“A bullet may have your name on it, but shrapnel is addressed "to whom it may concern"."
Unknown
“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”
Oscar Wilde
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Using the term Special Visuals seems almost comical when contrasting the HL1 engine to its far more modern variants, but there is a certain beauty to content created in such a restricted environment.
Some of these visuals are created simply through the use of the SKY texture, while others are created through dynamic lights or even scripted sequences. Some enforce the cohesive ambience of a spaceship, while others directly impact gameplay.
The View Halls have been mentioned on the previous page for their role as highways between the north and south areas of the map. They could easily have been created without the exterior views, but by letting them see each other as well as out into space, they serve multiple purposes. They reinforce the spaceship-feeling, as the hard bottom of the ship is being shown here with empty space beyond. You very rarely see SKY texture used on anything but the ceiling. They also help show that the Chromosynthesis Lab room, which appears to be between them on the map, is actually at a much different vertical height.
The Chromosynthesys Lab, i.e. Chromo Hive, is vertically opposite to the View Halls. As such, it deserved its own visual depiction of the hard ceiling of the ship, created in the form of a glass ceiling. This fits with the room, which has platforms supporting small rivers of Chromium, which is basking in sunlight reflected off the massive moon over the ship (hence chromosynthesis, like photosynthesis). The room also has a large crate of Chromium with an open top, and the resource node placed upon this. A background concept of the map was that Chromium and H20 are the most powerful sources of energy in the universe: this is why the ship is run by the latter and researching the former, while the aliens' hive locations are found near both.
The Map Pump Room contains Nexus' most complicated component: the Mag Pump weldable. As for the visuals, the room houses fourteen large pillars (pumps), some in the ground with only an inch of their tops showing, others fully extended. When the weldable is used, every pump changes its position. Accompanied by a very loud multi-directional sound effect, any player in the room is temporarily engulfed in stimuli. I explain the full details of the sequence in the Scripted Sequences section further down this page.
Nexus Mainframe contains perhaps the most noticeable visuals in the map. The 'mainframe' is a large blue dome set in the ground with a Resource Node placed on top. This mainframe pulsated between bright blue and black. As such, the entire room pulsates. Despite only reaching pure black for a milisecond, there addition of the fade-in fade-out darkness levels makes the room quite creepy. A tactful alien could time his ambush well in this room.
The Ventilation System and the Infested Hub form a fantastic part of Nexus' visuals. Although the whole system is explained later on, the visuals should be mentioned here. The Hub itself is, as it name suggests, fully infested, dark, and very creepy. But the hub is only a small proportion of the massive system. The vents themselves are very tight, but high enough for a marine to run in. The feel of the vents vary from heavy wiring to hard metal to lit circuitry, with occasional blackspots for extra scare-factor. Simply put, almost no other playable level has ever been created which can offer such a realistic sneaking-around-behind-the-access-panels feeling as Nexus.
The Port Shaft has received hundreds of (positive) Star Wars comments, which means I have successfully recreated that which inspired me for this room, in my own style. Whether you're an alien jumping down on marines, an onos taking the elevator, a marine shooting through the elevator's middle hole or simply running through, the room feels very intimidating. In early versions I noticed that many new players would run through the bottom floor without ever looking up or even noticing the massive elevator, so I added multiple upwards-moving translucent red bars. This helps pull the eyes upwards, and anyone taking the elevator will notice that it follows these bars very closely in speed.
Two other visuals to quickly mention are found in Docking Wing and the Bridge. Docking Wing is on the left extreme of the map, creating its own reminder of the ship's distinct size by again showing space outside. Instead of glass, a forcefield is present, appearing in-game as two quickly strobing red gradients. The Bridge also has a view to the outside, much akin to a Bridge seen in almost any scifi movie.
Ambience is an interesting topic. It is the term we use for the feel of a map. As a level designer there are dozens of methods available, yet generally their result is more than the sum of the parts. In this section I will quickly speak about just a few techniques I used, through Lighting and Audio and creating the 'living spaceship' effect.
