Talk:Cameo Era/Expansion

Concept art depicting Gordon, Alyx, Eli, Skitch and a rough D0g.

The "Cameo" period of Half-Life 2's development is popular among fans for its overall darker tone and stylised art, which had a heavy influence on the game's style by bringing a heightened feel to environments, particularly City 17. It heralded in the foundations of the Half-Life 2 we recognize today, albeit with a much larger scope. This increased scope provided the team with a wealth of development experience, as well as valuable wisdom about their limits — these skills would be brought forward to subsequent development, and subsequently honed the games' scope in future eras.

Much is known about this period, thanks to the large amount of work done by the development team.

Summary

This era began sometime in early 2000, with June 2, 2000, the "proposal date" of the 'Timelapse Opening' script, being the latest possible time.

The era's true heralding was the adoption of a 'circular story' design philosophy (LINK), linking the beginning and ending of the game with a single area which the player exits then returns to: City 17. Many new concepts and areas were solidified during this era, including the Air Exchange, an opening train ride, gasmasked citizens and the return of the Black Mesa Science Team. Gordon's journey was marked by 'cameos' with ally characters for each major section, with a select few defining the broader plot, such as Captain Vance and Alyx. Prompted by Marc Laidlaw's grim vignettes, the team's lead concept artists — Dhabih Eng and Viktor Antonov — created numerous pieces of concept art for the era, featuring an overall darker tone, more stylistic color choices, and somewhat exaggerated character designs.

Development background

"Gradually the process was to simplify things to make them directly related. So it gradually changed from this globe-spanning thing to, ‘Let’s do a city, or a region, an area where you go out and come back in.' you end up kind of where you began. It was our little local level design philosophy on a larger scale. You can see your goal, and you had to thwart a bunch of obstacles that get in your way, and at the end of the level when you get there." — Marc Laidlaw

Breaking with the complicated, sprawling story of the previous year, the team decided to simplify matters. Instead of fighting three competing alien races, exploring multiple cities or conducting espionage and counter-espionage, the team decided to simplify. A single alien race, a single city and a simplified rebels vs. aliens plot would unify all the story and concepting which had been developed thus far.

Design Approaches

The Cameo Era continued the Half-Life 2 team's self-imposed philosophies of simplification and sharpening of focus that began late in the Hyper era. A few different design approaches have been noted in the documentation for this era, many of them correlating to the overall themes of refinement and clarification of goals.

Circular story method

"The Citadel. Yes, it's a deliberate landmark that we want you to feel this relationship to. You go toward it, you go away from it, and you'll develop more and more understanding of it as the game goes on ... So you know from the beginning that you’re going to get there. But for a long time you’re going in the opposite direction. But eventually, the Citadel unifies the whole sprawling plot." — Marc Laidlaw

"We wanted the end of the game to feed directly into the beginning. For example, if there had been time in the development of Half-Life to fix it somehow, you should have seen the Nihilanth [the final alien boss] twice before you get to the end of the game. We should have made sure there was something coming about Xen, and you're trained in jumping puzzles before you get there! ... So it didn't feel like it was laid on with a trowel. So, those were conscious things like, ‘Let's do something circular,' where you can see the end of the game from the beginning and create this unity so that you don't have anything at the end that you don't have a relationship with already." — Marc Laidlaw

This era began a years-long process of taking existing elements towards a more specific and focused design philosophy. Honing the scattered locales they had up until that point, the team borrowed from Valve's own individual map design principles — seeing your goal near the start of the level and working towards that. The team adopted this paradigm at a macro scale by creating a location which would be the main area of the game and the plot — City 17, an alien-occupied metropolis with the central player goal at its centre. This would serve to give the game a more unified feel from beginning to end, while solving one of the biggest problems they the team saw with the original Half-Life, the disconnect between Xen and the rest of the game.

