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    The Final Hours of Half-Life

 
Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - The Microsoft
            Millionaires
Part 3 - The Valve
            Difference
Part 4 - Reassembling
            the Pieces
Part 5 - Squashing the
            Final Bug
The Final Stretch
After E3, the team entered what's affectionately known as "crunch mode," working almost nonstop to deliver the game. "Over the past few months," explains Valve's Robin Walker, "everyone got their turn at being the people who had to spend three days in a room with the door shut getting something done."

Still, everyone at Valve kept pushing the game design onward and upward. "It's hard to judge the point where you decide, 'OK, we have sucked people in,'" explains Newell.

While immersed in a multiplayer game, Robin Walker remembers the crunch days over the past few months.
"Each room needs to have enough cool stuff so players will never say, 'OK, been there, done that, and that's all you're doing for me now.'"

But time was increasingly a consideration. As Ken Birdwell decrees, "Most everything about a game is a decision about time. We have a million features we'd like to get in, but the question is, 'What can we get in before we ship and still make a fun project?'"

When all was said and done, most of the features that Valve wanted to put into Half-Life made it in - but there are a few exceptions. "Pain skins," which would show certain parts of bodies being wounded instead of the entire body, were cut, as was the ability for players to map their actual faces to the multiplayer characters. And then there were the design concepts that just didn't pan out, including one plan to have players actually pilot a helicopter in the game, with controls that Newell once called "just as good as a flight sim." Maybe next time.


Kinetic environments such as this one set Half-Life apart from other 3D shooters.
But the most innovative elements did make the cut, including the talking characters and ultrarealistic environments. As Newell sits at his desk discussing the game, he remembers a wonderful anecdote about his play experience the night before while he was testing. "I was playing this level in the game where you have to escort a scientist through the whole level and make sure he survives because he needs to help operate machinery," he recalls. "I was having a really good time, and all of the sudden, he was killed by an enemy. To be honest, I felt just terrible. I felt guilty. I was engaged with these people on a level where they had been working so hard for me. I felt like I owed them protection." After all the redesigns and reevaluation, Newell was finally getting the gameplay experience he wanted out of the game.

Before Valve would finish the full version Half-Life, it had to complete an OEM release of the product, a special release of the game for shipped by hardware vendors with their video and audio cards. The special release, entitled Day One, would turn out to be one of the best marketing tools Valve could ever hope for - it finally showed the press and the industry what the game was really about. Valve's secret was unveiled in all its glory.

Next: All The Stars Aligned