Unofficial FAQ
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Unofficial
Half-Life FAQ.
Last updated: Sunday, November 29,1998
Faq maintained by jaspur
Jason Thierbach. v.30
Disclaimer:
This document is provided "as is" without any
guarantees or warranty. Although the author has
attempted to find and correct any errors or mistakes,
they and everyone who has contributed to it, are not
responsible for any damage or losses of any kind
caused by the use or misuse of information in this
FAQ. The author is under no obligation to provide
service, corrections, or upgrades to this FAQ. This FAQ
was not made by Valve Software and/or Sierra and they
can not be held responsible for anything that is in this
FAQ. Any information in this FAQ can change at any
time.
Table of contents
1. Introduction
1. About this FAQ
1.2 About the author
1.3 Where to get this FAQ
2. About Half-Life
2.1 What is Half-Life?
2.2 Who is making Half-Life?
2.3 Who is Valve Software?
2.4 Who is Half-Life's publisher?
2.5 What's the story behind Half-Life?
2.6 What are Half-Life's features?
2.7 When will Half-Life be released?
3. Half-Life System Requirements
3.1 What are Half-Life's system requirements?
3.2 Under which Operating System will Half-Life run?
3.3 Will Half-Life make use of a 3D accelerator and/or
MMX processor?
3.4 Will Half-Life take advantage of 3D sound cards?
4. Multiplayer
4.1 What kind of multiplayer capabilities will there be
in Half-Life?
5. Editing
5.1 In what ways will Half-Life be editable?
5.2 The Half-Life Console
6. The Half-Life Development Team
7. Where to find more information about Half-Life
7.1 WWW
7.2 IRC
7.3 NewsGroups
7.4 Public Forums
8. Credits
9. Revision history
1. Introduction
1.1 About this FAQ
This FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is about the
game Half-Life. It offers you all/most of the available
information on Half-Life, and hopefully answers most
or all of your questions. This faq was written because I
felt the need. This faq was started August 5th 1997.
1.2 About the author
Jason Thierbach is a webmaster of the Half-Life
mega-site
Planet Half-Life located at
http://www.contaminated.net.
1.3 Where to get this FAQ
All the new versions will be posted at
http://www.contaminated.net
2. About Half-Life
2.1 What is Half-Life?
Half-Life is a first person 3D action game by developer
Valve Software. Half-Life introduces a revolutionary
leap in 3D first-person games by combining stunning
technology enhancements with genre-breaking
gameplay elements. Gamers are given opportunities to
wreak havoc--in true action-game fashion--but they are
also challenged to explore and strategize. Half-Life's
strong story elements, advanced inventory system and
story-integrated challenges create an experience
never-before-seen in traditional "run-and-gun" action
games.
Half-Life can be played both single and multiplayer,
with support for OpenGL and Direct3d accelerators and
MMX processors.
Half-Life is based on the Quake(tm) engine by ID
Software, with Valve's own enhancements to the
engine, such as 16-bit and 24-bit color and MMX
support.
More on Half-Life's features in part 2.6
This is what Gabe Newell (Valve founder/managing
director) has to say about the game:
"Our goal with Half-Life was to build the most exciting
and technologically advanced game possible."
2.2 Who is making Half-Life?
Valve Software
See Team section (6) for all of the bios.
2.3 Who is Valve Software?
Founded in 1996, Valve develops games software, and
are based in Kirkland, Washington. Valve Software
consists of more than 20 leading artists, game
designers, and programmers. Valve's prestigious
development team is comprised of many
well-respected names within the gaming community,
including: 3D artist Chuck Jones, formerly with
Apogee/3D Realms, where he was an artist and
animator for Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad,
Shadow Warrior and the Duke Nukem Plutonium Pack;
game and level designer Harry E. Teasley III, former
art director of Williams' Doom for Sony Playstation;
game designers Steve Bond and John Guthrie, creators
of the Quake Airplane and Quake Kart; and level
designer Dario Casali, one of the world's best-known
deathmatch level designers, including those found on
id Software's Final Doom. More information about Valve
is available through the company's web site at
www.valvesoftware.com.
More information in the Team (6) section.
2.4 Who is Half-Life's publisher?
Half-Life is published by Sierra On Line.
2.5 What's the story behind Half-Life?
Deep in the bowels of the Black Mesa Research Labs, a
decommisioned missile base, a top secret project is
underway. Information about the project is strictly on a
"need-to-know" basis, and as a low level research
associate you (Gordon Freeman) "need to know" very
little. Each morning you ride the train to work from the
employee dorms, you put on your environmental
protection suit, you enter the test chamber, and you
run stress tests on whatever odd devices have been
delivered from some other nameless part of the Black
Mesa compound.
