Half-Life 1 & 2 Map Names Explained

[@Pinsplash]

okay... getting a lot of questions here Q: Actually A means area. A: Technically possible but it seems weird to refer to chapters as areas. Q: Actually C means chapter and A means act. A: This would mean there are four chapters in the game and that acts are divisions of chapters, which simply doesn't make sense. Q: C4A1TITLE was intended as a "breaking the game" thing. A: Gearbox is not that clever.

[@boxfigs1710]

Chapter and act makes a lot more sense given HL1's development. The chapters we have grew out of a smaller assortment of chapters, but the naming convention stayed.

[@lutherkitty278]

I'm pretty sure that in the WON version of Opposing Force, it said XEN and not C4A1TITLE, I vaguely remember it saying that. I imagine that they forgot to include that when they ported the game to Steam

[@fatperson1152]

none of those are questions lol

[@xanious3759]

@@lutherkitty278 i swear the WON version it wasn't broken

[@TheAgamemnon911]

@@xanious3759 I agree. I played the release version and would have noticed and remembered something like that. This bug was introduced much later.

[@MegaZeta]

It’s funny… I didn’t realize “Opposing Force” was as much a physics joke as “Half-Life” and “Blue Shift” until this video. And “Opposing Force” is the simplest of the three…

[@Eliasdbr]

Also, some chapters from the HL Series like Surface Tension, Entanglement or Dark Energy are physics terms

[@concentratedcringe]

That's why I reckon some of the best mod names (like Induction and Field Intensity) continue that convention. If your mod's supposed to be an addition to the official games' stories, then having a similarly punny name is a good start 😌

[@racer927]

@@concentratedcringe So something like Half-Life: Cross Section or Half-Life: Transmutation would work?

[@concentratedcringe]

@@racer927 Yup! Those'd be great names. I especially like the ring of 'Half-Life: Cross Section', you could get some interesting gameplay and plot ideas out of a name like that 🤔

[@PineappleDealer37]

What is the joke on blue shift?

[@PedanticPig]

The words in the map names in HL2 also affect what the metrocops say when describing their location and how they refer to the player (e.g. "workforce intake" and "citizen" in the trainstation maps vs. "residential block" and "freeman" in the c17 maps). A lot of these you don't get to hear normally because there's no metrocops in those areas.

[@rocktobot]

that's actually really nifty. how subtle!

[@Skorpeonismyrealname]

Those are a seperate NPC exclusive to those maps. We likely were going to be combating against the other two Synth units at that time, before they got cut.@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413

[@Templarfreak]

@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 -shield scanners just happened to be used on certain maps in general, them spawning is not exactly map specific afaik, as in it's not hardcoded into the game to turn city scanners into shield scanners if the game is on certain maps.- EDIT: previous statement not completely true, see luke's comment. in the case of what OP said tho i think _that_ might be map specific, although i dont know that for a fact but it makes sense to me

[@vrad_exe]

There is code in HL2 to make scanners automatically turn into claw scanners if the map name starts with d3_c17_. The episodes turned them into a separate entity.

[@Templarfreak]

@@vrad_exe ooooh riiiight, right, i remember this now

[@lymphoid]

More interesting trivia for those who care: When saving c4a1f, the gate before Nihilanth, the save file displays as "Xen", although the map is technically part of Interloper. The Blue Shift training maps are ba_hazard1 thru ba_hazard6. In Half-Life Day One, t0a0b was not split up; and c1a2d is still part of c1a2. Uplink simply uses hldemo1 thru hldemo3. Decay for PS2 uses maps that begin with ht (for Hazard Team, as it was originally to be called). HL's cXaX schema also resembles Doom's numbering system: eXmX (episode x map x). Cheers

[@eklipsed9254]

Then I guess c stands for chapter and a would stand for area?

[@kirtheweasel]

Wait Aren't they started with dy?

[@lymphoid]

I assumed it was Chapter, Act; but Pin is probably right, it might just be a separator.@@eklipsed9254

[@lymphoid]

The PC Port devs used dy_@@kirtheweasel

[@Awesomeness-iz3dh]

I was wondering about Decay. Thank you.