The team was determined not to reproduce another Xen, the finale from the original game that was rushed due to time constraints. But no-one was to foresee that the development of Half-Life 2 would pose even greater challenges than its predecessor.

"There was you and a bunch of other agents were like you. Your HEV suit would have become this weird, black leather stealth suit with all these devices latched on it. There was some kind of parasitic implant thing in his brain that would kill him if he went against orders." Gabe Newell took one look at it [and said]: "It's not Half-Life."

"He was right ... We had some really elaborate stuff going on with agents and counteragents. That was really convoluted." — Marc Laidlaw

Bun: these quotes are only here for posterity of info — I intend to move most of the first quote to the hyper era's development background section.

"We wanted the end of the game to feed directly into the beginning. For example, if there had been time in the development of Half-Life to fix it somehow, you should have seen the Nihilanth [the final alien boss] twice before you get to the end of the game. We should have made sure there was something coming about Xen, and you're trained in jumping puzzle before you get there!" Marc grins: "So it didn't feel like it was laid on with a trowel. So, those were conscious things like, 'Let's do something circular,' where you can see the end of the game from the beginning and create this unity so that you don't have anything at the end that you don't have a relationship with already." — Marc Laidlaw

Cameos & characters

A location map from this era, note the characters named for major areas.

"We really wanted to make characters much more like people and be interesting, because really we had good experience in Half-Life with Barneys and the scientists. It was much better that we expected." — Ken Birdwell

A substantial outcome of the team's focus on character was the concept of the 'cameo': an interaction with a friendly companion character who would accompany the player for a short time or throughout a specific section. Cameos aligned with the design methods honed during the earlier production of Uplink, a demo released after Half-Life which was partly an impetus to streamline (by sorting members into defined roles like level designer and animator) the 'cabal' system, in preparation for future projects). In theory, the new structure would allow each section's cabal to create a new NPC that would define each major chapter.

Up to this point, companion characters had been agreed on as a key tenet of Half-Life 2, arising from discussions on the first games' strengths. However, it is likely cameos fully materialised here, as much of the documentation for the concept is from this one, such as the map on the left, which parallels Marc Laidlaw's famous vignettes. Cameos can be seen in action in retail, but in a reduced form. Only two cameo characters — Odessa and Grigori — made the cut, as by 2004 there was simply not enough time to fully implement the animations, voice work and scripts for more cameos.

City 17

"We wanted to do something that hadn't been explored yet. We figured, 'Let's include some vague Eastern European theme' that wasn't defined in the beginning." — Viktor Antonov

In conjunction with the circular design philosophy, the team decided to concentrate their plans for multiple cities into a singular urban setting.

Exploring 17

"A lot of people felt one of the best things we did in Half-Life was the before and after Black Mesa. Black Mesa labs is alive when you get there, because it's this world that's just purring along like clockwork ... and we really regretted we didn't have more of those in Half-Life." — Marc Laidlaw

A primary difference between the initial and final plans for City 17 is the length of the introductory exploration sections. As opposed to retail's fleeting passive exploration section, the Cameo era's introduction featured an extensive train ride to the city, leading into an exhaustive walking section through 'calm', pre-rebellion City 17 before reaching Kleiner's laboratory. The player would receive a painstaking look at life in the city, from Industrial areas to the Manhack Arcade, before

Continued floundering

Bun: introduce this concept in an earlier article like hyper or pre-pitch. Note that these problems became clearer in this era because of the more solid direction and larger amount of concept work done.

Unfortunately, while a vast amount of work was carried out, it was ultimately not building up to solid specs or goals. This was due to the parallel nature of development at the time, where programmers were still fundamentally working out the Source Engine; and so the concept side of the team tended to continuously iterate on different directions, rather than building a game around a set of solid technological limitations.

