The Combine have been draining the Earth’s oceans.

Control, storage and filtration of water have become increasing valuable commodities.

If the Combine are not defeated soon, there won’t be anything left saving!

It’s been a while since I have played Half-Life 2 and we all remember how annoying the Squad system was but what about the rebels in general?

At no point during the game did I actively protect them, especially if they had a weapon.

I’m sure some players remember better than I but did any rebels without weapons help you? I don’t think so.

As a break from how I normally do things, I thought I would try something new:
I want modders/mappers to choose the next mapping challenge.

I give you three choices and you must select via the comments.

ONLY modders/mappers comments will count not players. Sorry, but it needs to be the modders/mappers who choose, since they do the hard work!

Below are the three choices. Please read the details, not just the titles.

If you are looking for a Flash game to try, here’s a game called Drench. You have to paint a grid so it is all the same colour, but you only have a set number of “paints”. I found it quite fun.

Summer pretty much over, people are going back to work and it’s time to start working more seriously on the site.

I have a couple of new page ideas that should be quite easy to implement and I think I will use the Calendar page to plan some work too. Anyway, let’s get back to gaming!

This video describes the different views available on the site and mentions the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

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

It’s been a long time since I posted soemthing in the Reader-to-Reader section of my blog. I have been meaning to post this for a few months, but finally made the time today.

I present to you my collection of Half-Life memorabilia. I don’t own that much, partly becasue I can’t afford to and partly becasue I don’t want too many things like that.

Under each photo is a brief description, and if you have any questions just ask.

I may have a look for some other boxes of the games, might be nice to have the full collections, inclduing all the versions of HL2. I’m pretty sure I have the Half-Life Generations packaging somewhere.

If youa re wondering about the blue back in some of the photos, I keep all the stuff in that, which is a waterproof bag. I am terrified of them getting soaked in a flood (it does happen in my town but it’s highly unlikely – I’m just over-protective).

Okay, here are my photos….

I am pleased to annoucne a new page on the site: Categories.

This page allows readers to view the posts (but not any pages as they don’t have categories) in the standard “frontpage” view.

The new theme lost the automatically generated list, so I had to build this manually.

Full details about categories can be found on the page itself.

The views displayed differ from the PLAY archives, which are tables and also the LISTEN and READ archives (all found on the main orange menu), which are lists.

The page is linked to via the EXPLORE menu item.

I hope to make a video this weekend, showing the different views and their advantages and disadvantages.

As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to ask, post or share.

The Beta Testers Collective is on an extended break.

The simple fact is that there are not enough new maps and mods to test on a regular basis.

Therefore it has been decided that the project will take a break until you know what is released.

Ade and Erik-Silver are both still available for private testing.

They can both be contacted via the site: BetaTestersCollective.com.

I am sure you will join me in wishing them a well-deserved rest.

Last week’s poll question was related to violence and video games and this week’s question is an extension of that.

Have you ever fired a real gun?

It’s another emotive subject and I suspect that it might turn into a debate about whether guns should be legal etc but let’s try and keep on-topic.

I’ll tell you now that I haven’t fired a real gun but I have to admit I am curious as to how it would feel.