But this morning is different. This morning, your test
lab is suddenly the most important place on
Earth-because something is going seriously wrong.
Maybe it's sabotage-maybe it's an accident. Whatever
the reason, reality is getting all bent out of shape.
One minute you're doing your job, pressing buttons.
The next thing you know, you're staring into an alien
world. Something huge with too many arms is taking a
bite out of your partner's face. An explosion of
unearthly light....then darkness.
Disaster. Sirens wailing. People screaming. And
everywhere you turn, people are dying--being eaten.
Monsters are everywhere. Monsters--there's no better
word for them. You head fro the surface, to get the
hell away from ground zero, but the usual routes are
unpassable--damaged by the disaster, infested with
headcrabs and houndeyes and increasingly larger and
hungrier creatures. Madness is the order of the day.
You enlist the help of traumatized scientists and
trigger-happy guards to get through high security
zones, sneaking and fighting your way through riuned
missle silos and Cold War cafeterias, through darkened
air ducts and subterranean railways where you must
ride a missle transport sled straight into the jaws of
slavering nightmare. When you finally come in sight of
the surface, you realize the aliens aren't your only
enemies--for now the government forces have arrived
with heavy-weapons goons, squadrons of ruthless
containment troops, and stealthy assassin gals. Their
orders seem to be that when it comes to Black Mesa
labs, nothing must get out alive....and especially not
you, the guy who made it all go bad. So much for the
cavalry.
When your own species turns against you, where do
you turn? You've uprooted a bunch of nasty
government secrets. You've found a portal to another
world, and an alien light comes shining through. Can it
get any worse over there? Some things you just have
to see for yourself.
2.6 What are Half-Life's features?
16 bit and 24-bit Color:
Half-Life is engineered in 16-bit color:
Which expands the available palette to 65,535 colors.
And, with support for graphics acceleration, Half-Life
lets those with advanced hardware see over 16 million
colors. The result is greatly enhanced realism and
visual richness.
Specifically, 16-bit color makes the following
innovations possible:
Realistic lighting, translucency, and blurring:
Thanks to those 65,535 colors per image, Half-Life
engineers can blend light and color in innumerable
ways to get a variety of effects. Examples include
smoke, metallic surfaces, translucent water and energy
beams-even force fields that can fade in and out.
Different colored lights from different sources will
blend properly as they pool on a floor or wall. And
because these features are implemented in software,
they can be made an integral part of the gameplay
experience, not just a visual treat for those with
advanced hardware accelerators.
Dynamically changing surfaces/Decals Surfaces:
in Half-Life are dynamic-they can change over time or
as the player interacts with them. Damp walls may
grow mossy, water will ripple as the player moves
through it and, through the use of "decal" technology,
hard surfaces will retain the scars of a previous
firefight. Decals--spot painting effects over existing
textures--also make it possible for opponents to leave
threatening graffiti on walls, or for blood, water and
smoke to leave their marks on both surfaces and
characters in the game.
DSP(digital signal processing effects):
Audio effects accelerated by MMX instructions allows
for sounds to realistically reflect the environment they
take place in: high-end, tinny effects for confined
spaces and hollow, booming reverberations for wide
open spaces. Sound cues are often a gamer's best
orienting tools, and Valve has made sure that
Half-Life's sound technology provides the same quality
and feedback reliability as its light, color, and other
realism effects.
Real-time DSP:
Valve has created a proprietary method for producing
DSP in real time. Without the DSP functions, effects
would sound the same in a small hallway as in a wide
open space. With DSP, however, a sound effect is
muffled underwater, is deadened in a fabric-padded
space, and reverberates in a very large room. DSP
affects every sound a player makes or hears, such as
shots and grunts or machinery and monster noises.
Valve's implementation of the DSP technology also
saves disk space and memory. Half-Life can reuse the
same effect many times, but give it very different
sounds based on the geometry of the room rather than
have to record a separate WAV file for each type of
effect. 3d sound will also be implemented. For any
sound they hear, players can tell which direction it is
coming from-left, right, below, above, in front, or
behind. The source direction changes as they move
through the space (doh, engines that were revving on
the left will sound off on the right when a player turns
around), and constant sounds recede as players get
farther away.
