Comments I'm bored of reading: "Of course some of these are breakable. Why would they make two separate objects for the same thing just to make one breakable and one not?" 1. They already are separate objects. Practically everything that isn't an NPC or weapon is brushwork. 2. You say this as if that takes effort. You can make a breakable thing unbreakable with one click. 3. People in the comments have said the actual reason is the Unforeseen Consequences was made first, then Anomalous Materials, so things were copied over and not made unbreakable because it didn't affect anything. "Obviously those things have a lot of health because they didn't want you to break them" At 2:30 I say there are three parts to the wall. 2 can be broken by the player. At 3:00 the 3rd part of the wall is broken. The player cannot break every breakable thing. Some of them can only be broken by certain conditions being met. This is controlled with a flag. The proper way to stop a player from breaking something is to actually make it impossible to break, not give it a bunch of health. "Some things had to be made breakable for some technical reason" No.
Wow, these are the comments you're getting? Clearly coming from people who have never used Worldcraft. Takes 5 minutes of learning to discover func_wall and func_breakable
This is assuming that all of the devs worked on the level in the same way. Ie just because one dev was smart enough to set it to be unbreakable and or have the flag for not having a player break it. The other dev could of just set it to be 999 because it could be assumed that nobody would break it. Look at the case of the storage it the zombie was probably supposed to break down that door via a trigger, but then it got changed otherwise why have the zombie at all. Also just because they are seperate objects doesn't mean they didn't just copy and paste stuff example would be copying then transforming glass objects(which would keep the same flags). Doubling up could of just been they wanted more cheap way to double the break effect because it wasn't strong enough for explosion. However I agree that there are some good cases that have no justification like the file cabinet.
I appreciate the video and all your analysis. I'm not sure whether or not you're saying the devs made some insane or nonsensical choices. I imagine it's a mix of a lot of different reasons. Some might be inside jokes (infrequently I'm sure), some might be mistakes. Most are probably the result of copy and pasting a "prefab" object, and thus the dev is not going to waste their time disabling breakability for an item locked inside an inaccessible room for example. I haven't looked at the example specifically shown in the video but I imagine setting high health for some objects might be to allow them to be broken in scripted sequences by NPCs rather than the player. Some might even be the vestiges of a dev trying to make some kind of scripted sequence work but then scrapping it in the final edit. But yeah it's probably a mix of things overall what with sleepless developers cracking away at it from all different angles. Love nerding out about this stuff, thanks again for posting this video it was lovely
The majority of it is hardcoded in the props config file like being breakable and such, or was likely just copy and pasted. Just like how you have different footstep sounds for different materials it comes from a config file for the prop.
Same here. I would also admittedly shoot corpses to sort of paint the area around their death with more blood to make it more gorey and/or to suit my level of immersion. This evolved later in life to creating massive scenes in Gmod where I would spend hours positioning ragdolls and particle effects, bodies, blood etc. Man I'm weird.
@@AbeTweakin I would always gib bodies with the crowbar. It was especially satisfying with the glitchy way it would swing 50 times a second when hitting a corpse. I also did stuff like that in Halo CE, where I'd smack dead bodies and produce so much blood, the game would start lagging.
As we've seen from the alpha builds of Half-Life, the ceiling in the cafeteria being breakable is a leftover artifact from early versions of the map where you'd crawl through the space up there and need to stick to metal beams cause the tiles you'd just fall through. Except it sucked and was very easy to softlock yourself so amongst other parts they cut that chunk.
The zombie breaking through the boarded off door with 9999 health made me question how fucking jacked the scientists in Black Mesa were the first time I played through Half Life.
I’m pretty sure that being able to pull your weight both physically & intellectually is actually a requirement for a LOT of STEM jobs IRL, so being able to do that from carrying heavy equipment around isn’t too much of a stretch. The alterations that the zombification process does to the host probably also play a part
@@lyokianhitchhiker Yeah I could understand that. Now please explain at what point a scientist would need to have the strength to break through a solid piece of wood that is seemingly immune to all forms of damage (including gunfire, explosions, alien weaponry, etc) and exactly how much stronger you'd have to be after zombification to do it.
