Play through two entirely different maps in this experimental mapping challenge.
Claustraphobia puts you mostly in vents, while Misgnomer takes you on a journey with a twist at the end.
- Title: The Extreme Team Experiment
- Filename: sdk-2013-sp-emc18-the-extreme-team-experiment.7z
- Size : 48.30MB
- Author: TheVikingBoi, Rayquazza, TheCatOfWar, Dolmo
- Date Released: 02 May 2018
Download to your HDD [48.30MB]
- Make sure you have the “Upcoming” branch of the Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer installed in Steam and run at least once. (Properties – Betas – select “upcoming” from the dropdown list).
- Copy the “sdk-2013-sp-emc18-the-extreme-team-experiment” folder into your “SourceMods” folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- RTSL.EMC18.The.Extreme.team.Experiment should now be listed in your “Library” tab.
If you decide to use the Per-Map Opinion Images, please either watch the video below or use the file below:
The Extreme Team Experiment Review Template
Thank you.
For this challenge, we would like you to find a partner and work with them on the entry. As part of your entry, you MUST include a readme that states what each person did.
Your partner does NOT have to be another mapper, but can be. They could be an environmental artist, a modeller, a sound/music artist, a texture artist – it’s YOUR choice.
It’s impossible for us to define or check how much each partner does, but we would like to feel it’s a minimum of 70/30. Meaning that the junior partner does at least 30% of the work.
You just have to find an aspect that interests you and take it to the extreme. Remember, this is an experimental mapping challenge and therefore it is about pushing the limits. GOOD LUCK!
Full details can be found on the The Extreme Team Experiment announcement page.
Claustraphobia by TheVikingBoi (Formerly Rags Jams) and Rayquazza
Misgnomer by TheCatOfWar and Dolmo
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
Each map has 5 screenshots. Thanks to Coralilac for providing the screenshots!
1600 x 900
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2,406Overall
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0Today
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1Last 7 days
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126365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 7 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 21 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 50 Mins by Andromeda
Longest: 2 Hours, 30 Mins by rikersbeard
Total Time Played: 9 Hours, 29 Mins
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Just a quick comment. The first map was rather bad in my opinion! Besides that crawling through dark vents isn’t much fun in the first place, combining this with some stupid decisions and bugs made it even worse. The gas-can-via-gravity-gun-into-a-small-container-riffle was probably the most stupid gravity gun riddle I ever played and also showed off how flawed the handling of items in the Source engine still is. I also managed to get stuck two times with no way out other than to reload!
The second map was much better. It started off with nice scenery, then moved inside a Combine compound where amazingly helicopters were build and loaded before your very eyes! Here comes the twist that I won’t spoil and the only negative thing I can say about the map is that the end fight takes much too long, especially with rockets spawning randomly on the ground. I never understood why the Combine helicopters are supposed to be that much harder to kill than the gunships in the first place.
I can give you an answer to why the helicopters are much harder to take down than gunships. Firstly, if you shoot it with an RPG, in the main HL2 games you never fight a helicopter with that and you either take them out with the airboat cannon or it’s own bombs. Valve simply never intended them to be taken out with rockets and thus they take a ridicules amount of them.
Secondly, the gunships are Synths (somewhat living beings) while the helicopter are purely mechanic. (Following is only an assumption by me) Gunships have some sort of organs in them that get heavily damaged with each rocket, that’s why they make pain sounds when hit. Helicopters do not and it only goes down after the metal can’t withstand any more explosions.
Well, sort of. You do destroy one in Lost Coast with Rockets. It’s a simple fix though. If you intend to use Rockets, you can do a SetHealthFraction on the helicopter to set a more reasonable value. I used 20 (or 20% of normal HP) the last time I did one.
The helicopter you fight in Lost Coast is actually a gunship disguised as one. You can clearly notice that by the sounds it makes and how it tries to shoot down the rockets.
Yes, it is technically a Gunship with a special flag that forces it to use the helicopter model, but it demonstrates that Valve didn’t intend for the helicopter to take an ungodly number of rockets to destroy.
There’s a way to make that heli fight a lot easier! Someone else in the comments here worked it out I think, but my one regret from that fight is that it wasn’t made as clear as I’d have liked. Glad you enjoyed the map other than that though! 😀
Does the first map actually end with you falling out of the map, or did i do something wrong? A tip for the second map: throw gnomes at the helicopter too .