Skeletal animation system:
With a demand for realistic lighting and color effects,
there is a desire for monsters to look and move as
realistically as possible. To accomplish this goal, the
engineers at Valve have created a skeletal animation
system. Rather than store a discrete set of polygonal
meshes for each key frame of animation, as traditional
action games do, the skeletal system moves the
"bones" within a monster and deforms a mesh and
texture map around them. There are a number of
advantages this gives Half-Life animators as they build
more compelling and complex monsters:
Smoother and richer animation Half-Life players will
see much smoother animation than in typical action
games. While both sprite- and mesh-based animation
systems are based on a fixed keyframe animation rate,
which is typically targeted at the lowest common
denominator system, Half-Life's skeletal animation
system does not limit the number of frames in an
animation. For instance, a typical walk cycle may have
as many as 80 frames in Half-Life, as compared to only
4 in some sprite-based games.
6000+ polygon monsters:
With Valve's new skeletal system, monsters can be
much more complex than ever before-without affecting
performance. Half-Life will have monsters of up to
6000 polygons, compared to the 500-plygon monsters
in traditional mesh-based games.. Anatomically correct
motion Through skeletal animation, motion can become
more realistic and natural because the animation
doesn't depend on thousands of interactions of mesh
vertices that are difficult to map in all permutations.
The faster a character runs, for instance, the faster the
legs will move.
Multiple animations:
Compound animations and switchable body parts
Because skeletal animations are more economical,
Half-Life has many different animations per creature.
And, rather than have a fixed set of animations that
involve a monster's entire body, Valve can build
animations of many different parts and then combine
them into a whole. Monsters can turn their heads to
look at the player while they are running. Troops can
pull out weapons and fire while they are moving or
kneeling. Compound animations also make it possible
to remove or switch body parts in response to the
gaming action-say, to allow for a weapons change or to
show damage to a monster that's still fighting.
Monster AI:
Half-Life's monsters and life-forms are also
remarkably--even terrifyingly--intelligent.
Valve has created a technology that imbues Half-Life
monsters with tactical intelligence, multi-character
cooperation, and a supreme will to live. The result is a
menagerie of new creatures whose intelligence and
unpredictability make them truly formidable
adversaries.
Traditionally, game AI is a set of hard-coded if-then
decisions for every possible situation that could
confront a monster, such as, "If there is a bad guy in
this room then shoot at him." Valve took another track,
designing a module-based AI system that provides
practically infinite flexibility and monster growth
potential. Below are just a few of the ways that AI
decision modules work together to produce
unprecedented monster intelligence.
Monster behavior based on player's actions moment by
moment:
In Half-Life, monsters might advance only when it
makes sense to. They assess how much health the
player may have, where the player is heading, how
many of their own kind are left in a room, and whether
they have enough health themselves to fight. Such
conditions and others dictate whether a monster will
chase, attack, or retreat. While in other games
monsters are basically suicide squads, in Half-Life
monsters don't want to die.
Squad (group) behavior:
Valve's module-based AI technology also adds the new
twist of squad behavior and cooperation among
monsters. Adversaries can make a threat assessment,
recruit others and then plan a coordinated attack
against the player. Flocking behavior Achieving realistic
motion for creatures that travel in swarms, flocks, or
packs is just as important as achieving it for those
that move individually. To do that, Valve has crafted
an innovative Flocking Behavior Model that realistically
depicts the organic movement of animals such as birds
and fish.
Multi-sensory monsters:
Half-Life monsters possess a rich and varied group of
senses for detecting a player's presence-namely, sight,
hearing, and smell. For instance, some monsters can't
see at all, but locate the player by sound. Others have
the ability to track the player who has moved on by
using a scent trail. This forces players to rethink their
tactics and weapons choices.
Improved technologies for more exciting gameplay
Valve thrusts players into a full-surround gaming
environment that is its own thriving space. Half-Life
has an ecology and a society. Monsters are breeding,
herds are forming, and some monsters prey on others.
Players are dropped into the middle of this
environment and must learn from what they see. In
order to survive, they must use both their weapons and
their wits. Some examples of innovations that enhance
the player's gameplay experience include:
Continuous-world (day-and-night cycles) experience
Instead of discrete levels that offer no chance of
turning back, Half-Life lets players return to any space
they've visited-though what has happened in that
space in the player's absence may be surprising.
Usable vehicles and props:
Valve's designers have made sure that vehicles and
props aren't merely backdrops to a story-they are tools
that must be used to advance in the game. For
instance, an underground train system takes players to
numerous stations and allows them to backtrack. Some
vehicles also contain, or can be used as, weapons to
mow down monsters.
