First off, Don AKA Unq, continues his Classic of the Month event, where he plays a classic GoldSource release. This month it’s the absolute CLASSIC Azure Sheep. Don will start the stream on Saturday at 1pm Eastern time / 6pm UK / 7pm Central European time.

Check the Time & Date.Com website for your local time.

Hopefully, and it is a HUGE hopefully, Phillip will stream another Valve Hammer Editor Practice sessions and part of his and Don’s Level Design Academy.

This is the last weekend for a about 3 weeks where they will be uncertainty in Phillip’s schedule.

Phillip apologises for the lack of his streams and reminds everybody to check the RTSL twitter and FB pages for details of the streams.

It’s been almost 4 years to the day that I posted the last Real Theme.

For newer readers, a Real Theme post shows a real place or idea that could make a fantastic location or idea for a map or mod. I sued to post them more often but for some reason I stopped.
EDIT: I have just noticed that most of the images in those posts no longer work. I will try to correct that soon.

Anyway, I heard about the mine today and immediately cam home to create this post. I hope you are inspired by it!

If ever there were a place that would be perfect for a spooky FPS game, then this HAS to be it. It’s been in operation for over 700 years. There are tunnels, caverns, chapels, a spa, bedrooms and special tours. The whole place looks fantastic and if I ever go to Poland, I’ll do my best to visit.

Here is the Wikipedia page and the Official Homepage.

Anyway, enough reading. Check out the images.

I would love to buy a new PC but I can’t afford it. I do, however, have €150 I can use to upgrade my current system.

I’d like to keep some of that back to make a home-made portable recording booth. I have what I think is a pretty good microphone, it’s an AKG Perception 120 USB, but I have never been completely happy with its quality. That might be because I have a very basic sound card – I don’t know. One day, I hope to get a spider mount for it too.

So, let’s say I keep €25 for that, that leaves €125.

Ideally, I’d like to upgrade my graphics card AND sound card for that price.

So, here we are, a new publish day and a BUNCH of interesting news and stuff.

Go watch.

Hello and welcome to the fifth and final mapping challenge of The Hammer Cup 2016.

The judges and I have tried to ensure that each challenge was interesting for both the modders AND players. We feel that we have had thought-provoking challenges so far.

For the final challenge, we wanted something as open as possible but still quite defined. We have considered many previous challenges as potential options for this one but no particular one seemed right.

Therefore, we have decided that entrants can select ANY previous mapping competition/challenge from the past EXCEPT the previous 4 used in The Hammer Cup 2016.

Entrants may only select ONE theme for their map.

For those that are new to the site and think the challenges are a new thing, you might be surprised to learn that I have been running them since 2010.

Have to admit I was struggling for a good question and I really wanted to avoid another Half-Life 3 one, but this idea just popped into my head.

Obviously, we want the story to either be finished or explained at least to some degree, but personally, it’s all the new mods that we hope to get that really excites me.

Of course, the chances of Half-Life 3 being released WITHOUT mod support is probably as close to nil as it can be, but Valve might decide to move in a new direction.

Plenty of single player games do well without a modding community or do you think that once a company starts down that road it would be commercial suicide not to continue with it.

Are times changing?

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 is playing The Citizen Returns on Saturday at 12pm Pacific Daylight Time (Also known as: PDST – Pacific Daylight Saving Time, NAPDT – North American Pacific Daylight Time). You should double check the Time & Date.Com website for your local time.

Secondly, Phillip MIGHT be continuing his Level Design Academy: Practice Sessions. But he won’t know until the last minute, so keep an eye on the RTSL Twitter or FB pages.

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

All streams will be uploaded to the RTSL YouTube channel during the following week.

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

Here is Don’s and Phillip’s third tutoring session.

This video discusses texture manipulation.

Please feel free to ask questions related to the topics discussed.

Please visit its homepage for full details of the Level Design Academy project.

In front of you is despair, doubt and fear.

However, there is no other way forward.

Use your wits and skill to navigate both real and imaginary settings to finally find freedom.

Good Luck!