[@a1batross_]

Fun fact. GoldSrc hardcodes all these map names, with the only purpose to show chapter names correctly in save menu. Mods can override this through undocumented export function.

[@lightning1116]

So one of the level designers of Half-Life, Dario Casali is doing a 25th anniversary playthrough of the game. In his playthrough of chapters 2 & 3 he shows off an early draft of the game’s original story. These chapter divisions follow the original draft pretty well, with the major differences being the removal of the original acts 4 & 6 of the game (probably scrapped for scope and time reasons) and the later addition of Endgame. Endgame is actually a very interesting thing for them to add because it seems that the G-Man was actually reused from the original concept for Xen, where he played a minor role. I guess they liked him so much they decided to make him an elder god for some reason lol.

[@nfwrambo]

As is tradition at this point, half life alyx also has a completely different naming scheme for it’s maps

[@David-bh7hs]

Unfortunately no one has actually played that game, so we don’t really know what it is.

[@lewa_j]

@@David-bh7hs Chapter 1 "Entaglement" 1. a1_intro_world 2. a1_intro_world_2 Chapter 2 "The Quarantine Zone" 3. a2_quarantine_entrance 4. a2_pistol 5. a2_hideout Chapter 3 "Is or Will be" 6. a2_headcrabs_tunnel 7. a2_drainage 8. a2_train_yard Chapter 4 "Superweapon" 9. a3_station_street Chapter 5 "The Northern Star" 10. a3_hotel_lobby_basement 11. a3_hotel_underground_pit 12. a3_hotel_interior_rooftop 13. a3_hotel_street Chapter 6 "Arms Race" 14. a3_c17_processing_plant Chapter 7 "Jeff" 15. a3_distillery Chapter 8 "Captivity" 16. a4_c17_zoo Chapter 9 "Revelations" 17. a4_c17_tanker_yard Chapter 10 "Breaking and Entering 18. a4_c17_water_tower 19. a4_c17_parking_garage Chapter 11 "Point Extraction" 20. a5_vault 21. a5_ending

[@nfwrambo]

@@David-bh7hs :(

[@Concon12316]

It's similar to Portal 2's naming scheme. For example a1_intro_world is in the first act (Entanglement) and is the introduction map on the balcony. a2_pistol is when you get the pistol, etc.

[@adr2215]

Portal 2 does things in a similar way: each map has a prefix denoting what "act" it is, in the format "sp_a#_" seperate from the actual map chapter, in the following order: Act 1 starts with sp_a1_intro1 and ends with sp_a1_wakeup, one map before the end of chapter 1, The Courtesy Call. Act 2 starts with the final map of The Courtesy Call, sp_a2_intro, and runs through The Cold Boot, The Return, and The Surprise, and ends at sp_a2_core, the final map of The Escape. Act 3 starts with sp_a3_00, the first map of The Fall, and ends in the final map of The Reunion, sp_a3_end. Act 4 starts with sp_a4_intro, the first map of The Itch, and runs until the last map of The Part Where He Kills You, sp_a4_finale4. Act 5 has only one map in the entire game, sp_a5_credits, and is only used for the chapter called, well, The Credits.

[@adr2215]

small note: the sixense dlcs for portal 2 also work in a similar way, with 8 "acts", although i don't know enough about them to list the map order

[@thecaketubby5764]

Correct - singleplayer maps use sp_ and multiplayer maps use mp_. Also, the map names actually have some code built within them. Adding a sp_ prefix to your map will give you a portal gun on spawn, and the a# determine the loading screens. a1 - Act 1 (overgrown; shows broken down GLaDOS) a2 - Act 2 (reconstruction; shows destroyed chamber reactivating) a3 - Act 3 (old aperture; shows the junkyard) a4 - Act 4 (wheatley; shows a Wheatley chamber with some frankenturrets)

[@DolanDuking]

@@thecaketubby5764 huh, you'd think mp would be the one to give the portal gun since sp has more levels where you don't have the portal gun

[@OssyFlawol]

