The developers back at Valve shared some stories about the early days of the well-received Half-Life: Alyx, the prequel-sequel to the Half-Life franchise, which is an exclusive game for VR set-ups.
Among the problems Valve encountered was the height perception of tall players.
Height is Essential
In a report by PCGamesN, Valve encountered a few problems when Half-Life: Alyx was still in development, particularly facing a "hard-to-reproduce bug" that stopped players from teleporting in some spots.
As it turned out, the "bug" was because of tall test players.
This was based on Valve's Locomotion Deep Dive, a video clip where the devs talk about player movement in the VR-exclusive game, as well as some of the most interesting things they have learned along the way.
One of that is the knowledge that a player's height is essential.
Greg Coomer, a Valve developer, said: "It turns out that the height at which players view the virtual environment is very important. Early on, we would get hard-to-reproduce bugs from players banging their virtual heads on low-hanging pipes because they were unable to teleport through certain areas."
Soon enough, they realized that the "bug" was due to some of their taller colleagues who were testing the game.
The people back at Valve wanted to preserve what people would perceive in the real world based on their height in the game, so in a way, the height of a Half-Life: Alyx player would significantly impact their in-game body and perspective.
In the video clip, the developers compare the in-game perspectives of various gamers based on their height as the revelation affected how the game's paths were computed.
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Solving the Teleportation Problem
Additionally, Valve devs had to find a way to ensure the players can effectively teleport from point A to B.
According to PCGames, the solution was to make a standard minimum body size when they are teleporting, meaning the players will have the same height in-game when they are teleporting.
Players have more liberty going around the maps as they can use corners and gaps to overcome obstacles in their way, such as sliding under obstacles, reaching and squeezing through gaps, and catapulting from objects.
In a way, Half-Life: Alyx has created tons of clever tricks to combat motion sickness--something that is common in almost every VR game.
Meanwhile, players aren't the only ones getting stuck in-game.
Half-Life: Alyx Once Had a Crowbar
The Valve team also revealed that Alyx used to have a crowbar once, but they ended up removing it from the game even after many hours of working around it.
The team experimented on incorporating the crowbar into the VR game since it's pretty much an iconic Half-Life weapon, but they encountered different problems with it, including getting stuck on doors.
Robin Walker, designer and programmer of Half-Life: Alyx, said in an interview with VG247 that there were tons of issues involving the crowbars, but many were solvable.
Still, there are far more problems left that the devs can't fix.
Apparently, the Valve team even made maps filled with little puzzles where players need to use the crowbar, but the hook was a problem, and turning it into a melee weapon was something the devs weren't really happy about.
Most of all, the team had to abandon the crowbar after realizing that "it was Gordon's" and was "not Alyx's."
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