Small Half-life 2 Deathmatch study

As I’m about to make a very small deathmatch-ish project. The project I’m working on is a spinoff of the good old Crossfire and dm_runoff concept to create more drama, action and meta-gameplay to the level.

The idea is simple; The arena in which the players are playing within is about to explode. Players need to pick up three batteries scattered around the level and connect them to three sockets. When this is achieved one player can escape in the elevator, while others will of course try to take her place. When one of the players managed to escape the whole thing explodes killing everyone but the survivor who gets rewarded for her deed. I did a prototype of this gameplay back in early 2007 with huge success. A lot of interesting stuff happened when players started to apply tactics, like hiding batteries, to be the player who activates the sequence and has biggest chance of escape. I’m now planning to pick up this project again but with a more stimulating and interesting layout then I had back then.

I’ve had a look at the layouts of the official Half-Life 2 Deathmatch maps bundled with the game to get some ideas if they had similar elements to them. What I found was that this isn’t the case. Some of the levels look like Frankenstein’s monster since they got ported out of the Half-Life 2 single player (dm_lockdown and dm_overwatch). Others, like dm_powerhouse and dm_resistance are much more classic DM-style levels from a layout perspective, this is most probably because these levels got bundled with HL2:DM as a part of a price in a competition Valve started. My conclusion is that the levels in HL2:DM is pretty much random, but most of them are fun in their own way, but there is no consistency when it comes to layout. Good to know!

Below is a list of overviews for Half-Life 2 Deathmatch I did:

dm_lockdown:

dm_overwatch:

dm_powerhouse:

dm_resistance:

dm_runoff:

dm_steamlab:

dm_underpass: