The other month, I was asked if I wanted to judge the first ever Half-Life Alyx mapping
competition. My response was: wait, you can MAP for that? And I think I was more inclined
to enter a map myself than I was to judge it. Besides, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d
have the time to judge such an unknown entity. If there were 4-5 entries, maybe. But imagine
if there were a dozen entries that all needed rigorous testing and judging!
…there were 23. The competition has ended, the winners, announced. I was initially only
going to play through the winning entries. But then I thought that would be missing what
we’ve got here. I don’t just want to experience the best of what Source 2 is capable of. I
also want to know what an average submission is like. Or even a bad one! What makes for
a good VR map? And what makes for a bad one? I haven’t played through them all yet. I’m
getting there. But in this video I am only going to be covering two of them. Because
just from these two, I have learned so much about mapping for Half-Life Alyx.
Bear in mind that the editor wasn’t even out at the time. You had to download custom
stuff and jump through so many hoops before you could even start mapping that I commend
all 23 mappers for managing anything what so ever.
I will just say, I use teleport because I find it a lot more comfortable in extended
play sessions than smooth move. I don’t know anybody personally who disagrees with
this, but I get a lot of comments hating on teleport. Maybe these people assume that since
smooth movement makes for a better youtube video, it must make for a better VR experience
as well. But I don’t know. I prefer teleport. Onto the maps!
The first one I tried was sox. And it left a great first impression. It’s such a relief
to step out of that first room and to be greeted to an expansive city view and night sky. The
official campaign of Half-Life Alyx was extremely claustrophobic and after a while it made me
pine for freedom. So this sort of scale was appreciated.
The quality of this entry was just a tad below the campaign of Half-Life Alyx, but still
impressively high for such an early community map. Graphically, it looked good, but understandably,
not quite so polished as the official game. And the world was easy to navigate, but at
times was just a bit less readable. An example of this would be the rubble here. I don’t
look at that and immediately assume I can go there. But I still have to try it, just
to find out. And when I discover an invisible wall, it establishes in my mind that I won’t
be able to traverse other bits of the level like this, teaching me the rules of how this
entry should play. It gives me a gun that I must pick up and
load. It has those wooden planks you must pull out to get past. And then it’s time
for the first enemy. And this is a fine example of a tutorial sequence- the zombie starts
a long way away, comes towards you slowly and in a straight line, and is easily visible
against the firey background. I’m not sure how I feel about collecting
resin in a custom level. It feels more like something you’d get in a campaign and I’m
not sure how much time you’d have to use the upgrades in something shorter.
The design of this room is extremely simple, but it holds up to the scrutiny of VR and
had enough interactive objects for me to want to mess about with to distract me from what
I was meant to be doing. Leaving the room, I head off, down into an
alley way. And then the first combine fight starts. If
I’m honest, their placement wasn’t so immediately apparent- you’re put against
3 enemies with only a music que to warn you that a fight has begun.
Do you remember grenades in Half-Life 2? They would explode far sooner- you’d have to
immediately whip out the gravity gun to stand a chance of launching them back at the enemy.
But this game gives you all the time in the world to throw them back, even if you mess
it up several times. I expect VR games to get less forgiving, but right now it encourages
me to interact with this kind of stuff instead of immediately getting out of there because
it’s overwhelming.
-and that’s when it crashed. I tried it again and it crashed in the same
place again, at which point I gave up and assumed the map was broken. What a shame.
But from what I saw, this map was excellent.
The second map I’m covering is the main focus of this video. It’s quite long, and
attempts many of the gameplay elements found in Half-Life Alyx. But it’s where it goes
wrong, or where deviating from the tried and tested approach backfires, that makes this
such an interesting entry. I’m going to sound very critical of it in this video, but
I don’t want you -or its mapper- to take it the wrong way. I’m not trying to tear
this entry to shreds, but rather to try and understand what it attempted to do, and how
it could have done it better. And I think anyone interested in mapping for VR needs
to watch this, as it will save them a lot of time that would otherwise be spent making
the same mistakes themselves. The map is called MODBULLDOGG, and compared
with the first entry I covered, is more like I’d expect from an early map for an experimental
type of game. It’s a good length, with plenty of combat and a few puzzles. But quality throughout
is low. It would take a long time to bring this entry up to a high graphical quality,
but gameplay-wise, a few quick adjustments would be able to massively improve it, since
I feel it makes some big mistakes which should have been quickly spotted in playtesting.
You’re immediately greeted to this text. And I love this kind of stuff. It’s clear
we’re in experimental territory and I love how the mapper’s so straight-up and honest
with the player about it all. It’s all like ‘look, there’s a problem, I’m sorry,
and here’s the solution. Have fun!’ I did as I was told and it wasn’t an issue.
