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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
All the Stars Aligned
By September, Half-Life: Day One - which consisted of a near-final version of the first 20 percent of the game - became the most talked about game on the planet. Although it was never intended for public distribution, it quickly leaked out onto the Internet where gamers hungrily downloaded illegal versions of the game. The demand for the OEM version only grew when many critics and industry luminaries decreed it to be one of the best 3D action games ever.

"Most of the Texas game development community was stunned by the final Half-Life demo," says John Carmack of id.

Multiplayer games are another key element to Half-Life.
"There has never been a game demo that got as big a reaction at id as the Half-Life OEM version. We had some doubts, but it looks like Valve's plan worked."

John Romero at Ion Storm was also hooked on the OEM version: "It was amazing. I played it straight through for 4.5 hours until I finished it. At no time in the game do you feel safe, and that is a key element to hooking the player." Obviously Valve's plan of characters and a dense environment was brought to fruition. The level of realism and detail was second to none.

"I played it straight through for 4.5 hours until I finished it."
- John Romero of Ion Storm on the Half-Life OEM Version.
"From art to design to programming, Half-Life is the best produced and most intelligently designed 3D game I've played," says id co-owner Kevin Cloud. High praise from the design gods Valve first met with for advice. "If games are a combination of programming, art, and design, then Half-Life is a great balance of the three. It defies the prevalent notion that story line and interactive environments are the antithesis of gaming action."


The rich movie-like environments impressed Tim Sweeney at Epic MegaGames, who created the Unreal engine.
Tim Sweeney, who created the Unreal engine, was similarly impressed with Day One. "Half-Life is the first game I've played that really feels like you're playing a movie," he remarks. "Previously, all those interactive movie games felt like watching a slow, poorly made movie and having to stop every 10 seconds to click somewhere on the screen." Sweeney also thinks that Valve has upped the ante for other developers. "They've set a new standard for immersiveness. Other game developers will have to work very hard to compete with them."

For Harrington, the praise is humbling. "I think all developers are self-conscious and self-doubting. But when we started getting a positive reaction from the OEM version, we were really relieved."

If anything, Half-Life had been delayed so long and Valve had kept so much of the game a secret that everyone was surprised at just how good it was. Conceptually, everyone knew that Valve was trying to push the limits of what an action game could be, but no one expected the execution to be so flawless. Walking through the game's environments is like walking into a Wizard-of-Oz-esque universe - vibrant colors, an interesting cast of characters, and most of all, a rich world that feels alive. Half-Life makes other action games seem hollow by comparison. As George Broussard, who helped create Duke Nukem, puts it, "Finally, there are characters more than enemies, and more than guys that just stand around waiting to be killed."


Beyond Day One, Half-Life takes players to strange locations such as this mysterious alien world.
There was no question that the entire industry was lauding Valve's achievement with the OEM version. Still, Valve's work was far from done, and the most monumental task of all was still ahead of it: finishing the full version of the game in time for the Thanksgiving holiday rush. With Valve now locked into a release date, the final month would be the hardest one yet on the project.

By early November, only one major bug stood in Valve's way of bringing Half-Life to store shelves around the world. But in the software world, one showstopper bug is one too many.

Next: Part 5 - Squashing the Final Bug