Page 12: The Cabals Move In

John Guthrie at work in his cabal.

The immense scope of City 17 meant that no one designer could oversee the entire game. So, as was the case with Half-Life, Valve employed its "cabal" design process, in which small design hives tackled different parts of the city. For Half-Life 2, there were three main cabals of up to six designers. Each cabal worked in a large office that looked a bit like the bridge of a submarine. John Guthrie's cabal--which worked on the game's canal section and Ravenholm, a zombie-infested part of town--consisted of his longtime friend Steve Bond (they first started working together at age 16), Dario Casali, and Tom Leonard. "I actually see these guys more than I do my girlfriend," Guthrie jokes. On second thought, maybe he isn't joking.

Before designing levels the cabals worked on pencil drawings for level layout like these sequences for Ravenholm.

Potential story spoiler or just a concept thrown around during the development process? You be the judge.

The cabals designed levels much like they designed levels for Half-Life, with one notable exception: Level design was separated from art for Half-Life 2. In other words, the designers first fleshed out the gameplay before the artists began to gussy up the levels with beautiful textures. This new production pipeline let the cabals rapidly create new content. (The first pass at a map was called an "orange map" because all the level textures would be the same shade of orange). The cabals even designed the scripted elements of the game using simple text bubbles that would pop up on screen. So in the first pass at a level, the cabal might put in a text bubble that said, "One day you'll be able to drive a jeep and jump this ramp." This allowed the team to perfect the gameplay and work out story issues like pacing long before an artist touched the level. The orange maps even helped the cabals when it came to designing the physics of the gameplay." Before you could hoist up cars and drop them on enemies, you were hoisting up orange cubes," Guthrie says.

Integrating vehicles into gameplay proved a challenge.

By early 2003, the cabals were cranking away on game design, working on countless levels and collaborating with Laidlaw to make sure all the levels would fit into the larger storyline. Still, there were struggles during the early days of production. Namely, the core game technology was unstable and unfinished. Unlike Half-Life's development, in which Valve licensed the fully working Quake engine and built a game on top of it, Half-Life 2's development employed the Valve-created Source engine, which was a constant work in progress. In-game vehicles, for instance, weren't working when the cabals first started the design. That led to much frustration. "We needed levels built for vehicles but we didn't know how the vehicles would work," Newell says. "For instance, we didn't know how high off the ground the buggy could bounce." But since vehicles played a major role in the game, the cabals had to make assumptions about how they'd work. "Unfortunately, those assumptions often turned out to be wrong," Newell says.

Orange maps were created for all the levels before the artists added textures.

Despite these early concerns, Newell had a meeting late in late February of 2003 to discuss the state of the project with Yahn Bernier and Stelly. Newell still planned to show the game at E3 and ship it later in the year. But now he wanted to get more precise. He looked at the schedule and made a bold prediction: The game could be finished in September. Then his calculus got even more specific: The game would ship on September 30, 2003. While he won't confirm it, many have speculated that Newell set such an aggressive target to make sure the team stayed motivated during the summer. He maintains that when he made the September 30 decision, he fully believed the game could be done by that date.

Newell next announced the ambitious date to the team. Many of them were surprised by Newell's aggressive target. "The good news was that we actually had a ship date--a date to look forward to," Guthrie says. But then the harsh reality set in: There would be no room for error. In fact, there would hardly be any room for sleep. "I figured there were enough hours left between where we were in February and where we needed to be in September to finish the game," Guthrie says. "But I wasn't exactly looking forward to using all those hours to hit that date."

The Half-Life 2 team was about to enter a very serious crunch mode--a period of intense development that would last until the game was finished, hopefully in mid-September. The days of working on a project with no time pressure and an unlimited budget were a distant memory. Newell had now fast-tracked the game's release. It was going to be a very stressful summer at Valve.