Boid

"Boid" is the nickname is an inoffensive bird-like creature seen on Xen. It is made of two wings and glide in flocks of three or more, flapping its sides and emitting soothing resonant calls.

Standard Boid
The standard Boid wings have several shades of blue, pink and yellow and its main body is grey. At the center and on each side of its body, the creature seems to have four red eyes and a mouth.

Yellow Boid
Only appearing in Blue Shift it is completely yellow and has three red eyes on each side of its wings, but looking straight ahead, unlike to the standard Boid that has its eyes looking upwards and downwards.

Behind the scenes



 * The proper in-universe name for the Boid is unknown, as "Boid", used by the community as a nickname, comes from its model name, and is related to what is is video game-wise, i.e. a virtual entity used in an artificial life program simulating the flocking behavior of birds or fish (with each other, as well as their environment), developed by Craig Reynolds, an artificial life and computer graphics expert, in 1986, and named "steering behavior". While "Boid" officially means "bird-oid" ("like a bird"), it originally referred to a scene from Mel Brooks' 1968 film The Producers where a neighbor complains about the playwright keeping "boids", or "bird" said in a stereotypical New York accent. The term also links up with the ellipsoid-based 3D modeling tool by Tom Duff at the Graphics Lab of New York Institute of Technology called "soids".

As the Xen creature follows a simple Boid pattern, it has no AI and does not react to the player's or the other NPCs' actions, even though unused interaction animations and "alert" sounds exist.


 * The yellow Boid was to appear in Half-Life but was cut in the development process; it can be found in the game files. It was however brought back in Blue Shift, making its way into the canon like the Chumtoad, also initially cut.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life
 * Half-Life: Opposing Force
 * Half-Life: Blue Shift