@@spineappletea I'm not saying they’d need the strength to do that, just that having it is a side effect of all the heavy lifting they already do. As to the zombie thing? That’s just me spitballing.
@@lyokianhitchhiker Normal people generally don't put 100% of their strength into any action, unless they're fully aware that their life depends on it. But a headcrab has no reason not to use all of the host's resources in order to get another victim that is within reach.
@@NotWendy3yes, even when people assume they're using 100% o their strength it usually isn't. The body actually puts limits on the amount of strength used to stop your muscles from tearing themselves apart. The limit are only released when someone is in a life or death situation. This is what allows people to get the strength to lift entire cars off of trapped children, etc.
At the beginning it's the wrong security guard, the one you can kill is found right before you enter the control room of the test chamber. From there you push him to the rotating elevator and line him up at the right spot and then activate the elevator to crush him. Lymphoid made a video about it a while back.
@@BlueNeon16GD It may not be relevant, but from testing I found that it doesn't work at all if you have the "HD" models enabled, which until recently was the default.
@@yless42 but I'm playing it on mobile devices and i downloaded the hd version of xash it's still work at first then after i tried it second time it doesn't work like the video
I remember breaking that wooden door with the zombie and gonarch's lair floor manually, because when i was little i usually played using cheats. So with enough time to waste, i eventually did it. Years later when i replayed the game, i forgot that i used cheats and tought "but i could swear i broke it before". Now i understand why.
Some of these can be explained as copy-pasted prefabs (a feature of Hammer Editor, its basically a library of assets) that happened to be breakable. Like the note board or trash can, they were made with specific scale and breakable properties, and then imported in other maps. As for glass, maybe they scripted their editor to always make glass textured objects be breakable, thus making the workflow on maps faster.
You have to make the glass into a func breakable or wall. Then you have to set the texture to be rendered differently. It was probably just a habit to make make the glass a breakable.
@@Underqualified_Gunman Ngl its goofy to imagine that dev's muscle memory made them unnecessarily assign func breakable to every single glass window, aside being less plausible than a simple script to automate the process.
It might have been necessary to make the glass func_breakable (or func_wall) for it to be semitransparent. There are obviously other transparent (but not breakable) surfaces in the game, but the pixels of those textures are always entirely see-through (alpha 0) or entirely opaque (alpha 1 or 255). So it's not out of muscle memory or because of some script, but manually done out of necessity.
The unbreakable door behind the breakable door reminds me of a great book I read (I can't remember which one sadly, maybe Going Postal?) where the main character digs through a block in their jail cell wall with a plastic spoon, only to find behind it another new wall with a new spoon.
A lot of those seen in anom materials is due to Unforseen consequences being made first then a few valve devs worked on a pre disaster intro to the game making anomalous materials.
If I had to make a random guess, the door was a wall texture but they couldnt get it to react properly to being hit so they just put a real door on top of it
1:35 I've been playing this game since it came out, and until now I had no idea that the scientist says 'quick!', I could never hear him say it over the sound of the console breaking.
The early levels are easy to explain. Since you'd need to backtrack thru them anyway, only one copy was made, with breakable objects all in place. Then just copy pasted level geometry into a later level. The later like broken filing cabinets, probably has to do with triggers and duplicate entity names. All func_breakable can be assigned names for designing set pieces with their help, and in that case, the entity names were duplicates as a result of being copy pasted. And since they have the same entity names, the seemingly unrelated objects break at the same time. From my small time mapping for counterstrike, I remember this system was called prefabs. You just made a bunch of small objects that would be useful throughout, and you could subsequently just paste them around all your maps as needed.
@@CallOfCutie69 technically, a trigger calling for an activation of a function of an entity, and since entities have duplicate names, they all trigger by the same trigger.
