Development InfoGame: Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Engine: Source SDK Genre: Puzzle Adventure Development Time: 4 Weeks Game Mode: Single-player Mission |
Responsibilities
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Level Overview
Overview
The Murdered Prospekt is a stand-alone player level in Half-life 2 that takes place after Half-life 2: Episode One and prior to Half-life 2: Episode Two. In this level, G-man tasks Gordon Freeman to solve a crime in order to win his freedom.
This level is inspired by the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney [1] and Layton Brothers: Mystery Room [2] puzzle adventure games. The level revolves around solving a murder mystery by investigating a crime scene and confronting the three suspects about their alibis and their actions as they pertain to the crime. Players have the ability to present evidence from their inventory against contradictions of the witness testimony in order to uncover the truth and the real killer.
Design Goals
Single Player Mission/ Level Play Time: ~15minutes (Depending on Player's reading speed)
The Murdered Prospekt is a stand-alone player level in Half-life 2 that takes place after Half-life 2: Episode One and prior to Half-life 2: Episode Two. In this level, G-man tasks Gordon Freeman to solve a crime in order to win his freedom.
This level is inspired by the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney [1] and Layton Brothers: Mystery Room [2] puzzle adventure games. The level revolves around solving a murder mystery by investigating a crime scene and confronting the three suspects about their alibis and their actions as they pertain to the crime. Players have the ability to present evidence from their inventory against contradictions of the witness testimony in order to uncover the truth and the real killer.
Design Goals
- Create a level where players have a new experience of investigating the world for clues to solve a crime
- Act as judge, jury, and executioner in a murder mystery adventure
- Organize the level to take place within the Half-Life 2 universe and set between Episode One and Episode Two
- Create and design a new inventory system to work synonymous with an interrogation dialogue system
Single Player Mission/ Level Play Time: ~15minutes (Depending on Player's reading speed)
Map Layout
Environment
The Crime Scene
The design goals for this scene were to make sure to tell a story that the player understands when they first walk into the room. The body is lying on the ground with blood by the head and the railing is broken with pieces strewn around the floor. This first scene aims to tell the player that the victim on the ground fell from the second floor to the first because of the broken railing. Another design goal was the elevator in the background. The level loops around with stairs and an elevator to travel between two floors. To keep the gameplay fluid and prevent player backtracking, the elevator was added during an early iteration to ease the player between floors with smooth movement.
A light in the oFfice
Lights played a key part in telling the atmosphere of the level. Originally, the level aimed to be bright so that the player could see where the clues are and not feel as if they are in danger. However, playtesting feedback suggested that the world become darker because murder mystery levels are usually associated with a much darker atmosphere and darker shadows to emphasize suspense. With the darkening of the lights, clues are highlighted with smaller, brighter and more active lights. The light in this scene flickers when the player enters the room, immediately drawing their eye to the movement.
Murder Mystery Story
The story was very important for this level and the dialogue went through several edits. The dialogue needed to be short to keep the player’s attention as well as describe the relationship between each NPC as they pertain to the murder. There were also difficulties of the four Source SDK text channels fighting one another to be displayed on the screen and with a 256 character limit. The result was each NPC would say three to six lines of dialogue regarding their opinion of the clue presented to them by the player. Players could return, present the same clue, and have the NPC repeat their testimony as often as needed.
Final Confrontation
The final confrontation with G-man summed up the entire mystery. The player’s objective is to present clues to G-man in the proper order that the murder occurred. If the player presents the incorrect item, the players are hit with one point of damage. Should the player’s health dwindle to zero, they respawn at the door prior to the final confrontation due to the autosave. This screenshot also displays the final iteration of the inventory system, which was the second main focus of the level.
Inventory System
Inventory System
Players needed to be able see their inventory when they were going to present the clues to the witnesses during interrogation. There were difficulties with fighting text channels, and they resulted in changing the whole system to triggers of overlays enabling and disabling whenever the player was in the same room as the NPC they were interrogating. Since there can only be one overlay displayed at a time, having numerous overlays update if the player were to pick up and drop an item at whim were causing too many problems and over complicating the system. The result reminds the player of what button spawn what item and what those items are. Since the inventory overlay had to be small and take up minimum room on the play screen, the Evidence Room was added to accommodate all the missing item description text.
Evidence Room
Due to the limited text channels of Source SDK, there were a
number of challenges in giving the player dialogue and clue descriptions to
remember. Problems occurred with text channels fighting over one another
to display on the screen at the same time. Initially, it would be up to the player to
recall the descriptions of each item. However, upon playtesting feedback,
players desired a way to recall the information. One iteration attempt was
displaying overlays per item, but it created problems in spawning items from
the inventory and the player being stuck in certain overlay screens. The result
and final iteration was adding an evidence room into the level where players
could return and click on the items to recall their descriptions and where the
player found them. The clues only appear in the evidence room after the player
has picked them up from other parts of the map.
Post Mortem
WHat Went Well |
Challenges |
What I learned |
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