Game development can be notoriously complicated. That wasn’t necessarily the case for Half Life: Alyx, though, with one of Valve’s longest-running designers outlining the basic philosophy that made the game the best showcase for VR to date.
Robin Walker, best known for his work on Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2, explained how the design process for Half-Life: Alyx was deceptively straightforward. Because Alyx wasn’t built up to be a live service, the focus was more on ensuring the moment-to-moment player experience was continually fresh.
In an interview with Road to VR, Walker said Valve worked on this through a room-by-room basis. “When we build Half-Life, we just build it one piece at a time … conceptually one ‘room’ at a time,” he said. “And for each room a group of people sit there and they think: ‘what happens in this room that hasn’t happened in any of the previous rooms and fits into where we’re going with the next room?”
“And then once you’re finished that process and you’re happy with it, you put it in front of some playtesters and see what happens, and you iterate on it, and then you go onto the next room,” Walker reportedly said. “And you just do that until you’ve built the whole game.”
Each room would then be playtested by a group, and the developers would iterate on that feedback. It’s more like creating a series of mini-experiences from one room to the next, rather than finding ways to connect players to set pieces or working backwards by iterating on the content players engage with the most.
“Where in Half-Life 2 we might build a room—and there might be a vent on one side and some stuff on a bench or something – maybe 75% or 80% of players run through the room [without looking at anything] and 5 to 10% of the players explore one thing and another 5% of players explore another thing,” Walker said. “But when we watched [players in] VR early on it was like ‘Oh my god, everyone looks at the vent, everyone pokes their head under the desk’ – then it became ‘Oh great, now we can afford to put all that budget there’.”
Walker has more comments on the development process and the amount of iterations Valve did on Alyx, and you should definitely check those out. He doesn’t really touch a lot on the game’s greatest success, which is how good it feels to control, but that’s something that’s best experienced for yourself.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/03/half-life-alyx-the-kotaku-review/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/03/half-life-alyx-review-410×231.png” title=”Half-Life: Alyx: The Kotaku Review” excerpt=”Mere minutes into Half-Life: Alyx, I encountered a Strider. These behemoths cast ominous shadows on all who dare pass beneath them, their spindly legs and jagged haunches forming a silhouette of sheer threat. I gazed up at the Strider in awe. I could practically feel the wind buffet my face as it lumbered past the balcony I stood on. Then I raised both my hands high and flipped it off.”]
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/03/half-life-alyx-is-still-good-even-while-sitting-in-a-chair/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/qba0md8vr2gvzue5je0w.png” title=”Half-life: Alyx Is Still Good, Even While Sitting In A Chair” excerpt=”Standing in VR is cool. You feel like you are really standing in a virtual world. And for small experiences and mini-games, this is fine. But for something like the new Half-Life: Alyx, standing for hours and hours, plus crouching a lot, can start to make you feel sore and tired. So I just sat down. I recommend it.”]
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