Half-Life

Half-Life is a first-person shooter game developed by Valve Software and published by Sierra On-Line inc This game is notable as being both the fist game in the Half-Life series and the first game Valve would release. The game was immensely successful, thrusting Valve into the spotlight and winning over 50 game of the year awards. This page will function as both the history of Half-Life and an archive of all known about valves early days due to how closely tied they are.

Preamble: 1996

• Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington plan to leave Microsoft in mid-1996 to start a game company. They get into contact with Michael Abrash, who offers to license the Quake engine to them. Quake had come out that June.
• Valve is founded on August 24th 1996
• Key hires during Fall ‘96 include concept artist and designer Harry Teasley and programmer Ken Birdwell in October, and Quake designers John Guthrie and Steve Bond in November.
• Kelly Bailey is brought in around this time, and is chosen specifically because of his programming knowledge, previous friendship with Mike harrington at Microsoft, and his home studio - where he would record a 5 song demo for Half-Life prior to being hired.
• T.K. Backman, a friend of Birdwell, is hired as a programmer along with his brother, artist Ted Backman. Raising the Bar notes that Gabe jives with Ted’s surreal, genitalia-inspired monster designs.
• Artist Chuck Jones was also hired by a recruiter before the end of the year.

Winter 96-97 (Quake Total Conversion Era)

• Key hires during this time include Quake level designer Brett Johnson in December, Final Doom and Quake level designer Dario Casali in January, and environment artist Karen Laur in January, Brett is also considered for a composer role due to his musical background, however he turns down this offer, and remains a level designer.
• Brett had been recommended by his roommate and fellow Quake mapper Duncan X, who was working on Prospero at the time, however Duncan never worked on Half-Life prior to leaving the company before the turn of the new year in 1997.
• Writer Russel Ginns is brought in to write a story outline, this is the initial draft that was pitched to sierra.
• Laur’s arrival is especially notable since she, along with Yatsze Mark, are the only texture artists that worked on Half-Life. It can be assumed that any level design work before their time either used temp textures or Quake textures; Brett’s Quake-textured version of Stalkyard and Dario’s statements about the game being basically Quake seems to confirm this.
• Dario has stated in his developer commentary that the silo concept, which would eventually evolve into Blast Pit and Apprehension, was already prototyped by Harry Teasley by the time he was hired.
• According to Brett Johnson, the original goal was for the game to be a 16 level campaign more along the lines of a Quake Total Conversion.
• This is the same time where prospero begins development with its own team, many of whom would get transferred to HL after the projects cancellation. A core thing to make known is that Prospero was supposed to be the big hitter while Half-Life was more of a quick and easy project. This obviously went the opposite way.

Summer 1997 (The "Alpha" era)

• Not really too much to say other than in this time period the game would have been most similar to what was seen in the first trailers for the game along with the 0.52 Alpha build that was leaked back in 2013.
• The game wasn’t very far along yet with seemingly many disconnected levels and features that have yet to be implemented.
• Features such as barnacles and zombies did exist, but were stripped for the leaked build that’s available.
• Around this time, Prospero’s code is being worked on, and is referenced in with the leaked alpha’s FGD. The alpha also includes an enemy likely from Prospero in its tech demo, called the Probe Droid.

October 1997 (Preliminary Findings)

• At this point the HEV suit/armor system was beginning to be fleshed out as well as the HUD.
• The early green HUD was likely functional and the battery was to only draw when you had armor or had picked up the suit item. Hud icons for weapons are not known at all for this iteration of the HUD.
• During this time is when Preliminary Findings had been released for the press and public to check out to get Valve’s name out there.
• An early iteration of Brett Johnson’s Industrial Arts was in game at this time as seen in screenshots, along with temp voice acting for scientists done by Kelly Bailey. Barney had none as of yet, assumedly.
• Much prototyping was being done with maps at this time.
• Scripted events are implemented in their final form, and are used heavily from this point on.

December 1997 (German Leak Era)

• Around this time a German build of Half-Life had leaked online, although any trace of this or any sign of the build being available is not known or flat out gone.
• At this point in time the HEV is assumed to be fully in the game function wise, along with new weapon viewmodels.
• Robot versions of most human NPCs are seen in screenshots along with a robo-zombie.
• At this time the build still named screenshots “QUAKE##”.

Spring 1998 (Electric Playground)

• At this point the game seemed far enough along to show demos and to be more public with gameplay.
• Once again a design change for the HEV suit featuring black rubber gloves for most if not all viewmodels but still keeping the red color scheme.
• Surface Tension was being fleshed out as a chapter and featured in a gameplay demo.
• On a Rail had also been featured in a gameplay demo. Although brief and featuring little gunplay, the tunnels you travel in the rail system would include Stukabats and Bloaters you would have to avoid.

E3 1998

• The game was only half way complete level wise by this point, possibly less.
• Office Warrens was possibly a complete chapter featuring many unseen areas and cut areas. (The Third Floor, Lounge, Atrium, etc.) Office Warrens was intended to live up to its name being very maze-like and an overall vast office sector.
• Demos of On a Rail, We’ve Got Hostiles, and Surface Tension were also shown off. These were likely similar to the Electric Playground demos but with more finalized assets.
• We’ve Got Hostiles footage is non-existent as of now but there are a few (low quality) screenshots of the chapter from around this time.
• Barney has temp voice acting done by Chuck Jones as well as more scientist dialogue from Kelly Bailey.
• The HEV suit has now been made orange as it is in the final release. The viewmodels were the first to be updated with this new color scheme, yet the suit pickup wasn’t updated and in game until a month or two later.
• The Barney model had Ted’s likeness and the textures were more finalized compared to previous iterations of the model.
• Redwood’s Half-Life preview, one of the more in depth showcases thus far, is created during this time. (source: Redwood sent me the original files for the preview, most are dated may 26th, 3 days before E3 98)

==Summer 1998 (The Rush)

• The company was under a lot of pressure and Sierra wasn’t going to allow any more delays so Valve had to buckle up and cobble together a finished product with a few months to spare, and Xen hadn’t been touched upon other than concept art.
• Kelly Bailey stepped in and stitched together many maps trying to make sense of everyone’s designs so a cohesive start to finish game could be played.
• The Scientist, Security Guard, and Zombie went through several design changes in this time period.
• The scientist was to wear a blue uniform with buckles on the chest, although it’s unknown and doubtful this version was ever in game. A zombie variant with the blue uniform however was in the game. The scientist they went with was the white labcoat nerds, and they wore black latex gloves likely due to skin group issues in the code at the time.
• Barney was looking more like his final design but with a different face. It was intended that Barney would have different face variations but this was never added in the code. Comments in the code still exist relating to several barney heads, along with different pitches for their voices.
• Multiplayer is being heavily refined during this point, modes such as Tron, Donkey Kong, and Joust - All employee “mod” gamemodes - are abandoned. Coop, Deathmatch, and Loot become the main 3 gamemodes.

Fall 1998 (The Final Stretch)

• Xen was still being developed really close to release.
• Day One leaks at least twice and shows Valve a positive public reaction, causing them to concede on several issues and finish the game.
• The opening of the game is remade to match the new artstyle, it is completed in around 1 month.
• Several employees are hired on to handle code work, the ichthyosaur, skyboxes, and some pathfinding code get overhauled by an independent contractor.
• Another independent contractor overhauls the robot grunt models, but is commissioned for work in another country at the start of September, forcing Valve to use human models for the Security Guards and Scientists.
• Art is considered final by August at the latest.
• Weapon Code is being worked on as one of the final tweaks to the game.
• Coop and Loot are abandoned due to a lack of time.