Here we are, Summer is over, nights drawing in and weather supposed to be getting colder – perfect excuse for more gaming – at least for me.
I expect to start updating the site with new mods soon and hopefully there will be some good ones.
Anyway, chat about anything you want (within reason) EXCEPT maps and mods already listed on the site – please comment on the respective posts.
This Month’s Sci-Fi Movie
In June 2014, I started to use a poster from a classic Sci-Fi move as the background for the post image.
This month it is from The Brain that wouldn’t Die (1962). A doctor experimenting with transplant techniques keeps his girlfriend’s head alive when she is decapitated in a car crash, then goes hunting for a new body.
Kind of thing Dr. Kleiner would do.
Hello October my good friend!
I Love this month because horror is one of my favourite genres to exist for movies, games and reading. Halloween especially because its an excuse to dress up like a bit of a idiot for the night.
Also, I suggest a RavenholmVille contest, who can create the best HL2 level set in Ravenholm, with the main focus to blend HL2 gameplay alongside a strong horror experience.
Well if you haven’t already you should check out last year’s RavenholmVille
And HorrorVille and HalloweenVille while you’re at it! 🙂
Cheers mate, I’ll give these a look.
I avoid the horror mods – definitely my least favourite setting – as well as vents, and sewers…
Give me mixed indoor and outdoor settings, with interesting puzzles, every time. A sense of place is hugely important to me. I like to escape, not just kill enemies.
I’m working through Uncertainty Principle. It’s a great mod, but there’s too much repetition and way too much box stacking/climbing.
Got a Wii U? Got Super Mario Maker? Now, you can play some of my maps on it! I released my first one yesterday, so you can play, rate and comment on it!
Koopawing Castle: 7D57-0000-007F-D11D
As with my HL2 stuff, I really worked to try and match the core game’s aesthetic and gameplay style. So, no cheap tricks or unfair mechanics here. Just a straightforward castle level in the New Super Mario Bros. style with Thwomps, fire and a couple secrets to find. I have a couple more where this came from which I’m still tweaking.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Super Mario Maker is a game released by Nintendo that’s basically an official Mario level editor that lets you build your own maps and share them with others. On the building side, you have access to 30-40 different objects, enemies and level mechanics – many of which can be combined with other objects to create new ones – and a very easy-to-use tile-based editor where you basically draw your map with the Wii U stylus.
I actually think SMM would be a great introduction for those who were always curious about level design and wanted to understand its basic concepts, but don’t want to learn a full-fledged editor. While there isn’t any kind of scripting system, it’s a minimalist game where every block and enemy placement should matter and you’re given a pretty large canvas to work with. I also liked how Nintendo really doesn’t hold your hand in the process. Instead, what they do is unlock a handful of new objects every day and let you experiment with them on your own before unlocking the next batch. This invites players to discover the possibilities and combinations on their own, which encourages that all-important designer trait: resourcefulness. When in doubt, you can always look at some of their levels to see how they built things. And the end result are levels that would easily fit in with their respective games.
There are also some really nice things about the way SMM is set up. You can test your level from any point, you can change the game and tileset on-the-fly and you even have a diagram of where other players die on your map so you can see where difficulty spikes could be, along with an overall percentage of players who could beat your map versus the number of deaths.
On the off chance that you have a Wii U, I think it’s worth checking out. I really hope this winds up leading to more games like this – Zelda Maker is an obvious candidate – but even on other platforms. After many years of companies acting like modding doesn’t exist and actively trying to discourage it, it’s nice to see some of them starting to realize its potential again.
I’ll admit, I’m more and more tempted to get a second hand wiiu every day. Didnt give it a glance on launch, but there are a few decent titles for it. I imagine I’d love SMM, and your stuff.
Yeah, even though it has never been a big success, it does have some fantastic games on it. I play with it way more than my PS4. Part of it, of course, is because many PS4 and XB1 games find their way to the PC eventually. But I also feel that I’ve really fallen out of favor with what most triple-As are offering these days. Aside from Fallout 4, there’s really nothing on my radar that I want.
Amen to that, and I can’t say I’m particularly interested in Fallout 4 even. I’m much more looking forward to the upcoming indie releases from “experienced” developers – The Witness, Adrift, Tacoma, Quadrilateral Cowboy, etc.
I would say that there’s one thing about Fallout 4 that I don’t look forward to, and that’s the return to Bethesda’s writing. It really comes down to how I think a post-apocalyptic civilization would resemble the wild west of New Vegas more than colonial times. The way FO3 tried to work in themes of patriotism, rebuilding the country and preserving history felt very hamfisted and didn’t fit the dark, sarcastic tone of the Fallout universe for me.
The one thing I will give FO3, though, was the greater emphasis on the Vaults and their cruel experiments, as well as the offbeat Atomic Age setting that the series is most known for. NV kind of dropped the ball on those aspects by not making them the focus, but it spread the cynicism across the whole narrative instead of reserving it for the Vaults, and I think that’s why the game feels more authentic than FO3 does.
Here’s another one. This time it’s an Airship level in the New Super Mario Bros. U theme.
Koopawing Airship
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I have a Ghost House coming soon for Halloween. It’s pretty fun to build these. It only takes a few days and there’s something very calming and zen-like about using the stylus to essentially draw your map on the screen. Satisfies that urge to build and share something without being a big time commitment.
Was there supposed to be a link in your comment?