I remember looking at the source file for that early intro map with the laser and thought man that was clever how they cut that body in half. Since there wasn't an actual dismemberment system and clearly they REALLY wanted to cut that body in half, they had to get creative. It's actually two bodies set to play two different animations, with one having the upper body in the floor and the other one, the lower body. The breakable triggers a very slight movement to separate the two bodies as well, though it's been so long since I've looked I can't remember if that's an additional animation or the two parts actually moving. It's also why if you look closely, the texture stretches weirdly at the separation, those polygons are still connected to the other half, the animation just stretches out a very thin part of the model into the ground where the other half of either is. I think. The last time I opened any of the Half-Life models, let alone the source file for this map was quite literally over 15 years ago.
Wooden board at 2:14 can be broken "legally" if you get grenades from "secret" in next level and backtrack, door have small gap where grenade can slip trough. Also another really amusing thing on this level, in second room where twitching zombie sits on chair and looks at blinking laptop, there two ways to kill the zombie, first one is... just kill it, and second one is break laptop and zombie will die.
honestly it would be more unsettling if you could kill him and he just reappeared the next time regardless. Especially if there was a flag that checked if you did so that would have him comment on the futility of stopping what has been set on motion by him during the end sequence but the game is old, so that would've taken more space, and old games needed to conserve that
@@Pandalka That's cool to know! Sadly OF isn't officially canon, but I prefer to act like it is. The Combine Advisors look like they're from dimension X, to me. Either way the G-man definitely doesn't seem human.
@@Rolan7196 I don’t think the advisors are related to Race-X. I say this because most of race-X either has 1 eye and 6 limbs (shock troopers, voltigores) or 2 eyes and 4 limbs (pit drones) and all of them have a sideways mouth, while the advisors presumably have no limbs (arms are robotic) no eyes and just a hole for a mouth.
Fun fact: If stacked objects were made as func_pushable entities with the Breakable flag enabled, ones on top would fall down once the ones underneath have been broken... but instead they were made using the func_breakable entity which has no physics implementation and therefore they remain static in mid-air.
@@absolutehuman951 Potentially, although there's still other ways to implement it better than what Valve did. Honestly some of the levels just seem kind of rushed or made by inexperienced level creators when you look at the finer details.
You know what's weird Being able to break the window between you and Gman if you have a weapon at this point, but not being able to break it with your crowbar after the resonance cascade while seeing a scientist dies to a Headcrab in the same room
Last year, I challenged myself to get through the entire game without picking up a single weapon besides the crowbar, and I found myself discovering/utilizing breakables in maps to get past roadblocks. In Surface Tension, I couldnt blow up the transformers to get onto the roof without blowing myself up, so I just whacked the transformers myself. I discovered the breakable floor in Gonarch's lair after I realized I wouldn't be able to kill it normally
My favorite discovery when I first played this was the scripted table that collapses after you fall on it from a broken pipe. I managed to survive without landing on the table and found, to my amusement, you can crouch under the table, jump and get smashed
While a lot of these are part of the "behind the scenes" of building a world, I'm guessing a lot of these (where aplicable) are part of that Gabe's philosophy of "the world should acknowledge the player's input"
My favorite breakable is always the tanks. It's always amusing to watch people play HL for the first time when I usually beat it to death with a crowbar or a 9mm pistol.
almost every weird breakable in Half Life has something to do with a Scripted Sequence, the 9999hp door is supposed to be broken by the zombie making a custom animation for example. In a dev interview they stated that every level part they made had to be tested again and again, so I guess there was a moment where the map devs played the initial levels with weapons, and added the extra detail of breakable props, such as windows and stuff where normaly the player doesn't have weapons. Its a nice detail they kept on for people that likes to experiment how well made the map design is done in general, messing around with breakable stuff is always fun.
Reminds me of my experiments as a kid by using noclip and impulse 101. So many objects can break, there are even stages for some. There's a real difference between this, and say, a vending machine in most mods which is just a solid box object without a script attached to it (so it can't heal you or break).
