Forum posts

Happy to hear it. Hope it's going well. Looking forward to seeing these maps

Awesome. Thanks Pebs.

Has someone been watching Bandersnatch?

Honestly had to look that up... So no.

You guys might know by now, be it via my multiple choice fan fictions or my love for dialogue options in RPGs, that I am a sucker for player choice.

More recently I have been turning the idea over and over in my head that this could be applied to mapping. Using triggers and trigger conditions, you could create a short map that could be replayed a number of times and each player might have a different experience. What's more, you can have minor choices within these choices to expand on the idea even more so. Here's a quick example I had in my head one evening while walking to the car.

Premise
The player and their allies need to power up a teleportation system using a unique power module. This module is common, used by a number of nearby systems, so there are a number of options available to the player.

Option 1 - The Cargo Area
The cargo area uses a power module to power its heavier equipment. This is not being used currently. as the cargo area is being used as an outpost by the marines. You can go in guns blazing and take them out, or you can use a ventilation system to sneak into the area and take the module with minimal amount of fuss from the grunts. This might depend on a choice the player made much earlier which determines which weapons they currently have available. In the end, whether you take out the grunts or not, you have a power module

Options 2 - Help the marines
Prior to heading into the cargo area, there is a service window with a call button. Using this causes one of the grunts to come to the window. After speaking with one of your allies, (the player is mute after all) the grunt says they will hand over the module if you go into the basement and deal with a rogue scientist who is causing them problems (hacking into the security system and activating various defenses to keep the grunts from progressing).

The player heads into the basement, dealing with automated security systems like turrets, laser grids, tripmines, etc. Once they reach the scientist, they can kill them outright, prompting a message from the grunts and they provide the module via some automated delivery system or a cargo elevator or something.

Option 3 - Help the scientist
Alternatively, the scientist will offer the player a unique weapon and a power module stored in the basement if they escort them to a locked door. The player can have the scientist follow them, but doing this will trigger a hostile response from the grunts. A squad of grunts pour into the basement after the scientist unlocks the door and the player gets the module.

Option 4 - Security systems
Finally, the player can go to a new area entirely and take a power module from a security station. Taking this will cause hostile aliens to flood into the area as the countermeasures are taken offline, but the player might get plenty of ammo and medical supplies from the area.

On top of all of these choices, you could trigger different responses from your allies when you return to them, depending on how you handled the situation. This can all be done within one map, or a series of maps, and while it might result in a lot of work for an ultimately shorter gameplay experience, it would greatly improve the replay value. Or maybe it would be a huge waste of time. What do you guys think?

One week to go. The final stretch. How's everyone doing?

I went Claire A/Leon B my first run. Still working on the B campaign. I'm really impressed with how it turned out as well. My PC has to settle for medium settings sadly. It's getting on it years. Didn't diminish the experience however, and I absolutely loved it. Can't wait to jump back in tonight and hopefully wrap up Leon B so I can dive right back in with Leon A.

Definitely getting this as soon as it becomes available. I was waiting for news of a Hornet DLC. They revealed a whole new game. Those crafty Australians.

We're almost at the half way point. Happy to see a bunch of you showing progress and I'm aware that others are working but keeping it to themselves.

I will sponsor the winner again, via a US$100 Steam gift certificate.

Blimey Satch, that's awfully generous of you. <3

Behold! A thing being done!

Awesome.

Yup, what the penguin said. We're pretty chill like that.

Does it strictly have to be HL1 / Source or is something like Sven Coop applicable?

I would say base games only, given the rules regarding custom code.

Can the entry be made of multiple maps?

Absolutely.

Brand new please. Wouldn't be fair otherwise.

A new mini competition is a go! As the brief states, your goal is to make a singleplayer map that focuses on a theme: Ascension.

As this is a mini competition, you must manage your time effectively. Don't bite off more than you can chew, and leave plenty of time for testing. Good luck and have fun!

You're truly doing God's work... by which I mean Gaben

My understanding is that the early access maps are unrelated to the full release. I'd double check but I'm pretty sure that's the case anyway.

VoidPoint recently added a new map to the early access version of Ion Maiden and it was an absolute blast to play through. Really looking forward to the full release later this year.

An engine has absolutely no bearing on a games quality and the idea that modern games have to have ground breaking graphics to be considered a masterpiece is absolute untrue.