There’s a lot more going on with Portal 2’s map names beyond the sp_aX_ naming convention. As someone explained in a reply above, Coop uses mp_coop_, but the game actually checks for two other potential naming conventions - if a map has ‘2guns’ in the name, it will load the game logic for the cut 2Guns campaign, spawning Atlas with the Portal Gun and P-Body with the Paint Gun, due to the Paint Gun not being compiled into the final game though it leads to P-Body spawning with nothing. If a map has ‘vs’ in it’s name, you won’t be able to replace eachother’s Portals, which is an unknown remnant of a competitive gamemode they tried to make. (I speculate it’s related to the cut Nuggets) Sixense Maps are a little special - they use the sp_aX_sx_ convention, and what’s strange is that the developers at Sixense seem to have treated the act counter as a whole chapter - I’m willing to bet this was done for them to have more loading screens. (Which is a little stupid, because they would have been able to modify the Portal 2 code anyways??) What this leads to is Acts that 90% of the time are 2 maps long. While there is 8 total acts, you cannot transition from Sixense Act 4 to Sixense Act 5, as Acts 1-4 are for the Main Campaign, while 5-8 are for the Advanced Campaign. And to cover all bases - yes, the Coop DLC for the Sixense DLC has it’s own convention of mp_coop_sx_.

[@DolanDuking]

@@OssyFlawol omg it's ossy

[@BeerDone]

The convoluted naming of HL1 and OP4 must have been due to development still being done in the DOS file system. It did not support file and folder names in excess of 8 characters, so you had to come up with ways to stay under that limit, while keeping the structure somewhat digestible. My guess is Gearbox had moved to NT sometime between developing op4 and Blue Shift, which allowed them to use more "legible" file names.

[@fabiosarts]

but even Windows 95 did support long filenames

[@odinatra]

Multiplayer maps disprove your theory

[@SneedFeedAndSeed]

that would make sense, they were using a modified engine of a dos game so development must have started somewhere with dos

[@Zack_Wester]

@@fabiosarts yes and no. it supported longer but you didn´t really know how long the filename path was to the install directory. HL by default install in. C:/Siera/HL/map01.map (well in margin). or in ProgramfileX32/sierra/HL problem was I could easily install it in C:/Programfilex32/Mygames/games/First_Person_Shooters_1996/Sierra_valve/Half_life/map01.map Might start to get to long. X32 could also be X16 (maybe need to dubble cheak that was ages sinse I last used windows 95.

[@DaHitch]

@@fabiosarts While that may be, certain naming conventions from DOS persisted for a long time after DOS fell out of common use. I too, for a long time into using Windows, avoided naming files with more than 8 characters, using spaces, or special characters (@,&,#, etc) to avoid issues. Technology changes faster than human habits.

[@Zmeeed01]

Chuckling Pinsplash is something I was not prepared for.

[@Woot100]

1:31 all bops are castards

[@nuxx1876]

custards

[@containerseightandnine9756]

I always read C1A0 in my head as ciao

[@DaxAxeOffical]

i also always read T0A0 as "toao"

[@KingMetalMario]

Notice how several maps are missing in HL2 such as d2_coast_06 and some c17 maps. There were a lot of maps that were cut late in development some of which you can play unfinished versions of in the leaked 2004 build.

[@QQ_Gabe]

I always thought the A in the HL1 map names stood for “area”

[@QQ_Gabe]

Also I thought the C stood for “chapter”

[@tiranito2834]

personally i've always thought the naming meant "campaign X, act/area Y" for example c0a1 would mean campaign 0, area 1, makes sense, right? But this video somehow tries to claim that 'a' serves no purpose other than separation and tries to use some kind of weird "act" system for what is obviously the campaign number... specially if you have played other valve titles like l4d where the maps are ordered like c1m1_map_title, which means that 'a' would stand for some kind of synonym of "map", and wouldn't you know, the words "act" and "area" make quite a lot of sense in that regard. Also, knowing how modern map titles are still in a very similar format but include the map title at the end makes it clear that the map files were short strings due to system limitations of the time at which half life was programmed, but considering how the multiplayer maps have longer strings, and how even in legacy systems a 255 byte length file name limit was pretty common, I would say it was simply done that way because it made it easier to order the maps visually. The multiplayer maps don't really have a chronological order in which you need to play them, but the campaign does, so I would imagine it would make things easier during development to have maps ordered in such a way that you could easily insert or remove new maps while also keeping your directory easy to order when displayed so that you could quickly find whatever map you wanted to edit.