Manually
Easy
2 Hours
The first map ended for me with meeting the Gman, I tried your tip too, but as these things were so small I rather used the rockets instead!
I had the same issue. Basically, the vent is supposed to fall on the floor.
Why nobody says that the framerate at the second map (misgnomer) drops down to an unbelievable value of 1-3 fps before the conveyor and farther? Or is it only my issue?
Sorry about this, it ran fine during all of my testing but there’s a chance that something went wrong and spawned too many physics objects at once
You know, when I saw the announcement, I was quite skeptical about how it’s gonna work out. I feel like the “pairing” concept is a little too much. The requirement is little too demanding because the second mapper needs to do 30% of the work. And I think most mappers prefer to do stuff alone anyway. Well, here we are with 2 maps.
It begins with a scream so I thought it’s gonna be a horror map, judging by the name too. Well, my mistake then. The start looks promising and nice but that’s the best this map can offer. Before pointing out the flaws, I’d say that the beginning has very good combat and “weapon introduction” pacing.
In the beginning, the vent that was blowing strong wind somehow shut down by itself. (I think.) I absolutely loathe the idea of the gas puzzle. Because of how physics work, you must align the can properly to put it inside the slot. Why not just have the player do it automatically by touching the generator with the can?
After this, it gets worse. So much worse. The vent room…. it’s very, very bad. It’s filled with fast headcrabs, has a sniper, dark, cramped, and too many weapons getting introduced which are placed too close to each other. That means you will be accidentally switching weapons while trying to kill all of the headcrabs. Why would you give me the pistol, the shotgun, and the RPG in a single room? A room that is already far from the beginning?
The part of the vent that is supposed to fall down broke. And there was 5 Manhacks stuffed in that part of it. It also won’t fall down properly if you don’t “visit” the part pass the manhacks which leads you to a room that is not sealed properly so you can see the entire map from there. After you fall down, by punting the vent with the Gravity Gun, you are greeted with Soldiers firing at you. Point blank. The door to the “Storage” won’t open again if a Soldier in the room closes it. Locking you out.
The final fight was poorly done; enemy spam is so real on this one. You have a Hunter, a squad of Soldier with 2 Elites and a turret looking at the door you emerged from. It can be either easy if you save RPG rockets and wipe them out in a tiny room they are in or you get overrun and die. Also, please balance out the Mechacrabs, these buggers do more damage and are way tougher than headcrab. There are too many of them.
Also, after the beginning of this map: no checkpoint. At all.
The map started off very nicely. The chopper at the beginning is a very good foreshadowing, in my opinion. It feels great to be able to sneak inside and see a chopper factory. When you switch the bomb model to the gnome, I was grinning as the gnome flooded the conveyor belt and break the loading system. The combat is well-escalated, well-made. The only bad thing about this is that the gnome acting as a bomb is never taught directly to the player. I think the gnomes that I saw before fighting the chopper were bombs too, but it is never a must-use to progress so I ignored them. And because of how much the knockback by a rocket to the chopper caused, the chopper will usually be knockback towards the edge of the map, dropping the gnome out of bound.
Well, it’s quite obvious who won for me.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
After copying the server.so and the client.so from SDK2013 the mod runs under Linux
I had to use god mode at the first one. I was falling out of the map, too
The second one reminded me of the Turret Thing in Portal2. Very funny.
It took a while to take the helicopter down.
The first map isn’t that good. It’s mostly crawling through vents and fighting in cramped areas, so I guess it lives up to its name. The fuel can puzzle was poorly done and caused me a lot of confusion. I am used to mappers automatically triggering the fuel can load once I press it on the item needing fuel (generator, car). I just assumed that the fuel can in the room had to be empty and wasted a considerable amount of time looking for the “real” can. In the spot where the vent breaks it didn’t seem to work right, as instead of the vent breaking it slowly descended to the floor while I was trapped inside and getting shot. Also, after I cleared that area I crawled back into the rest of the vent and I think I was able to see out of the map itself.
The second map was terrific. The inside of the factory was an interesting setting and the combat was enjoyable. It took me a little while to work out what to do with the gnome but eventually I got it and it all made sense. The final battle also tripped me up a bit as I assumed I was supposed to keep searching the yard for rockets until I hit the helicopter enough times. Once again I figured it out again eventually. I am going to play this entry a few more times!