My game of the year for 2017 was Hollow Knight. A 2D metroidvania made in unity by two people. Everything from the game play and narrative was made to work to the genre/engine's limitations and absolutely nailed it.

Yes, atmosphere is important, but this is something that can be achieved with even the most dated engines. Duke Nukem 3D went for a very lighthearted tone and the build engine was perfect for it back in 1996. Duke Nukem Forever however, kept jumping from one engine to the next and the final result released in 2011 was completely fucked.

The last I heard, Valve was working on a couple of titles based on VR and I just sighed. I'm sure VR is a fantastic experience, but it is a gimmick and not a particularly accessible one.

Also, while the time of Quake and Half-Life style games might be over in the AAA market, indie games like Dusk, Ion Maiden and 3D Realms unannounced Quake Engine game give me a lot of hope. Valve was tiny when they worked on Half-Life, so perhaps the smaller indie devs are the ones to pay attention to these days.

Or perhaps I'm just getting old and "Kids these days wouldn't know a good game if it kicked them in the nuts."

No custom code, period. Entries will be base game code only, so no Spirit of Half-Life or whatever.

Any other custom content is fine, but as I said, not the focus of the competition and essentially just wasted time. It will be based purely on the map and how it complies with the theme.

I realise now I only confirmed this to Dimbeak, but there will be a mini compo running in February. It'll be exactly four weeks long.

The idea isn't to build something enormous, just something that fits the theme. Four weeks is plenty of time for a mini compo I say. That's probably MORE than most of the RTSL VILLES had.

Strangely enough, the day I posted this thread, Gggmanlives uploaded his thoughts on Metro Exodus and states that it plays a lot like the Highway 17 sections of Half Life 2.

Looking at the recently released footage, I think he might be right.

It's a linear FPS game with larger open sections and it's mainly about traveling across a very hostile environment with a train and some other vehicles here and there, clearing the path ahead. Sounds more like On A Rail. Lots of enemy variety, different ways to approach situations and plenty of different weapons too. Maybe this is one to watch.

It seems that as time goes on, more and more people are now coming around to the idea that the Half-Life series will not be getting any official follow up games. Neither Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 have been even vaguely hinted at by Valve in any official capacity.

So my question is this. Why has there been no real successor to the Half-Life series?

First and foremost, what is it that we all love about the Half-Life series to begin with? Is it the narrative? The environmental story telling? The moment to moment game play? If you really think about the main plot of Half-Life, the story isn't really all that original.

Science experiment goes wrong. Aliens appear.

Yes, you can dig deeper and deeper into each of those points. The Gman's involvement in the whole thing, how the combine tie into it and so on, but right now we don't have any answers to a lot of the questions.

So what is to stop some other team coming along and making their own Half-Life? What really is the reason that Half-Life holds such a special place in so many people's hearts while other FPS games come and go without a backward glance.

For me it would be this. Half-Life is about variety, especially when compared to modern shooters. The environments, the conveyed emotion, the enemies, the weapons. Every single aspect of Half-Life shifts and changes with every new encounter.

You learn tricks which you use against certain enemies. (Vortigaunts need to charge their attack and will always hit if they have line of sight. Houndeyes charge can be interrupted by attacking them. Headcrabs can be dodged and then take a moment to wind up for another attempt.)

It doesn't SEEM like a modern AAA developer should have any major issue making a game with the same level of variety, but why has this not happened do you think?

Yeah, my system drive space does appear to fluctuate wildly at times, but it's never been an issue more than being a little unusual. I couldn't be happier with Windows 10 for gaming and at the same time I simply could not do my job without Ubuntu. So I'm happy. Nothing needs to change.

I have never experienced Windows 10 rebooting without my consent. So again, a non issue.

Literally no need. Like I said, I only use Ubuntu at work. At home I run Windows 10 so gaming is no issue.

I wouldn't even consider gaming on Ubuntu... since I only use Ubuntu at work and would very quickly be asked to leave.

To be honest, most of The Core is just weird porn stuff...

I have a sudden very real urge to play Absolute Redemption again after seeing all those carnival assets.

Liking it. Looking very classic HL.

I used to love RE2, but I would never have called it a horror game as much as it claimed itself to be. It's far too camp and my friend and I used to mostly just laugh at it. I don't believe I ever completed it though.