[@mort_brain]

As child, I played old WON versiob of Opposing Force and it had XEN chapter title, when I followed Freeman.

[@N64gamer124]

While i understood the naming format of the Half-life 2 maps i was always confused by the map names for half -life one maps.

[@lefishauchocolat2915]

pinsplash is completely serious for 30 minutes and then hits you with the worst pun in existence

[@the-guy-beyond-the-socket]

thank you so much for making proper subtitles! when i was outside without headphones i was able to watch this video as fine as if audio wa turned on.

[@minermemecoffee8256]

i feel like you made this entire video for that joke at the end

[@solushyperborea]

i cant believe you got the ancient valve games autism instead of like the rocket science autism or the helping the world autism

[@Myne1001]

Why cure cancer or figure out time travel when you can learn facts about silly orange crowbar man game

[@MUSiCK9]

Oh man I just installed half life 1 not that long ago and I was trying to figure out what the map names ment! Timing of this video could not be any better! Thank you Pinsplash!

[@Oni32-ir2ob]

4:23 The game replaces the text with placeholder text for translation purposes, Valve could have written the actual text directly within the map, but that will definately create a problem when translating the game to another language, because each time they want to translate the game to another language, they would have to modify the text within the maps and recompile them, which is insane, and it's simply not possible because the game back then was supposed to be released on a CD which can not store more than 700MB total. The actual text is stored in a file named "titles.txt" so the file can be easily modified by translators without having to modify the maps.

[@darksteinmann]

that laugh at the end of the video caught me off guard XDDDDD

[@Trash_prince]

That joke at the end was so weird because Pinsplash sounds soothing like Daily Dose of Internet, and then suddenly in the end a deranged homeless

[@npc_pigeon]

i've always wondered how the heck the maps were named in both games. especially hl1, it just didn't make sense to me lmao

[@randomcommenter10_]

fun fact: in the hl2 beta, the canals maps have a different name for when you're underground called *d1_under_*

[@totograne]

im such a fan that I know all the names of the maps by heart.

[@llSuperSnivyll]

I've always treated the "a" as in "act" like you do in this video. So "c2a1a" would be Chapter 2, Act 1, Map A. (Though "Interloper" makes things weird... or maybe the Interloper maps were meant to come before Gonarch's Lair at first?)

[@Zeraph-Zen]

This

[@segarallychampionship702]

I always assumed c means chapter

[@xanious3759]

afaik, gonarch used to be after interloper but before nihilanth. it got moved cuz they thought two bosses in a row was a bit much.

[@MrBrax]

This is scary, I was asking myself this question yesterday with specifically the "a" in the middle

[@limelime293]

I stayed up for 2 years to watch this I'm so excited

[@BrockRogan]

bravo another top notch vid, i wonder if they changed the map naming convention again for alyx

[@nfwrambo]

Half life alyx uses acts again, so it’s a#_name and sometimes the map has multiple words in its name now with underscores between them. For example, the first map is called a1_intro_world. The only exception to this is the second half of the intro to the game which is called a1_intro_world_2, all other maps have unique nsmes

[@darksloomianlegacyworld3211]

4:43 I finished playing Opposing Force today and I can safely say that this mistake happens when you jump in the portal Gordon jumps in. You get teleported into a void and drop down, though you can’t really see it for very long.

[@chewtag]

everyone already knows that

[@Templarfreak]

very interesting video. it's always nice to just review over ideas and concepts like this, even if you already think you have a good enough understanding of it. you could have missed something you didnt notice before, or maybe something new will click that didnt before.

[@NickJerrison]

I almost want to believe the entire reason you made this video is those last five seconds.

[@TheAntlionGuard]

That outro was a bit outlandish don’t you think?

[@DruCart]

Bro that absolutely vile hacking chuckle at the end. Straight villainous.

[@TehEpicMike]

I knew it was something like "Chapter0, Act1" or something.

[@GreatCollapsingHrung]

that laugh at the end was kind of disturbing...

[@sleezymagyar8276]

Not to be that guy but half life 2 your stuck teleporting for a week after the prison part.

