THE LAB
A HALF-LIFE INSPIRED EXPERIENCE
SCHEDULE
6 WEEKS HALF-TIME
TEAM SIZE
SOLO DEVELOPER
RESPONSIBILITIES
GAME DESIGN & SCRIPTING
GAME ENGINE
UNREAL ENGINE 5
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
The Lab is a Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 inspired experience. The main focus of this piece was creating a gravity gun with strong inspiration from how it works in Half-Life 2 and creating a fitting level that depends on the player using the gravity gun to progress the level through both combat and.
My goal with this piece was to create a level with good onboarding and tutorial for the player using simpler physics puzzles and combat while also creating all the gameplay mechanics from scratch using visual scripting through blueprints in Unreal Engine and creating some simple models in Blender.
BREAKDOWN
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Developed in 6 weeks of half-time work.
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Focus on blueprints, level design with physics puzzles and onboarding.
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First Person Perspective
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Recreation of the Half-Life 2 gravity gun.
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Scripting gameplay events
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Melee AI that can patrol
ASSETS & SOFTWARE USED
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Unreal Engine 5.5
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Blender
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Miro
WALKTHROUGH VIDEO
OVERVIEW
1.
Level Start
4.
Cargo Area
7.
Reactor Storage Area
2.
Finding the Gravity Gun
5.
Maintenance Area
8.
Reactor Room
3.
Bait & Switch Corridor
6.
Large Vents
9.
Entrance to Sewers & Level End
LEVEL DESIGN TECHNIQUES
PLAYER GUIDANCE & FLOW CONTROL
To guide the player I mainly use leading lines and foreshadowing. I want the player to naturally be drawn to go towards the areas they have seen before through a vent or follow pipes in the level. To control the flow I use hourglass design and one-ways in the form of drop downs to control the level flow and minimize the risk of the player walking backwards.
CREATING SUSPENSE & TENSION
In most combat encounters in the game the player is positioned at advantageous positions such as vantage points to get a good overview of the area they are in. I also want the player to feel safe in these areas before they venture into the combat sections. To lower the suspense there is one decompression zone in the middle of the level before the second puzzle to let the player take it easy. To add some misdirection I use some red herrings and bait & switches.
DESIGN PROCESS
PRE-PRODUCTION
I started the development by collecting reference pictures and organizing my thoughts and ideas for what I would like to showcase in this project. The focus for this project was mainly on level and puzzle design and I wrote a comprehensive list of what I wanted to include in the level which includes both technical and design requirements.
PUZZLE DESIGN
As I started thinking about potential puzzles for the level. I was fascinated with the simplicity of Half-Life 2s physics-based puzzles and wanted to use that as inspiration for my own puzzles as I think they are very fun and intuitive.
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The first puzzle is a weight-based puzzle on a crane inside the Cargo Room. The lift is down and stacked with objects, when these are removed the lift start moving upwards. I thought this was a good introductory puzzle as it only involves removing objects from the lift.
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The second puzzle involves spinning fans that needs to be stopped to be able to get past. There are two crates placed in the room as a red herring. These crates get destroyed by the fan and when the player looks back at the entrance to the vents they'll get bait and switched and see another vent with a steel beam inside which can stop the fan.
Puzzle 1: Weight Based Puzzle
Puzzle 2: Fan Puzzle
LEVEL DESIGN
The level takes place in an underground lab that gets attacked by an unknown force that tries to take over the lab. As such the level is completely indoors and designed to be a linear experience.
During the development of the level it was playtested until I was happy with the flow. There was a number of times where I reworked an area of the level such as the vent room where the second puzzle is located, this area was a corridor and smaller vents that led directly into the reactor room. But after feedback I reworked this area into the current state.
During the later parts of the development I noticed some performance problems, which was mainly caused by the amount of actors and shadow casting lights in the level. I fixed this by optimizing the lights in the level by using less shadow casting lights and more non-shadow casting lights. I also started using Unreal Engines data layers which let me group objects and then load or unload them depending on what data layers they are in, an example of a data layer group is the Cargo Room which is every object for this area of the level.
Comparison pictures of different areas of the level in an early and the final stage.
The difference between the destructible and the non-destructible vent.
Showcase of loading and unloading Data Layers.
GAMEPLAY PROTOTYPING
THE GRAVITY GUN
The most crucial part of the gameplay is the Gravity Gun as this is used for both combat and the puzzles and as such this is easily the most complex blueprint in this project. I started to work on this immediately and tested, fixed bugs and added features to it during probably half the project time. My goal was to try and replicate the actual Half-Life 2 gravity gun in my own project which according to playtest feedback, I succeeded in doing.
The gravity gun uses a physics handle to grab objects that derive from a blueprint class that I use for objects that can be picked up. At the start however it could pickup ANY object that simulated physics which worked well enough until I discovered some unintentional problems. I could grab the spinning fan from the large vent puzzle to stop it from spinning and letting the player through. This was not intended to be solved this way even though it was cool, but this led me to create a blueprint class for objects that can be picked up.
ENEMIES
The enemy AI run on a behavior tree with different states such as idle, patrolling, investigating and combat. There are only melee enemies as I ultimately cut the ranged enemy because the gravity gun took a lot of development time and I felt like adding guns would be too much for this project so I cut them and as collateral damage I cut the ranged enemies to make the combat easier for the player.
A NEWTONIAN PROBLEM
I wanted to implement a newtonian damage system but after some testing and research regarding this topic I found out that while cool it would require a large amount of time to tune this for all the different weights on the throwable objects which made me not pursue this any further. I used a simpler system instead that relies on velocities to deal damage.
The Gravity Gun being able to grab the fan which is cool but unintended.
The different objects that can be picked up by the gravity gun.
The behavior tree for the enemies.
BLUEPRINT SHOWCASE
The Gravity Gun Blueprint in Unreal Engine.
REFLECTIONS
I think this was a very fun project where I learned a lot about creating physics-based gameplay, combat encounters and puzzles but also about the importance of being able to hold deadlines and trying not to overscope. I think the puzzles became quite fun but still simple as this would be the first level in this game. It was also a fun experience recreating the Half-Life 2 gravity gun in Unreal Engine and on a tight schedule. In hindsight there are some things I would change if I would do this project again or come back to it in the future.
The main thing I'd like to do is rework the start of the level. I think it could be better and more immersive in the sense that I want the player to feel like they are working in the lab. Introducing the level in the form of a small tutorial where you for example help another lab worker do some experiments, this could also be a good place for a very simple first physics puzzle in the game before all the action starts.
The second thing is to actually add guns, ranged combat and ranged enemies to the level. Even though I think it is alright and the right decision to have cut these features I do think that it would vary up the gameplay in a good way so the combat would get more fun and also give the player more choices in how to tackle the combat in the game. The combat that is in the game is however still fun and rewarding with throwing the destructible crates on enemies that gets destroyed on impact.
In conclusion it was a fun and rewarding project for me that taught me a lot and I would like to create something like this on a larger scale and more narratively driven in the future.