shomon2's Journal: hl2 map

Marble plated. like an old swimming pool with marble tiles, the kind of victorian thing you don't want to be around at night. It came to me in a dream when I was 3 or 4 years old: I was at school at night, wandering around after I'd been shut inside because I didn't get out in time after the bell rang. I went to the toilet, the usual toilet I went to but now there was a huge round thing in the middle of the wall, that hadn't been there before. It was scarey looking and was like the beginning of a big tube, like the way into some sewers. I looked inside and knew that if I went in the door would close behind me and I would be forever trapped in a huge pipe with yellow water trickling around the bottom. Maybe I'd have to survive on little bugs I caught with my fingers and maybe I'd die of hunger or maybe I'd just go on walking forever in my own hellish maze. And one day I might come to a junction in the tubes, after a lifetime of crawling around turning into a wanderer of creaking marble sewage systems. An illusion of choice. Press the red button now.

So this never materialised as a flash animation, although I did storyboards for it. I never wrote a song about it, but I wrote a text and a legend behind it where the pipes are actually tiny veins in the eyes of the enemies of some really forgotten king. The enemies walk forever in the maze of veins, but one day the incantation might be broken and these monsters would be set loose on the touristic city (I imagine a version of venice) where the hall of eyes exhibit was housed. One day a monster would find himself in this strange place with a guestbook on a plaque and tourists walking around with cameras and children. And maybe would berserk or would fade into a dream again.

And I tried to do it as a dhtml nightmare back in the nineties.

But Half life 2 is the best outlet for it. Again a distorted deathmatch map: the only weapon you're given is the crowbar, you seldom meet other wanderers, the tubes are randomly generated, go on far too long and small bugs run around giving 1 health each time. The tubes are also a boy's height. So you have to crawl at all times. And then there's random teleporting going on. One random teleport that happens rarely will take you to a museum, where a hall of eyes lines the side, where you can go on a rampage and kill tourists, but with some physical constraint to make it harder (like guards with actual guns). I think the experience of someone using it would have to usually be just the cramped sensation of wandering around in the dark in a tube, which sometimes goes underwater and where you sometimes find bugs, and it's never the same and then you get bored and leave. But if you stay in it for a really long time, you might find another wanderer (and both die from the ensuing crowbar fight) or you could get teleported to another part of the tubes or if really really lucky to the outside tourist world. But most people would just get bored and leave. And a few people would hopefully get claustrophobic and related emotions to do with confinement and dark tunnels up ahead.