Manually
Easy
1 Hour
This certainly lived up to its name as it’s mostly sneaking about in vents. However, i found this mod like a jumbled up collection of maps blindly thrown together. It’s also too blummin dark much of the time and some areas have very odd design indeed… It feels cheap and cheerful (cheerful in a horror’ish sort of way lol)
However, having said all that, I did play through to the (boring) ending and I really did enjoy this mod if I’m honest. But i doubt it’s something I’ll ever wanna play again! 😉
Sadly, I cannot play or rate Misgnomer because my Mac bombs with this error message 🙁
“”324/steven_the_zombie – npc_fastzombie_torso: UTIL_SetModel: not precached: models/zombie/fast_torso.mdl””
You could try running Misgnomer under Episode Two. If I remember correctly it doesn’t use mechacrabs or mertz module so there won’t be missing content.
Yeah it was developed entirely in episode 2 so no reason why it wouldn’t run fine there 😛
I have an issue with the last six mapping challenges that, oddly enough, doesn’t exist for previous ones. Each of them start up well enough, but immediately crash to desktop without an error message as it tries to load the main menu. Am I supposed to install a Source SDK Base 2013 other than the Single Player version?
Did you set the SDK to the -upcoming beta? Or are you perhaps using Linux/Mac? As of right now these systems are not supported but we are working on it.
Thank you guys 🙂
That would be great that somewhere could be indicators on what systems these mods run.
I use Mac and sometimes the mods don’t work. Those indicators could help. – but this should be done by RTSL website owners. 🙂
Yes, having infomation about whether they work on Mac and Linux would be useful but it is unfair to think that a hobby website owner will have the time or resources to be able to test on the three main operating systems.
There are better Villes out there, and there are only two maps in this.
Manually
Medium
50 Minutes
Vents, vents and more vents. It felt so Half Life, the sound of the metal rumbling as you climb through is second only to the electronic howl of a dead combine!
I liked this map even with its very frustrating generator refuelling puzzle! “How do you get this ………. can in!” And there were many more words to that effect before I finally got a perfect dunk after some seven minutes of sheer frustration! Mods are rarely perfect, which kinda makes them more fun, so I forgive easily.
Windy vents were a nice touch, adding a new element to my crawling.
The ending fight seemed a little unbalanced as the combat went from mild to total in the opening of doors! Sentry gun, soldiers, elite’s and a hunter? I died several times in succession and quit in frustration!
Next day replay saw a cooler head and I was still alive after a third attempt, barely alive! G-Man that was tough, the end!
I liked this mod and apart from the difficulty of the generator refuelling it played nicely, harsh at times but it was fun.
The opening was nicely coastal but I rushed thinking that Combine chopper was going to shoot any second! Nice touch.
Combat is well paced and the factory quite novel and interesting.
Getting sealed in a room with a helicopter mine, I was relieved when it did not explode, was a simple puzzle if you figured it out. It took me a few head scratching moments after I saw the mines turn to gnomes and breaking the conveyer belt beneath the Combine chopper to realise my mine was no good. Where there’s a gnome there’s a way!
I had some confusion with the unexploded mine, whether to keep hold of it or not?
Finally out in a large arena type area I noted the rockets as I killed Combine with saw blade and gun, wondering whether it be Strider or Hunters, both or gunships?
The chopper turned into a very enjoyable combat for me as I ran from place to place, building to building both recharging my health and suit and rearming my RPG. Apparently for me the red light beacon on the RPG wasn’t enough for me to notice until I had lapped it a few times running!
I still find it so annoying that gorgeous helicopter can’t actually fly, but it made for a nice ending, even if the resistance squad were dead!
I liked this one better for a rather exciting but not too difficult ending combat, where rockets reappeared in the same places as you ran, fired and hid!
Manually
Easy
2 Hours, 30 Minutes
Honestly, this map was disappointing. It started off nice but the more you play it, the worse it gets. The combat was okay, but I felt like it could have been WAY better sometimes. That sniper in those vents REALLY wasn’t necessary. The mapping was pretty basic and towards the end you can very easily break the map and find yourself outside it. Also, the enemies near the end were invincible. Overall, I didn’t have that much fun in this one. It’s a shame though, since it started off really well.
This map looks nice and plays well. The mapping is generally good and the map itself had a lot of atmosphere. The combat was good, but sometimes it just felt tiring, especially near the end of the map. Not a lot more to say here, other than that it’s a great map and I personally believe that it’s better than Claustrophobia.