Most of these breakables are from lazy mappers, or for use in cutscenes / scripted events. Going from the start of the video: 0:08 - Glass brush is tied to incorrect entity (should be func_wall, not func_breakable.) 0:21 - Lazy mapper. Should have used monsterclip and had Barney obey the monsterclip flag to avoid going in the elevator shaft. 0:29 - Same as first, glass should be func_wall. 0:44 - Those wall objects like the cork board, dryerase board, pictures, etc. are generic prefabs set to be breakable. Doesn't matter if they're used in a place they can't be broken. 0:55 - Same as first, glass should be func_wall. 1:08 - More prefabs. 1:19 - These breakables are used as part of the cutscene with the overloaded equipment. 1:47 - Mapper oversight. 1:59 - Breakable used for a scripted event. Scripted events in the HL engine are very primitive and rely on nonsense entity setups to work. The invisible breakable here is used to trigger gibs and the dead barney model animation to split. 2:09 - This is what the "unbreakable glass" material type does that should be used in most other places where you want glass to make sounds when hit, but not break. 2:14 - Another breakable prefab. 2:18 - This breakable is used to spawn the gib that fell in the water, that's what its purpose was. The high health is because it's a scripted event where a trigger makes it break. 2:28 - Scripted event using the zombie. Lots of scripted_sequence entities used to make the zombie break the stuff in the room, and eventually the door. 3:05 - Lazy mapper. These file cabinets are groups of func_breakable brushes that have a named hierarchy with each other. If you copypasta these, or use them as prefabs, they need to be renamed or you'll end up with duplicate named entities. This creates weird behavior like this where other random breakables that are supposed to be unrelated also break. 3:42 - Mapper oversight (for the glass ceiling tiles). I think there is also a scripted sequence in this room where monsters spawn above the ceiling tiles and drop down, but don't remember for sure. 3:58 - Mapper oversight for not using triggers properly. That whole freezer section is a bit buggy. 4:29 - Used for simulated garg damage. 4:38 - Same thing. breakable used to spawn gibs. 4:48 - Mapper oversight, used for gibs for the track train breaking the wall. Should be only set to break on trigger of a path_track when the train passes it. 4:53 - Same as earlier, lazy mapper incorrectly using prefabs. 5:19 - Mapper oversight for not telling the lower func_breakable to break the one on top when it breaks. 5:22 - Valve used a func_tank as a stand-in for a sniper here, because it has a predictable behavior. The faux soldier breakable is used as a trigger to disable the func_tank when it's destroyed. It also fires an ambient_generic to play the fake soldier death sound. 5:52 - Known problem with monstermakers, they will not spawn their intended monster if they're blocked. 6:09 - The alien grunt not dying is caused by the fact it is locked by an scripted_sequence with the "don't allow interruptions" flag. So it can't die before the actions its supposed to do are done. Mapper oversight for allowing the breakable tank to be broken with weapons, instead of only trigger from the console button. 6:30 - Mapper oversight. Breakable should be set to only break on trigger. 6:46 - Unsure about this specific door. It's probably a func_door with erroneously set breakable health. If you have a door that is impassible, but you want it to make a locked sound when you touch it, you generally put a fake locked func_door there to make the sound. In any case, mapper oversight. 7:15 - Breakables used to spawn gibs. Also mapper oversight with the sign above the door, the wall isn't clipped properly, so you get Z fighting from the faces both being in the same location. 7:28 - LOL. And used for a scripted sequence. 7:36 - This whole area uses a bunch of really ugly entity setups for the mortar launcher to work properly. The electrical boxes are made part of the same entity, because explosions in the HL engine are very buggy and very unpredictable. The nonsense origin locations are there to make it easier for the mortars to more reliably hit. 8:20 - Same thing here, really ugly entity setups. Breakables are for the gibs for the falling blocks out of the ceiling. 8:31 - Mapper oversight. The floor is supposed to open up after the Gonarch dies and explodes after a scripted sequence in the middle of the room. The breakable should have been set to trigger only. 8:43 - Mapper oversight. Should be func_wall since the player is never intended to interact with the glass. 9:00 - Ugly entity setup to make it easier to take out the func_tankrocket. 9:03 - Mapper oversight, Should have set the lower func_breakables to break the upper func_breakables when they break.
