Half-Life2 was made in a year?

[Perret]

After reading the Final Hours of Half-Life2 I have the feeling that this final-content of HL2 don't need soooo long to be made ... they said they can produce 3 hours of superb gameplay a month. Now, the game is 17h long (if we can believe what the press said) ... and they began to really develop "the game" (this game that we actually play on the 16, because before was only tech-play-demo or some sort like this I think) by the begining of the year 2003 ... and then totally rebuild it at the end of 2003 ... (because of the source-leak) .. but why they can build such a great game (if we can believe what the press said again ) in sooo short time?

The orginal Half-Life was made in from ground in 2 years ... this is very short too ... some games need more then three years to be finished, but it seems, Valve is very fast in producing great gameplay, in fact. Yes, 6 years sounds like a really long time, but I think the work on the Source-Engine and the Source-Tools 'waste' a lot of time ...

What do you think about it?

Greetings

Sorry for my english time-form-management (tenses) ... I think I should invest more time in learing the forms and dont spend so much time reading (not writing ) in this forums ...

 

[StardogChampion]

Didn't the article say that they had about 3+ different cabals (teams of mappers) creating all the content. So no wonder they could create stuff so fast.

 

[Trebaruna]

They only went 3hr a month when all their technology had matured and the tools were easy to work with etc.

 

[morits]

They also had to create Source

 

[Lobster]

And over the years they would have already collected alot of the weapons, monsters and maps etc, through experimentation, the year and a half at the end woulda been fitting it all together into an actual game.

 

[koopa]

And over the years they would have already collected alot of the weapons, monsters and maps etc, through experimentation, the year and a half at the end woulda been fitting it all together into an actual game.

Exactly. Even when Gabe says 'it's not good enough, we have to do it again' it doesn't mean everything gets thrown in the bin. Lots of art assets/tools/etc can be re-used.

 

[ThrasherX9]

HL1 actually took about a year to complete too. In late 1997 the game was completely scrapped and redone in a years time. HL2 had tons and tons and tons of planing, experimentation, and ideas that they threw around for the first 4 years. The last year is when they were actually able to work out the games levels and content. So, no, HL2 took 5 years to make.

 

[Solver]

And creating maps isn't creating the game. Notice how the article says they were writing the engine, tools, and other stuff long before they even started to make the maps. It's also obvious that at Sept 30, 2003, the engine was largely working, though buggy, but the actual game content was still very unfinished.

 

[Epsi]

The thing about creating anything is that for a long time you're casting into the dark, trying to turn a completly blank state into something coherent. So they're creating the technology, the story, the art, everything, and trying to mould it into some kind of consistent whole, all the while probably not having a clue what they're doing most of the time.

5 years down the line, and they have the HL2 world nailed down, the technology is stable, and they're at the top of the learning curve at creating content at this sort of level. So they are the top of their game, and able to whack out gameplay at a massive rate.