Zhenghao Chu

Antlion Master

Project Snapshot

This is a half-life 2 level for single player. The theme is about an escape from the antlion research department controlled by Combine force, where many antlions put in the prison. The player can use bugbait, he/she should take good advantage of the antlion and trying to use them to solve puzzles and kill your enemy efficiently, and finally escape this place.

Engine： Source Engine (Hammer)

Base Game: Half-life 2

Development Time: 100 hours

Level Design Documents

ChuZ_AntlionMaster_LDD.docx

Goals

The design goals will mainly focused on the new mechanism of guiding antlion to interact with switch under several different situation:

The antlion should work correctly, follow the instruction from bug bait; meanwhile, the player should know how to guide the antlion, and antlion should give feedback to player to reinforce the learning of this new mechanism.
Create aesthetically and thematically environment that conveys the theme of research center, make player regards the antlion as their teammate and feel angry about combine forces
Make the objective of the level clear, and player could have a strong sense of where to go and what to do.
Combine the antlion mechanism with verticality structure and restrictions to make it have more depth and potential in gameplay design

Design

Antlion interacting system:

It is not hard to control the antlion with the bug bait. However, make antlion do something for player is never designed in original HL2 level. So basically, I fake the interaction and make it looks like the antlion is interacting with the switch. Every interaction system includes four parts:

1. Main trigger box: When the antlion step into the box, it will activate the animation of both switch and antlion and execute the logic about switch related entity.

2. Scripted sequence: It controls the logic of activating antlion’s animation. I choose the attack animation since it looks like the antlion is beating the switch down.

3. Switch and move_rope: The switch gives feedback by execute animation of idling down, also the move_rope is used to clarify the connection between the switch and controlled entity so it conveys the result of interacting with the switch.

4. Protection trigger: It is possible that the antlion gets stuck because more than one animation is activated at the same time.

To avoid this situation, I add this trigger box as this box will activate the main trigger box after antlion finishing its flying & landing animation. So, the animation will be triggered properly one by one.

Beam trap & Antlion switch:

This is a total new mechanism that does not exist in the original Half Life 2 level. I will explain the pacing design for the new mechanism to introduce it.

Part 1 Introduction:

When the player gets out, he/she will see one antlion sprints through the beam and get killed. It hints the player that the beam is dangerous. And as taught in first room, the player should know to guide the antlion to activate the switch, also the blue cable indicates the relationship between switch and beam emitter.

The first time the player meet with the antlion switch

The Second Antlion Switch + First Laser Trap Puzzle

Part 2 Beam trap + verticality:

Now there are two switches for the antlion to activate, and there is some verticality. It reinforces that the switch can only be triggered by the antlion.

Also, the sequence of deactivating the switch is restricted, as there is one beam trap blocking the position for activating the switch (see figure 4, picture 1, red squared mark)

I also hope the player feels awesome when seeing the antlion fly over fast, which shows the power of antlion.

Second Laser Trap Puzzle Part 1

Second Laser Trap Puzzle Part 2

Part 3 Beam trap + verticality + interaction between antlion & player:

In this part, the antlion and player need to interact with switch to deactivate the beam for each other. As what is showed in figure below, it is an alternate progress.

Also, for increasing difficulty for the player, there are some moving beam and this time the beam won’t all be deactivated, the antlion can only deactivate one of them and the player needs to move in time to dodge them. Also for the antlion, in the final part, the player also needs to guide the antlion move in the right time, otherwise the antlion will be killed by the moving beam too.

Third Laser Trap Puzzle

The diagram of third beam trap puzzle

(The emitter without beam means the beam is shooting vertically)

Environmental Narration Creation:

The model resources in HL2 are limited, so it is challenging to build the theme of antlion research center. So, I choose to focus on expressing the crucial action that combine forces have done on antlion. I design the room 2 as a place where combine abandoned the antlion bodies. By building this environment, I want to implement the narration and make it more reasonable and consistent.