Ducking, crouching, and crawling:
For more realistic and varied action, Half-Life lets
players duck and crawl in addition to stand, walk, run,
and jump. In addition to expanding players' tactical
options, being able to duck and crawl opens up myriad
spaces once sealed off to first-person shooters, such
as a maze of duct work which can be used to help
elude monsters or reach otherwise impossible rooms.
Improved physics:
In Half-Life, physics and gravity behave more like in
the real world than in other games. Flooring can be
unstable and rickety railings can give way. Even typical
tactics for obliterating the enemy must yield to
Newtonian physics. For instance, blowing up a soldier
who's wearing a backpack of desirable goods also
destroys the goods. An initial surprise to experienced
gamers, it will challenge players to dream up some
interesting alternative solutions.
Scripted sequences to advance the story and interact
with:
Rather than jar players out of their immersion by
plugging in backstory details as a voiceover or text
screens between levels, Valve's new scripting
technology reveals information through sophisticated
scripted animations that can be deliberately or
accidentally interrupted (such as by shooting at a
character or bursting into a scene in progress).
2.7 When will Half-Life be released?
Half-Life is available in stores now!
3. Half-Life System Requirements
3.1 What are Half-Life's system requirements?
- being required
+ not being required
- Pentium 133
+ MMX processor
- 16 MB RAM (32 recommended)
- CD-ROM Drive
- SVGA graphics adapter
- Windows supported sound card
+ OpenGL, Glide and D3D supporting 3D accelerator
+ 400 MB hard drive space free
(Cd will be required to play)
3.2 Under which Operating System will Half-Life
run?
Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0/5.0
3.3 Will Half-Life make use of a 3D accelerator
and/or MMX processor?
Half-Life will support Direct 3D and OpenGL.
One of Valve's enhancements to the Quake engine is
support for MMX(tm) processors (Pentium MMX or
Pentium II). If you have a 3D accelerator, capable of
running Direct 3D, Glide or OpenGL at a decent speed,
it will look mind-bogglingly cool.
Other chipset support is not known at this time.
3.4 Will Half-Life make use of a 3D sound card?
Half-Life sounds great with chips supporting the
Aureal's A3D and Creative's EAX sound API's. Half-Life
also supports Microsoft's DirectSound API.
For more information on 3D hardware issues, check out
Sierra's Half-Life support page.
4. Multiplayer
4.1 What kind of multiplayer capabilities will there be
in Half-Life?
With the multiplayer functionality in Half-Life, we are
going to make action gaming on the Internet a lot
more fun and a lot less frustrating to the mainstream
gamer"
:said Scott Lynch, Senior Vice President of Sierra
Studios.
Half-Life multiplayer features
Won Authentication issues:
To play Half-Life online, you must own the game and
enter the serial number that's on the cd case upon
installing the game. When you try to connect to a
server, Won will authenticate your copy. Some people
who have bought the game have had problems logging
in and playing multiplayer games both online and
setting up games on a LAN. Alot of these issues have
been addressed in the 1.0.0.6 patch for Half-Life.
Always be sure to have the latest version so you can
stay up to date.
One button play:
Gamers will be able to be up and running in a
multiplayer game with the press of a single button.
There will be no configuration hassles, no IP
addresses, and no need for additional utilities or
patches. The Half-Life launcher will automatically
connect to the Internet, locate the master server,
select an appropriate low-ping game, download any
resources necessary to play, and launch the game.
Find Your Friends:
With Half-Life's integrated communications and
searching facilities, gamers will be able to find their
friends no matter where they are on the Internet, get
together, talk to each other, and then jump into a
game together. It's also easy to set up a private game
that only you and your friends can play.
Be Yourself:
Anonymity is a thing of the past with Half-Life. As part
of customizing the appearance of their onscreen
character, players can scan a picture of themselves
onto their computer and have that appear as their
character's face in the game (and on their opponents
screen). Members of clans can spray paint their clan
logo or other bitmap on the opposing teams territory to
let them know who's really in charge. A master server
keeps track of your accomplishments and standings
versus all of the other Half-Life players.
Lag-friendly game design:
For many players new to the Internet the amount of
time it takes for information to travel back and forth
across the Internet, known as lag, can make the fast
pace of action gaming very frustrating. By the time the
server has registered a fire command, the target has
already moved. Half-Life addresses this by designing
for lag. One example of this is one of the weapons, the
Snark, a fire-and-forget organic grenade that is
completely independent of the player's ping time.
Cooperative and Competitive scenarios:
Many mainstream gamers are interested in both the
competitive and cooperative aspects of the multiplayer
experience. Half-Life will contain both head-to-head
and cooperative scenarios.
