Get Your Free TVs!



Get Your Free TVs! was the very first Half-Life 2 test level to be created in 2001 when the team had only a rough script of the game, some concept art and was experimenting the new technology. It consisted in a test sequence designed to highlight all the new technology created for the game and test the NPCs and physics, not to be included in the final product. Based on a very early Source engine, this sequence was the real start of the game development.

Description
The concept was to simulate a street war between rioting citizens and the Metrocops sent to contain them. Such a sequence would test the engine's ability to create a vast, believable world and lifelike characters. There would be APCs and tanks rolling down the streets. Citizens would throw Molotov cocktails at the vehicles, which would then explode. Other characters would start looting stores and yell, "Get your free TVs!". There was even a hand-to-hand fighting system so the Metrocops and Citizens could get into fistfights, feature never implemented or seen in the final game.

Trivia

 * The Citizens had the original "gas mask" design shown in Raising the Bar and in the map " ".
 * The small map can be found in the WC mappack under the name " ", with several versions ranging from "03" to "09".

"city_test" gallery
These screenshots were taken from a fixed version of " ". Broken links to textures, models, skybox and sprites have been fixed.