No, but here’s a Miiverse post about it anyway. 😀
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkgmaNaSw
If you have Super Mario Maker, you can input that code and either download or play the level. And also follow me so you can get notified of new releases when they happen.
And another – Koopawing Ghost House.
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It takes place, as you might expect, in a Ghost House. How appropriate, huh? Here, the hallways seem to repeat themselves. Can you find the way out?
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkho7yFYg
My learning curve got a workout last night, because my housemate bought me Tomb Raider for steam (since it was quite cheap and I hadn’t played it) – having an obviously-console based play style is a bit weird and out of my experience. I’ve played a couple ‘over the shoulder’ type games before, but they’re definitely not much to my liking. Learning the ropes on TR has been frustrating because screw quicktime events with a damn FORK.
But also: because he bought an XBox1 and Lego Dimensions for it. Because I have to have Chell and a Capaldi Doctor figure 🙂 So that was actually the very first time I’ve ever PLAYED a real console game, with a controller. Ever. And yes, I’m nearly 50 so I had an Atari 2600 back in the day, but nothing console since then, only PC. I was quite surprised at how easily I adapted to it, though it only uses the sticks and letter keys (so far). Actually neither of us knew what the hell we were doing in places so we had to consult online to figure out what to do.
The Dimensions game looks to be very, very fun. Though be warned if you’re not used to ‘interacting’ with a game – you have to get up and move your pieces on the game pad thingie, as well as if you haven’t assembled the lego toys in advance you need to do them while playing, there’s a manual that comes up emulating the one you get with the product. We had to assemble the Batmobile to continue.
I suck at driving in most Source games, Eric sucks even harder in EVERY game, I will watch him drive off cliffs and into trees and stuff… Dimensions batmobile is no exception for either of us. I drove it so it got stuck on a ledge and i couldn’t move it any more… He took control over it and IT WENT BURNING OFF THE EDGE in a fiery crash 😀 We couldn’t breathe we were laughing so hard.
Recommended, good game, plus legos. They’re always fun.
Looking forward to the maps from Verticalville 2 🙂
Speaking of, when’s the ETA for the Phillip? I’ll be interested to see what people think of my entry
Phillip tweeted that there was a slim chance yesterday that he would release and stream the mod. I haven’t heard anything since, though. I’d expect it this weekend.
Tomorrow morning, straight after the livestream of my playing all the entries.
So people know, Patreon was hacked and data released. If you have a Patreon account be sure to check up on your password and info.
So Phillip,, RTSL operates at ZERO GMT ?
No, it operates at Central European Time, which is currently GMT +2
I bought a Steam Controller and Steam Link on pre-order…
Very excited to see what the experience will be like when they come through.
What’s a Steam Link?
I bought Black Mesa a couple of days ago, and maybe because I played the free version not that long ago, I’m a bit bored with it.
It does have some nice touches with weapons – they feel snappier and more realistic somehow.
The AI is not great and a lot of the military seem to be very stupid.
I’m currently working on a HL1 map. However, I have an issue with the lighting. Everytime I spawn a light entity, and then try the map, the light doesn’t appear. The map has no leaks, I checked.
Hi Tolis,
What do you mean “spawn” a light entity? Light entities in HL1 either exist in the map from the start or they don’t – you can have them switched but not “spawn”. It’s possible the light is there, just switched off.
To troubleshoot the compile, read the compile output and look for hlrad (that is the radiosity or lighting section at the end). See if there are any errors.
Also in general, texture lighting looks much better and more natural in HL than what you’re doing which is point lighting using light entities.
Managed to solve it. Thanks a lot!
A question for anyone, Has anyone played HL2 on Windows 10 yet??? or anything else, if so I would like to know if it’s worth the move!! If not I’ll stay with W7. Thanks
HL2 does work on Windows 10. However, at this point, I no longer recommend upgrading to it. The long-term stability of the OS is poor, with even fundamental stuff like the Start button locking up for no reason out of the blue. I think it may be worth upgrading after they work the kinks out, toward the end of the year when you can upgrade for free. But right now, I use 8.1 and my opinion is that everything feels more sluggish and unstable in 10 with absolutely nothing gained.
If 10 was intended to win back the people alienated by 8.1, then it’s fatally flawed because of everything else that took a giant step backward.
If you’re happy with how W7 behaves, don’t bother with 10. As Maki says, it’s kind of a step up from 8 users perspective but the only thing I’ve heard really that makes any difference to me is ‘it boots up faster’ than 7. Gets a big old ‘shrug’ from me, not intending to change what’s not broken here.
It’s not a “step up” from 8.1 at all. It’s a step backward.
I think, in time, they’ll be able to clean it up. But it’s not this miracle release they were making it out to be. Far from it, in fact. Like I said, if this was their idea to win back the users that 8 lost, then this needed to work perfectly right out of the box. Instead, it succumbs to their traditional habits where they release something undertested and half-finished and spend the next year fixing it. Baffling since they had a solid base to start from, imo.
Thanks for the info! That’s what I was thinking also, I loaded it on my spare PC and got it to run good —- until I installed “Bioshock Inf” The game wouldn’t run at all!! So I think I’ll stay with W7 for now. I gave it my best “OLD MAN” shot!!! 😉
I has a Twitter now. You can follow me. https://twitter.com/makidev
Guys, I think there is a spammer on this site. He recently commented on Half-Life Uplink’s page and he’s talking about Clash of Clans hacks.