Auto Download and Configuration:
Even experienced gamers can be frustrated by the
complexities of downloading new maps, placing
add-ons into the right directories, and knowing which
of these should be used with which servers. Half-Life
makes all of these operations automatic and
completely transparent to the player. If a player
connects to a server, and the server administrator is
running a Half-Life game that requires new sounds,
new models, new maps, or additional DLL's, all of
these will be automatically downloaded and configured
for the user.
Additional Features:
In addition to the above, Half-Life features 32-player
Internet and LAN multiplayer support. Servers are
available via WON.net, Gamespy or user hosted
servers. Half-Life's skeletal animation system lets
players see which weapons opponents are using.
Half-Life's dynamic environments add to the realism
and chaotic fun: burn marks, bullet holes and blood
marks appear on surfaces. Multiplayer levels include
player-controlled trains and conveyer belts, which offer
creative means of offense and defense.
Team Fortress 2:
Valve announced in May 1998, the acquisition of TF
Software Pty. Ltd., Australian developer of Team
Fortress, one of the most popular multiplayer games
on the Internet.
Team Fortress (TF) is a first person action game with
strong team oriented play and strategic elements. Each
member of a team takes on a specific class, such as
scout, sniper, or engineer, in competition with other
teams. The player's class determines his or her
appearance, tools or weapons, and skills. Close
coordination with other team members is the key to
success in the game; it is also the source of the
game's long-standing popularity. The original Team
Fortress, developed as an extension to id Software's
Quake, was released in August 1996. Today,
approximately 40% of current Quake servers are
dedicated to Team Fortress.
Sierra Studios and Valve also announced that Team
Fortress 2 will be shipping as a Half-Life expansion
pack about a month after the game hits the store
shelves. "Half-Life is clearly perceived in both the user
and press communities as the best single-player action
game for 1998. Team Fortress is one of the most
popular games being played on the Internet. Building
TF 2 on top of Half-Life's will result in a multiplayer
experience of much greater depth and broader appeal
than anything currently available," said Scott Lynch,
Senior Vice President of Sierra Studios.
Here is what level designer Dario Casali had to say
about internet play:
"Net play in Half Life will have QuakeWorld style
functionality and we are currently discussing this with
several gaming services. We are making sure that the
process of getting a net game going will be a simple
one."
5. Half-Life Editing
5.1 In what ways will Half-Life be editable?
Half-Life is Windows/NT based, allowing people to use
C/C++ to develop add-ons. Editing will be different in
Half-Life, as Valve is using .DLL's instead of .QC files.
DLL's can be used for models, sounds, levels. Almost
everything. Half-Life will allow experienced
programmers to modify via modules. Programming in
Half-Life will avoid using an interpreted language
approach (ie, QC), which is better suited for Dos
games.
Worldcraft:
Worldcraft is the leading 3D action game level
development tool. An enhanced version of the editor
will be included with Half-Life, and will take advantage
of the numerous technical advancements found in the
Half-Life engine. Worldcraft, called "sleek, swift, and
completely intuitive" by Wired magazine, has long
been the favorite map editor among gamers developing
customized levels for Quake.
The current version of Worldcraft has been called "the
undisputed king" of level editors by PC Format
magazine. It is an intuitive, easy-to-learn tool that
incorporates dozens of powerful features previously
available only to advanced programmers. The newly
enhanced version of Worldcraft-which will be included
in the Half-Life box-will support Half-Life's many
technological innovations, including programming AI,
24-bit textures, chrome and translucency. It will also
contain advanced editing features, including vertex
manipulation and clipping planes for faster shaping of
architecture, support for Direct 3D and OpenGL, and
improvements to the user interface to make frequently
performed editing tasks faster and easier. Worldcraft
will continue to support 8-bit legacy games.
For more information on editing, check out the links
below for tutorials, tips, etc:
Wavelength
The Official Half-Life Editing Resource Center
The Forge
5.2 The Half-Life console
In order to use the Half-Life console, load the game
with "hl.exe -console" (or make a shortcut that adds
the -console command line option). You'll see a gray
CONSOLE button in the upper-left of the main menu,
and the traditional ~ (tilde) will bring down the
console in a game.
Visit the following pages for lists of cheats, console
commands, map list and console command variables:
Console Commands
Cheats
Maps
Variables
6. The Half-Life Team
Gabe Newell -Founder/Managing Director
Gabe held a number of positions in the Systems,
Applications, and Advanced Technology divisions during
his 13 years at Microsoft. His responsibilities included
running program management for the first two releases
of Windows, starting the company's multimedia
division, and, most recently, leading the company's
efforts on the Information Highway PC. His most
significant contribution to Half-Life was his statement
"C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big
bomb and not let them blow it up."
