I'm really surprised I remembered the password to this account. The last computer I used to log into TWHL was a family tower computer that came with a sparking brand new operating system called Windows 7. In the time I've started using the site I graduated high school, got my diploma, and gained and lost jobs.

Half-Life along with the first Unreal Tournament were not only the first first-person shooter games I ever played, but also the first ones I played that came with their own map editors. Being a preteen without a real creative outlet, I quickly went to task to learn how to make rooms and boxes.
Seeing how I wasn't out of elementary school at the time, I had no knowledge about concepts such as player flow, the importance of lighting, and basic optimization techniques. I was making square rooms and crates, but they were my square rooms and crates, and that made me happy.

I've been a lurker on this site for over a decade. I remember scrolling through the new Half-Life map vault submissions for new deathmatch maps to play with friends. I remember listening to a version of Bohemian Rhapsody with lyrics replaced by TWHL in-jokes. I remember following along with the developer updates of The Core, and I remember the first time I had ever tried to be a part of an online community. At the time, the tutorials and resources hosted on TWHL ranked very high on the search results when you Googled Goldsource tutorials. I visited the site enough to eventually break and create an account. Maybe I'd eventually upload some maps of my own now that I was actually starting to piece things together.

I was very shy on the internet back then. I didn't make an account to use the forms or make friends, so when I penned and published my first journal entry on this site, I was almost horrified that it was publicly posted. My anxiety was assuaged however when people were mostly supportive that I had shared that I knew how to make turrets work. I had accidentally made first landing with the community.

I continued messing with Half-Life, all the while posting on TWHL more journal updates about what I had been up to from making songs with default FL Studio plugin presets, to what MS-Paint quality game I was making with Game Maker 8. Eventually I had completed my first ever map. It was a basic house design made by someone who had just got the hang of how to create brushes, used the carve tool for everything, and didn't have any structured plan for the map and added rooms and objects as they went.

After uploading my map and receiving comments there were trying to be as diplomatic as possible to someone who'd just uploaded their first ever map of a collection of brushes that dares to call itself a house, I took a break from the site for one reason or another and didn't return for several months. When I got back, due to what I still can only assume was a practical joke played on me, Apartment had won a Map of the Month Award. Not only that, but it won by a staggering margin against maps that were made by people who weren't 14 years old. It beat out maps that actually had talented people crafting them instead of someone who made an octagonal brush and called it a table. And the reward for winning the award was that one of the site's mods had to create a review video of it. The task begrudgingly fell on Urby.Watching today, the video is hilarious. Allegedly, Urby had an undisclosed amount of alcohol in him as the camera was pointed at him to record his thoughts. I'd have made the same video were I in their shoes; it's a shit rough-brushed layout, and it got called out as such. Why was the outside plasterboard? Why was it in space? Why were the floors more than 64 units thick? Why was the windowless house 90% dead ends? Why did people vote for it for Map of the Month? Honestly, the video makes itself.

I was 14 at the time, however, and when I watched it then I didn't find it funny at all. I legitimately remember tearing up that someone was eviscerating not only the first map I ever made, but the first piece of content I had ever stepped out of my comfort zone shared online. It took me quite a while to get over it.

When I was 12 I went to a 3-week long sleepover camp. It was the first time I had ever spent an elongated amount of time away from my parents, and I dealt rather badly with it. I didn't like the food being served, I had a loose tooth that really hurt but didn't want to fall out, and I missed my parents dearly. I remember being in the office of the head of the camp, crying that I wanted to go home. It took me a while to get over it.

The point I'm making here is that the Apartment debacle was just one of the many important life lessons I would learn growing up. I actually point to this event helping me develop healthy attitudes when it comes to receiving criticism and feedback, especially if they come from people who know what they're taking about. Urby wasn't going to go on camera and lie about how my map was good for someone who was new to map making. It won the award, and it was going to be held to the standard that all other MotM winners were. I had to learn this lesson at some point if I wanted to participate in an online community, and in retrospect I'm glad I learned it here instead of somewhere else where it could've gone much, much worse.

So what I have done since then? Since then I almost became one of the best Lethal League 1 players in the world, peaking at #8 in tournament ELO in 2015. I learned how to map in the DOOM engine and after studying racing game design theory and I got my first ever map, Coastal Temple Zone, included in the release of the Sonic Robo Blast 2: Kart community cup, available in every vanilla installation of the game. I became the fastest speedrunner of Kirby and the Amazing Mirror for both Any% and 100% outside of Japan. But beyond that, I've been floundering from community to community, never really finding my place.

One of my personal issues when it comes to my hobbies is that I'm a serial starter. I hyper focus on a particular interest very hard for around 5 months, then move on to something else. The upside is that. The downside is that I end up disappearing for years without really a trace and end up decaying ties with friends I might have made - just ask the SRB2K discord about that. I tried returning to TWHL in 2015 or so, but it didn't stick, and I was soon off doing other things.

