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Overgrowth is sandbox game where you play as a rabbit, man, thing? It has 3 solid pillars that the game is based on, melee combat, stealth and platforming. The game has a good main story mode (and a few bonus ones added to that by Wolfire) but I'm not really here to talk about any of that. I've owned this game for a very long time, before the game was on Steam, before Wolfire went radio silent and I just assumed the game was dead and even before it had anything close to a main story mode and just came with some test maps. And back then you kinda had to make your onw fun. and you could do this with the games real time level editor. So this is less like making a map in say Hammer, and more like Halo's Forge mode.

But I have never really tried to make a full on level, until now

so the fist step I took was to load up the red rock climbing map from the alpha, delete Everything and make it look like thisOk bit of a jump but I don't want to bore you with the details of moving around objects and resizing them.

The goal of this map is too kill all the bandits that have take an old ruined fortress as they're base. A dog has hired you to do this and says as much when you talk to himmaking scripted Dialogue even ones as simple as this is quite involved, and is easy to screw up. I can only imagen the pain of setting up something more complex!Speaking of complex, giving NPCs armor in this game is done by carefully moving the pieces where you want them on the NPC and snapping them to one of they're bones. Luckily giving them a sword is much less painful and just snaps it to they're hand or on they're hip.I really think the most important part of making a good Overgrowth map is giving the player freedom to take things on in different ways. Like yeah you could just rush in and storm the gate, but there's a big tough dog right there waiting for you. Probably best to do some sneaking and see if there's another way in. There is a rabbit guard on patrol in the back but he's got a lot of ground to cover so finding a rock on the side of the fort to climb in is pretty easy.and throw in some stuff less telegraphed to the player, like this abandoned camp on top of a cliff.So yeah learning to make maps for this game is way different to almost anything I've done!

I got a gameplay video here
video link
and the workshop link here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2829999035

I've thrown together a rough prototype in Unity, the texters on the balls didn't come out quite how I would have liked them to but have a look

The game uses WASD to punt the ball, you can use two of the keys together to make a 45 degree shoot but that's as close as you can get to pulling off trick shots right nowAll of the code for taking shoots is in this small C# scriptStill working on Half Life stuff but I thought I would step out of my comfort zone with something like this

UPDATE!
Made a brand new Table made with Blender, with holes! exciting I know.But wait there's more!
I also made new C# scripts, here's a look at one of them (all the scripts for the holes are basically the same)Hell I even made a video for this thing
Video walkthrough

Another Update!
Updated the code to have sprites of the balls that fell into the holes float up. had to update the code for each one of the holes

here's just a snippet of it, It's a whole lot of the same thing over and over again, and it's too big to fit into a screencap.

After figuring how to change the hud color for my HL1 mod, I though I'd just try doing something similar for The Vorts!
All it took was a couple lines edited, all of them in the hldll's islave.cpp file.

line 744: m_pBeam[m_iBeams]->SetColor(151, 0, 255); //this will give it a nice purple color!

line 790: m_pBeam[m_iBeams]->SetColor(151, 0, 255); //I think this is for the cut revive, lets change the color anyways!

line 820: m_pBeam[m_iBeams]->SetColor(151, 0, 255); //same as the last bit of purple lightning, but this one hurts!Think I could get it to cycle some colors too if I wanted, but I thought I'd share this for now!

So I did it, I finally got to the end of Half Life Alyx. Is it the brake through VR game that's going to make it mainstream? Probably Not (not that I think it ever could even if it was perfect). Really thought if you already have a head set, it's a must have game. I'll just say if haven't played it, you might want to stop reading now if you are worried about spoilers. They game really takes the sentiment that a lot of critics have said about Half Life games being rollercoster rides and pretty much embraces it. It's a theme park attraction through and through. The Big difference being this took me 14 hours. I honestly found this quite shocking. I get that it's a $60 game but god damn! Don't expect to play this in one sitting(I could only play for about an hour at a time, but I might just be getting old). You will be guided by the nose, even more so than past Half Life game. Even this game's collectables will be more close to the main path than lets say the Lambda supply cashes in HL2. And I had my gun fully upgraded well before the end of the game, so don't sweat it. The new Gravity gloves are a no brainer upgrade from the Gravity Gun. saving me from having to bend down for ammo. and yeah Just picking up and tossing bottles is just as fun and novel now, as it was in HL2. Gun play is where things get interesting. Reloading and aiming are no longer as simple as moving your mouse and clicking. This lead me to some rather panicky moments (wonder if the Devs played Wolffires Receiver). This works great if feel with shambling zombies, than Bullet spoongy combine. Who's encounters I feel are often more frustrating than thrilling. And I kinda feel like the devs knew this, because firefights with them are surprisingly rare throughout the game. On a note of stuff I love, the world and environments. City 17 feel a lot more wild in this game. I get the feeling like the Combine's rule is still new and I can still feel a lot of the old world still linger. Oh and they pulled in a lot more of the alien setting form HL1 and Zen, Big plus. All the characters and writing felt solid. the change in VA for Elie is unfortunate (RIP) but he dose a great job still. Russell feels like a more toned down Wetly form Portal 2 and I'm cool with that. Now for some spoilery stuff. most of the game I really could just file under, solid HL2 style stuff but I do have some highlights. The part sneaking around a unkillable zombie monster, named Jeff. plays like a lot of the sneaky Horror games you see on the PC. And it's a great fit for VR, unnerving and tense for all the right reasons. I feel like the zoo level should have been longer. it's a great bit of irony to have it be the level that the Antlions are reveled (feeling a bit more like Starship Trooper bug, eh ok) We just need more zoo levels in games. The climatic part with the Strider would have gone over a lot better I feel if the artillery gun worked better. And the finale part in the big ship you've been working so hard to get to pulls all the same notes as the sidadal, but better. the crazy Inception style levels are a great treat and breather after the Strider battle. not much to say about the powered up Gravity Gloves other than it made me feel like Shazam! now on to the Big spoiler! So it's not Freeman you rescue but Gman. He gives his sepal and gives Alyx the choice to kill the Advisor that killed her father in Episode 2. I didn't wait to see if there was a HL1 style ending. Now the big thing is after the credits (thankfully short for a VR game) and wow Elie is a live and hands you (Gordan Freeman) the crowbar. Still don't know how I feel about this. So, over all HL Alyx is great, but my back and legs hurt after an hour of playing and my face gets sweaty.