Mike Harrington - Founder/Director of Development
Mike's development career began at Dynamix, where he
worked on a variety of sports titles for
GameStar/Activision. He spent the last nine years at
Microsoft working as a developer or lead developer on
OS/2, Windows NT and Microsoft Bob v1 and as a
development manager on Microsoft Bob v2 and
Microsoft News Viewer. Mike was pleased to learn that
resistance is not, in fact, futile.
Monica Harrington - Business Development Manager
Monica has been in the software business for fourteen
years, eleven of them at Microsoft, where she was
most recently a senior marketing manager in the
Interactive Media Group. At the time Mike and Gabe
decided to start Valve, Monica had just taken a job as
the group marketing manager for Microsoft's consumer
software businesses, including games. She decided to
change jobs so she could continue to pump Mike for
inside information on Head Crabs, Big Momma, and Mr.
Friendly. Monica's maiden name is Harrington. She
claims Mike changed his name.
Ted Backman -Art Director/Conceptual
Artist/Illustrator/Animator
Ted has been a freelance artist and animator in the
Seattle area for the last four years. Ted developed
many of the more unusual monsters for Half-Life,
including the Head Crab, Mr. Friendly and Big Momma.
He is also a black-belt karate instructor.
Lisa Mennet - Director of Marketing
Prior to Valve, Lisa worked for 12 years in software
marketing at Aldus Corporation and Starwave
Corporation. She also has a master's degree in
Educational Psychology, and uses her clinical training
at work whenever possible.
Harry Teasley -Game Designer/Level Designer/Artist
Harry came to Valve from Shiny Entertainment, where
he was working on the upcoming game Wild 9's. Prior
to Shiny, Harry was at Williams Entertainment where
he was lead artist and designer for PlayStation Doom,
and was lead designer for Doom64. Before Williams,
Harry worked with Sid Meier at Microprose on
Civilization as well as Pirates Gold, among other
projects.
Chuck Jones -Illustrator/3D Artist
Chuck joins Valve from Apogee/3D Realms where he
was an artist and animator for Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of
the Triad, Shadow Warrior and, most recently, the
Duke Nukem Plutonium Pack. Formerly a tattoo artist,
Chuck tagged Jerry Cantrell of rock group Alice In
Chains long before he created the space aliens who
invaded Los Angeles.
Ken Birdwell -Senior Software Development Engineer
Ken has contributed to a wide range of projects in the
last 15 years. These include in-circuit emulators
(CodeTap), 3D surface reconstruction (Surfgen), 3D
prosthetics design tools (Shapemaker), and satellite
networking (Microsoft's Broadcast PC). He also wrote
one of the first graphical shells for multiplayer on-line
games for Compuserve's Sniper. Oddly enough, Ken
has a BFA from Evergreen State University, where he
studied painting, photography, and animation. Ken has
designed and implemented the animation system and
many other engine components for Half-Life.
Yahn Bernier - Software Development Engineer
Yahn was an Atlanta patent lawyer with a degree in
chemistry from Harvard. So obviously he ended up in
Seattle developing computer games. He taught himself
to program at the age of 12 and, more recentley,
developed what we at Valve have called "that other
level editor," BSP. Now that he's getting paid to make
games, he figures he'll practice law in his spare time
(little does he know). Yahn is working on Half-Life's
multiplayer code, and on Worldcraft 2.0. His favorite
phrase, when imbibing too freely, is "Yucca will
assimilate you."
Kelly Bailey -Senior Software Development
Engineer/Musician
Kelly, formerly a product unit manager at Microsoft,
has a programming background that includes consumer
multimedia, database engines, and networking. He
created all of the music and sound effects for Half-Life.
He is also lead singer for a Seattle band, Lucy's Fishing
Trip, and, therefore, shaves less than the rest of the
staff.
Dario Casali -Level Designer
Joining Valve from England, Dario is a world-famous
level designer. His work includes some of the most
popular deathmatch levels on the Internet, as well as
Final Doom, published by id Software.
Steve Bond -Game Designer/Engineer
Having made the great trek westward from Fort Walton
Beach, Florida, Steve is responsible for much of
Half-Life's sophisticated monster and entity behaviors,
of which the squad-level AI is his favorite. Steve
worked with John Guthrie on several projects that
demonstrated the power and flexibility of the QuakeC
development environment, which caught John
Carmack's attention, who in turn referred him to us.
