News Archives

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Welcome to TWHL's News Archive! Feel free to peruse a giant backlog of old news posts for your own amusement.

The News

MotM: November 2011

Daubster
0mnidimensional
[6 comments]

Another month, another map!.. of the month.



Congratulations to noSICK, our first member ever to win two Map of the Month awards back-to-back!

Check out the reviews on Surfacerun, his little gem of pure vanilla Half-Life-single-player-ness. Also, be sure to leave some comments for both the reviewers and the winner - both sides would definitely appreciate the feedback!

Decryption Continues!

Penguinboy
Haha, I died again!
[16 comments]

Howdy folks! To avoid huge news syndrome, your extended MOTM surprise continues in a new news post. This news post, even!

But before we get to that, I must point out that unfortunately, we forgot to acknowledge a recent tutorial by our good friend (and distinguished gentleman), Moaby. He wrote a most excellent tutorial on the subject of creating caves using displacements. Sorry about that, Moaby! To make up for it, you get a...tutorial award! Congrats!

And with that, back to our scheduled programming:

Happy New Year!

Daubster
0mnidimensional
[125 comments]

From all of us on the admin team, we wish you all the best in your future mapping endeavours of 2012! We have some very exciting stuff in store for you in the upcoming year, so stay tuned!

'Tis the Season to be.. TUTORIALS.

Daubster
0mnidimensional
[8 comments]

What with the holidays being so fun, even the grumpy folks on the admin team are getting in on the holiday spi-

.. wait, it's already over? Oh well. More tutorials.

First up, Random Entity Triggering by Stojke, which covers everything you'll need to give your GoldSource maps a bit of replayability, or to create more complex entity systems.

Next, Perfect Timing with Doors by Instant Mix offers an in-depth guide in door timings, as well as a crash course in basic kinematics. Great for entity setups where complex door systems play a big role.

Finally, Map Layout Theory for CS by Skals analyzes the layouts of a few more successful Counter-Strike maps, giving you pointers on what made them work, and why. It also provides you with general guidelines to keep in mind when designing a layout, making it worth a read for any CS mapper.



Now that the tutorials are out of the way, let's focus on the awesomeness that is Captain Terror, give him a round of applause, and provide him with our first Map Vault Award given away since 2005!

He has consistently been one of the most active members on TWHL, constantly helping out in the forums, and most importantly, giving almost every mapper in the vault constructive feedback on their submissions.
Happy Holidays, congratulations, and keep up the great work!

Competition 32

Daubster
0mnidimensional
[7 comments]

A new competition this soon? Blasphemy!

Re-invent a Counter-Strike Classic is live, and this time we have prizes!

Be sure to check out the official thread for more details.

Competition 31 Results!

Penguinboy
Haha, I died again!
[6 comments]

The results for competition 31 have been posted! Congratulations to Captain Terror, Skals and ninja defuse for landing the top three spots, and good work to everyone else who entered! All the entries were quite good, you should all be proud!

Daubster is currently organising a new competition, which should start soon. We've also got another surprise in the works...stay tuned!

New Tutorials

Strider
Sigh.
[16 comments]

EDIT:
Competition 31 is live. Head over here for the rules. I'll have an official thread up a little later.

Slow news lately, but two new tutorials have gone live tonight. They are Introduction to Colour Correction by Archie, and Coding NPC's in GoldSrc by dexter. Head on over and share your love for the authors. I command you.

Sigh.

Who Changed the Front Page?

Penguinboy
Haha, I died again!
[9 comments]

Someone decided that it would be a good idea to mess with the front page. As a result, some people with aggressively cache-tastic browsers will need to force a page refresh. You will know if you need to, because there will be bullet points chilling in the general shoutbox region.

On every browser except Opera, this means pressing Ctrl+F5 while on the TWHL home page. For Opera users, good luck! Try pressing F5 a few times, restart your browser, reboot your PC, format your hard drive, buy a new computer, and so on. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

New Tutorial!

Daubster
0mnidimensional
[12 comments]

Dragos has let us in on a neat lighting trick in his first tutorial, explaining how to implement some sharp & sexy shadows in GoldSource!
With a relatively simple technique that can create some truly awesome visuals, Realistic Shadows is definitely worth a read for any GoldSource mapper.

A wild Portal 2 appears.

Strider
Sigh.
[8 comments]

Yep, it's finally here. Now is the time to call in sick from work or school, because there are much more important matters to attend to. I, unfortunately, will be away from my gaming rig for the next few days, so if you spoil it I will hunt you down. Other people might not appreciate it either. Discuss!

EDIT: The results for Compo 30 are out.

EDIT: The Portal 2 Authoring Tools Beta are now available!