Xen Monsters
A mod for Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Level Overview
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Development info
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Level features
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Level summary
“Xen Monsters” is a single player stand-alone level for Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode 2. The player takes control of Gordon Freeman as he discovers and masters a new technology brought to Earth by the Combine: the ability to capture and train species from the multiverse for battle. Freeman must train a tamed headcrab in the White Forest and use it to fight his way past the monsters of the other resistance trainers in a series of Pokemon-inspired, turn-based battles.
“Xen Monsters” is a single player stand-alone level for Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode 2. The player takes control of Gordon Freeman as he discovers and masters a new technology brought to Earth by the Combine: the ability to capture and train species from the multiverse for battle. Freeman must train a tamed headcrab in the White Forest and use it to fight his way past the monsters of the other resistance trainers in a series of Pokemon-inspired, turn-based battles.
Design Goals
Learn a new engine quickly. I had four weeks to build a complex level with interesting gameplay in an engine I had never worked in before.
Improve my skills as a scripter. I deliberately chose some technically challenging mechanics to replicate in the Source engine.
Incorporate playtester feedback into the design. I knew this would be a project that might not easily convey all of the necessary information to new players, and implemented every piece of playtester feedback that I could. Sometimes this meant changing my design from something I saw as obvious initially.
Improve my skills as a scripter. I deliberately chose some technically challenging mechanics to replicate in the Source engine.
Incorporate playtester feedback into the design. I knew this would be a project that might not easily convey all of the necessary information to new players, and implemented every piece of playtester feedback that I could. Sometimes this meant changing my design from something I saw as obvious initially.
Xen Monsters
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Overview map
Post Mortem
What went right
- Stretching myself. By choosing a gametype that I knew would be difficult (turn-based combat) I was able to expand the range of features I could mock up with a limited toolset.
- Scope. Initially this project was much larger, including a bigger map and the ability to catch and train multiple Xen monsters. It remains a large project, but I learned the difference between crucial features and ancillary goals.
- Problem solving level up! I ran into so many problems with this project, but I expanded my debugging skills by fixing them.
- Scope. This project became way more work than it should have been. Even with many features on the cutting room floor, there remained a set of core interconnected systems that had to be created and debugged together or the entire project would not capture the essence of Pokemon-style gameplay I was looking for.
- Scripting interconnected systems. If even one component failed, the entire level collapsed.
- Conveyance. In trying to replicate some of the complex systems of Pokemon-style turn-based combat, I had failed to also include the excellent tutorials that came with it.
- Underscope. Projects always expand once I get into them. It would be better to deliberately underscope, particularly with projects in engines I am unfamiliar with. There are only so many hours in the day, and hard work is not enough to compensate for large initial scope.
- If a feature is not conveyed to the player, it is not done. I spent the majority of my time on very intricate systems, and the rest of the time setting up the battle arena conveyance.
- Be willing to admit when something is out of reach. I spent the better part of the first week, that I could have spent prototyping, trying to figure out Source SDK's GUI code so that I could have truly interactive arena buttons on the screen. I overestimated my abilities and wasted time because of it.
