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It is becoming increasingly clear that Valve, to put it simply, knows how to do things right. Their latest release, a new single-player level for Half Life 2 called Lost Coast, showcases not only the addition of HDR lighting to their already very powerful Source engine, but also an extraordinary sense of design.
To explain the specifics of how HDR, or High Dynamic Range, lighting works the way it does would be irrelevant to this article—what we will focus on is how Valve utilizes the technology, which, to be honest, is awe-inspiring. The entire level uses a single light source—the sun. As the player moves from a dark hallway into the sunlight (or, conversely, out of the sunlight and into a dark hallway), the engine uses something called Dynamic Tone Mapping to simulate the effect of a person's eyes adjusting to a sudden light change by slowly adjusting the exposure of the scene in very much the same way the human iris would. The result feels very natural and is only blatantly noticeable when you realize that you've never seen a game do it before. This, along with other neat tricks (like the use of refraction shaders, which, when looking through a window of imperfect glass, will distort the light appropriately—see the screenshots below), serves to create a ridiculously realistic and engrossing environment and helps the player forget that they are experiencing the world artificially.
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But fancy new technology isn't the only impressive aspect of Lost Coast; in fact, the actual level design is some of the best I've seen. As soon as the player enters the area, a nearby fisherman fills them in and gives them an objective: get to the church at the top of the cliff and disable the Combine gun that is attacking the village. Climbing the cliff, however, is not as easy as it sounds. As the player moves along the dangerously narrow ledges, they are forced to fend off enemies from above, below, ahead, and behind—sometimes all at the same time. After reaching the top of the cliff, the player is allowed to explore the area and take a breather from the action. Upon reaching the objective, the situation is presented to the player as a puzzle, forcing the player to carefully examine their surroundings and use the physics engine to disable the gun—in this case by removing the panels and using a box (or bucket, or candlestick, or whatever is lying about) to jam the loading mechanism—which then sounds an alarm and the player is faced with another combat situation. This kind of pacing—action, exploration, puzzle, action, and so on—works incredibly well in controlling the player's emotions and keeping them immersed and entertained. The type of action varies as well—for instance, the combat on the cliff edges differs from the combat in the church in that the latter involves more of a dependence on cover and has less directions the enemies could come from—or, as another example, the exploration of the church courtyard is more relaxing than the dangerous and tricky navigation of scaffolding at the end of the level. With such a wide variety of action and a masterful sense of pacing, Lost Coast is a perfect example of finely tuned level design—I might even say it's the best I've seen in a FPS.
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If you own Half Life 2 and have the kind of high-end machine that can run Lost Coast, there's really no reason to not download it. It's a great example of what the industry is capable of technologically, and shows Valve's impeccable design sense. Oh, and it's free too, so that's a plus. | | |