Archived from the original dev blog and left as it was written, so it reflects the game as it stood in 2008.
Before going into my blog, I'd first like to introduce myself. My name is Abe Robertson and I've been designing levels for the Black Mesa team for a little over a year and a half. When I first joined I was truly overwhelmed, not having been exposed to that many exceptional artists before. I felt it was my duty to hone my skills and achieve the level of quality that every one of them was injecting into their own work.
I eventually did get a lot better at what I was doing, but not without falling flat on my face hundreds of times in the process (as seen below).
After becoming a full team member I was promptly assigned to work on Residue Processing, which happened to be one of the most hated chapters in Half-Life. Because I didn't know exactly what I wanted stylistically, it was inevitable that I'd have a plethora of failed attempts.
This was the first time in my mapping career (I call it mapping because there wasn't much level design involved at the time) that I felt I should step back and reevaluate my level creation process. I started drawing hundreds of concepts and planning out exactly what it was I wanted to see from this chapter. I concluded that it takes place inside (and briefly outside) a waste treatment facility.
I had to get a little more in-depth than that, however. There were some features of the original that wouldn't necessarily appear in your typical treatment plant, but were too iconic to remove, so I really had to get imaginative. What I did was break the facility into chunks: chemical waste processing, the aerated grit chamber, municipal solid waste, and finally an area for composting. The art style differs slightly for each one.
The level that I'm going to briefly discuss today is c2a4b, the chemical waste processing area. The most memorable item of this particular level would probably be the radioactive sludge. We chose to keep it in, simply because it wouldn't be Black Mesa without it.
The first room went through about five iterations before I liked what I was seeing.
Here is an ealy version, still in the gameplay testing process. Some aspects changed dramatically.
And here is the final version after several lighting, texturing, and detail passes.
The room that caused me the most grief was the one that originally had nine vats of toxic waste and vertically moving pistons that the player had to jump on. Not only did the puzzle go against the laws of water displacement, it also looked like it was constructed solely so people could hop across the platforms gleefully to sweat out whatever they'd had to drink on that particular day to compensate for the lack of restrooms. For the life of me I could not get this area to work out. I would try creating these complex puzzles where you'd have to exit the room and operate a crane, or turn on a power generator so you could rotate a catwalk, but it all just seemed like overkill. I decided that for this instance, simplicity should prevail. I just made it a horizontal puzzle.
I was really doubtful when I started working on this map. Ultimately what I wanted was a fun, good looking level that made sense. I didn't think I'd ever be able to do that, but I did, and it was good enough for me, which was a great feeling.
Here are some extra screenshots for enduring my endless droning. Sorry for the low resolution. 😆
