This is the Read category

A collection of text posts, including Poll Questions, Text Interviews with moddersand Phillip’s Blog. All posts are written to encourage friendly debate and discussion.

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Week 29

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 Mistake of Pythagoras on Sunday 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.

22nd July 2016 No Comments

Poll Question 353 – Would you play Half-Life Go?

Unless you live in a cave in the mountains and have just returned to civilisation (I used that word reluctantly!) and this is the first website you have checked, you will no doubt have heard all about Pokemon Go.

I have got almost no idea how Pokemon Go exactly works, nor do I want to, so please don’t explain, but here is how I see half-Life Go working.

At various locations around , well, everywhere, are hidden various Half-Life enemies. You job is to kill or avoid them. For example, when you are in 5 metres of a headcrab your phone starts to make that purring sound sound. Upon lifting your phone up and scanning the area, when you are facing the headcrab it jumps and screams at you. The only way to kill it, is to position it at your feet and kick it, making sure the camera sees it happen.

With other enemies, you must use your phone as a gun. In some cases you must run away. There would be ammo caches scattered around the area. For example, if you saw a strider you would know that there is a rocket launcher nearby, as well as some rockets.

Players could locate Easter eggs of extra caches buy looking in groups i.e. the caches only appear if there are two or more “rebels” with 2 metres of each other.

I suppose you could buy extra weapons, ammo or range detection and I assume you can do those things in the Pokemon version.

Anyway, would you play it?

What other Half-Life inspired features would you add?

14th July 2016 25 Comments

Week 28

Firstly, we’ve got a little out of sequence recently. Don was supposed to be this weekend, but he stepped in for Darren, who went last weekend instead of the first one. Anyway, there are no actual events planned and since July has 5 weekends that confuses things even more.

But fear not, Phillip will step unto the breach dear friends, once more (kind of a shaky Shakespeare’s Henry V reference) and will be streaming at least 2, YES, 2 Valve Hammer Editor Practice Sessions which are part of The Level Design Academy series – both Saturday and Sunday morning at around 11:00am Central European Time.

Secondly, Phillip will also be starting a new “Phillip Plays” series.

Drum Roll Please….

The Closure!

Yes, he wanted to the Final Project Diary first but he is just itching to play Leon’s most recent release. He has no doubt that he will spend a fair amount of time shouting at the screen, but that’s normal between him and Leon.

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.

13th July 2016 8 Comments

Week 27

Firstly, Darren will be continuing his The Ville Retrospective event and this week it’s the turn of EndVille starting at 1pm UK Time on Saturday (GMT+1).

Secondly, Phillip hopefully will be streaming one his practice mapping sessions, which is part of The Level Design Academy. It’s most likely to be Saturday morning or after Darren’s stream.

Thirdly, Phillip and Don will be streaming the 4th Tutoring session on Sunday at 3pm Central European Time. The topic is “clip brushes and brush entities”.

You should double check the Time & Date.Com website for your local time. Please note the UK is not on GMT during the summer, so use 1pm UK or London time to check the stream time in your time zone.

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.

7th July 2016 1 Comment

July 2016 General Chat

Hello July, you Daughter Of A Stalker! Where have you been?

I can finally, wear that yellow bikini around the house I keep talking about (if I receive $1000 Dollars donations this month, I post pics), so it’s definitely starting to get hotter.

My work load eases off from today, so I should be able to do more with the site in the next 5 weeks or so.

So, what have you got planned for this month?

1st July 2016 57 Comments

Poll Question 351 – Would you ever play Half-Life games on your mobile or tablet?

Now that Steam is available on mobile Windows devices I started thinking about all the Half-Life games I had seen on Android, which lead me onto whether I would actually want to play Half-Life games on my mobile (I can’t, I have an iPhone – at least I don’t THINK I can) or a tablet (I can’t, I’m sure this time because I don’t have a tablet! Ha – gotcha.).

I know that desktop usage among non-business users is dropping significantly and mobile and tablet is soaring but there are some things better done on Desktops. I’m not suggesting that games HAVE to be better on desktops but some games work better there, just like some films HAVE to be seen in the cinema to really appreciate them. I’m sure you get what I mean.

The future could easily be VR goggles wirelessly connected to your mobile/tablet – who knows?

I don’t want you to think I am some old fuddy-duddy, I have played games on my mobile but only a couple. Mostly Dumb Ways to Die

I’d love to hear your thoughts on mobile gaming in general and specifically to FPS games like Half-Life.

30th June 2016 23 Comments

Week 26

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.

30th June 2016 2 Comments

Wieliczka Salt Mine – Real Theme

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!

Wieliczka Salt Mine

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.

29th June 2016 7 Comments

Calling Tech-heads – I need your help

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.

29th June 2016 19 Comments