[@scantyer]

Well then the devs named the maps wrong. But from Gordon's perspective it had been 3 days

[@sleezymagyar8276]

His perspective yeah. From outside it's been a week

[@Poleskeris]

years ago I'd guess random numbers and see what map I've gotten

[@csgoyuri6413]

thanks for captioning your videos

[@nevoobrazimiy]

That grinch laugh at the end caught me off guard

[@Sage_the_Turt]

always happy to see proper captions

[@illegalwaffles]

You made this whole video just for the closing joke, and I respect it

[@Agartha_Inhabitant]

I always thought the "a" stood for "area"

[@kwak0]

i never realized that "d" stood for day

[@taibasarovadil]

Now that I think about it, yeah, it IS a bit outlandish

[@XanderNiles]

I always wanted to know why the maps from the campaigns were labeled in specific ways and this solves the query.

[@Yourlocalwordrobe]

that laugh at the end :skull:

[@nextros4440]

honestly i always thought the glitchy placeholder text when you exploit yourself into xen was on purpose, since youre doing something to intentionally break the flow of the game

[@MyScorpion42]

opfor dev: "uh... right! I *meant* to do that..."

[@WackoMcGoose]

...So basically, Blue Shift is when GoldSrc "grew" the ability to have more than eight characters in a filename.

[@biygas]

because that joke at the end was so bad i'm uploading 7 no commentary reaction videos of this.

[@SASTSimon]

NEW PINSPLASH VISEO! LETS GOOO! I LOVE NERDY HALF-LIFE VIDEOS

[@Ellesiumss]

1:11 A is for Area

[@revolutionstudios5052]

The purpose of the C is twofold: it indicates “campaign” and “chapter”. The second A indicates the act of the chapter. It’s part of the general “unravelling” of Half-Life’s story. C1 explores Black Mesa as an innocent research facility, where it seems that what happened was accidental and unpredicted. C2 shows that Black Mesa, with its ties to the military, to NASA, and especially that rocket containing a satellite that - for some odd reason - has the capacity to close the rift, is not as innocent as C1 let on. C3 is where we learn that not only did Black Mesa know about the dangers beforehand, they were already toying with them; and in C4, Xen, we learn exactly how far antagonistic science witbout moral boundaries or reassurance will go at Black Mesa. It’s why you hire a writer to write your video game, John Carmack.

[@CAPTAIN_CLOCK]

I love the Half-Life 2 ones. I always interpreted the middle word as the overall area of the game you were in, and never knew the d meant day. I thought of the middle words as areas because a lot of them include more than one chapter: trainstation includes Point Insertion and A Red Letter Day canals includes Route Kanal and Water Hazard eli includes Black Mesa East town includes "We Don't Go To Ravenholm..." coast includes Highway 17 and Sandtraps prison includes Sandtraps, Nova Prospekt and Entanglement c17 includes Anticitizen One and "Follow Freeman!" citadel includes Our Benefactors breen includes Dark Energy

[@lagoozri9568]

I WAS WAITING LOAST COAST TO BE MENTIONED

[@stefano7868]

Damn, bro pulled out the Lego Palpatine laugh at 7:44

[@nolram]

I’d love to see this for Portal and Portal 2 as well

[@TomatoRadio]

If you are still interested, here you go, Portal one uses a Blue Shift style naming scheme. All test chambers use the prefix "testchmb_a_#" going from 0-15, with 12 not being present. Most chambers with only the blue portal have two chambers in the same map. The escape sequence uses maps escape_00 to escape_02 with the very beginning being part of chamber 19's map. Advanced chambers use the original map name with the "_advanced" suffix. Portal 2 uses a system more like HL2. The first categorization is whether it's a single player or multiplayer map, in which "sp_" or "mp_" will be placed. Then if the map is singleplayer, they are then categorized by the "Act Number" which corresponds with the main menu background you will see, as the map name is what determines that. "a1" Features all maps until GLaDOS is reawakened. "a2" Features all maps while GLaDOS has control of the facility. This includes the Chapter 5 and the last map of Chapter 1. "a3" features all maps of Old Aperture, so Chapters 6 & 7 "a4" Features all maps from Chapter 8 & 9 "a5" is used for just the Credits. Then after that a brief description of the map is placed like "laser_intro" or "finale3"

[@ecksdee1149]

What does he mean by "that was almost based" at 1:34 ? Am i missinng something?

