Comments

Puzzle design is definitely very difficult and its especially hard to strike that balance - one of the best ways to work out that balance is to play a lot of puzzle games. Not just ones that fit into HL2 or the type of puzzles you want to make - all kinds of different puzzle games. You'll start to develop a feeling of what's fun, what's boring, and what's frustrating.

When it comes to puzzles, especially for something like HL2 where puzzles are relatively easy, you have to design for the audience - people playing a HL2 map are much less likely to enjoy a super difficult puzzle, but people playing a Portal map are probably wanting more challenging puzzles.

One way that works for longer maps/mods is to do what Valve does with the Portal games (many other games do the same thing too) - start with a simple idea and then build on it over time. You can introduce the various aspects of a complicated puzzle one by one and then slowly make it more complicated and difficult - this way the player doesn't get overwhelmed with too many new ideas at once.

Some of my recommendations of interesting puzzle games to play to see how they approach difficulty: Myst, Quern: Undying Thoughts, COCOON, The Witness, Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, The Talos Principle

Same Windawz but coffee is tasty so I drink it anyway

But yeah if it affects you a lot and you want to drink it at nighttime then just get some decaf, it tastes the same.

Huh, I didn't even know this was something that people disagreed on, always seemed like common sense to me...

The point about feedback that something works or not is really important in a public forum, because it's very possible that someone else will have the same issue, and being able to see right away if the advice helped the person with the same issue is extremely useful and a huge time saver.

Another point is that thanking someone means that it encourages them to continue being helpful in the future. And when it's in a public space, it also encourages other people to engage with the community, posting their own questions and answering others. Everybody in an online community benefits when people are helpful and friendly.

This isn't really useful for Q&A since the forums are where you should go to get a response, but, I'll respond to these in case anyone has the same issues:

@sadpepe: The classname in this tutorial is weapon_eagle, it's possible that in your console and in the impulse 101 code, you typed deagle by mistake. The names need to match or nothing will happen.

@The Skeleton: If you are not willing to spend a bit of time to learn, then programming is not for you. This tutorial is intended to be useful, not to entertain you.

@Chris I Guess: Start with the Half-Life Programming - Getting Started guide. It will tell you how to get these files. Note that if you don't know how to code, editing the HL SDK is going to be a very painful learning experience.

Hi everyone, just stop. TWHL isn't the place for your debates, go to facebook or something.

The mod must be played on latest Steam HL, not WON retail.

Not that I cheated much.

So... you cheated a bit?

Good luck with your graduation and job applications!

Congrats on the gig! Core Decay looks very cool, and Unannounced FPS looks very unannounced.

Good start so far, here's some of my thoughts:

Some of the areas outside the map that are visible seem quite empty - consider what the world outside the map looks like - for a junkyard, there'll be roads leading to the entrance, maybe cars parked outside, streetlights, and that kind of thing. I also notice that there's areas of the map that are fairly flat and undetailed - it'd be great to see more terrain work, and more detail in the landscape - such as piles of rubbish, or more buildings. Maybe even some Combine buildings, if you want to go that way. One thing that stands out to me is that the map's layout is a square. You've got some variation with the underground section - which is good, but in the end, there's parts of the map where you can see from one side to the other which isn't the best for gameplay. Maybe you could change the layout of the map - take a look at the layouts of other HL2DM and CS maps to see how they have paths that connect together in different areas, and let the players move about in multiple ways while still not being able to see the entire map from any one area. If you want to keep the square layout, you could add more walls or props to block sight lines. Remember that variation can be vertical as well, maybe you could add an extra level to the building or make the rooftop accessible to increase verticality. The basement only has one entrance and one exit, which can often make gameplay more predictable - maybe some extra entrances to the basement area would help.

Take a look at what audio options you have, such as soundscapes and ambient entities. Currently the map is silent, and could do with some extra ambient effects to make it feel more "realistic". Some of the HL2 maps have great background sounds such as the Combine announcement system, scanners, trains going past, birds singing, and other effects. This really helps to improve a map's atmosphere.

There's nothing interesting in this journal, move along

Nice!

MOTM

🎉🎉🎉🎉

It's finally done! Big congrats and thanks to Unq and Strider for heading up this collaboration, and everyone who contributed a map or helped with beta testing!

This mod actually contains my first real map release ever, it's fairly simple but I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Yeah but a quarter of 1152 is 288. Happy 288th birthday!

Congrats on the Kickstarter success, zeeba!

...good point, I suppose. Reworded the question slightly.

I was going to add Black Mesa: Xen into this list as a "maybe" option, but there's no way it'll come out this month...

Obviously the third eye is in the rear, as seen a lot in pornography. Urby's subtly admitting to us that he's an asshole. Happy birthday, asshole!