The competition itself isn’t anything special really. If you have some spare time or just wanna try and play EVERYTHING on this site, but if you’re looking for a better Ville, then there are some others which are better.
This challenge wasn’t very exciting as I could’ve expected. As soon as I loaded up the game, I was already able to tell that this wasn’t going to be as great as the previous challenges we had since last year.
The first areas of the map were fine and it made me think that the map would be great. However, as I got further, it began to get worse. There was one section where I was crawling through a vent until I somehow gotten into the skybox when I got to the end. There was another part where the vent leads to a room that is full of headcrabs. It also has a sniper that is hiding in the vents, which doesn’t only make it rather difficult, but also doesn’t make sense. After getting knocked down in the vents by Combine soldiers, the combat immediately becomes difficult as many begin charging in without warning.
Despite this challenge having only two maps, I’m surprised one of them is actually good. This map has a pretty interesting story, which involves the player invading a hunter chopper factory, which I don’t see often and was the first time to see one. The combat was at least balanced. The design still feels geometric, though. Overall, this was a cool map that I was glad to see in this competition and I enjoyed my experience playing it.
Well, overall a nice, decent and very entertaining competition. Though I really didn’t understand if both entries were collaborative, or if each entry was developed independently by each author.
This was for me a decent entry in combat terms. The spaces were indoor and tiny, and I guess that’s why it was called like that. I agree that the gas-can puzzle was a dreadful horrible executed idea, and it is perfectly understandable why many people got angry with this puzzle. The last combat was fine though, and qhat I enjoyed the most was the combat.
Let me just say that being able to fight inside a CMB Helicopter factory was absolutely a great, and a mind-blowing idea! I just loved to see the whole building process of the CMB Helicopter and how the CMB loaded the ball-bombs. The Gnome part was a very funny and clever detail. I also loved combat on this one.
Overall it was a cool mapping-challenge, it’s quite a shame that we didn’t have many entries. I hope in some near future we have more material to enjoy. Play it Now.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
Looks good. Plays good.
This map needs a lot of work. I like a good vent map, but I got really confused when I was able to exit the map. I don’t know how that’s possible unless the map was compiled with a cordon or if the map just has as giant skybox around it. Both of which means that the mapper didn’t optimize the map correctly.
Usage of space and world brushes: 2/10
The vent section themselves aren’t that bad. It’s a typical crawl through with a few headcrabs. I did get lost a few times, but it’s very tight spaces.
Visuals 4/10
Not eye pleasing, but far from the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s pretty dark the entire way through. Blood everywhere. A few audio ques suggest the player wasn’t the only one alive when the combine were in the area.
Gameplay: 5/10
50% score for gameplay feels valid because I did have a good time playing through it until I came to a locked door with no way to proceed. I rarely need to use console commands, but ended up having to just ent_fire the door open. It’s a mixed bag of weird sniper positions and combine hunters in a small room. Luckily I found an RPG, so the battle at the end was pretty easy. Just a well placed shot killed most of them in the room and a second killed the rest.
Final Score: 11/30 – 33%
Final Comments: It took me 27.5 minutes to complete the map with one console command. It’s doable if the door doesn’t lock near the end.
This map has a lot going for it. I got stuck at the platform puzzle, but managed to just parkour around the beam by jumping off the platform with the switches.
Usage of space and world brushes: 8/10
Excellent world design and solid brush work. I almost loved every minute of it. I didn’t quite like the ladder portion, but it was easy enough.
Visuals 8/10
Everywhere I looked, I saw detail and meaningful prop placements. It wasn’t quite eye candy, but with some more love, it could be.
Gameplay: 8/10
I wasn’t sure what the gnomes were for, but it seemed the helicopter fight at the end kept dropping them out of reach of the player. Either that, or they despawned as soon as they hit the ground. I love a good helicopter fight. It’s a bit longer than a typical gunship fight and I just had to realize that the RPG rounds were in fact respawnning. I never realized it was a helicopter factory until I saw the assembly line and final helicopter battle. I did get confused on the undetonated mine section, but accidentally threw the gnome into the machine and it worked.
Final Score: 24/30 – 80%
Final Comments: It took me 32 minutes to complete the map without cheating. It’s doable if with some precise parkour.
This competition has two pretty good maps with varying scores with a very clear winner.
Manually
Medium
59 Minutes