Happy Halloween! For our last installment of #Blocktober, we thought we would tease something weve not shown yet (aside from a small tease in a dev blog post a long time ago). The Xenian swamp!
There is a lot of lore around Half-Lifes development cycle that talks about the larger plans, cut levels, and more planned locations for Xen. Due to time or technical reasons, many of these ideas never made the final cut. One of these was the idea of the Xenian swamp. The area was actually briefly seen during Half-Lifes resonance cascade scene, but was never revisited beyond that, though it is quite likely that Valve originally intended for you to end up back there at some point during the Xen chapter.

Paper Plans

We wanted to bring this back in our version. Our Xen is all about realised potential. We thought it was a really cool touch to get a tantalising glimpse of the unique and interesting alien environment at the start of the game and then actually get to explore it much later, near the end of the game.
The original layout of the swamp was made by Xen Lead Chris Horn, and was intended to follow a river upstream across several branching paths, each leading to different encounters and gameplay areas. Quite a lot of our ideas and designs for Xen were originally more non-linear in nature, as an attempt to change things up from the linearity of the Earthbound sections. This was something which would later adjust, as we became more accustomed to Xens design and core ideas, and figured out what worked and didnt work.
This was the initial blockout with some rough prop placement and with the major gameplay elements from the plan blocked out. This map was meant to be sprawling and winding; feeling like a confusing alien environment. As you reached the maps conclusion at the top of the river, you would get to higher ground, and be able to look back across the maze you just navigated.

Revision, Revision, Revision

This map went through a large amount of revisions. The early versions didnt play particularly well. It was far too easy to get lost and difficult to keep track of your progression and location, and we also found that lots of memorable gameplay sections and encounters were being missed. Things werent framed well in general because players could approach from multiple areas, and it was all too much to manage for players and designers alike. This led into the maps first major rework, similar to how the first map of Xen had been totally reworked (you can see details in our previous #Blocktober post). In fact, this was done by the same mapper! The first key idea which helped bring the map forward was to make it feel more Xen and less terrestrial by breaking the map up into several floating islands, which had somewhat collided together: thus allowing the river to flow across them. The idea was that this would help players track their progression better by allowing them to mentally tick off sections of the map as they got through it. This helped a lot, but didnt solve all the problems.

Across many, many revisions, the valley/canyon maze following the river eventually gave way to a more interesting and complex path and cave puzzle, that further gave way to something even more ambitious, which we wont spoil. Over time, the map became more linear, directed, and focussed, which benefitted it hugely. Due to its enormous complexity and size, the map also eventually turned into 2 maps! While a lot of the core ideas were maintained and developed from the original blockout, the overall look and shape became unrecognisable. This maps design and what we learned from it is something we really want to talk more about in detail after Xen has shipped. The multiple loops of iteration and feedback took this map from one of our most troubled, to one that we are most proud of. This was probably the toughest map to develop in the Xen chapter. It was a lot of work, and the lessons were hard, but we hope youll think it was worth the effort once you get to play it. We sure do! Finally, here is an aerial shot of the same map, in its current state, matching the shot from the earlier blockout images. The shot below illustrates the top left quadrant from the earlier blockout image.

Steam Sale

Now is also a good time to mention Black Mesa is on sale for Halloween! Until November 1st we are 60% off!