[@alika3651]

1312 is a way to write "acab", meaning "all cops are bastards"

[@shifty_dragon3679]

It is similar to "1312" which is an anarchist dogwhistle

[@konna6130]

you just had to say it in the end

[@incoherentthoughts420]

seeing the GCFScape logo on the .bsp files is what separates the boys from men

[@gmodmaster22]

Maybe the first time ive heard you laugh in a scripted video very good and informative. Imo the second A in hl1 maps could stand for 'area' as a rename for the concept of "map" from the e1m1 days of doom/etc

[@ZeFlyingFurry]

That laugh was so beautiful 😭

[@kornsuwin]

the ending was pretty funny

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

I never knew the d in the hl2 map names stood for day.

[@chopshops]

babe wake up, pinsplash uploaded

[@scantyer]

Much prefer the way they named maps and blue-shift and HL2. It's much more intuitive. Also about the last maps of Sandtraps and Entanglement, that's because even though you changed scenarios, you're still in those chapters. So it's like a mid point

[@mihael64]

Strange, I personally prefer the way they named the maps in HL1.

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

@mihael64 But with Half-Life 2 you don't have to memorize which numbers map to different chapters (With one or two rare exceptions which are easily remembered) With Half-Life 1's map names I have to open the map in-game to know where it is, with Half-Life 2 I already know what map a BSP file is before I open it in anything.

[@TomatoRadio]

​@@TinyDeskEngineerThere are benefits to both. Hl2 is far more readable while hl1 is more concise and also has its chronological and alphabetical orders synced. I prefer hl1 but it's purely subjective

[@teaboy301]

I wonder why they couldn't use underscores for separating the characters in Half Life 1

[@Mikle_Bond]

Maybe they needed all filenames to fit into 8 characters to comply with 8.3 short names in windows

[@mfaizsyahmi]

It hasn't been invented yet

[@teaboy301]

@@Mikle_Bond I don't know anything about windows at the time so I guess I learned something :)

[@ksysinf]

For me or looks like they just picked quake style naming eg e1m1 and just switched episodes for chapters and maps for areas/acts

[@wibs0n68]

@@ksysinf tbf, the map designers of HL is basically Quake/Doom mappers

[@TheBreakingBenny]

HL2's "D3" does not account for taking place a week after destroying Nova Prospekt and bailing, but I digress. Left 4 Dead 2 brings the C#A# format back, but it's called "Campaign #" "Map #". This becomes for instance C1M1: Dead Center, The Hotel

[@alika3651]

1:34 DAMN PINSPLASH I DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE BASED LIKE THAT ??

[@Wyattporter]

I love the line at 1:34

[@shifty_dragon3679]

​@@TheSonOfRyanIt's an anarchist dogwhistle

[@Wyattporter]

@@TheSonOfRyan 1312 stands for ACAB which stands for all cats are beautiful :)

[@suicidalbanananana]

I have some vague memory that the second character was used in alpha & beta builds to differentiate between different versions, but i'm very much unsure about it 🤷‍♂

[@kylefinn5301]

I bet how the C4A1TITLE thing happened is that Gearbox directly copy pasted the first Xen map from HL1 for use in the sequence if you try to follow Gordon

[@DolanDuking]

4:34 more accurately, the term for that text is unlocalized, it gets localized by a string table that is fed that text and replaces it with the title in your language.

[@ksysinf]

Always thought c stands for chapter. And I find the division to be perfectly logical one. C1 is Gordon's pretty much lonely journey to get out of the complex. C2 is a quest for getting into lambda core. Alien-human warfare is at its peak in this chapter. C3 is lamda core. Human army lost at this point and it's freeman vs alien swarm all alone

[@pinkocean310]

I'll give you a like just for that laugh.

