said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s probably that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But out of disappointment grew a bold idea: Now that fans had an outline for the next Half-Life, maybe they didn\u2019t need to wait for Valve to finally get around to working on the game; they could just do it themselves. Dozens of Half-Life fans started to congregate around the subreddit r\/DreamsofHalfLife3<\/a>, where they talked about making the next Half-Life themselves. The team christened themselves Project Borealis<\/a> (a nod to an Aperture Science research vessel introduced in Half-Life 2: Episode Two), and over the course of the last two years that initial group of fans has grown to over 80 designers \u2013 approximately the same number of developers listed in the credits of Half-Life 2. This eclectic team holds a wide array of interests and specialties and is spread across the U.S., U.K., eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, and South America.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have team members who are currently or have previously worked at triple-A game development studios, including Blizzard and Ubisoft,\u201d says Walton. \u201cOthers have previously contributed to community projects such as Black Mesa or other Half-Life mods. And we have many team members who are currently at university or working for non-game dev organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project Borealis\u2019 scrappy, ad-hoc development team is full of part timers and hobbyists, but it is also run a bit like a commercial game studio. Team members have official job titles, report to team leads, commit to deadlines, and conduct group meetings. Project Borealis even lists open positions on its site and conducts interviews with newcomers before they join the team.<\/p>\n

Over the last two years, this collective of weekend warriors has designed an impressive-looking shooter. Laidlaw\u2019s blog post talked a lot about Half-Life\u2019s story, but was vague on gameplay, which gives Project Borealis a fairly long leash with which to experiment. The team wants to push the envelope a bit and add modern gameplay sensibilities, such as destructible environments, snow vehicles, and new enemies like frostbitten headcrab zombies. At the same time, Project Borealis is committed to making a game that stays faithful to what the series has done before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want this to feel natural,\u201d says Walton. \u201cWe were not going to add aiming down the sights or cover mechanics so it becomes a completely different game. But it\u2019s been more than 10 years since Episode Two, so we\u2019re experimenting with stuff that\u2019s a natural next step. We added a vortex mode to the Gravity Gun, so it can create these kind of tornados with hundreds of physics objects. That kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new bells and whistles in Project Borealis\u2019 Half-Life project are only possible because the team made the controversial decision to move away from Valve\u2019s long-running Source engine. In a surprise move, the team is developing on the Unreal Engine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started the project, everyone\u2019s assumption was that we would use the Source engine,\u201d says Walton. \u201cBut early on, the programming team said, \u2018You know, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good idea. The Source engine is old, it hasn\u2019t been updated in at least five years. It\u2019s not going to be fun to work with.\u2019 Some of the Half-Life community was hesitant about us using Unreal Engine. Like, \u2018Is that gonna feel like Half-Life?\u2019 People have played that game so much that if something feels wrong, they\u2019ll know. So when we decided on Unreal, there was this other group that said, \u2018Well, we\u2019ll do it using Source!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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INSIDE BOREAL ALYPH<\/h2>\n

By day, David Mason is a student studying digital animation at The University of Alabama. By night, he assists with programming, sound design, texture art, and modeling as part of Keep Away From Fire<\/a>\u2019s development community. Mason has been a part of the Half-Life modding community since he was in junior high, so when he was offered the chance to become a design lead on Keep Away From Fire\u2019s effort to develop Half-Life 3 in Source, he jumped at the chance.
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\nKeep Away From Fire\u2019s Half-Life project has the working title Boreal Alyph. Boreal is an obscure word for north and alyph is a corruption of the Yiddish word for time. In turn, \u201cNorthern Time,\u201d is a reference to Marc Laidlaw\u2019s blog post and its story set in the arctic. Unlike Project Borealis, however, the Boreal Alyph team doesn\u2019t see Laidlaw\u2019s outline as gospel.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Laidlaw\u2019s blog post] is kind of just a guideline, you know, a rough draft of our game,\u201d says Mason. \u201cWe\u2019re in this process of constant revision with this project. I\u2019ll be the first to admit our limitations. We don\u2019t have professional experience. A lot of us have never shipped a full product before, and so we\u2019re having to figure out things on the fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boreal Alyph\u2019s version of Half-Life Episode Three takes Gordan Freeman and Alyx Vance to a weather station on a remote island somewhere in northern Russia, but this is just the start of a much larger journey, and players will eventually travel to research stations, coal mines, and mining settlements across the globe. The Boreal Alyph team has put a lot of time into developing its own characters, locations, and narrative arc for this version of Half-Life 3.<\/p>\n

