Tate says observing playtesters helped them figure out how to proceed with Chapter 7 “more so than is typical.” Sound designer Roland Shaw tells me people were responding positively to the horror vibe of the level rather than Jeff’s robotic elements, so they pushed more in that direction. These moments were meant to give him opportunities to demonstrate how powerful he is on something that wasn’t you – but that combat was ultimately removed (the display of power replaced with how he mutilates headcrabs) because it killed the otherwise scary tension for many people. While now you can essentially leave your gun in its holster the whole time, players previously had to juggle firefights alongside avoiding Jeff. In fact, Chapter 7 as a whole used to have a much larger Combine presence. It had a piece of debris shoved through its face (which you can also see in the gallery below) to make it clear that it was blind – that part, along with being intimidating, was always a constant – and Jeff stayed that way for a long time before the team decided to switch to something more closely tied to Half-Life’s Xen world. You can check out the gallery below to see concept art, ranging from a hulking monster to a dude with a big ol’ wrench, but Tate says Jeff eventually settled as a large Combine robot. To amp up that uncomfortable tension, Jeff got much bigger. “Those early iterations were, in part, aimed at just seeing how players would respond to being locked up with him in a confined space,” Tate explains, “.people were still calling that out as one of their high points in the level, and in the game.” The initial versions were just a large empty box that Jeff would wander around in while you avoided him, but it was an immediate hit during a company-wide playtest. One of the earliest tests around this concept was a prototype version of Chapter 7’s tense elevator scene. Level designer Dean Tate tells me the gameplay concept for Jeff – or the “Blind Zombie” as they refer to him internally, as he started off using a standard zombie model – and the level around him came from playing with the idea of having some imposing entity in your personal space, figuring that concept “feels more interesting and heightened in VR versus 2D.” Brown says the biggest positive takeaways from early experiments were “the tension of being in the room and having to get close to this thing that people really didn't want to be close” – not just it invading your personal space, but you having to enter its space to progress. And while loads changed as playtesting reactions came in and overall story beats shifted, parts of what make this level so effective were clear from the start. “The germ of the idea came up very early on,” Brown explains, saying they initially stumbled upon the idea of a blind, unkillable enemy you have to avoid while progressing when they were still experimenting with what VR could do generally. Valve tells me Half-Life: Alyx was in development for roughly four years, and programmer/designer Charles Brown says they were working on Chapter 7 off and on for at least three of that. Close any programs that add overlays, or disable the overlays (f.lux, discord, geforce experience etc.If you haven't played Chapter 7 yet or need a refresher, you can watch it above.Close all unnecessary programs running in the background.Set windows power saving mode to performance.Paste the following: -novid -console -vconsole +vr_fidelity_level_auto 0 +vr_fidelity_level 3 +vr_render_scale 1.0 Right click the game in your Steam library, then go to "properties" and "set launch options". Both NVIDIA and AMD have released driver updates specifically for Half-Life: Alyx Here is a list of other things that will boost your fps, though not by nearly as much as the previous step.
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