This video explains The Hammer Cup 2016, its history and objectives, briefly describes each challenge, announces the winners, talks about the points and the prizes and finishes with the thank yous.

Points spreadsheet here: .

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New readers may be surprised to hear I have a holiday away from the site. Well, actually, I have a few but mostly just for the odd day or two here and there, but the one in August is longer. I will be away for 12 days!!!

12 days of no updates or new posts. Well, that’s not strictly true. The Week XX and weekly poll question will be schedule, but that’s it.

I do check email and follow the comments, however, I avoid replying or posting if I can. We all need to re-charge our creative batteries.

I will be in the UK, specifically, London and near Portsmouth.

Every year I post details of my holiday and suggest a RTSL meet Up (used to be a PP Meet Up) and in all the years I have been suggesting it, it’s only ever happened once – in New York. Two people came to meet me for dinner and it was a lot of fun.

So, here goes again:
Who would like to meet me in Central London on a either Sunday 14th, Saturday 20th or Sunday 21st for an afternoon coffee?

For those that are really serious, I’ll give you my mobile number and we can Whatsapp to arrange things.

But please, please only say you are interested if you really are and can actually make it. My time is so short there and I have so many things I want to do, London Sky Garden, Royal Opera House: Bolshoi ballet, British Museum, friends, shopping, parks restaurants etc etc, that I don’tr want to waste time sitting waiting for people who won’t come.

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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.

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A few years ago, I read an interesting article on the BBC website about psychology and testing. I emailed the author, a university professor and suggested creating a few maps for testing purposes. I can’t remember the exact details, but video games seemed an ideal medium for the tests. Unfortunately, I never heard back from him which was a little disappointing, but there you go.

And then yesterday I read this BBC article called Why are people so gullible? and it got me thinking again.

I’m not actually proposing this Ville but I would like us to talk about potential ideas. There must be plenty of ways of introducing specific psychological concepts into maps.

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Recently, I have a seen a few videos about SP HL/HL2 mods and I don’t think they are very good (not that I think mine are), but they have a LOT of views. I think I can do better, not just better than the videos I currently produce (which are only uploaded streams and the new Minute Mods series) but also better than the ones I have seen.

I have created what I believe is the best resource for single player maps and mods and with regard to videos I am not doing a very good job of utilizing that resource.

What I would to start to do is create some videos that showcase some mods but use aspects other than the generic “Top 10 HL2 mods”. Well, I do want to do that, but I am sure there is a lot more I could do too.

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I feel I am very approachable. I’m a friendly guy, willing to help whoever I can. But I am also the guy who runs the site and often people apologize for contacting me and “asking stupid” questions etc. That makes me feel bad. Contrary to popular belief, there are actually stupid questions, but it’s better to ask them than stay ignorant.

It seems that new members feel that shouldn’t bother me or interrupt me if I am on Steam Friend and the opposite is true. I love to hear from and chat with RTSL members – at the right time of course, but if I am on Steam Friends then that’s fine.

It occurred to me recently that plenty of other members help other members if they see a question or comment before I do. Often this is due to timezone issues but other times it’s because I am doing other things.

The site has got quite a few new members recently, but unless they make an approved comment with 3 days of joining their membership is deleted. This is to stop spammers and keep the database lean and mean. In addition, there’s no reason to be a member unless you want to sue the recommendation system, so at some point members will HAVE to have a comment approved.

So I would like to propose the following idea for your consideration.

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I have made a momentous decision…. I am going to try and turn RTSL into a job.

Patreon is a website service that allows artists and creators to receive regular donations from supporters.

In the past, I never believed it was possible to make a living from my site and I’ll be honest and say I don’t think full time is possible. Not because of the site itself but because of its incredibly niche content. However, I may be able to make running the site a part-time option and that is my realistic objective, with full-time as the ultimate dream.

I will continue to have donation drives, like the one for The Hammer Cup 2016 prizes etc because ALL of that money is used for buying prizes.

By spending more time on the site, I would be able to update the older mods more quickly, spend time creating new content, like Minute Mod videos for each and every mod, more video reviews and special videos like a round up of each category in the RTSL Awards. Not to mention more podcasts with in-development modders.

I have been inspired by Alex from LambdaGeneration who has some great ideas for running his site and reaching his objectives.

If this doesn’t work out, well at least I tried and I may also explore other gaming-related opportunities.

Who doesn’t want to turn their hobby and the thing they love doing into a full-time occupation?

So, please visit my Patreon page and if you decide to support me, thank you.

As always if you have any comments suggestions or feedback, just post a comment.

Here is the introduction video…

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Just in case you missed the tweet and mention in a post, RTSL is now on Facebook.

Along with Twitter and Tumblr, I will be posting short updates about the site.

Some longer things will be posted to Facebook and Tumblr, with a tweet linking to both of those.

I know that not all of you use Facebook, but it only takes seconds to copy and paste to create a new post, so iit’s not too much effort and I hope it will help readers stay engaged with the site.

I should mention that LiveStreams will for the time being only be announced on Twitter, partly because Twitch automatically tweets and partly because it seems more appropriate.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please let me know.

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I love running RTSL. I must do because I spend 80% of my free time doing it. But I am never happy. I know that a lot of the downloads are not working and a lot of the older mods need updating and 2016 will be called “The Year of the Content”. That said, there are lots of things that I want to improve and create.

Below, you will find details of most of my plans. I do have one major idea up my sleeve, that I hope to reveal very soon.

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I have to admit I was planning on AntlionVille but by the time I had finished Antlions Everywhere I was sick to death of the freaking things. I am sure there will be an AntlionsVille in the future but not this time.

There were some really great theme/challenge suggestions made by people and, again, some are sure to happen in the future, but the one that really caught my eye was CrossoverVille. I am going to open it up to a wider range of games though.

Hope it inspires you!

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