With no other human around, at least not alive, it falls to you to find a way to escape.

Luckily, you have some weapons and armaments, use them wildly and you might make it.

Whatever the hell happened here, it’s not your day to die!

At Don’s recent reminder/kick up the bum, I started work on a new Mapping Challenge page. They really deserved their own page and the move from the own domain and new theme meant they got forgotten about.

I recently created a new Mapping Challenge table page, that can be found via the PLAY menu, but wanted something more.

This new page separates each year into its own section and has two sections for the 3×24 and 6×10 series. In addition, there is a JUMP TO menu available on the page to “jump To” each year.

I have added screenshots for the latest 4 challenges, and will add the others when I get time.

If anybody wants to send me the rest, I need 256x125px – Thanks.

This means that the Mapping Challenges can be view in Special page, Table view and standard Excerpt view.

I’ll need to check I have all the links to the views in the right place.

As always, let me know your thoughts and comments.

I’ll try to start adding maps and mods again regularly when I get back from my weekend away next weekend.

Two weeks ago, your friend, Jonathan, went to a mysterious city.

He hasn’t returned and your mission is to find him.

It’s immediately clear that this city is different and something evil lurks in its deepest corner.

My apologies for asking another HL3 related question, but it’s been on my mind for a while now.

Half-Life 2 WAS a revolutionary gameplay experience and it certainly expanded the story but you could easily argue that it created more questions than it answered.

I don’t think I want to go through that again. I want answers. Good ones too. Of course I want to play a fantastic game but I would prefer I game made with the current version of Source that draws the series to a well-crafted close rather than an amazing new game that doesn’t answer any questions.

Obviously, we want both, but if you had to choose between the two would you be able or is there something more important for you?

With blood rushing through your veins and your skin crawling, you crouch in a corner with the thought that if you make yourself small and still enough, it may overlook you.

This is petrifying fear, where movement is the last option, because movement draws attention to yourself.

Is it possible to escape from this alive? Only time will tell.

Well, here we are with the first What The Headcrab. Hope you like it. If you don’t know what this podcast is about, please read the What The Headcrab: Introduction.

Below is the podcast, along with the links to each topic mentioned, along with my very brief notes.

Today sees the announcement of a new podcast. I have been trying to create a new podcast for a while and have tried a few things.

Ideally, I would like to create the show with one other person, but it just seems impossible to find somebody available when I am and also who has the same “interests” as I do.

Therefore I have decided to try and simply create the podcast alone.

Unlike other podcasts which run to over an hour, this one will be around 20 minutes.

It will cover news, updates and general Half-Life stuff over the previous two weeks or so.

I won’t be going into depth about any particular item, just giving you an overview and hopfully drawing your attention to things you might have otherwise missed.

There is no set recording schedule, but I am aiming for every two weeks.

The show will be split into 5 sections: ModDB, GameBanana, Reddit, YouTube and Misc.

In future, I may add DeviantArt and or any other site that has HL content.

In each section, I’ll talk briefly about what has been updated or announced.

I will NOT be talking about anything I have published on RTSL.

I will be linking to each item in the podcast’s post.

The first show could be this afternoon or maybe next weekend.

I’ll be happy to cover any HL news items you have heard about, so please send me an email.

As always, thoughts, comments, ideas and suggestions are welcome.

We have become very accustomed to playing maps and mods on one level.

That’s not to say that some maps don’t include more Z-axis gameplay, but in general it’s something that could be used to more and better effect.

This mapping challenge is all about having the player move up and down in a realistic way.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they can ONLY move up and down, but the idea of vertical gameplay or movement should be the central theme of each entry.

This week’s poll question (a few days late – sorry) was inspired by Carolyn (a RTSL reader) talking about mods being hard.

One of the possibilities for mods is to ramp up the difficulty giving it a smaller “market” but I respect mods that aim for a particular type of player or focus their work in some way.

In general, I don’t think mods are harder than the respective games, although, and more experienced readers feel free to correct me, some early HL1 mods were pretty hardcore.

I’m working on a MapTap idea to allow users to have more control over the difficulty of mods, but I am torn between wanting to give players the choice and respecting what the modders have created.

If a mod is too hard early on, then it’s just too easy for players to cheat, don’t you think? Whereas, if a player has gone through most of the mod without cheating they are more likely to try to finish that way.

Anyway, back to the actual poll question.

All I am looking for in mods is new and interesting situations, not tougher fights.

What about you?