Anthony Stone
Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.
My name is Anthony Stone and I am one of the long-standing level designers for Black Mesa. I have worked on much of the AI encounters and logic events across the game as well as building a few of the maps from scratch. I am the team’s encyclopedia of how everything works.
What was your first experience with Half-Life?
My first experience with Half-Life almost didn’t happen. I had no idea what I was getting when I first Installed the game and only installed it because I wanted to play Counter-Strike which was a mod back then. I began the game just to see how the graphics looked on my new PC of the time. I started playing it and was confused at first… a 10 min tram ride and then I arrive at Anomalous Materials and walked around offices with no real gameplay insight. This was very unusual. I put the game down at that point with no real intent to go back to it, but I’m glad I did. The next day I booted it up to show my brother the game I was dubbing the “work sim” when I got to the residence cascade. I was blown away and finished the game over the next day or so.
What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?
Not the most difficult thing for me personally, but a difficult thing to watch was the differences in opinion on art and style across a group of very talented people. Everyone on the team is super good at what they do and everyone has an opinion of what works and what does not. This tends to do areas over and over again in order to really master the idea the team is going for and can cause a considerable headache if you don’t check your ego at the door. You are going to have to have many hands-on your work and you may see things you really slaved over get ripped out or changed. It could be a hard pill to swallow for some. It can lead to bitter feelings or discontent but in the end, we all just want the best product that flows well in the end.
How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?
MUSIC!!! LOTS AND LOTS OF NEW MUSIC! Seriously, I can keep working for hours with music I have not heard before. It makes the hours fly by. Just no country music please… and for my wife’s sake keep me away from dubstep.
When did your interest in game development begin?
I originally started making maps for the HL2 leak way back when and then moved into making Counter-Strike Source maps. There was something super satisfying about creating content and seeing how people enjoy it and the way they play it. It also was a great creative outlet for my mind. I always loved to build stuff and this was a great way to take things in my mind and get them into a 3d world I could actually visit.
Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?
Yes and no. There was a point where we had to choose to release the Earthbound section of the game or keep fighting on to get XEN done as one major release of the game. I was very on the side of we should put out what we have rather than take the additional years to finish the full game with no end in sight. I set an ultimatum for myself. So while it was not giving up… I felt very strongly that we needed to give our fans something. It never came down to it because we did release. Truth be told it probably would not have left anyways…
How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?
I am so guilty of this. I love to watch streamers play my work. When it first came out, I would watch a few hours a night. Nowadays I check it once or so a week if I am super bored. I’ll never get tired of seeing people blow themselves up calling the lift up in the trip mine puzzle in Surface Tension.