"There was a fair amount of spinning of wheels in terms of... 'Well, we can go in this direction or this direction,' and the people who could really answer the questions were like, 'Well, I'm still trying to get the shaders up and running,' so the people on the concept side tended to have to iterate a lot ... essentially we were trying to solve production problems when we were still in pre-production, which meant that they couldn't get a lot done, and it was also really frustrating. It's like you're trying to create an art direction when you still don't know what your polygon budgets are going to be, and you're still a year away from knowing exactly what sort of performance you can achieve in an area that's going to be critical to a set of artistic choices that you're going to make. So, there was a fair amount of thrashing." — Marc Laidlaw

Plot

For an article documenting in-depth the evolution of this era's maps, see coming soon.

A vast amount of documentation exists covering the Cameo era's plot, with various contradicting story ideas and vague gaps intersecting or co-existing with one another across the era. It's also the era that represents the largest number of map files and assets in the 2003 leak, so extensive, detailed information is available for the various set pieces/locations which mappers created for each given area.

For the most part, the following outline is a critical synopsis which primaries the 'main' plotline of vignettes from Raising The Bar — that is, the vignettes which follow the geographical map above. However the outline will also try to include a broad overview of each story point's proposed concepts and areas, whether in the form of in-game assets or scripts, in supplements (if applicable and noteworthy).

Prologue

In the same vein as the original game's introduction, this was to be a long section heavy on worldbuilding, introducing the player to the new world via exposition and visual storytelling. At the same time, this unfolding narrative would also provide a chance to demonstrate the capability of Valve's new Source Engine.

We have information on two main concepts for this era's prologue: Eli's slideshow and the combined G-Man briefing/train ride. Eli's slideshow seems to have been more a 'lore' document than a serious attempt at an introductory segment, and it was soon replaced by the latter two concepts, both of which survived to the retail game — albeit in a mutated form.

Slideshow Briefing

Earlier concept

"I was really hoping that by describing these scenes, I could trick Dhabih Eng into painting them" — Marc Laidlaw

The Slideshow Briefing was an early script by Laidlaw, outlining a short scene in which Eli Maxwell directly explains to the player the intervening years between HL1 and HL2, talking over a series of retrospective photographs. The script may have served for the team as a solidification of the Cameo era's story concepts, and, possibly, the era's first proposal for HL2's introduction.

However, rather than providing a solid direction for the game's first moments, Laidlaw's purpose with the Slideshow was to alleviate the so-called "spinning of the wheels" that had taken been taking place over story development (discussed in previous era articles). As a point of fact, Laidlaw even refers to it as a 'spec' — industry terminology for an uncommissioned script that is more focused on delivering a story outline. In essence, the script could have been a kind of reset switch, intended, like the other vignettes, for the story side of the team to work off and become enthused by.

Interestingly, most of the imagery in the Slideshow is directly summarised by Dr. Kleiner in the Old Friends script, further hinting at the Slideshow's status as a sort of 'plot bible' for the new era. But at the same time, a few points also point towards the script serving as a vague concept for the game's prologue. These two conceptions for the Slideshow are built on in the following sections.

Plot order

Whereas popular fan theory often interprets this scene as taking place mid-game, at Maxwell's hideout, comments about the piece by Laidlaw doesn't hint at a placement in the in-game timeline. Instead, a close reading of the text combined with Laidlaw's discussions suggest the Slideshow had place as a prologue. There are several points that contribute to this theory:

• The script has a mysterious and abrupt ending, Eli cutting off before giving Gordon details, and the projector going dark, implying a curtain call;
• Eli's dialogue simply has the tone of an introduction, with lines like "where does this start?" and references to "what we do next" being some obvious cues;
• Some of the scene's imagery is somewhat reminiscent of the final game's G-Man scene;
• If it existed in addition to the Timelapse Opening and/or Train Ride, the Slideshow would simply be bluntly restating information the player could already gleam, especially the images of City 17 and Wasteland;
• As aforementioned, Dr. Kleiner verbatim borrows from the Slideshow in Old Friends, a scene set earlier in the game than Maxwell's introduction, which may imply the Slideshow had been cut by the time Old Friends was written;
• Following from the above point, Laidlaw describes this spec as "an unworkably clunky way of giving exposition," one which he "was happy to lose,"

But the question remains, how could the scene serve as a prologue, if the Cameo Era's trademark beginning is a journey by train? Two possibilities exist. One is that the Slideshow was only a vague idea: half-heartedly committed to, more or less temp, which would fit with Laidlaw's disdainful description of it above.