So what was the point of this journal? Well one thing, I guess this acts as my "Hey, hope you're doing well!" to all the nice people I met over the decade on this site, if they even read this far into this word salad that assuredly has many typos and grammar mistakes. While I haven't really done anything here in years, I'll always remember this place and am so happy it still exists (and by all accounts, is still active). I still sometimes boot up my copy of Jackhammer and start brushing out a Half-Life Deathmatch map that will never be finished. Maybe I'll finish one for old time sakes and upload it. I don't think I ever really redeemed myself.

I started work on a mod called Half-Life Retail, which as the name suggests was aimed at bringing back the game to the condition of the original 1998 release, which had several features that the later versions do not. Namely:

• Those old shadows, which were just the model flattened on the floor at an angle.
• A different type of view model bobbing, where the effect wasn't like it is today(basically the same as Quake 1's).
• Having fleshy hit sounds play as a sort of hit indicator when you shoot an NPC.
• The old Quake-style view roll when you turn around while running, or strafing.

However, I also started toying around with some stuff I felt would be nice to have. Basically, one feature I added was to insert per-vertex lights into the game by relying on light.rad and the level geometry. Of course, I will make this toggleable via the options for those who do not want it. Another feature I also added over from the Raven Beta sandbox mod, is stencil shadows which are cast by these lights.

Another feature I have in mind is to allow gl_overbright to work both on models and the world. I dislike how flat lighting is in OpenGL, and this would basically fix that issue. This too of course would be toggleable.

Anyone interested in perhaps playing a release of this mod? If so, I will probably end up creating a github page for it and updating it there, but also releasing it here on TWHL, and perhaps ModDB. Not sure about the latter though.

Also if you have some other features from the original retail you would like to see, I'm all ears.

I am resigning from my job in two months.

After that, I will do some traveling--first to Taiwan, then Australia, and finally Guatemala.

https://www.signalhillrotary.org/cultural-exchange

I start my instrument pilot training in August, and I should have my certified flight instructor's license by the end of this year.

Modding consoles are a veteran job

EDIT:
I'm in regret again about the things that I did to people. Not just here but everywhere else. I'm too toxic okay?
It's okay to say that people are ignoring me because of my lackluster drawing skills and bad behavior.

For me The Scariest Parts about Windows Are The Malware That Were Hidden Or Even Corrupted System After The Updates But also Stuck In Black Screen For about 15 Minutes, stuck on Game Freezing that cannot be alt + win + del and Alt tab, Virtual Machine Virus Can Spread Through Main Host Machine and Blue Screen.

How about you guys? Many of People who uses PC/Laptop too much somehow causes unnoticed issues..I wanna know what are you experiencing

Mmm feels like 12 but in reverse. Haven't had the cake yet tho'.

I've been spending the past 3-4 days with my boyfriend, absolutely love the lil bastard. He'll be here for another 7 days, but either way, I am terribly happy. I got to experience my first kiss, which was one hell of an experience. We've gone shopping together, I showed him around all kinds of places, showed him a bunch of food here (ćevapi, kebab, Mum's potato & cheese pie), and we've still got a lot more to do~

So yeah, this is life for me. Spending time with a beloved one. I love the feeling. I haven't had a hug in a very long time (5 years!!!) and now I am getting those every day. It feels absolutely amazing and I don't wanna trade it for anything else.

You know, a time ago I said to myself I'd take a break from programming to just enjoy life a bit. That never really happened. But now it's happening, so it's kinda nice, not having to think about my engine project, or ADM, or the HL SDK series... is this what vacation feels like?

我的英语能力无法支持和各位进行自由的交流，所以我的对话和评论的外语部分均来自翻译软件的翻译结果。我会把原话和翻译后的版本同时发布，通过这种方式尽可能的降低各位通过可能不准确的翻译结果产生的误会。请各位理解，谢谢。
My English skills do not allow me to communicate freely with you, so the foreign language portion of my conversations and comments comes from translation software. I will publish the original words and the translated version at the same time, in this way as far as possible to reduce the misunderstanding caused by inaccurate translation results. Please understand.

Roses are red,
violets are blue.
Today is the day
I become

Science Team

Le prison is a parkour level, that have's monsters in them (progressively),
Yeah, you have to do some platforming and also kill monsters, very original idea isn't it?
But yeah, this is going to be my first map that isn't a test map.
Or should I say, isn't only one map, yeah it is a multiple map project.
So, it's going to take me a long ass time.

No sneak peek today.

See you on my next journal!!

I am getting the hang of map making, also i am making another map (one that doesn't only have a door, a crowbar, and a vent to break), it is a parkour map.

