Welcome to 2014!
Let’s hope that it will be a bumper year for Half-Life maps and mods
Please use this post to talk about about anything you want to – except maps and mods, which should be done of the specific post, assuming there is one.
January 2014 – General Chat.
1st January 2014
Happy New Year PlanetPhillip, and hope it’ll be the Half-Life 3 year for PCs too…
So, how has 2014 been treating everybody so far?
I’ve been injured and haven’t played any squash which is really frustrating and I still have more recovery ahead.
I’m getting very close to buying my new PC, so by the end of January, I should be up and running – fingers crossed.
I’ve had two weeks off work and start again tomorrow, so I got up a little earlier than normal today so tomorrow doesn’t seem to much of a shock to my system.
That’s about it from me. Your turn.
Proper work has gone crazy which is frustrating as I’m very much into my mapping right now. Grabbing time when I can but between work, girlfriend, gaming and other important things, trying to find time to focus on Hammer is hard.
We’ve got some really fun gameplay sections completed so far though on Rise and Fodderstomps detailing is all rather jaw dropping. The man has a calling…
We’ve got concepts for 3 maps so far, all large size taking roughly around 30 mins each or more to complete. Hoping for a 5 map mod but will only go that far if its justified…
I also want to try and build in as much replay value as possible so coming up with gameplay areas where the player could stay and play forever is tough. How do you suggest to the player that they can move on whenever they want to or stay and have fun?
What if they don’t get the message and don’t realise they can move on whenever they want… its hard to design it in.
Remember how Valve sets up that chair and the ammo crate while leaving a clear path to continue down. You talked about it in your level analysis video
Oh, sorry to hear about your injury, but glad you’re better now.
I hope Santa swings by your place as a late favor and helps you with your new PC.
As a general thought, I recently noticed, after dying for the catrillionth time in dm, that some if not all HL2 player models, including the one in the main picture above, have “C17” on the back of the collar. I noticed something peculiar that resembled some symmetrical pattern but it wasn’t perfect and then it struck me as being some City 17 tag. Of course now every time I see it I’m like DOH why did it take me 8 years to notice that!
I need some testing done.. Can you send me your email…
Well why the dot dot, that’s always music to my ears! We should find eachother on Skype, if not, please check out the main site betatesterscollective.com
Haha, loving the new banner image! Although, something tells me it won’t work…
It did work, because it made me feel better, and that’s all I hoped for.
Good on you Phillip,,
its very few business’s in the world that can totally ignore their customer base.
A concerted media/blog/letters to editors drive (that means WE get off our arses and contribute–) may get some form of response.
Valve need to realise people move on,,
get married, have kids, grow older.
but then,, seeing Valve care so little for us, they’ll probably just release for their console anyway.
Why beg?
What would letter writing really accomplish? This isn’t like the cancellation of Star Trek. It’s not like Valve is unaware of fan demand for Half-Life 3. They are just too hip to care.
And, perhaps, be careful what you wish for. We all know how Season 3 of Star Trek turned out. 😛
Mate I gave up begging 40 odd years back when santa didnt bring me a bike,, 🙂
too hip? maybe,, but with a small touch of arrogance too I reckon,,
The ONLY way we as a community of gamers and players is going to blacken Valves eye is by a general strike on the Steam Empire. Set a date and NOBODY use their site or products. Start with a weekend and if they persist in nonresponsive behavior hit them again for longer periods of time. We’ll see how thats received.
Ok sorry all but I didnt know where else to ask about my tech problem. I havent played any HL for quite sometime, upon launching the game it went thru its updating on steam and is now up to date, however whenever I load in a map or mod just after launching I get a WHITE screen. error message states…….”cant find backround image” materials/console/startup_loading.vtf
any help would be greatly appreciated………..Oh if I start the original game, HL2. HL2 ep1, HL2ep2 they all work just fine
might be steampipe related http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/steampipe-and-current-issues/
Try following this: http://lambdageneration.com/modding/source/fixing-half-life-2-and-portal-mods-on-steampipe-a-quick-guide/
Hope it helps.
The PP frontpage picture of a broken, battered, humiliated, defeated, and sorry looking Valve character is awesome!
I hope y’all have a great year.
I doubt we will be seeing anything related to Valve this year. I will however start mapping again. I have not been mapping since the 6×10 competition because I was just dry on Ideas, so I deliberately held of on level design so I could build up some Ideas, so hopefully, I will have my first released map soon. Feels weird to have mapped for almost 6 years and no maps released.
Come on, Valve, I need you guys. I have waited long enough. What are you up to, Gabe? Will I have to play Half Life 3 as an old man in my deathbed?
If someone wants to know, Half Life 2 is the best rated PC game of all time in Sweden, with 97 out of 100 score, followed closely by Left 4 dead with 93 out of 100. Will Half life 3 get 98? Maybe even 99? Ooooor, it may be the best damn game of human history and score a flawless 100 out of 100.
First, though, someone needs to wake up Gabe.
I have a new level in the works. It’s about a month old at this point and I really like how it’s coming along. Doesn’t have a name yet.
Anyone know a good G-Man impersonator? I deliberately made him optional, but there is one line that would be pretty awesome to have.
This sounds very interesting, can’t wait to see more of it. I honestly think sound could have made some money being a G-Man impersonator. Good luck finding one.
A quick progress update:
Well, still no official name, but I’ve had some thoughts about it. Initial testing has gone well, but revealed a few key difficulty spikes to iron out. Still, it’s been entertaining to see the testers react to the situation more-or-less exactly what I wanted the player to. There is more than one way through things, but it means the visual language is not confusing. Visually, the level is more-or-less complete, barring any props or overlays that pop up.
Speaking of pop up, there aren’t any leaks in the level, but I’ve certainly been bitten by this charming Steampipe-related bug: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/609 Things like Combine barricades and health chargers simply faze out of existence completely independent of whatever settings I put on them. Really sucks, but given the sheer age of the bug, I don’t expect Valve to fix this and I’m not going to re-tune the level to avoid health chargers.
First off happy new year to you all!
Maybe some of you heard already about it. We are hosting a HL2DM Mapping Competition on http://hl2dm.net . We will be giving out 50€ for the first place, and 25€ for the second and third. Also many game giveaways to random participants.
The mapping competition will run for 3 months, so you got plenty of time. If you got any questions, feel free to post on our forums.
– Maxtasy
I am kind of curious, for us Half Life 2 fans who are still loyal, how much do you have in the HL2 Games? Myself, combine all 3 games, I have 383 hours of gameplay, not counting some mods, so maybe 450 hours. And my EP2 maps folder is 2.5 gigs in size.
I also have 322 hours in Source SDK, I was using a widget wich allowed me to start the SDK without launching steam, so thats not all the time I have, so make that about 500-600 hours. All those hours and not one single released map…
Anyone else wanna share their nerdiness?
I don’t trust the figures Steam gives me. I guess that most of that is from mods anyway. My highest is EP2 which says 100 hours.
I have spent my free time in December and January fixing up my library of good/great mods that were broken by the Steam Pipe update. Although it has been painful, it also has been a great chance to go back and play some classics. I found a great web page for HL2 and EP2 mods which tells you what to add to the “gameinfo.txt” file so it will work again.
However, I haven’t yet seen anything on how to fix and EP1 mod so it works with the Steam Pipe update. Does anybody know of such a fix? It would be greatly appreciated.
Well the first word of the level title in the new header is obviously: F O R E S T
Maybe. Crossword Solver suggests 198 possibilities.