Here are the two practice sessions after Don’s first tutoring session. Please feel free to ask questions related to the topics practiced.

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

Another “out of the blue” new feature has gone live today.

You can now see the latest 25 comments of each user by clicking their name from any of their comments.

There are two caveats: One, this is only available for registered members and two only if the user has not disabled this feature in their profile.

In addition, comments with videos embedded seem to break the feature, but the comments will display until the video, so for example, if you look at my profile you will see the layout is broken and there are only 3 comments with the last one being an Embedded video.

If however, you look at, for example, Ethosaur’s profile, everything is display properly.

I am releasing this feature now because it will probably be a few weeks until we can fix it and the number of embedded videos is very very low.

Eventually, you will also be able to see a user’s latest reviews but that’s for the profile’s major update sometime in the future.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.

Lastly, I know the user profile page needs a make over to make it look pretty but I just don’t have the design skill or time.

You find yourself in a town occupied by the Combine.

Escape to the countryside is possible but expect fierce resistance.

Find the console that will open the main doors to freedom.

Secondly, Darren will be continuing his The Ville Retrospective event and this week it’s the turn of BeginningVille starting at 1pm Greenwich Mean Time on Saturday

Secondly, Phillip will be streaming his first practice mapping session, which is part of The Level Design Academy which has already posted the first session online. The exact day and time of Phillip’s stream will be tweeted. It’s most likely to be Saturday afternoon but he might also stream on Sunday too.

During Darren’s stream one copy of Bad Rats: the Rats’ Revenge will be given away 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.

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

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.

We are getting closer to the end!

Welcome to the fourth of five mapping challenges as part of The Hammer cup 2016.

TrapVille AKA AdmiralAckbarVille

For this challenge we would like you to create a map that contains at least one trap. It could be one huge or complicated trap or multiple smaller simpler ones.

The player could be the one setting the traps or the one avoiding them. Or the one caught in them.

The winning map will be the one that creates the most interesting situation involving traps, that is fun to play and looks polished.

We are big fans of Rube Goldberg machines, and would love to see clever, overelaborate traps – but we realize the short timeframe, so please don’t get so carried away with the trap design that you don’t have time for testing and polishing the rest of your map.

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

“After fairly light resistance, the town square feels a little too empty. This was too easy. Not committing too far forward, you investigate further. It’s clearly a trap. You retrace your steps but quickly find the trap was not the town square after all…”

“The Combine attack is just too strong. Time for a retreat into the mines. You are sure there is a way out and the only way to stop them following you is to blow the entrance. Oh dear, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea – it looks like someone may have been waiting for you down here…”

“Between you and the survivors is the abandoned village, but it’s almost as bad as Ravenholm. There’s talk of the ‘residents’ becoming creative to capture more escapees. Could it be true? Only one way to find out…”

As always, if you have any questions either ask in the comments or if you require a private answer send Phillip an email: [email protected]

Putting aside the fact that the actual game itself will feature new enemies, weapons, locations and hopefully, please! plenty of story details, are you as interested as I am about the potential maps and mods from from the game’s content?

In many ways, the actual maps and mods created by the community is a better body of work than some of the games themselves. I even considered asking the question of if I had to have one or the other (the game or the community content), which would you prefer, but of course you can’t have the community content without the game!

I am assuming that most readers here will want both but some among you might only be interested in the games themselves.

Thoughts?

Here is Don’s and Phillip’s first tutoring session. Please feel free to ask questions related to the topics practiced.

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

Multiplayer games and mods are always throwing out betas for users to play. I makes sense. Some smart puppy once wrote Release early and release often (I am paraphrasing) but with SP mods and games, it’s a whole different ball game.

I can tell you that if I ever beta test something for somebody I generally don’t want to play the final release. Partly because I know what happening and partly because I would be a little upset if my feedback were actioned.

Some SP game and mods are so different from the standard product that releasing without plenty of testing would be a disaster. Obviously, all SP games and mods should be extensively beta tested but releasing to the general public, especially if it is a game, is a little risky.

OH BOY!

What a weekend we have planned!

Do we sound excited? Because we should because we are!

Firstly, Phillip is doing his PLAYATHON 2016 starting at 12pm Central European Time on Saturday and finishing at 12am Central European Time on Sunday. YES! That’s a full 12 hours of Phillip in your face.

He will be giving away one copy of PAYDAY 2 and 5 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. In addition, he will also be giving away another 6 of his own games, so that’s one game per hour.

Currently, he has planned Research and Development, Aftermath, Deep Down, Mission improbable, Point of View plus plenty of others.

If that wasn’t enough, Phillip and Don will then be starting their Level Design Academy starting at 4pm Central European Time on Sunday

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

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.