The Boreal Alyph team disputes the idea that their project spun off of Project Borealis\u2019 decision to use Unreal, but one thing is certain: The Boreal Alyph team is committed to using Valve\u2019s Source engine. In fact, the Boreal Alyph team has already worked out a deal with Valve to license the Source Engine for non-commercial use. This means the team can edit the engine\u2019s code, but can\u2019t sell its final product. These types of licensing deals are rare, so many within the Boreal Alyph community feel Valve has given Boreal Alyph its blessing. Using the Source engine has allowed Boreal Alyph to nail the feel of a Half-Life game from day one. Of course, that doesn\u2019t mean development has been entirely smooth.<\/p>\n

\u201cSource is definitely not as user friendly or as well-documented as something modern like Unreal or Unity,\u201d says Mason. \u201cIt gives us a lot of trouble sometimes. For example, graphically, it\u2019s hard to do a lot of modern shading t\u00adechniques, because Source Engine is on DirectX 9, which is very old at this point. It\u2019s a constant fight to see how we can \u00admodernize the graphics in a way that won\u2019t take 20 years or make us pull out all our hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Source engine may be long in the tooth, but the Boreal Alyph team has put it to good use. A small group of programmers have already rewritten the system\u2019s A.I., so Combine soldiers now flank the player, which is not something enemies did in the original games. To date, the team has spent a lot of time on the gunplay and enemy design. One new creature is a medic variant who releases a support drone that flies around the environment and heals fellow enemy soldiers. The Boreal Alyph team is also tinkering with a heavy Combine unit who has a massive health pool and carries a chain gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are definitely trying to emulate the style of Half-Life 2,\u201d says Mason. \u201cWe\u2019re planning our own vehicle section, and the beginning of the game is supposed to be a lot like Ravenholm \u2013 the horror section from Half-Life 2. We\u2019re kind of recreating that, but in a style similar to The Thing or Metro 2033. You\u2019re in this frozen wasteland, and you\u2019re stranded, and everything\u2019s going to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

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SLOW AND STEADY TOWARD THE FINISH LINE<\/h2>\n

Both Project Borealis and Boreal Alyph started with the noble desire to give fans like themselves the experience they had been craving for over a decade. In the process, these collectives have learned game development is much harder than it looks. In some ways, both groups have faced challenges that even commercial game studios don\u2019t have to worry about.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this distributed, completely volunteer group of people, and we somehow have to pull them together so we can actually get this game done,\u201d says Walton. \u201cI think that\u2019s definitely the biggest challenge for us. We\u2019ve got people who know Half-Life inside-out and Unreal Engine inside-out. The technical side of things is fairly there, but figuring out the organizational aspect, keeping things together, that\u2019s probably the biggest challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a unique beast doing business over the internet when people are spread out over every time zone from Pacific U.S. time to Moscow time,\u201d echoes Mason. \u201cPeople have jobs and school, and they\u2019re not physically in the same location. It just doesn\u2019t work the same as a traditional, physical studio environment where people actually go in and meet each other every day. And they\u2019re paid! That\u2019s a huge motivator. You just kind of have to take a much more hands-off, slow-and-steady approach to development.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Project Borealis and Boreal Alyph rely on the fact that their teams want to work on these projects in their free time. When life\u2019s circumstances change, sometimes those desires change. Commitment is a huge problem for both communities. Members of Keep Away From Fire have even experienced a phenomenon they\u2019ve dubbed the \u201cBoreal Alyph curse,\u201d because it seems like the most committed members of the team continue to get hired away by commercial game-development studios and into paid positions where they can no longer work on a Half-Life fan project.<\/p>\n

Given all of the factors that feed into the development of these community-driven projects, it\u2019s a miracle both Project Borealis and Boreal Alyph have progressed as far as they have. Both teams have built robust playable builds that look like professional game projects. Still, the road to the finish line is paved with a number of unconquered challenges, and neither group is willing to commit to a release date. So, for the moment, both groups of junior designers are slowly plugging away on their dream game. A legion of Half-Life fans eagerly await the release of the next Half-Life game, and these fan projects might be their greatest hope.<\/p>\n

After all, who else is going to make Half-Life 3?<\/p>\n

\n

This article originally appeared in issue 318<\/a> of Game Informer Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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