Talk:Dhabih Eng Era

This era is easily one of the most widely recognized in Half-Life 2's development cycle, and is characterized by both concept art and an overall darker tone. There are quite a number of maps from this era that are featured in the WC Mappack, giving us clues on the story at the time.

Summary

Concept art depicting Gordon, Alyx, and Eli, as well as Skitch.

This era, at the latest, started around June of 2000 (the proposal date of Laidlaw's "Timelapse Opening" vignette.) Many new concepts were introduced during this era, including the Air Exchange, Ravenholm, and Gasmask Citizens. The namesake of the era, Dhabih Eng, created numerous pieces of concept art for this, all of which featured an overall darker tone, more stylistic color choices, and somewhat exaggerated designs for the characters. The Wasteland, as well as a train ride akin to the original Half-Life, were added in. Initially, cameo-type segments were featured as well, but they were eventually scrapped in favor of a more unified story. In reality, the changes made during this era were very gradual, although most of the elements during this era were eventually scrapped or heavily modified. Even the scope of the game was both reduced and expanded upon during this era. By the end of the era, it began to finally shape into the game we recognize today.

Changes from the Hyper Era

• o First proper player drivable vehicle, digger, earlier was manhack and rocket
• o Vehicles where designed to be small segments, changed later for more engagement

Early Physics manipulator design (beam physgun) Early physics implementation (ipion virtual physics still used)

• brickbat
• Physics manipulator considered as an ingame weapon

the 3 different alien race ideas are now not separate

• Troops from the 2 main alien like races are featured together, some are fused designs others are not
• the idea of gman's race having a city with a citadel is merged into the main setting
• Slightly cartoonish like early tf2 style but dark, with Characters having slightly strange proportions
• Synths styled to have glowing exposed components

Borealis moved to later in plot (not in arctic to begin with, no sack ticks)

Lab teleport introduced that Originally fails to go to kraken base

Gradual Changes

New Tripod hopper? (this art is really out of place of hl2, its in the same style as hl1 art, I've put it here due to the concepts towards the end experimenting with wildlife) Vertigo art deco museum then palace (figure out this) Player drivable Vehicle added to Wasteland traversal (at some point vehicles were properly added physically)

Tile semi-organic metal citadel vs laser weapon on top in vignette and concept art

Plane changed to helicopter? Or vice versa (voice files and outline in rtb: uncorrected proof) Plane crashes into one of them in Vertigo map, alyx captured, escape to other roof tops that have stalkers on them

Two Different consul designs

• Consul Patrick Stewart star trek inspiration
• More cartoony
• o Kidnapped alyx

air exchange was thought of as two different possible concepts or both at once (polluter and atmosphere portal dam)

Skitch, Tbot and d0g development (also vignette) Concept art for tbot has the right proportions and features but different details to the textures and known model components Era started with tbot design Scrapland vignette seems related to some inspiration from forbidden planet

• Dusty glass grill

• Extending legs

• New posture Looks like a beetle sitting down

Towards the Start

City 17 full of sky scrapers

Citadel positioning in relation to manhack arcade

Towards the End

City 17 barely any sky scrapers

Slow drift from cartoon esque to realistic with same maps/plot

D0g proper

Wasteland cut down to coast (<-- this might be better in pre-retail)

Antlion caves merged with quarry cave part of raven holm as victory mine

??/11/2001 chargeable gravity gun present (vtmb started development with source, never updated engine version [1])

Main Information

RTB Story Vignettes

Quarry town with monk, traps and mines (vignettes)

• o Went into scurry mine field then encountered some antlions (talk about scurry mine art and map)
• o Next place is a safe camp run by Captain Vance or eli

Antlion caves

• o Much larger open spaces after eli den, planned to be even larger than the Antlion caves introduced with grub extract
• o Antlion grubs were partially used but never fully as their purpose was still being figured out, left until episode 2 to be refined

Bus ride (in story vignette?)

Manhack arcade

Story

Kids in factories

Captain Vance, the Conscripts and Younger alyx design

Manhack arcade

Gargantua train sequence mentioned in a vignette in rtb, with the train ride being much longer

Wasteland

• - Eli Maxwell Scrapyard
• o Catch train, after a bit need to move on foot for some reason (todo, was this implied by the maps?)

Depot

• Originally a prison
• Gunship construction
• Catch train to air ex
• o Antlions attack with you but against you too

Citadel incinerator

Npcs

Trench coat metro cop older icon stunstick

Cremators

Slightly updated Bullsquid, higher res than hl1 but still cartoony

Man hack from this era only has textures and sounds

• Possible outline in graphics card wallpaper (https://valvearchive.com/archive/Half-Life/Half-Life%202/Art/Wallpapers/ATI/wallpaper_06_1024.jpg)
• in all the other wallpapers any images are of recognisable concept art, this outline is the only outlier with several shape features being similar to the textures

