We’re far too late with this, and we feel extraordinarily bad for it – E3 has an unfortunate tendency to possess games journos body and soul for one mad week a year. But it’s never too late to celebrate, and so we shall.
Adam ‘Cargo Cult’ Foster, the delightful fellow behind what’s comfortably the finest singleplayer HL2 mod in the ‘verse, MINERVA: Metastasis, has snagged himself a job at Valve. Let there be much rejoicing.
I’ll be starting at a certain Valve Corporation at the beginning of October. What does this mean for MINERVA? Right now, I don’t know – I’ll initially be working on Valve’s own Episode Three, but after that, who knows? I seriously suspect this isn’t the end for this particular chain of experiments in designing single-player Half-Life 2 maps, all conducted for fun in my spare time.
Like any of my projects, it started off small, but rapidly grew far, far, bigger. It’s not finished yet, but this time I actually released something. ‘Episodic’ worked.
And, I accidentally acquired a job in the process. Oops?
To everyone, thanks.
Congratumalations, Adam! It’s well-deserved without a doubt – and way past time, as anyone who’s played Minerva will attest to. Unfortunately we missed out on the mini-ARG Adam presented on his blog that ultimately led to this cheerful revelation, but a slew of canny RPS readers, amongst other denizens of Adam’s own site, managed to decipher his elaborate code. It involved hacked audio files, the Polish national anthem and GPS co-ordinates, from what I hear – co-ordinates that turned out to be Valve HQ.
A cunning puzzle indeed, and one of many reasons why Adam’s upcoming tenure at Valve really is good news for gamers. I fervently hope to see his remarkable level-design efficiency applied to Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – this man could save us from those all-too-regular HL2 loading points.
If you’ve not played Minerva yet, especially its remarkable third episode, now is the time. Do so quickly, so you can legitimately say ‘I preferred his early work’ come Episode 3.
Thanks to Tom and Chris for tipping us off to these glad tidings.
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Nice one Adam!
and it’s nice to see how excited everyone is that the CargoCult will be working on Ep3, almost as if Valve couldn’t manage it by themselves.
Also:
Speech!
(@Bozzley – if you download the latest version you can choose to start at the begining of any of the three chapters, they’re all included. And yes, there is some plot in the 2nd one…)
Congratulations, mister Cult.
So I reinstalled HL2 for the sole purpose of trying MINERVA, and because somehow it did not work, I noticed that episode 1 is required.Damn!
Congrats and good news all around.
Congratulations. It’s a great mod and it’s nice to see the universe working logically for short bursts at a time.
Well done. I wonder how many modders in total is it that valve’s employed? I certainly know Adrian Finol was the lead on Frontline Force.
Congrats. Though I never really liked Minerva.
Robin Walker was a modder too, he made the original Team Fortress for Quake
Notably, the Counterstrike people. And yeah, Frontline Force. And Portal, natch. In fact, I’m sure more than half of Valve’s current workforce was plucked from Modland. And why not? You’re getting good talent and high motivation with a low chance of refusal.
Certainly a big congratulations to CargoCult. Well deserved.
Incidentally, I played about 20 minutes of Minerva, and am now unable to continue due to Steam being all grumpy about me playing anything HL2-related offline. BAH.
Downloading MINERVA right now.
Excellent news, and looks like the acolytes’ “paranoid and obscure conspiracy theories” have finally come true…
Congratulation to Adam i look forward to dieing and swearing whilst playing your levels in Episode 3.
How coincidental, considering Adam’s style of level design sounded like it would fit the apparent nature of Episode 3 perfectly. I just hope this won’t lead to Minerva being cancelled or something.
My only complaint on Minerva would be that I got stuck once or twice, unsure where to go or what to do next. But:
1. This is a minor gripe in the midst of a wonderful bit of game.
2. Maybe I’m just dumb?
3. In a non-trivial level design, this seems like a common problem that is probably solved most of the time by many rounds of play-testers, rather than by the level designer just being a genius. So for someone working independently to have this small problem seems neither unlikely nor cause for much concern. If anything, it’s reassuring that now we’ll have “Cargo’s work” + “play-testers” == “teh awesome”
A hearty congrats Adam, I enjoyed your work and am happy to see this happen.
This is some good news. I remembering playing the MINERVA games as they came out on my old AGP rig. MINERVA was the strongest additional content for HL2, though I was always a little vexed that it didn’t bring anything new to the table. Then again, it was absolutely amazing for just one guy, and I was checking for new releases pretty regularly.
The only part of this news that I don’t like is that he doesn’t start work on Episode 3 until October, meaning we probably won’t get to play it until late 2009 at the earliest.