Big tunnel with antlion blood mark

This is set for cooperating with the antlion bodies put in the big container, trying to explain where these bodies come from and what this place for.

‘Dead Antlions’

There are no model as the antlion’s body, but I can make them become ragdoll at the beginning, so they look like dead body then.

Also, in order to make it easier for the player to see the body, there are blocks at the bottom of the container(It is black so the player can not identify it when seeing it from higher place)

Antlion Blood Mark

I add antlion blood mark on the ground and make it looks like the antlion is dragged through the gate. It works as sightline for telling player where to go and hint the next room’s function (also the ‘storage’ mark above the door)

Also, it guides the player to notice what happened at their right when they are going downstairs.

Additional Screenshots:

Post Mortem

What went well:

1. Try to make some innovations on antlion’s function

In my level, the antlion can interact with the switch, which is impossible in original HL2 levels. It is the core gameplay of my level and the key to my puzzles. The innovations always bring risk and uncertainty, it cost me a lot of extra effort to confirm it works. Apart from being functional, the conveyance and tutorial are also very important. It is useless if only the designer is clear about how it works. However, it has huge potential when combining with all gameplay mechanism with switch, and some verticality and restrictions could make it much more interesting. I am really satisfied with the infinite possibilities it has.

2. Locate the problem with effective method and creative mind

As I use many new mechanisms that didn’t appear in original HL2 level, there are always some bugs accidentally jump out. For example, as I set the beam trap with some damage so the player could not walk through directly, a weird problem happened: There are some beam traps have no damage while others have. So, I make the plan:

Copy the functional beam trap and replace the broken one: most directly way to fix
Find all the setting about damage, and make control experiments to confirm the possible reason: most thorough fixing method
Google it

Unfortunately, I tried all, and it still didn’t work. It could be something irregular, so I decided to use some irregular solution too. Accidentally, when I try to touch with every part of the beam trap, I surprisingly find out that only the part that is close to the emitter of the beam has no damage while the other part does have the damage. I try to think it logically, as the problem is relevant to the distance, I suspended that moving the beginning position of the beam might do something and I tried, and it works! It has cost a lot of time, but the process is precious as I can learn a lot about solve the problem in a reasonable way.

3. The conveyance about the objective

Question: where to go? It is hard to convey to the player as HL2 has no UI guidance for clarifying it, and the only tool is the visual conveyance. So, I design it in several perspectives:

See it from the beginning
Add caption as brief narration about where to go
Make the flow of the whole level is consistent (like in my level, the player is keeping going downstairs in whole)
A lot of decal and sightlines for guiding direction

At last, I believe that the player could realize where to go and feel natural about this process.

What went wrong:

1. Underestimate the importance of being realistic

I must admit that the third room of my level is very disappointing, as I just believe there should be more verticality in this room, so I build it with different floors without thinking too much. However, several problems appear:

Needs supporting props for all the floors
Why this room is design like this structure? What’s the point of going up? (I set destination at higher place)
What is the realistic function of this room (as the HL2 has a realistic background)?
Where does the enemy comes from?
The flow of the whole place is weird

I spent a lot of time to fix these problems, and some of them are still not fixed well. Ultimately, I believe the bad foundation of the room makes all design hard to progress. If the structure is more reasonable and build it with some solid reference, most of the problems can be fixed much more easily. It is very dangerous to design the place with too simple thoughts.

2. Too much unnecessary narrative decoration at early milestone

At early milestone, I decide to design the room 2 as a place for abandoning the bodies of antlion whose death reason is crucial medical experiment. However, it is awkward and confusing since the surroundings and itself is not polished enough. As a conclusion, it didn’t explain anything as the main gameplay elements are not visually polished enough. The process should be step by step and the result of breaking steps is severe.

3. Not game breaking enough

When playtesting my own level, I am always too conservative and afraid to break my own level. However, there are always some game break methods that ruins the whole level easily. So maybe I should not value and protect my design too much and just break it as much as I can, and only by that I could jump out from my own vision’s restriction. Also, it could provide some innovative way for designing and setting.

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