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The Development of Faculty Errand
The Development of Faculty Errand
Created: 12/30/2020
Created: 12/30/2020
Updated: 12/30/2020
Updated: 12/30/2020
Faculty Errand was my first map that I fully released to the workshop, developed for Half Life: Alyx, the first game that made mapping feel interesting for me. It was incredibly barebones and lackluster to say the least. It started development around March 27th, a really short time after the game it uses as its base was released, more on that a bit later.
Faculty Errand was my first map that I fully released to the workshop, developed for Half Life: Alyx, the first game that made mapping feel interesting for me. It was incredibly barebones and lackluster to say the least. It started development around March 27th, a really short time after the game it uses as its base was released, more on that a bit later.
This barebones nature was partly due to a large portion of the map's development taking place during March 27th and May 15th, 2020. During this time the official tools for Alyx hadn't been released and a small portion of the community (quite incredibly, might I add) created bootleg tools within days of the game's release. Leave it to the Half Life community to do something like that. Anyways, because the community had to use the bootleg tools for the time being we didn't have access to most of the assets (and in a lot of cases all of the features, the bootleg tools didn't even have the ability to correctly compile lighting! That's why when you look back at the earliest maps made for Alyx they will be fullbright). The other reason it's not detailed is ... well .. to be frank, I was new to mapping.
This barebones nature was partly due to a large portion of the map's development taking place during March 27th and May 15th, 2020. During this time the official tools for Alyx hadn't been released and a small portion of the community (quite incredibly, might I add) created bootleg tools within days of the game's release. Leave it to the Half Life community to do something like that. Anyways, because the community had to use the bootleg tools for the time being we didn't have access to most of the assets (and in a lot of cases all of the features, the bootleg tools didn't even have the ability to correctly compile lighting! That's why when you look back at the earliest maps made for Alyx they will be fullbright). The other reason it's not detailed is ... well .. to be frank, I was new to mapping.
From what I can remember, Faculty Errand had an uneventful development cycle. It took me around 3-4 months (I work very slow) and there were a couple times I just stopped for a while because I didn't feel like working on it. The area pictured above went through several iterations before it reached its final state because I couldn't decide on what to add next to make the map interesting. I settled on soldiers spawning, seeing you, and shooting and breaking the door that you may have used as cover which I thought made for a pretty cool moment. The rest of the map went through development mostly smoothly until the end where I wanted to do more, but decided not to because I couldn't find a way to continue it without it feeling stale or me needing more experience. Faculty Errand finally released to the public to not that bad of a reception on June 13th, 2020 and that concludes my look into the development of Faculty Errand for now.
From what I can remember, Faculty Errand had an uneventful development cycle. It took me around 3-4 months (I work very slow) and there were a couple times I just stopped for a while because I didn't feel like working on it. The area pictured above went through several iterations before it reached its final state because I couldn't decide on what to add next to make the map interesting. I settled on soldiers spawning, seeing you, and shooting and breaking the door that you may have used as cover which I thought made for a pretty cool moment. The rest of the map went through development mostly smoothly until the end where I wanted to do more, but decided not to because I couldn't find a way to continue it without it feeling stale or me needing more experience. Faculty Errand finally released to the public to not that bad of a reception on June 13th, 2020 and that concludes my look into the development of Faculty Errand for now.
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