The map will have 10 levels!! (5 with the long jump)

Here's a little sneak peek of the map:See you on the next journal

2 years ago, I proposed this silly little idea. TL;DR imagine if you could have a GoldSRC-like workflow but in a modern engine. After all, wouldn't it be a dream for some, to be able to make full-on games in a modern engine, without any of GoldSRC's limitations?

Note: This is aimed at gamedevs who 1) want to make games the way they make HL mods 2) want their games to be moddable out of the box

So, about 2 and a half years later, here I am, coming back to this idea.
I've sailed the seven seas, climbed all hills and mountains, grown, learned, made friends, contacts, partners, all kinds of things in the meantime. I've worked with various idTech engines and their respected forks, Unigine, CryEngine, Unreal Engine, Unity (almost got a job in this, well, almost), NeoAxis, Flax Engine, Source 2 even... none of it was really a good fit for my idea.

Unigine came the closest, honestly. Nonetheless, I, one day, decided to start writing an engine from scratch. Virtual filesystem, input system, windowing, console system with CVars and commands, plugin system, all kinds of systems. Worked on it for 13 months, and it got somewhere for sure.But then, something odd happened.

History repeats itself

Godot 4 alpha something came out with the claim that they merged .NET 6 to replace Mono. I like .NET more than Mono (it's what they use for C# scripting). I just had to check it out. After a couple nights recompiling stuff and messing with NuGet packages, I was able to get a working build with all tools. And it was LOVELY. I compiled it to try out modern C#, stayed for the UI system and all the flashy new toys they added, and most of all: volumetric fog.

I got absolutely mesmerised by it. I love fog. I love smoke. I love volumetrics in games. I fell in love with the thing. That + a few other things motivated me to consider rebuilding my engine on top of Godot, if that makes any sense. I then remembered the article I wrote over 2 years ago, and it is true what they say - history repeats itself.

And you know what? This time I actually have the skill, time and patience to actually do it! But FIRST, I needed to make sure it can actually even work.

Payback time

Do you know what's the purpose of a proof of concept?

It proves a concept. It proves that the core idea can certainly work, and is worth prototyping. And that's exactly what you're looking at. This was a pile of code in a single Godot project, that could read Valve220 .map files, and let you move around. In the 2 weeks I programmed this thing, I learned a lot more about Godot than I did in the last 2 years.

After that, it was time to start working on the real thing.

This diagram here below, this architecture, is what gives me a great deal of convenience. I can work on the launcher, engine and games/plugins separately, without the need to re-export a Godot project if I just want to modify the "engine".

Now, before someone says "Ayo, what the HELL are you doing?", let me tell you this first: Godot is not just a game engine. It's a game engine, engine. Alright?

An engine engine. With Godot, you build your own workflow, you combine some things that you like and you use that unique combination of those things to make your game. My case is just a very special one.

In fact, here's a quote from one of their recent articles:

Godot, at its core, is and will always be (by design) a very general purpose game engine. This mean that the tools provided, while certainly capable, are still game neutral. The goal for Godot is to provide a great set of building blocks that can be used and combined to create more specialized game functions and tools.

(taken from Godot for AA/AAA game development - What's missing?)

I don't know about you, but I definitely see Godot this way. Maybe I'm more radical about it. Either way, I cannot think about making games, until I have a workflow that I truly love and am comfortable with. Godot gives me a foundation for that.

The dream

In the end, I just hope to have my dream come true: making games the way I make Half-Life mods.
And by that, I mean: making commercial games with modern technology, the way I make Half-Life mods, with modern tools and mostly without any of the bad parts of the workflow that make it incongruous.

• I don't like the SMD+QC workflow, I just want to import a GLTF and be done with it. It is a reality we can have in HL modding even, and I'd like to write such a tool one day. It'd help beginners tremendously, I am certain in that.

• I love the mapping workflow, but I'm not a fan of the BSP limitations. We're all very ambitious, and limitation breeds creativity... but not when that limitation is a few centimetres above your head. Can't even jump, let alone fly. Just look at AllocBlock or clipnodes. You don't want that in a modern engine, do you? An octree-based solution - as opposed to BSP - would fit this engine of mine, and even play with Godot 4's occlusion culling system pretty well.

There's several other things I could talk about, but these are the main two. Every modern engine I've worked with (except Source 2) basically had those 2 arguments up there flipped. The modelling workflow was great, mapping was not. Can I have the best of both worlds? Somehow, I convinced myself I indeed can.

At the moment

So, right now, we have:

• a plugin system
• a virtual filesystem with Source-style game mounting and folder structure
• a console system
• a placeholder game template that loads TB maps

What's missing is frankly a lot of stuff. Animated models, audio, networking, a main menu system, AI, mostly the need to build a proper game SDK, and flesh out parts of the engine. I have lots of ideas I want to experiment with, including entity components.