Early Dropship

Particle storm

• Only limited particle system remains
• Sounds for forming, dissipating, hovering and lightning strikes
• A node for “particle storm rock spawn”, possibilities include
•  Something for it to grab and throw
•  Something that is a consequence of it attacking, allowing you to attack it
•  Something for it to protect and for you to attack
•  Something for it to spawn from
• If not a proper enemy it is Possibly a method to keep the player within the playable area, like leeches or piranhas in the ocean, somewhat similar to the guardians in halo multiplayer maps

antlion guard

• No bug bait control, guard actually threw poisonous pods at the player
• model in the leak (https://combineoverwiki.net/images/f/f4/Spore_leak_1.png, https://combineoverwiki.net/images/e/ee/Spore_leak_2.png)
• texture from antlion guard sources https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/308781516606013442/575890300619325442/026a4f86a2fff3ef6fc7b54ad4d535f2.png
• the guard still has an animation for this

Sand Barnacle? texture is more realistic than this era The sand barnacle: (insert email here)

trapping method	Hiding method	Attack method
Spring loaded tongue whip	Mostly buried in sand	Melee bite attacks when close to centre circle depression

Normal barnacle:

trapping method	Hiding method	Attack method
dangling Sticky tongue	Attach to ceiling	Melee attacks with mouth when close

Speculation

the Scanner designed for this era is only in concept art and sounds

• https://valvearchive.com/archive/Half-Life/Half-Life%202/Art/Levels/City%2017/city_wall_alt.jpg
• Sounds indicate charging stations and possible ability to fire energy balls, also a dive bombing behaviour and a poison gas attack that was implemented later
• Piranha like movement

Computer Chips plot element in spire/weather control

• Weather controlling related?
• Allowing use of combine weaponry? (this is Specifically alluded to in audio from skyscraper between combine units)
• if the above what they were for, it might have been explained at the start of the game in relation to the physics manipulator

key dates

(Note (bun): oh yeah americans this is in dd/mm/yyyy deal with it 😎 - should change to yyyy-mm-dd in final article)

• 19/05/2000 tank plus diesel engine loop sounds
• 22/05/2000 first reference to trans.txt and 'v' (valve) tools as opposed to 'q' (quake), in gary/buildnew.bat

(Note (bun): keep in mind oldtrans.txt does reference lab_ textures (which are actually very similar to the earliest lab maps we have))

• 02/06/2000 timelapse opening vignette
• 15/06/2000 first combot sounds
• 21/06/2000 to 23/06/2000 sounds/c17/ wavs

(Note (bun): it occurs to me that these sounds could have been for siggraph/gyftvs)

• 23/06/2000 to 28/06/2000 siggraph 2000, private/closed-room valve tech demo
• 16/08/2000 to 17/08/2000 testlevel sounds
• 24/08/2000 to 29/08/2000 testcitadel sounds
• 09/10/2000 to 06/12/2000 sound/ambient/areas/borealis wavs
• 10/10/2000 sound/ambient/areas/sky_scraper (vertigo) sounds
•  01/11/2000 soldier vert lines (plus heli_way.wav)
• 16/10/2000 to 01/11/2000 airex sounds
• 11/10/2000 stalker sounds
• 17/10/2000 all headcrab bite sounds
• 23/10/2000 binocular signal sounds
• 28/10/2000 alyx voice lines (misc, cache, citadel and skyscraper

[14/11/2000 vert lines were re-recorded with a different voice actor]

• 29/10/2000 much more sounds for flying apc turret
• 21/11/2000 to 06/12/2000 kraken ambient sounds
• ricochet release date
•  idea for city logo from platform designs
•  possible reuse of content from tf2 development
• • heads from realistic tf2
• • armour is similar to space romans
•  slight possibility of late development aleph character model
• 8/11/2000 new bullsquid sounds
• 14/11/2000 first mention of town, phys town zombie town trap town
• 15/11/2000 to 14/12/2000 manhack sounds
• 17/11/2000 to 22/11/2000 ice axe sound
• 30/11/2000 soundscape_test sounds

(Note (bun): possible approx. soundscape implementation date?)

• 8/01/2001 first manhack test room
• 12/01/2001 to 16/01/2001 vortigaunt voice
• 23/01/2001 vort test map
• 9/03/2001 first wasteland scanner sound
• 19/03/2001 first haz (hazard course) voice lines
•  later, kleiner lines recorded (04/02/2002) and gman lines re-recorded (27/02/2000)
• 27/03/2001 alien assassin ball sounds for tripwire
• 30/03/2001 gunship sounds
• 30/05/2001 to 6/11/2001 roller and roller bull sounds
• 6/09/2001 roller mine sounds
• 21/09/2001 to 26/09/2001 Particle storm sounds
•  ??/11/2001 vampire: the masquerade -bloodlines starts development
• o barely updated the sdk once downloaded, forced into crunch so no time to deal with changes in how source worked
• o Old console variables for charged gravity gun
•  Sounds for this still exist
• 3/01/2002 crow sounds
• o Used sack tick model while being programmed
• 4/01/2002 hammer 3.4
• o Proto_sniper code still refers to program as worldcraft, this is the date the name changed
• 4/02/2002 first e3 sounds
• 13/02/2002 visual studio 7 (version before was the last version to use dsp, v6) see hl2_scripts.dsp in hyper era article, since this file could have been updated with a mash of things prior to this date

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HL2 - Eras

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