I must say, I am awfully tempted to try out the remake. I might try the one shot demo, regardless of the daft concept. I remember the original RE2 had a time limit on the demo as well, but you could replay as many times as you liked.

EDIT

Yeah... OK. Resident Evil 2 is now on my wishlist.

Well, the issue there would be the difference between Source and Goldsource. I have no idea how to set up a Source mod.

I just can't hold my interest in Minecraft for long. History has demonstrated this many times, and this was no different. I had fun, but... yeah. I don't think I have any more in me for now.

Yeah, I'm in this same camp. Every now and then I will see something that causes my original love of Minecraft to stir, somewhere deep down inside me. However, launching the game and putting it into practice I very quickly realise how over the open world, survival crafting genre I am.

So a question that was recently put to me on Steam. Will the mini-competitions allow for custom content such as models, sound effects, textures and so on.

While I personally do not have any issue with this, I would say that there are a couple of preferences. Obviously no overwriting of base game content, and assign custom assets to their own directory for ease of removal. Hell, even mini-mods would be preferable if that were the case.

HOWEVER, bear in mind that the competitions will be mostly based on a specific theme and this is what they will be judged on. You can pile in as much custom content as you like in the interest of lore and world building, but if your map/maps don't properly address the theme of the competition then it's essentially a waste of your (very limited) time. I personally will give a much higher rating to the mapper that makes something unique with the vanilla assets, but in the end the community will be the ones casting votes.

I'm actually glad so many people are looking forward to Bethesda's upcoming titles. At least we know that Fallout 76 isn't going to sink the company any time soon. Haha

Yeah, Black Mesa: Xen takes me back to a time of expansions and DLC with some actual, substantial new content. Looking forward to it.

My first thought was "Bossfight" in all honesty. Would be interesting to see people have a crack at making a decent arena and an interesting way of killing the boss. Could be anything like a Gargantua, Tentacles, a Strider, an Apache/Combine Hunter Chopper or hell even something like an Antlion guard.

Give the mini-competitions a corny RTSL Ville style name like:

• The Whole Boss Life - Map a boss fight
• The Whole Bridge Life - Make a map focused around a bridge
• The Whole Crowbar Life - Make a map where the player gets only a crowbar

And so on...

Uhm... Oh. I... Oh. Lemme think about this.

That is a pickle.

I stand corrected... Still, I do like a good, themed, single player mapping competition.

For those not in the know, RunThinkShootLive.com is no longer going to be hosting the "Villes" competitions as Phillip has now stepped away from the site and gaming indefinitely.

These Villes were basically competitions, based on making themed single player maps, specifically for Half-Life 2: Episode 2. For example, SniperVille, HalloweenVille, BridgeVille etc. The time scale for each competition was usually no longer than a month, meaning that mappers would need to be creative and resourceful in order to produce something that would be of a reasonable size and quality within a small timespan. Some truly remarkable maps came out of these and it's a shame to see them go.

Having entered the most recent TWHL competition, making a single player map in the same style as the original game, I really enjoyed giving it a go myself as well as playing the other entries. So I was thinking, why not start a similar thing on TWHL? Every so often, have a shorter competition to make a single player map in ANY Half-Life game, Source or Goldsource, with a specific theme? No mods or custom code or new models or anything like that. Just use the base game content to make a map that fits the theme.

Hell, it doesn't even need to be official and put more pressure on Penguinboy, but something like the minicompos that used to run from time to time.

I must say I prefer the pixellated look on textures more these days. Blurry OpenGL textures in Half-Life look hideous. Also, the far worse issues in the steam version of Half-Life really bug me now.

Dayum.

Looking good, Windawz.

Depending on when it was released and assuming it was released in the map vault here, Jessie might be the one who would recall. She's playing through everything that's available in the map vault and that's bound to have stuck out. I don't recall seeing it on any of her streams though.

I have... no idea what that is. I guess i could Google it.

A friend pointed me toward an animated music video the other day and subsequently a track by Mystery Skulls. Never heard of them before and the animated music videos are fan made, but have tens of millions of views. What's more, the videos tell their own story when viewed in order and it's surprisingly deep for three videos under five minutes each.

I highly recommend the tracks to anyone who likes Daft Punk style EDM and recommend the videos to anyone who likes visual storytelling. I happen to love both and I'm hooked.