This is the Phillip’s Blog category

A variety of post themes, including articles, ideas, stories and rants.

Follow the Phillip’s Blog releases via RSS

The Hammer Cup 2017 Fund Raising Livestream – May 2017

Hello everybody. This weekend, starting at 2pm Central European Time on Saturday 13th May, I will be livestreaming to raise money for The Hammer Cup 2017 Prize Fund.

ALL money raised will be added to the fund.

However, it’s not going to be simply me playing and you watching, with the occasional donation – OH NO!

If you want me to keep playing you will have to pay. It will work like this:

  • Starting at 2pm, a minimum of 3 Dollars will need to be raised WITHIN THAT HOUR for me to continue after 3pm
  • Starting at 3pm, a minimum of 4 Dollars will need to be raised WITHIN THAT HOUR for me to continue after 4pm
  • Starting at 4pm, a minimum of 5 Dollars will need to be raised WITHIN THAT HOUR for me to continue after 5pm
  • Etc

I will attempt to stay online for as long as the money keeps coming in, yes, for as long as the hourly target is reached!!!

I am sure there are some devious people who will pay to see me suffer – in fact, I am counting on it.

Remember, All the money goes to The Hammer Cup 2017 Prize Fund, so it’s for a good cause.

At this point, I plan to play Prospekt and some other longer mods (probably past Villes), probably even an hour or two mapping. – but I am open to suggestions for other things.

Anyway, I hope you can join me and as always, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please don’t hesitate to post them.

Don’t forget that all RTSL are now on the YouTube channel: https://gaming.youtube.com/c/Planetphillipcom/live.

Hope to see you on Saturday!

10th May 2017 7 Comments

50-Hour Mapping Challenge Next Weekend

Starting Friday 12th May 2017 at 9:59pm Central European Summer Time, there will be a 50-Hour Mapping Challenge.

It is NOT part of The Hammer Cup 2017.

The Deadline for submitting entries will be Sunday 14th May 2017 at 11:59pm.

The theme will be appropriate for the time period.

Theme details and standard details will be announced next Friday.

Dev textures will be allowed. CALM DOWN.

I will be giving away Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II to the best entry.

There might be another judge in addition to me.

This is the first time I have run a mapping challenge like this – it might be a disaster or it might be fun – let’s see.

I will answer any questions you have now, EXCEPT if related to the theme – so don’t ask.

5th May 2017 22 Comments

12-hour LiveStream, Saturday 28th January

Hi Everybody,

This weekend, I will be live-stream for hopefully 12 hours starting at 12pm Central European Time on the RTSL YouTube channel.

I will only be playing maps and mods for Half-Life games, so no Unreal or Red Faction etc like last time.

In addition, I do not have time to set up all the mods before, so some of the stream will be me getting everything installed and working, which may be educational in itself.

Last weekend, I played a bunch of other mods and didn’t get to play Point of View, Human Error, so I will start with both of those.

Depending on time, I will also stream any other map or mod that is suggested on the stream or I fancy playing.

Once finished, I will be editing the stream into individual videos for the RTSL channel.

That’s it for now, if you have any questions or mod suggestions, please let me know.

26th January 2017 7 Comments

RTSL in 2017

See that cat above? That’s how I have been feeling the last 6 months. I just haven’t been able to get the energy to do any work on the site.

However, I have almost reached a decision to continue with the site BUT before I make that final commitment, I want to be sure.

In a few days, I am going away for the Christmas holidays and then on 4th January I am going for a holiday in the sun. I will relax, looking at the ocean and ponder life’s unanswerable questions: “Can Gordon talk?“, “Should I stop pretending to be a bad player?“, “should I extract all the modding knowledge from Don’s brain and become a mapping giant?“, and of course “Should I continue running the site?“.

I suspect the answer to them all will be “YES!“. So, let’s just assume that for the rest of this article.

16th December 2016 17 Comments

Explore Phillip’s Collection of FPS Games – Part 2

Here is the second video in my series of FPS games exploration.

It was recorded during my recent 12-Hour Autumn Playathon.

The format is more or less the same as the first, but this time I tried to include a view of my screen, so viewers can see some details of the games I research.