No but really it's:
Pornography = XXX
with three eyes = III
XXXIII = 33 in Roman numerals

Hoping all goes well!

I think personally I'd prefer the Oyster card regardless, I'd feel a little uncomfortable swiping my credit card instead of my Go card (as it's called in Brisbane). I tap-to-pay the hell out of everything else though, so maybe I'd get used to it. I draw the line at using the phone though, Samsung and Google have too much of my data even without my complete purchase history.

Gives me bad memories of my first GPU upgrade. The case was blocking the card from being seated properly but I had no idea it wasn't right. As soon as I turned the power on for the first time, two transistors blew on the motherboard. It was in my first hour of a 30 hour LAN party and my computer was fried, very upsetting. Took 6 months for Intel to make good on the warranty return, I had no money to simply buy a new one when I was a kid.

Since then I've heard a few reports on unseated GPUs and nobody else has had any issues with fried motherboards, so either I was incredibly unlucky or the transition from AGP to PCIe made improvements in that area. Glad nothing went wrong for you!

+1 for the Samsung EVO drives. I have 3 in my PC at the moment - 2 of them bought earlier this year (EVO 860) to replace some dying spindle drives, and one I've had Windows installed on for a few years (EVO 850). Loving the price drops of SSDs in the last few years! My Steam/games drive is a 1TB SSD now, if you hate the excessive loading times on modern games, it's a must!

I think VR needs premium hardware, I wouldn't build a mid-range PC and expect VR to work well on it. But I could be wrong, I don't know much about it.

Looking pretty good! The only thing I'd suggest is to consider the GTX 1660 instead of the GTX 1060. For an extra $20 you get a decent boost in performance and double the memory as well.

Good to hear that there's no issues!

It's not though. It's exactly 9000.

Uninstall hat.exe

I know right? I played Subnautica until 2am on Saturday only to be FORCED to wake up at 8 for the stream. FORCED!

(Subnautica is being given away for free on the Epic games store atm by the way. It's real good.)

For what it's worth the archive works fine for me in both 7zip and WinRAR, not sure why it would be showing as corrupted for some people.

I'm crap at Photoshop so this'll have to do

Another free one I stumbled upon today is KdenLive, I haven't tried it but it looks useful.

In my experience, dots for multiplication is common, colons for division is not. Colons are used for ratios which represent relative proportions, rather than an operation with a single answer.

Welcome to the club ....of being in debt
Real nice looking house though!

Good timing for this example, I added a link to this to the Tutorial: Counter-Strike mapping page since it's a common problem that people have when mapping for CS. Thanks for making it!

@NineTnine: also 5 years before COD2, Medal of Honor: Underground had a female protagonist who was also on the cover of the game.

Honestly I've only seen posts like this complaining about these people who are upset about having gender options in Battlefield. That's the only exposure I got in regards to this Battlefield malarkey, I think folks are blowing it out of proportion a bit.

If you look hard enough you'll find idiots on the internet having a whinge about any completely ridiculous thing you could imagine. Who cares what they think.

You would be looking at TWHL4 right now if I hadn't have broken my arm the day before I was going to deploy it

Also congrats on your degree, that's what I have too

I genuinely was gunna migrate this weekend but broken bones delayed that. Gimme a few months to heal my arm.

@Stu: The calculator app asks you to rate it but doesn't hold you hostage. I've seen it once and I clicked cancel and moved on. I don't even have an app store account.

I've never had any issues with Windows 10. Some comments:

• Delay updates for 30 days (the maximum). This will reduce restarts and you will avoid any bad updates which were rolled back.
• Feature updates (which are like service packs) are released twice a year and will take longer to install than most updates. You can delay them for up to a year. They seem to reset some settings, but it takes 5 minutes to change them back when you notice them. Most (if not all) settings are retained.
• Use Spybot Anti-Beacon if you're concerned with the statistics they're collecting. This will block the telemetry that both Windows 7 and 10 send.
• If you want an extra layer of protection use a software firewall (I use ESET) to block network requests from telemetry applications.
• The settings stuff isn't great, but the old control panel still exists and everything is still there. Some of the new stuff (UWP, tablet mode) can only be configured through the new settings app, but you get used to it.
• The start menu is fine, once I got accustomed to pinning apps onto the statt menu I very much like how it works now.
• The interface isn't broken anymore. I've never had a problem after the anniversary update came out.
• The old vs. new style is still there, but honestly you won't notice it. The only "new" style apps I ever use are settings and calculator. Everything else is the same as always.

Still a little busy this week (moving house) so probably not in the next week or two. Be patient!
Also Strider still hasn't finished the header images so it's his fault really.

Both types of formatting work, so you're all good there.