Before that, Steve worked at a local Internet service
provider and delivered pizza, a fact that we rarely let
him forget, even in his corporate bio.
John Guthrie -Game and Level Designer
Along with Steve Bond, John started the influential and
popular Internet gaming site, Quake Command. John
was also the co-creator of Quake Airplane and Quake
Kart. Today, he occupies Valve's darkest office, where
he is hard at work constructing the chambers and
corridors of Half-Life's treacherous missile base and
underground train system.
Brett Johnson -Level Designer/Composer
Brett's craftsmanship as a musician is matched only by
his ability to create traps which snare, snag and frag
unwary explorers in 3D environments. Valve lured Brett
mid-way through his final year at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute and a promising career in
biochemistry. A hard-assed New Yorker, Brett
continues to deny Seattle's claim to being the
birthplace of espresso.
Karen Laur -Illustrator/Texture-Maker/Artist at Large
Karen has contributed to Starwave Corporation's Castle
Infinty and Eastwood, and Activision's Zork Nemesis.
She was the sole creator of Materia Prima, a texture
collection published by the Valis Group, and was head
designer for Maya Romanoff, a prestigious producer of
hand-made wallpaper. Karen was also owner/operator
of the Washington DC restaurant, Dante's.
Dave Riller -Level Designer
Prior to joining Valve, Dave was an active developer in
the on-line Quake community, and worked with id
Software on the deployment of Quake World. For his
day job, Dave was a program designer/analyst at MSI,
a Windows software developer located on the East
Coast. He also ran their website. Dave has been a beta
tester for Doom 2, Hexen, Quake, and Warcraft II. In
his virtually non-existent spare time, Dave is a pilot
and musician.
Marc Laidlaw -Writer/Game Designer
Marc Laidlaw is the author of half a dozen strange
novels, including Dad's Nuke and The 37th Mandala.
While writing a cover-story about Quake for Wired
Magazine, he determined that level designers had the
coolest jobs on earth--although the fact that he'd been
working as a legal secretary for 10 years might have
warped his perceptions very slightly. In addition to
building levels for upcoming projects, Marc will be
working to ensure that Valve's stories and scripts are
as intense and entertaining as all the other elements
of its games. Oddly, he refuses to do anyone else's
typing.
Jay Stelly - Engine/Special Effects Developer
Jay recently joined Valve from Tetragon where he was
lead engineer and 3D engine developer of Virgin's
Nanotek Warrior. Before that, he developed titles for
Sony Playstation & 3DO. Way before that, he wrote his
first computer game (at age 9) and had a game
published in a magazine (at age 15). A native of Cajun
Country, Jay finds Northwest buildings too hot (what,
no air conditioning?) and the food not hot enough.
Gregg Coomer - Game Designer/Art Director
Gregg has worked on a variety of graphic design,
multimedia, and web projects for Nintendo and
Microsoft. Resident art-boy, he'll critique your shoes,
interior decoration, and interface design, in that order.
His secret dream is to create a game called 'Aksidenz
Grotesk'. You know, for kids.
Yatzse Mark - Artist/Texture Illustrator
Yatsze Mark (pronounced "Mark") came to Valve from
San Diego where she was working at the Lightspan
Partnership, doing background painting for traditional
cel animation in educational games. Prior to Lightspan,
she worked at Leland Interactive Media (later to
become Midway Home Entertainment) after her
graduation from Art Center College of Design in
Pasadena. Her exceptional skill at painting is only
exceeded by her questionable taste in husbands.
Doug Wood - Animator/Modeler/2d Artist
Doug joins us from Apogee/3DRealms where he worked
on projects such as Duke Nukem3d, Shadow Warrior,
Prey (before everyone left) and the Plutonium/Atomic
Edition for Duke. Before 3DRealms, he worked for
Origin down in Austin. As far as we know, Doug is the
only member of Valve who has ever been a Guardian
Angel in New York City. Doug is responsible for many
of Half-Life's scripted sequences, including tentacles
that pull unsuspecting scientists through the ceiling.
Louis Donaldson - Office Manager
Louise is the only person at Valve who wasn't a
hardcore gamer before joining. She is still a bit
suspicious when we tell her that not only is it OK to
play games at work, but that we expect her to play
games at work. Her daughter thinks it is sooo cool that
her mom is working at a games company, even though
her mom won't let her play Half-Life until she is ten.