[@the_merahm]

bro that laugh at the end 💀

[@StickerWyck]

These "acts" apart from Xen make no sense. Surely that time you get ambushed and waking up in a compactor would be the start of a new act. Or maybe each act could group episodes in terms of similar tones. Act 0: Before the disaster, ominous. Black Mesa Inbound, Anomalous Materials Act 1: SHTF. Unforeseen Consequences to We've Got Hostiles Act 2 is you fighting back in a bigger way. The first long-term goal given to you is to launch the rocket. Blast Pit to Apprehension Act 3: Get your bearings, make your way to Lambda. The war between HECU and Xen reaches a tipping point. Things looking bleak as the military starts it's retreat. Residue Processing to Surface Tension. Act 4 depicts the situation deteriorating as Gordon reaches the other side of the desert. You need to go back underground where the inhabitants of the mysterious Lambda Complex await your arrival. Impending doom hangs in the air. Forget About Freeman, Lambda Core. Act 5: Xen (obviously)

[@Gherkins]

little bit outlandish of a video don’t you think?

[@sugoha_2548]

I really like that they kept the placeholder text in opposing force when you follow freeman because it breaks the 4th wall so it's really in theme since you're supposed to create a time paradox when doing that, maybe it's intentional ?

[@crabot]

From what other comments said, it seems that in the original version it did say xen, but when ported to steam it broke

[@sugoha_2548]

@@crabot oh ok, well I still like it the way it is :) Thanks for the info

[@thr0ne1997]

lmao that ending :D is this pinsplash?

[@Blurns]

There were maps in the HL2 leak with a d4_ prefix.

[@pepperspay8175]

“that was almost really based” was hilarious

[@psltmtir]

1:35 _seinfeld bass slaps_

[@Moonknife]

4:51 maybe its like lore accurate, i dont know causing a paradox messing with the area name

[@CaptainFoxer]

C1A0 Chapter 1 Act 0, makes more sense instead of A being a dummy designator.

[@beggarsbazooka9517]

6:09 Ummmm ackshually Half lifer 2 takes place over more than 3 days becuz a whole week passes when Gordo and Alix teleport out of Nover Prospet

[@scantyer]

Yeah but from Gordon's pov, its 3 days. Also it was valve who named the maps so it's not our fault that they were the wrong ones in there

[@vedrisnightmare]

You forgot about Decay.

[@scantyer]

Everyone did

[@ethanlivemere1162]

I thought this video would be useful so that I would be able to determine map titles myself if I ever wanted to load one using the console, that I could just follow the logic "okay so it's the nth map of this chapter..." After watching this video, no, that won't work.

[@dsfadfdag6534]

I always thought it was Chapter - Area - Variation

[@frankmills1917]

BSP file... That's a file name I haven't seen in a while.

[@zephyr1181]

1:35 based on what?

[@rch5395]

the small a could be used a character to split up the map name into 2 different parts (idk why they would ever code it this way)

[@tornAK-47]

I was thing that name of the maps like this because: Chapter # Act # "A-B-C-D"

[@monsterurby]

The naming convention for Half-Life 1 seems to have carried over from the likes of Doom and Quake by Id Software. In those games, each map is named individually, but the map files are named as: E1M1, E1M2, E2M1, etc (Episode # Map #) Half-Life is a much larger game, with a more significant overarching narrative. To me that map names always meant Chapter# Act# and then a letter for the map. Makes perfect sense to me: Chapter 0 is the Prologue and consists of the tram ride. Chapter 1 is the lead up to and the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The race to the surface only to get smacked back down into facilities depths by the HECU. Chapter 2 follows Freeman's journey to the Lambda complex and the gradual tipping of the scales in Xen's favour against the military Chapter 3 is exploring the lambda complex and getting to the teleportation labs and the master teleport Chapter 4 is the journey through Xen to the showdown with the Nihilanth Chapter 5 is the Epilogue and features only the Gman speech. Different games/studios use different terms for their levels. A project I recently worked on refers to Zones, broken up into Levels: Z1L1, Z1L2, Z2L1 and so on

[@Gelatinocyte2]

I imagine the middle "a" meant "and", but that didn't make sense.

[@nfwrambo]

I thought it meant area

[@scantyer]

Kid named c2a4a

[@HaAJPaAJ]

7 acts is pretty unconventional, isn't it? Opposing Force's act divisions are confusing yet sensible at the same time.

[@xellella4221]

01:31 this is the content I'm here for

[@sirizalot]

Why did they make this needlessly complicated and confusing