If you haven’t seen the first part, I recommend you watch that too.

I hope you enjoy it and also hope it will encourage you to explore your collection.

I will add a list of games covered very soon.

27th November 2016 4 Comments

Hard!Ville Mapping Challenge

Even though I am not a very good player, I love challenging but doable sections in mods. I don’t mind replaying sections again and again if I know I can do it. It might not be pretty or fun to watch if I am livestreaming, but I sure as heck enjoy it.

16th November 2016 54 Comments

Explore Phillip’s Collection of FPS Games – Part 1

I’m a collector of FPS games. Well, I was until about 5 years ago and then I stopped. When I moved to Spain from London about 15 years ago, I packed all my collection into boxes and put them into the basement meaning to get them out and display them. Alas, that never happened.

For the last few years I have been meaning to explore the boxes and see what I have and FINALLY I did it yesterday!

Below is the video of the livestream “event” and I certainly enjoyed it, as did the people on the stream.

People often expect me to be an expert of all these old games, but the reality is I haven’t even played 95% of them. In fact, from the list below I have only played 2!

The video last an hour and consists of me taking a game out of the box and briefly talking about it and checking the net for more information.

I’ll do one of these every week or so until I have gone through all my collection. Soon I will have the chat text as part of the video so that should make more sense when I respond to a point raised in the livestream chat.

I hope you enjoy it and also hope it will encourage you to explore your collection.

13th November 2016 12 Comments

Autumn 2016 12-Hour Playathon Stream

Back in May, I did a 12-Hour Plaython, where I stream for 12 hours non-stop.

Well, you guessed it, I’m going to do it again!

Starting at 12pm Central European Time on Saturday 19th November 2016, I will be streaming for 12 hours straight – besides the occasional toilet break of course.

Last time, I just played HL games and mods but this time I think I will broaden my horizons!

I am open to any suggestions you have but I can’t guarantee I will play everything suggested, not least because I probably won’t own the game.

This coming weekend, I will be streaming a special “Box opening” event, where I open one of my basement boxes full of games and perhaps we can choose some of those.

I will still play mods if that’s what viewers want.

Last year, I streamed on my Twitch channel but this year it will be on the RTSL YouTube channel, so make sure you have booked marked that page.

Obviously, I’ll be posting on Twitter nearer the time and during the event.

I was lucky enough to be able to give 12 games away last year but I don’t know if I will be able to do it this year. If you have a game you would like to donate, please contact me.

Finally, if you have never watched a stream before and think it sounds stupid to watch another person play a game, please keep an open mind. The chat during the stream is almost as much fun as watching me make an idiot of myself and we generally have a lot of fun.

If you have any questions, please ask.

I hope to see you there.

11th November 2016 6 Comments

I’m Taking a Partial Sabbatical

Hi Everybody,

I have some surprising news.

Over the last few years I have felt increasing pressure running the site. Remember, in various forms, I have been running the site for almost exactly 13 years. That’s a long time. During that time I have spent thousands of hours working on it. I feel that I’ve done a pretty good job at promoting SP maps and mods.

Recently, it has felt more like a burden than a hobby. Every weekend is planned around streams and work that needs to be done on the site. Every week day, most my free time is spent doing something related to the site.

I need a rest. A proper rest. Not just a few weeks. Even during my “holiday” I felt obligated to check in and see what’s happening. That’s wrong.

I heard something on The Goldberg’s last night. Somebody said “I just wanna ride my bike and play video games”. And that’s exactly how I feel. It’s time for me to be a consumer not a creator.

I feel that I have been trying to promote SP Half-Life stuff alone, of course I haven’t, but that’s just how it feels. I have tried so many different projects, initiatives, ideas and events. Some have been mildly succesful, others failures, but at least I tried.

One of the reasons I renamed the site from Planetphillip to RunThinkShootLive was because I wanted more community involvement. Something more like LambdaGeneration, but that takes a lot of work and it never really had the effect I had hoped for.

I have been thinking about closing the site for a few years now and over the past few months that feeling has become stronger.

Unlike last time, which was a reaction to a big problem with ModDB, I will be giving people and myself time to transition.

2nd September 2016 103 Comments