Two key characteristics of Nexus' lighting relate specifically to the maps ambience. In the rooms near Marine Start and MS itself, the lighting is fairly abundant and a sterile blue. As the rooms progress towards the hives, the textures gradually get more details and become more multicoloured, as with the lighting. Not only does this give small favour to the 'home team', but it creates different moods in their respective areas of the map.
In a map of such a scale, there end up being some areas that are comparatively lacking detail. I made good use of spotlights to create visual detail in areas where texturing and brushwork could not. Examples are found throughout the map.
The use of Dynamic Lighting adds to the 'living spaceship' ambient feel. The glow in Nexus Mainframe, the active slug in Railgun, and the erratic generator beam in Port Thruster are all examples of ways the map feels alive.
I believe that audio is an often underappreciated element in all forms of media, at least for the target audience. We often see a movie or game and, when commenting on the quality in hindsight, never mention the calibre of the audio. Yet to watch almost any movie without the music or to play any game without the ambient sound effects will prove just how much quality sound can complete the package.
Early in development, I went into the ambient sound and effects folders for NS and combed through the entire selection, jotting notes along the way. I then matched sounds to rooms: Coordinate Mapping with a server buzz, Logistics with computer beeps and fuzzy radio transmissions, Thruster Engines with a loud hum, Chromo with an organic clicking rumble, etc. The only custom sound found in Nexus is a stock NS pulsing sound that I modified to be in sync with the Nexus Mainframe glow pulse.
The end result is a map with seamless ambient audio integation in almost every room.
Although not requiring actual scripting tools such as LUA or the Source menu-based trigger system, these events found in Nexus would still fit under the banner. All are triggered by the Weldable entity: this is an entity which must be 'shot' by a marine equipped with a Welder, which then triggers an event.
The Mag Pump weldable serves a very special function. When a player first enters the room, it is filled with pumps: these are pillars either in the ground or fully extended. There is initially one vent in the room.
But when a player welds the weldable panel (lit in red), the mag pumps are cycled. That is, they switch positions, either going into the ground or rising out of it. While this has the effect of changing the positions of cover in the room, it also has two other effects.
First, it unblocks three others vents in the room, bring the total vent count up to four. Second, two upright attached pumps are lowered to give access to a small room. This room can fit up to four Siege Cannons which will reach the Starboard Thruster hive.
Although this hive can be sieged from two other places, the Mag Pump siege gives the marines many advantages. One related to the scripted sequence is the ability to place the Turret Factory and then upgrade it to Siege (both required before the siege cannons can be place) before they need to weld.
Despite the strength of the siege, it is balanced out in numerous ways. The most obvious is the additional vents opening, but there are more subtle methods used that would be explained in a guided tour.
There is a hidden area south of Engineering visible on the Minimap named Manual Override. At first glance it would appear to be an alien-only vent area, but one would eventually notice that it contains a Weldable, which can only be activated by a marine.
A regular marine (i.e. not equipped with a jetpack) would have to do some serious searching to find the route into this area, but that is covered in the Hidden Routes section on the next page.
Once a marine has reached and welded the weldable, the two H2O tanks which flank both Engineering and the Override have their water drained. This allows marines to build in either of these rooms, which are actually within siege range of their respective Thruster hives.
Although the opening of two siege rooms would be considered quite an advantage for the marines, it was balanced in two ways. First is the rather difficult and dangerous route to actually get to the Manual Override. Second is the set of two vents in the ceilings of each H2O tank, giving the defenders multiple entrances during the assault.
Many marines enter Logistics for the first time, and follow the catwalk around and up into the overlooking control station. They are usually a bit confused to only find a window and an almost-closed door with blue light shining out from under it. They usually then go about the rest of the map.
If a marine were to get to the top floor of the Residential Block double resource node room, he would notice a weldable beside a closed door. Upon welding this weldable, both the door here and the door above Logistics would slowly rise.
This sequence therefore opens a new route. This is a small bonus for the marines, but it is well worth it; they gain a route from Marine Start to Double that is quick and brings them into the room on the top floor. There is also better access to the Port Shaft from this position.
The two other weldables are found first in Keystone Interface, where it opens a multiple-floor-spanning ladder, and then in Coordinate Mapping, where it grants easier access to the jump puzzle found in that room (explained in the Hidden Routes section).
