Archive for April 2016

BacktrackVille
for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Welcome to the third challenge from The Hammer Cup 2016, which has a Grand Prize of a NECA Gravity Gun, plus other prizes for second and third places.

This challenge contains 12 entries all with the idea of a “backtracking” as the main theme.

One of the staple events in video games is the backtrack sequence. A part of the game where you retrace your steps in the exact location but this time something has changed.

The change can be due to new enemies, a violent explosion, time travel, new vehicles etc.

We would like you to create a map where the player interacts with an area and then has to backtrack through the same area, but the area must have changed.

The reason for the change and the exact change is entirely up to you.

Total Downloads: 6,28930th April 2016
84 Comments and 14 recommendations, most say "Play It Later"

Poll Question 344 – Will you watch/rent movies via Steam

So I woke up yesterday morning to read the news that Steam is now or going to be very soon renting movies.

At first I was excited, I know that I don’t use Steam to its full potential and this could be useful for me, but then I saw the price.

Now, this might be “industry standard” but that doesn’t mean I am going to suddenly start renting movies at that price.

Personally, I think it is too high but maybe it’s because I hate spending money.

I think there is little doubt we all knew that this was coming and I am also sure it is just the beginning, but when I pay a couple of dollars for a game that I can play for many many hours, it’s still hard for me to accept that movies are 3 times the price.

29th April 2016 28 Comments

Week 17

There is only one planned livestream this weekend and it is Phillip playing BacktrackVille on Sunday at 12pm Central European Time.

He may play and stream something on Saturday but there are no plans to at the moment. IF he does it will also be a 12pm start.

You should double check the Time & Date.Com website for your local time.

He will be giving away one copy of PAYDAY 2 and two copies of Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age courtesy of Aaron’s SteamContests.com, so a huge thanks to him and his site – go check it out to have a chance to win more games.

All streams will be on the RTSL Twitch Channel and announced on the RTSL Twitter Feed.

If you have any questions about the streams, just ask.

27th April 2016 11 Comments

Announcing the Level Design Academy Livestream

I am pleased to announce the Level Design Academy here on RTSL.

Before you get too excited, allow me to explain what it is and what its objectives are.

Overview

The LDA will be a regular live streaming event where one person teaches another how to map for the Goldsource engine – that’s for Half-Life and Opposing Force (including all the other Half-Life mods out there too, single- and multi-player), for those that don’t know.

Just like other RTSL streams, they will be announced on the Wednesday or Thursday before a week in the Weekend Livestream Schedule post.

24th April 2016 14 Comments

Identify This Map 003

Barnz is looking for…

” I think it was a map from valve-erc (this was when I used floppy disks to store prefabs). the map begins in a lab/office environment, similar to hl1’s. the player has to go through an air duct in a restroom (you can witness scientists running away from something from the air ducts). there was the huge stairs from the office complex (the same brushwork), with a barney on top floor, doing his “beat_grunt” animation (unused anim from hl1) when standing on a dead marine. the player comes across an elevator. the doors open when you approach it, and grunts come out. the screen fades in, and the map ends.”

Can we help him?

If you have information about this map or ideas as to what map it could be, please comment below.

The image above is NOT taken from the map we are looking for.

24th April 2016 5 Comments

Week 16

First off, Dan Jordan AKA The Rabbit, continues his Source of Fame event, where he plays a Half of Fame Source release.

This weekend he starts Strider Mountain on Saturday at 12pm Pacific Standard Time, which I believe is 8pm UK / 9pm Europe. But you should double check the Time & Date.Com website for your local time.

I will be continuing my Mega Miigga on Saturday at 12pm Central European Time.

Dan and I will be giving away 2 copies each of Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age courtesy of Aaron’s SteamContests.com, so a huge thanks to him and his site – go check it out to have a chance to win more games.

All streams will be on the RTSL Twitch Channel and announced on the RTSL Twitter Feed.

If you have any questions about the streams, just ask.

22nd April 2016 6 Comments

Poll Question 343 – Do you think you would buy “themes” for games that changed the default experience?

I know the last poll was only a few days ago but I want to get back to the Thursday schedule.

Please bear with me. I’ve got an idea and before anybody asks, “No, I don’t have any inside information”.

Imagine that half-Life 3 is released but it is also made available with, for an extra cost, themes.

The themes are “overlays” that include sound files (voice and music), textures and maybe some other assets.

The idea is that you buy the game and can play it as Valve imagined it. But you could also “change” it by buying different themes that give the game a different feel.

Think of it as being similar to HTML and CSS. The HTML is the content and the CSS is the look and feel.

21st April 2016 17 Comments

Poll Question 342 – Do you think Valve should support multiple versions of each game?

The BBC posted a news item about how Blizzard took a fan’s server offline that was running the original WOW game.

Now, you might be thinking that this poll is about what would happen if Steam went offline permanently, but it’s not.

What really got me curious was this quote from Blizzard: “The developers however prefer to see the game continuously evolve and progress, and as such we have no plans to open classic realms or limited expansion content realms.”.

I think it raises some interesting questions.

Should the developers force changes of the game onto players? It happens all the time and as players we don’t really have any say in that process. Maybe it’s technically too difficult for developers to allow multiple versions of each game.

Could each change be made an option? Unless it is security related, why not?

Well, perhaps for MP games that would be a HUGE issue. Playing against players with different settings could ruining the game for many and you obviously can’t have different servers for every combination of options.

But for SP games like the ones we know and love, perhaps it is possible.

In fact, what if it were a paid option? Would that interest you? If you apid, for example, 5 Dollars per game, you could ahve all the changes as options and if you didn’t you just got the changes and had to play the latest version.

What are your thoughts?

16th April 2016 15 Comments

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