Thre's a valid reasoning for most of the breakable items: Why make special unbreakable instances of props when you can just reuse the original breakable ones
2:34 About this part tho. You can trigger that zombie yoo break all those parts bh itself, and then get the hidden ammunition. Otherwise after you kill the zombie BEFORE it break all those part the player won't get the extra ammo. 1:09 And man, that was...savage?
6:57 I wonder why they put a destructible door then a indestructible door....? Also how the heck do people find this stuff? LOL A lot of these are probably behind some trigger so they make sense and continue to the story, but some of them.... don't make sense at all?
Good stuff as always. You could make a follow-up called "The Weird and Broken Breakable Things in My Life", except it's about me and uses clips of HL being borked to illustrate it. (IDK. Therapy is expensive.) Dumb jokes aside, thanks for continuing to put things like this out. There's been plenty of HL content and dedicated channels crop up on the site in the past five or so years, but yours is unique. It sure beats the "lore" videos on extremely specific elements that are only 10% actual lore and 90% wild speculation.
the door at 2:29, when I was kid, I saw it can be breakable by zombie. I've killed the zombie before it breaks it. I used crowbar and hit every point of that door. When it gets fullly damaged, it brokes. I don't know am I hit enough damage but it worked. This could be a another interaction too.
The way cabinet faces break when another is shot reminds me of my StreamDeck Bitfocus Companion buttons when I copy and paste but forget to edit the feedback sources. Then a whole row of buttons will light up when using the first, and only the first.
The teleport below Gonarch in the pit (and some other portals) is funny looking. Just recently I have realised that it shows the pictur of the other side.
The barney that is cut in half by the laser is literally two barney models shifted at the midsection and clipped into the floor. You learn a lot more about why things are the way they are when you make maps in the hammer editor. Edit: BTW this was the first video I saw on this channel. It appears you're very knowledgeable on this subject. I feel like an idiot now.
Hey man, just want to let you know that I actually like it more when your videos have a voiceover. I often do other things while watching videos. It's nice to not have to read too much onscreen text for context. Otherwise, interesting video as always 👍
I don't really think this is weird. Making the game you'll make the object for toilet paper, and think the level designers may or may not choose to make a bathroom area later in the game, so I'll make the object breakable so it will be easy for them to just copy paste in there.
You know... you realize how much we long for Half-Life 3 when you see videos like these being made... but you actually only true realize how much we long for, that you yourself enjoy these videos and don't even question about it...
I think stuff like the corkboards/billboards and small objects like toilet rolls being breakable makes sense, since making these objects func_breakable will prevent them from splitting faces when the map is built and also for preventing it from splitting pvs spaces as well. On Dario Casali's channel, during the hazard course section he mentioned they placed light fixtures and such 1 unit away from walls to prevent the wall's brush faces from being split into more. I'm assuming later on they realized they could turn them into brush entities instead 😁
Yeah I actually made a comment that they could have simply made anything that touches a surface that they didn't want to split, a func_wall entity. Same as the func_breakable stuff in this video, where stacked objects don't react when ones underneath have been destroyed... in this case they should have used a func_pushable entity with the Breakable flag enabled.
The reason you couldn’t get the guards gun is because that was the wrong guard at the wrong elevator. The second elevator that spins as it goes up and down, has a bug that will crush the guard and possibly you if you’re not careful. I use that bug to get the gun during the Vourtigaunt cutscene, During a co-op play through. One was confused one couldn’t stop laughing the other was AFK
I guess since some of these are models used in other parts of the game, instead of simple brushwork, they're just reused breakable versions from other parts of the game
6:25 reminds me of a cop in front of the stations in GTA: San Andreas. Getting shot, calling for backup and dies right after the call animation/audio has been completed 😂
