"Traitor"   -Ian Hamilton   4-5-99

Legalese
This sound file was created by using the sounds from the game Half-Life.  Absolutely none of the samples were recorded by myself, and I do not claim to have done so.  This file may be distributed as long as it is not altered in any way and this file is included in its original, unaltered form.  My written permission must be secured before it is released in any kind of compilation.  Half-Life is a registered trademark of Valve Software, etc, etc, etc.  Now then, on to the real information.  ;-)

Background
For those who have not played Half-Life, here are the important bits of info:  The game contains lots of dialogue and character interaction.  There are literally hundreds of voice samples and sound effects that are easily woven into funny situations by Sound Recorder and a little creativity.  However, there is one teensy problem with this; namely, all of the samples for the characters have the same voice.  What this means is that all scientists, etc, have the same voice.  It is therefore difficult to portray, say, a group of scientists in a purely audio format.  However, I feel that I have done a fairly good job with these works.  

As Half-Life takes place in a government research facility besieged by aliens and the military, the major characters of Half-Life sounds are as follows:  Security guards, also known as "Barneys," scientists, military personnel, referred to in the game's code as "hgrunts," the facility's announcement systems (nicknamed "Vox" and "Female Vox"), and the various alien nasties.  

The Barneys and scientists have a large number of pre-recorded phrases.  Because many of them are made to be parts of conversations, quite a bit in the way of dialogue is possible.  However, the hgrunts and both Voxes have an even greater potential, because rather than phrase libraries, they have word libraries.  This enables those of us who have taken up this strange hobby to create whole sentences from scratch.  However, it must be said as a matter of record that I do not like the hgrunt sounds much because of the low quality derived from the "radio" effect.

Specific Story and Notes
"Traitor" is my third work.  Gordon sells out to the Grunts and comes back on the military's side.  As the scene opens, a scientist and Barney are attacked by a couple of grunts, who are fended off by the valiant security guard.  Gordon comes in and wastes them both.  Vox, who is in league with Gordon and the U.S. Army, breaks the news to the scientist and keeps a running commentary of events.  It seems that Gordon goes where the money is...

"Traitor" Didn't quite come out the way I'd hoped.  It originally started with Freeman approaching a squad of grunts and offering his services (Hey, not THAT way!  Get your mind out of the gutter!), and the scene progressing from there.  However, there was not enough vocabulary in the hgrunt library to properly construct that exchange and make clear what was happening.  Not only that, but I feel that I made some errors and poor choices here and there... I also can't shake the feeling that overall I'm becoming redundant. However, what can I say? I like to have the characters shooting each other, particularly the good guys.  Another factor is that this is my first time using the grunts.  As mentioned above, I don't like them a hell of a lot.  Perhaps this one isn't all that original, but I think Vox's newfound expressiveness at least lends an interesting air to it.  I actually consider the "style of execution" (no pun intended) here to be rather funny if you listen to it a bit.

Special Thanks

Not_anne  for running The Wav Pool, the site dedicated to Half-Life wav files.

Matt Fay and Catherine Brown   for putting up with my enthusiasm over my new-found hobby and giving me constructive (and, at times, not so constructive) criticisms.

Lora Knepper   for showing to me (deliberately or not) that I can easily hook others on this "sound mixing thing."   Mwahahaha.

Valve Software   for making my favorite game of all time (as of this writing).

Comments, Questions, and Feedback:
Direct to Ian Hamilton  (jabberwocky@worldnet.att.net)