Mona Lisa Guthrie - Office Manager
Mona comes to us by way of Florida. She spends her
time pretending to work at the front desk, ICQ'ing the
entire development staff, and forgetting to send faxes.
She has a nice haircut, so we forgive her.
Joe Bryant - Programmer
Joe, an Alaska native, recently joined Valve from
Realtime Associates, where he was lead programmer
on Magic: BattleMage. Before that, he was a
programmer for the Alaska Army National Guard for 6
years (yippee COBOL!). Joe also worked on medical
and oil pipeline robotics and once spent 3 days on an
Arctic Ocean beach debugging code for an oil robot.
Steve Theodore - Game Designer/Animator
Steve Theodore comes to Valve from FASA Interactive
in Chicago, where he made BattleMechs (tm) for FASA
Interactive's MechCommander and the ill-fated
MechWarrior III. He's probably the only animator you'll
ever meet with a degree in Roman History and a
reading knowledge of ancient Greek. Despite his
professorial manner, Steve was a member of Chicago's
famous art-rock trio, "The Chimps" and was feared and
hated by his former landlady.
Karl Deckard - Designer/Artist
Karl comes to Valve by way of Nintendo, where he was
responsible for graphic design and production on
Nintendo Power Magazine and several player's guides,
including Killer Instinct, Yoshi's Island, and Super
Mario RPG. His thorough familiarity with paper-based
role-playing games, wargames, and CCGs, combined
with his knowledge of PC and console video games,
mark him as Valve's quintessential game fanatic.
Randy Lundeen - Mapper/Artist
Randy comes to Valve by way of Microsoft, where he
worked as an interface designer for the Internet
Gaming Zone. Randy designs some of the most
unusual and original levels in the company; he also is
the most likely person to be pushing the polygon and
memory limits of our engine. In his distant past, he
was a key staff member at a potato processing plant
(his responsibilities including peeling and potato
quality oversite).
Robin Walker - Game Designer/Development Engineer
Robin co-wrote the popular Quake mod TeamFortress
with John Cook and Ian Caughley, before being
assimilated when Valve acquired TeamFortress
Software. He's now hard at work on the TeamFortress2
design and game code, and has no time to answer
email, so please don't send him any. Easily identified
by the large inflatable kangaroo mounted on his
monitor, Robin has no idea how to relax now that his
hobby has become his job.
John Cook - Software Development Engineer
Formerly of TeamFortress software, John is lead
programmer on the TeamFortress2 project recently
acquired by Valve. Before that, John studied computer
science at RMIT in Australia. John is apparently still
suffering jetlag from the move to Seattle, as he
doesn't seem to be able to make it in to work until
past noon.
Aaron Stackpole - Network / Systems Administrator
Aaron magically appears whenever there are computer
problems. With a background in game and level design,
Aaron's status as a Microsoft Certified Professional
with over eight years of computer software and
network support experience makes him a valued ghost
around the offices. His work for the Gunman TC has
brought him acclaim in what he laughingly calls his
spare time ... we're still trying to figure out why. Aaron
also became the proud father of twin baby girls on
September 14, 1998.
7. Where to find more information about Half-Life
7.1 WWW
You can check out the following webpages:
Valve Software
Offical Half-Life site
Sierra On-Line
Visit our links section for an up to date list of all the
Half-Life fan sites.
7.2 IRC
#contaminated, #half-life or #valve on 3DNet
...get mIRC at www.mirc.co.uk and select the 3DNet
server.
Then type /join #half-life or #valve and chat with other
Half-Life fans, and Valve employees.
7.3 NewsGroups
Currently unknown, but dang it, there should be.
7.4 Public Forums
Contaminated.net's public Half-Life forum
Telefragged's public Half-Life forum
8. Credits
Valve Software
- extra big super-duper thanks to Lisa Mennet, and
everyone else from Valve
Bakshra-"Rock!"
Jason Thierbach(a.k.a.)jaspur
Thanks to Satanic maintainer of the Official Hexen II
Faq
9. Revision History
v.10 - Almost finished for first non-public release
v.20 - Too many things to be mentioned
v.21 - Changes in links, system requirements, and
team sections
v.22 - Changed release date
v.23 - Changed release date again, system
requirements, team sections, added and changed a few
things here and there
v.25 - Changed release date. Added more multiplayer
info (TF2). Changed system requirements. More
Worldcraft info. Other things, here and there.
v.30 - Brought various sections up to date since the
games release: sound, editing, multiplayer.
If this FAQ doesn't answer your question, check out
HLH's New Unofficial Half-Life FAQ.
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