Here's a monthly breakdown:
March:

• map compiler
• interactive console from BTX
• asset loading

April:

• networking
• more accurate Half-Life-style player movement
• standard map entities

May:

• material system
• basic main menu
• a bit of documentation
• the first developer preview

And yeah, my engine project now has a name: Elegy.

Either way, I hope to get a little game demo out by June or July. I'll be reimagining my very first game project, so that will be fun.

Right now I gotta test Elegy on Linux, deal with college and all that other stuff. See ya until then. I may eventually create a website for this project so I don't have to post about it here all the time, though it is kinda nice.

This is continue of frustration and burnt out because of corrupted OS and windows update so.... here's the story

__18 October 2022_ ( I have to skipped 4 Days Because I Forgot What Situation I've been Encountered In Those Days. I Don't know)
I've been Quit HL Modding and Started to Re-Visited STALKER Anomaly because I realizing new update patch that came out few months ago so I decided to go checking out. I've become a boring gamer again

_20 October 2022_
Well When I playing STALKER Anomaly in 16:34 AM I Encountered some New Issue within the game after I quicksave. it turns into blackscreen for a moment and I got Panicked Then I Pressing the Power Button from my keyboard and hope this would not happen. then windows update "We could complete the updates.Undoing changes" come out of screen and it got me mad honestly.( I have no words to typed about this situation anymore because i forgot about this)

_22 October 2022_
Well s*** went happen again when I playing STALKER Anomaly, My screen turns black after quicksave and then blinking 2 times that i already on desktop I thought it can be happen forever luckily it only temporally and i also saw some error log That says out_of_memory but i'm still gonna play it but my mouse was laggy in main menu so i'm still going to play it and weird error log happen it has some LUA Error so I have to go Discord anomaly Tech-Support but after i sending it i got muted without any explanation, And I Realize how Toxic And Irresponsible STALKER Anomaly Community Are it Disgust me...oh well i'm still staying on the community

_26 October 2022_
I Encountered another issue again that came from amount of anomaly addons that i use through the game. the game just crashing without error log pops-up and then my desktop screen filled with the game when the game is already crashing then I Restarted the laptop to make this screen disappear. so i asked another tech support named Rascal He's actually friendly in the community. So I Asked

N-spy: Oh god. Using 1.5.2 DLTX mod just broke my background desktop after my game crashed
N-spy: Nah. It's something with your OS
Me: I Know my system already corrupted
Rascal: Sorry to hear that, if it is not hardware - re-install from scratch usually fixes stuff like that
Rascal: But you have to bring back files and settings, spend tome
Rascal: if it is hardware - time for repair / replacement
N-spy: Okay Thanks for the Tips
Now I Understand what I Suppose to do with my OS now i have to repaired it

_27 October 2022_
Now I'm gonna tell my father to repair the system so now my father take care my laptop to repair these issues including the stupid "we couldn't complete the updates" and things didn't really well because my father struggled to find password in recovery so helped him to access the settings but it didn't work, I actually tried many times to typed my password that came on my microsoft account it still doesn't work and my father blaming me for not updating windows 11 and I getting pissed. I have to decided create new account without Password and Email in order to bypass the Password Recovery Settings but still..it appeared now me and my father tried to figured out it turns out it's uses admin password. my father just give up so I decided to fix it again but in different method is to install Windows 11...Tomorrow

_28 October 2022_
It's time upgrade to windows 11 to avoid "We couldn't complete the updates. Undoing changes" and other corrupted System and oh god it took so long to upgrade windows 11 because it goes up very slow, it made me to cancel the upgrade because it's getting night on my place. I'm basically tired of this

_29 October 2022_
I'm checking laptop again to Upgrade. Well it's still fairly slow but this time i have to paused if evening is coming. Nothing bad happen to my laptop

_31 October 2022_
Now The Upgrade Still Works Fine When it comes to Update now I'm getting less paranoid about the Issue that stuck onto my head in few days, man it really made me mental breakdown back 11-26 October now the upgrade almost Completed in 21:00 AM and I Unpaused the Update in 8:36 AM. damn it took 9 half hours when it's completed it's the quite the opposite that my laptop are incredibly slow and also some Apps are Incompatible with windows 11 but i don't know which one of them everything it's really slow

_1 November 2022_
Now I have to cleaned up some of the cache file and corrupted files from the past and it's getting fast but not too quite. Luckily it runs perfectly fine except File Explorer double-click some file are slow

_Okay This is Probably The End of this Issue. But it Still some bug like Unresponsive Taskbar probably the bug that i only found in windows 11 and thank god it really get rid of that stupid undoing changes Until_

_20 January 2023_
moderator: removed due to rule: No piracy