So you step out of the truck into a place that looks more like a Half-Life 2 level in
terms of detail. And then it’s straight off down into the sewers! And then into a
multi-storey carpark which also looks like a place straight out from HL2 Episode 1. In
a game so heavily reliant on props, it’s obvious where the mapper has tried to paint
their own scenery. It’s not so easy to get away with as it was in Half-Life 2. And this
ant-lion nest looks like a tarpaulin with a gooey texture over the top. I mean it’s
fine, it’s to be expected when the game doesn’t have the assets for what you want
to make. But it immediately highlights that this is a less professional, user-made submission.
So these fights against antlions serve as a kind of tutorial, with the difficulty level
being increased on each floor that you pass up through. That’s cool, and it works well.
It’s just unfortunate a multi-storey carpark was chosen for this level, since it causes
a problem that is quite unique to VR. Turning all these corners is not fun to do-
either you turn in person, and end up getting tangled in your headset’s cables. OR you
manually rotate using the joystick, which is what I did. And doing this just feels janky
and fiddly. Add enough corners this close together, connecting enough similar-looking
rooms, all dimly lit and with the tunnel vision from your torch, and it becomes a disorienting
experience. It makes you want to get out of there! It takes a level like this to highlight
that this is a problem in VR, and it makes you appreciate how few corners you need to
turn in the main campaign for Half-Life Alyx in comparison.
It also highlighted how much space these antlions need to get about! I don’t think the low
ceilings of this carpark can be that enjoyable for them either.
A classic thing in mapping is to light up where you’ve got to go- which you can see
is used to good effect with the doorway here. However, this is when stuff like this ends.
The way this next room is designed, it draws your eyes to the partially open lift shaft
and implies you’re supposed to get through here somehow. Especially since you can see
the shotgun on the other side. You can even reach through and pick up the ammunition for
it. But despite all this, you’re not meant to get to it just yet. But as I left this
room I couldn’t help but think I had left behind a weapon I was supposed to have picked
up. And then it’s onto another stairwell you
have to go around and round and round, getting tangled up in cables as you go.
There’s something thrilling about eerie stuff like this in VR. I’m kind of half
expecting him to blink or to jolted to life. But thankfully, he didn’t. Cos I would have
probably shat myself. And then guess what! It’s around and round
and round again, only this time, leaping between spikey, low-detail user-generated surfaces.
To give it credit, it’s actually pretty fun. It’s just a weird mix of cutting edge,
and the kind of mapping techniques I remember seeing 15 years ago.
Then you go through a series of apartments. And they’re much darker than they need to
be. Remember, it’s daylight outside! And yet I’m stuck in here, using my torch to
find my way. There was some fun gameplay through these sections as I used the shotgun to blast
zombies and headcrabs. But I think what happened here was that the
mapper designed an apartment, then to save time, copy-pasted it 4 or 5 times to extend
the length of the level. It’s just that he didn’t bother adding unique stuff to
find in each, so it ended up feeling like wasted space. Plus, with the number of enemies
here, I got dangerously close to running out of ammunition. Half-Life Alyx itself is a
game about scavenging, I’m used to being low on ammunition. But normally, you can find
at least something to use if you take the time to search drawers and the like. But there
was nothing to find here- aside from some extremely dodgy clipping on these fridges.
Having your hand pass through a handle in VR is a SIN!
Any way, you reach this laser wall and it’s quite obvious you need to follow the wiring
back around to a control panel. I was surprised when the door opened to reveal an enemy…
but I think for once, he was even more surprised than I was!
So here’s something that’s SIMPLE, but not exactly intuitive or obvious the first
time you see it. It’s clear the cable goes into this control panel. Normally in the game
you can hack this kind of thing on the end. But not in this example.
So I was close to retracing my steps, but decided to take a closer look at the control
panel to see if there was something to pull or press, even though I couldn’t see anything
lit up. And it turns out the hacking minigame carries on through this thing.
And I’m not stupid- I still remember that blue laser grid and that this has something
to do with it. But when you complete a puzzle and it isn’t made immediately obvious what
has changed, you do begin to question yourself. Is there another bit of the puzzle? Is there
something else to press in this room before moving on? And so on. I returned to the laser
grid and fortunately, had managed to turn it off.
I’ll tell you what- it was a relief to get my hands on some more ammunition! And so much
at that. What wasn’t so needed was this weapon upgrade
station. There just hasn’t been enough resin in this level to be able to afford anything
decent. The pistol came with the laser sight. Had there been a spare 40 resin or so lying
about I’d have appreciated the opportunity to choose the upgrades I cared most about,
like the automatic reloaders or something. But as it was, this was a missed opportunity.
In fact, maybe I was the one missing the opportunities. Maybe I was supposed to have found a way to
get these gun turrets. And maybe had I pulled these levers in this dark corner here, there
might have been a load of resin inside. In which case… my bad.
As it was I just headed through to the next stage of the level.
Now THIS was a fight! In Half-Life Alyx you typically only fight 2-3 enemies at once.