The second possibility is more interesting. It is known that the Scrapland, with Dog predecessor TBot, somewhat pre-dates the Cameo Era's trademark beginning on a train. Additionally, most sources agree that Eli Maxwell was one of the first primary ally characters conceptualised around this ere. Hence there is a possibility that, in one draft or another, the Scrapland and Eli Maxwell came before entry into City 17, with Eli giving Gordon a pep talk before he enters the city proper.

Chronology

One summary in RTB:UC states that the Slideshow was in fact demonstrated "around the time" that the three races were being discussed. The lack of specificity in this phrasing complicates any certainty around when this script came about. It could mean within a year, within six months, or at the exact same time. Since Raising The Bar is a source that sacrifices complexity for readability, coupled with the fact that summaries in the Uncorrected Proof edition are known to be unreliable, we can't be entirely sure of what exact era the slideshow is from. And at the same time, the barriers between eras can sometimes be fuzzy, given the lack of information on the team's story sitdowns.

However, the script mentions many concepts known to be later than the three-races eras, like the Combine — who properly came into focus in the late Hyper era — and specific enemies like Cremators and Striders. Additionally, as discussed, most sources describe the slideshow as specifically trying to solve the floundering issues which had become clear at the point of writing. So, the editors have made an educated guess that the script is the beginnings of this era, rather than pre-dating it.

G-Man Briefing

An image of the earliest known version of the Half-Life 2 G-Man model.

An explanatory scene to bridge the gap between Half-Life 1 and 2, two versions of which were proposed — each of which essentially boil down to the G-Man waking the player up from their imposed sleep, then subjecting them to a scene which alluded to the player's purpose and what had happened since the first game.

G-Man Briefing →

Timelapse Opening

Alternate concept

The Timelapse Opening, proposed June 6th, 2000, is an evocative script by Marc Laidlaw, in which the G-Man subjects the player to an initiatory monologue. The scene would introduce the player to the state of the world by visually demonstrating the destructive events of the years between HL and HL2, and at the same time, show off the full brunt of the (then-unfinished) Source Engine, by making extensive use of Valve's new "terrain and shader effects." Laidlaw's surrealist Timelapse as well as the teleportation effects used in the first game's Test Chamber scene, to convey environmental changes. This bridging scene, picking up right after the end of the first game, signaled Valve's intent to solidify a direct connection between Half-Life 2 and its predecessor, after deprecating the loosely connected story concepts of the Pre-Pitch and Hyper eras.

After the G-Man's conclusion the player manually boards an incoming Wasteland Train, its passengers held in stasis by the G-Man. Upon boarding, the train and her commuters creak into life, starting across the terrain the player has just seen desolated; as well as starting the game proper. Thereafter, the script ends with Samuel greeting the player, presumably leading into the train ride. As a sidenote, Samuel's line of dialogue has a hand-scribbled comment which reads, simply, "Or?" The meaning of this, like many of the vignette handwritten notes, is unclear. It could mean either indecision of where to go next, apprehension over the line, or perhaps even ambivalence over the name of the character of Samuel.

Chronology

Ironically, although the Timelapse is the only story document in our possession with a date attached, it is unclear whether it came either came before, after or alongside the main version of the G-Man Briefing (see below). Without more solid information, the concept will have to remain here as an 'alternate' version, since it is outside the main line of story concepts.

