VanceHQ

VanceHQ is a map from the leaked Half-Life 2 beta build. In early story drafts, it served as the preamble to the player's final approach to the Combine Citadel. The player would unite with Captain Vance (a precursor to the final game's Eli Vance) and they would presumably work together to storm the large gate and enter the Inner City that surrounded the great tower.

For a location that's supposed to have big story significance in the old drafts of HL2 it never got much love from Valve. Only one prototype level was made and it appears more as a hastily-built realization of a concept art illustration rather than anything with any confidence behind it. Only one version of the level exists in the leak. The location became redundant after Captain Vance was cut from the game and City 17's aesthetic evolved past the pulpy Judge Dredd-style dystopia explored in the game's early years.

For my take on the level I wanted to remain true to what had been done, mainly in regards to the architecture design and texture choices. I carried over the strong usage of white and light-toned stone and brick buildings, decorative trimmings and ornate motifs. The entire interior of the HQ building had to be almost remade from scratch - the garage's layout is generally identical but the ground floor was simply an empty space in the original. This posed an interesting challenge: Try and provide as many elements of a paramilitary headquarters possible within a certain amount of space. The final result sadly didn't include everything I wanted such as a firing range, fireman's pole down to the garage and a more elaborate control centre.

The choice of sky and lighting was both a deliberate homage to the concept art and also a departure from it. I had experimented with a bright yellow sky and found that only flat, even lighting would match it. This resulted in a fairly dull presentation, so I used another skybox based on an envmap graphic for one of the later Citadel models which had an incredibly harsh appearance. The result was half of the exterior was totally drenched in shadow - a suitably dramatic atmosphere for a high-stakes location.