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<div id="gutter"> <div id="gutter_btm"> <div id="gutter_top"> <div id="container"> <div id="container_layout"> <div class="legacy pre2005"> <table width="582" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"> <tr><td width="115" valign="top"> </td> <td width="15">   </td> <td width="452" valign="top"><a href="index.html"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/title.jpg" width="452" height="169" border="0" alt="The Final Hours of Half-Life"></a> <p> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="165"><tr><td width="165" height="25" colspan="3"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/nb_top.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="25"></td></tr><tr><td width="25" height="130"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/nb_left.jpg" border="0" width="25" height="130"></td><td width="115" bgcolor="#000000"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" width="115" bgcolor="#000000"><tr><td width="5"> </td><td width="110"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/clear.gif" width="110" height="1" border="0"><br><font face="arial" size="1"> <a href="index.html">Part 1 - Introduction</a><br> <a href="part2.html">Part 2 - The Microsoft</a><br>             <a href="part2.html">Millionaires</a><br> Part 3 - The Valve</a><br>             Difference</a><br> <a href="part4.html">Part 4 - Reassembling</a><br>             <a href="part4.html">the Pieces</a><br> <a href="part5.html">Part 5 - Squashing the</a><br>             <a href="part5.html">Final Bug</a><br> </td></tr></table></td><td width="25" height="130"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/nb_right.jpg" border="0" width="25" height="130"></td></tr><tr><td height="25" width="165" colspan="3"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/nb_bottom.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="25"></td></tr></table> <font face="arial" size="3"> <b>Improved Technology <br></b>Although Valve had the Quake technology, it didn't intend to just build a game on top of it. Valve had a group of engineers that wanted to extend the engine and custom-tailor it for the game. <br> <br>Put simply, Valve's vision for Half-Life was beyond the capabilities of the Quake engine, and to make it a reality, major obstacles had to be overcome. For example, due to the limited memory of typical PCs, conventional animation methods simply would not work for the amount of character animation the team wanted to put into the game. <br> <br> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="5" align="left" width="120"><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#222222"><a href="screen20.html"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/20.jpg" border="0" width="120"></a><font face="arial" size="1"><br>Ken Birdwell explains his proprietary skeletal animation system that uses bones and joints to animate characters.</td></tr></table><font size="3" face="arial, verdana, helvetica, sans serif"> That's where Ken Birdwell, a man who John Guthrie calls a "genius," comes into the picture. Birdwell, who rides a Harley and used to design software that scanned a person's foot and created custom shoe insoles, was behind the concept of skeletal animation in the game. "I wanted to see more fluid animation, but we didn't have enough memory," he explains. "We needed to compress down the animation by a factor of 10 to 100. Skeletal animation was the answer. We actually create bones and joints for the characters." As characters walk around in the environment, they have a virtual skeleton that creates the movements seen on screen. <br> <br>The skeletal animation system also proved useful in solving the problem of making mouths that move on the characters. Newell is particularly proud of this achievement. "I remember when Ken and Kelly [Bailey] had been working in secret to get the mouths to move - a really hard technological problem. They kept it quiet because they wanted to impress us all when it was done. It's an amazing feeling to think that something really innovative and cool is going to come out of the guy in the office next to you." <br> <br>To make the mouths of the characters move in the game, Birdwell and Bailey actually created bones in the faces of characters, which in turn are used to manipulate the movement of their jaws. Guthrie is still dumbfounded by this achievement. "If you ever wonder who goes to college when he's 13, it's someone like Ken Birdwell. He solves really hard programming problems." <br> <br> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="5" align="right" width="120"><tr><td align="center" bgcolor="#222222"><a href="screen43.html"><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/43.jpg" border="0" width="120"></a><font face="arial" size="1"><br>Advanced AI would help keep the player on the edge of their seat. </td></tr></table><font size="3" face="arial, verdana, helvetica, sans serif"> Another major area of innovation for Valve was in artificial intelligence. Although a lot of games promise advanced intelligence, Valve spent months developing proprietary technology that would actually make enemies work together in packs and flocks. Dave Mattson, a web master at the popular Half-Life fan site halflife.org remembers when Gabe Newell gave him a demonstration of the game's AI. "Gabe showed me this map that only contained four Houndeye enemies," he remembers. "One of them quickly assumed the role as leader and stood on his lone hind leg and watched our every move, looking for signs of aggression. The other three creatures cautiously began exploring their surroundings - sniffing the floor and licking bloodstains. It was incredible." <p align="right"><b>Next:</b> <a href="part33.html"><b>There was No Model</b><img src="/web/20110225015808im_/http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/shared/arrow.gif" width="23" height="23" hspace="5" border="0" align="absmiddle"></a> <br clear="all"> <br> <br> </td></tr></table>