But there is one hint of circumstantial evidence of this scene having been earlier than the main version, that being that the Timelapse contains none of the retail scene's dialogue, unlike the former, which also shares the retail scene's brevity (see below). This having been said however, the differences could be explained by Laidlaw wanting to test different ideas for G-Man dialogue.

There are also some plausible arguments for cutting the Timelapse, in favour of a shorter scene. If the scene did lead into the opening train journey, the entire visual briefing is made somewhat ancillary, since the ride serves to visually and subtly communicate almost all of the plot details that are directly articulated to the player in this scene, without actually being there. From a writer's perspective this concept shares the same problem as the Slideshow, in that it leans more heavily on telling, rather than showing, the state of the world post-Resonance Cascade.

It is also possible that Laidlaw realised the difficulties in implementing the Timelapse — this mistake, of placing ambitions before technological limitations, may have been a lingering fear for the developers. During the first game's development of level designers saying they could implement Laidlaw's ambitious ending ideas, only for them to turn out to be impossible. As has been discussed, the team was keen on not replicating the mistakes of the first game.

Regardless of whether it came before or after, this version of the G-Man Briefing is famous as the more extended one. The main plotline version, described below, is far more succinct, in some ways more akin to retail, although it lacks any hint of the G-Man subjecting the player to visual imagery besides his own visage.

The 'main' version of the briefing borrows dialogue from the above version, compressing that scene down to a refined length and style (G-Man against a dark void; player waking up on the train, rather than boarding it) that closely resembles the final game's introduction. In fact, this script even shares the G-Man's famous opening line in HL2 retail: "Rise and shine"'.

Like the timelapse, this scene also leads straight into the train ride and Samuel as the player's first friendly face, only here, the scene has been fully fleshed out as opposed to a stub.

City 17

First a part of the industrial map, then a separate, large area.

The Manhack Arcade

The Arcade, in all its iterations before being cut, was to be where the player would first encounter Barney Calhoun, undercover as a metrocop.

Escape

BUN: Very unsure if only the bus ride or the teleport too were from this era. Investigate!

City 17 Uprising

Citadel

OLD NOTES—

Blah blah talk about the BETAA STORY:

• Gman intro
• Long train ride
• Long C17 intro (trainstation, industrial, manhack arcade)
• Meet Barney/Kleiner
• - Bus chase
• - Later teleporter shenanigans
• Canals/sewers
• Scrapland w/ Eli/Dog
• Doin some train ridin', meet w/ Alyx
• Airex w/ Vance
• Owen/Odell on Borealis
• Dr Mossman in Kraken
• Arctic + Weather Control
• - AC-130/Osprey back to C17
• Vertigo
• Streetwars
• Citadel confrontation w/ Consul, Alyx n Mossman

Kids in factories

Captain Vance, the Conscripts and Younger alyx design

Manhack arcade

Gargantua train sequence, 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?)
• Airex

Depot

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

Citadel shit

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

i've always thought the antlion cave vignette was much later than the others, is it even from this era?? i have my doubts - bun

Bus chase (in story vignette?)

Manhack arcade

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) (Note (bun): ummm)
• 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

WAD textures

fprintf (f, "{\n\"classname\" \"worldspawn\"\n");

fprintf( f, "\"mapversion\" \"220\"\n\"sounds\" \"1\"\n\"MaxRange\" \"4096\"\n\"mapversion\" \"220\"\n\"wad\" \"vert.wad;dev.wad;generic.wad;spire.wad;urb.wad;cit.wad;water.wad\"\n" );

- BUN: thanks to jaycie aka jackathan for finding this originally

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

(BUN: i always thought the combot model moved and looked like a piranha, not the anomalous concept scanners — and I would say based on the fact it's a monster_ NPC it existed this early in more than just concept form, plus it appeared at GYFTVs which imo almost certainly confirms it's the combot model which is what's referred to as piranha-like)

(BUN: additionally, the old combot model doesn't even have any lods — it's old alright)

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

(BUN: more likely just a McGuffin for the short vignettes?)

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

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