I am playing Minerva right now (had to buy episode one because of it) and liking it, but I have a question – who is the player character? is it Gordon, or some renegade combine soldier, or someone else entirely? Answer only if its not a spoiler, thank you : )
The player character is just some guy, you know?
This answer didnt exactly satisfy me, but okay.
Pavel: The common theory is a combine solider/metro cop, judging from some things Minerva says. For the sake of simplicity, the acolytes call him ‘Perseus’.
Okay, thank you.Now I can play with my mind at ease without constant wondering wheter I play Gordon or not.
About time man! Congrats to you! You have inspired me in my personal sp mapping for a long time now ….. so….. THANKS!
Great job, chief!
Many felicitations to you, man. Well deserved. :)
congratulations, well deserved. Make sure episode three is going to kick asses
Congrats dude. No surprise really given your work. ;)
Don’t be so sure.
Have some inside information Theory?
Minerva is ace. Nice one.
*** END MESSAGE ***
Sodding heck – you are all talking about me, right?
…
As ever, huge thanks for all the support – it’s cheered me up while I wrestle with documents and travel arrangements for a trip off to some particular north-western state in the USA. Yep, I’m trans-Atlantic apartment-hunting, and as ever it’s some overly complicated route to get there.
I think I arrive in Seattle some time on Tuesday – and if my body-clock is up to it, I’ll go and bother the people at Valve the following morning!
Also, if anyone is wondering – this wasn’t an intended result of MINERVA. At no point was it a portfolio piece – it was something I built, for fun, because I wanted to. Anything and everything from then on was an unintended, but highly welcome, side-effect…
Hey, Cargo Cult, I just now finished MINERVA for the first time (literally, 5 minutes ago, because of all the enthusiasm here) and I am thrilled.It was a blast, I can’t believe that you made it almost all by yourself…the gameplay and design was better than HL2 itself.So, congrats and make Episode 3 a design heaven : ).
Damn right. I loved the first chapter.
Very well deserved, the level design in some of the later levels of metastasis were arguably better than valves in HL2. A great mod. I am very excited at the thought of Adam working on Epi 3, im sure it’ll be all the better for it.
As a side note I really loved the music that was used in the first epi.. really changed the feel of that section.
Hey CargoCult – Thanks for the game!
Please tell me Valve hired you as “Executive in Charge Of Getting Episode 3 Out In A Reasonable Time.”
Also, does this mean Minerva is going in Orange Box 2? It is good enough to.
Awesome! He certainly deserves it.
Congrats Adam! Or should I say congrats, Valve?
Hope the transition from solitary tinkering to working in a team with the best people in the industry goes smoothly for you. I look forward to scourging Ep 3 for Minerva references.
Heaps of congrats, CargoCult! If you could ship Minerva single-handedly, it’s no surprise Valve want to put you in a room with other people!
It has been confirmed – Valve is going to put Cargo Cult in charge of making Episode 3 all by himself.
Anyway, congratulations! I played with him once in Team Fortress 2 on Goldrush, so now I can say I was with a Valve employee in one team :-P
Gratz Mr. Foster, a much deserved appointment after a great mod.
What the people who didn’t “like” the mod must at least try to understand that this was made by a single person (with some advice and help from VALVe along the way), and compared to other mods who have had entire teams of people behind them and failed. From that perspective, for how well and fun it was to play with a coherent if slightly cryptic story line while knowing how hard and time consuming it is to design and produce a mod, the work is outstanding.
You can really see that HL2 mod scene is working VALVe’s favour as they pick the best and the brightest from the community to join their ranks, now if they would only hire the entire Dystopia / Neotokyo teams *hint* *hint*.
Congrats, Cargo Cult.
Let’s see a revised Minerva enter into HL canon as the “Blue Shift” of HL 2 and 3, please. That would be pretty neat, as I’d like to know more about Minerva herself.
Congrats! *clap clap clap*
MINERVA: Metastasis was quite good. I liked a lot the idea that there was an external kind-of-powerful entity that is not friendly with the Combine and uknown to the humans. Very intriguing.
I remember the moment when you wake up after booming everything up with only 15 HP or something and then you have to run away before Minerva destroys everything while she talks to you about some stuff. That was epic!
But maybe I just got everything wrong and that was not what happened.
It’s good to see the singleplayer modder getting some recognition for a change.
See to it that Episode 3’s difficulty on Hard is similar to Minerva’s. It was the first time I’ve been challenged by single player FPS for years. Not because I’m a master player but simply due to a lot of experience.
I thought the character was a Combine soldier disconnected during “reprogramming”.
@chipp
Um, spoiler warning please :P