But there are about 6 of them here. And you don’t have that much ammunition. And they’re
such bullet sponges. Still, there was a good amount of cover and space to run about and
I had a good time in this fight. The pathfinding seemed a bit broken, as enemies
didn’t want to move that much. So I’m not sure how one had apparently managed to
get around behind me like this. Manhacks are the one time I consider broken
pathfinding to be an improvement! Even with Source 2 and its highly detailed
props, glitches can happen. I currently have no experience with mapping for it so am unable
to say how easy it is to avoid stuff like this. But it’s highly distracting in VR
and a sign that it’s an amateurish level. I appreciate the occasional puzzle that’s
thrown in as it helps add variety to the experience and to slow the pace down after periods of
running and shooting. VR needs breaks such as these. And I’m beginning to imagine that
viewing a shaky VR video like this, you’re happy to view a slower paced section like
this once in a while as well! You know something’s got to happen in a
room as elaborate as this- it doesn’t immediately drop you in a fight, but instead lets you
explore it and learn what it’s all about first.
Here’s something I almost missed- a machine gun’s waiting for you inside that box. If
it hadn’t been for the machine gun ammunition sat around it I don’t think I’d have noticed
it sat inside. And maybe this map’s maker is just very tall, because this box is up
so high, if I was 5 foot 6 I wouldn’t have been able to see inside it.
Here’s an example of unintuitive placement. Connecting the battery in here, it activates
the lever to the right of it that I tried earlier. But since there are cables trailing
out to the left, I assume it has something to do with that and it leads me off on a hunt
for something that doesn’t exist. Had the battery panel been put on the OTHER side of
the lever, with nothing else that side of it, it would have been more natural to check
the lever. Sure, it’s got a green light next to it to show you can pull it now. But
it wasn’t visible, nor my focus, when placing the battery in the first place.
Pulling this activated some kind of animation in the far corner of the room, which I noticed.
So I walked towards it AND STRAIGHT INTO A TRAP!
This section made me realise that the Valve-made levels for Half-Life Alyx would always have
you in a position with good cover before getting into a fight. This is more important in VR
than it is in normal games because moving about in VR takes more effort. If you’re
trying to get to cover, you’re not too interested in shooting back at the enemies- because you’re
trying to get to cover! Which, in this case, involves sprinting back to the control panels
again. And then, just when I think it’s safe, another
door opens and a huge super-armoured combine steps out and it’s back to the control panels
again.
And then it’s onto the roof top. A fitting scene for the finale to take place. And how
nice it is to be somewhere that’s well-lit! And it’s weird to see the Citadel with so
little haze shrouding its lower levels.
It’s quite nice to mix the combat up by placing lots of thin beams between you and
the enemies. Combine in Half-Life Alyx deal huge damage so fights generally comprise of
90% hiding away, and 10% pumping bullets into them before they open fire again. But you
can’t open fire when you’ve got to carefully aim between cracks to conserve ammunition.
Like I said before, it’s amazing, the difference this open area makes. It feels like this map’s
‘budget’ went into this final sequence and placing all the distant details. I can
even see the playground from the start down there, which helps me to get my bearings.
But what a missed opportunity!
Stepping out of the truck at the start, you’re looking the wrong way and have no need to
look back at the building behind you. Had you started THIS side of the park, you would
have begun facing this building you ultimately reach, which tells a coherent story. OR, better
still, if this building and the citadel had been visible and in the same direction and
there would have been no confusion as to the direction you were meant to be headed. And
it makes the level into a story, rather than just a series of disconnected rooms you have
to navigate.
So it took me a while to figure out what to do here. It’s a multitool puzzle which involves
stooping over and running it along the ground. Which is more effort than it looks in VR!
This would be a criticism I have with the game’s mechanics- it would be nice if you
didn’t have to get quite so close to surfaces you’re trying to scan, which I guess is
why they’re usually within arm’s reach without having to stoop over.
And then, again, it isn’t obvious what you’re supposed to do since you’ve just been lead
towards these control panels. But you’re actually meant to return back to the start
of the puzzle and to twist this thing. At which point I was like ‘oh I’m meant
to shoot these!’ …but apparently not.
But you are! It just takes 3 shots each. Again, a bit unintuitive in a game that forces you
to conserve your ammunition. And then, in another cruel twist, after the
last of these is destroyed, without warning it spawns a load of enemies behind you. You
have good cover but they quickly encroach on your position from several angles.
And then I was instakilled by a setpiece.
And then I had to replay this whole section from this point.
The second time I was killed by an enemy with an endless magazine.
But the third time, I did it!
It looked like it formed a bridge across to the next building, but I couldn’t figure
out how to get up there. Or even if all of the enemies had been killed.
And that was the end.
…OR IS IT?!
No, definitely the end.
So a very interesting dive into workshop content for Half-Life Alyx. Even though I’ve pointed
out its many flaws, this map was an enjoyable experience. It makes me excited to dabble
with my own creations, since now I think I appreciate interesting cover and fight locations
a lot more, knowing what works and- more importantly- what doesn’t. Thank you to the mappers involved
in this competition. And from how critical I’ve been in this video… maybe it’s
just as well that I wasn’t a judge.