Before taking on the role of level designer at Valve, game developer Chuck Wilson toyed with recreating Half-Life 2 levels in Source 2.
In case you're out of the loop, Source 2 is Valve's most recent iteration of its in-house engine, powering games like Counter-Strike 2, Deadlock, and Half-Life: Alyx. Older titles from the studio, like the ever-beloved Half-Life 2, used Source – and before that, the GoldSrc engine.
As for Wilson himself, his portfolio includes stints at Sucker Punch Productions, Respawn Entertainment, and now, of course, Valve.
Prior to joining Valve as a level designer in 2022, however, Wilson experimented with Source 2 – perhaps to try and learn the engine before joining the company, or as a test project for the team.
An eagle-eyed fan on Reddit has spotted as much, linking to the dev's website, where he recalls recreating Half-Life 2's spooky ghost town, Ravenholm, in Source 2. Wilson first describes his goal with the recreation.
Chuck Wilson’s (Valve Level Designer) Ravenholm Source 2 project [2022] from r/HalfLife
"Learn how the editor works by looking over the example content Valve provided, and dive into the levels they shipped to better understand their construction," he writes. "Then build something with what I learned."
Attached are screenshots of his Ravenholm recreation – and, yep, it looks pretty dang great. Much smoother textures than we saw as kids, with improved lighting… but the same eerie vibe from 2004.
Wilson explains why he chose Ravenholm, then goes on to describe his process. "The opening to Ravenholm seemed like it would be an appropriately scaled project to tackle. I started by loading up Ravenholm and taking tons of pictures of the opening area and reacquainting myself with the look, feel, and scale of the space. From the ref, I was able to deduce the scale and re-block it out with Hammer 2's modeling tools."
He's likely referencing Hammer, known by some as Hammer 5 or Hammer 2, which serves as Valve's in-house level editor for games in the Source 2 engine.
"After I got the whole space blocked in, I decided to make some compositional changes to the space to better guide players to the zombie and to the eerily lit sawblade shack," continues Wilson.
Once he was done with the composition, he explored "some of the new features Hammer 2 had to offer." It sounds as though he was a big fan of his time in Source 2 recreating Ravenholm, too – even if there was much to learn.
"Throughout the project, I was able to learn and make use of Hammer 2's modeling tools for geometry, physics sims for cloth, cables, and the hanging zombie ragdoll, tilesets (3d meshes placed off of a single face), hotspot materials (insanely fast UVing of faces), volumetric fog, cubemaps, compile processes, and more."
The level designer concludes: "A small space proved to be a fantastic way to learn a wide variety of tools and prepare me for future projects. I walked away being blown away at how powerful these tools are for Level Designers, and even more so if you are a Level Designer with some environment art background. These are easily my favorite tools I have worked with to date." That's quite the compliment.
Unsurprisingly, Wilson's portfolio share here has sparked new hope in fans' hearts for a Half-Life 2 remake in Source 2. As one commenter exclaims, "This genuinely makes me excited for a Half-Life 2 Source 2 remake in vein of Black Mesa."
Others aren't convinced this means anything at all, though. As somebody else says, "There’s nothing to be read into here." Hey, a girl can dream… right?
Sadly, I doubt we'll see a Half-Life 2 remake from Valve anytime soon, however. Heck, we're still playing the waiting game for Half-Life 3.
