As I was laying in bed this morning, trying to go back to sleep but knowing I couldn’t, I had this idea.

At the beginning of each month, I will randomly select one review posted in the previous month and send the author a free Steam game.

The game won’t be AAA and it might not be very good but it’s free!

The winner will NOT be able to select the game and if they have it already or don’t want it then they can pass it on t a friend.

My thinking behind this is NOT to encourage people to write reviews because they think they might win a game but to say thank you for supporting the site.

The community and reviews set this website apart from other websites. Imagine I simply had a list of download links instead of what we have. I don’t think it would be very friendly and inviting website to visit.

The winner will be chosen using the Recommendation Wall page, which is currently partially broken, but will be fixed soon. This means that a review MUST use a Recommendation Image. This also means that this giveaway is only open to registered members of RTSL.

I will announce each winner in the monthly General Chat of the following month. So, the winner for August 2017, will be announced in the September 2017 General Chat and Twitter.

I have plenty of games to giveaway, but if you have spare ones you want to donate, please email me the details and any credit you want.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions or complaints, just let me know.

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Hello and welcome to the second 50-Hour Mapping Challenge – CromulentVille.

Below are the details.

PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY.

As always, if you have any questions, you can either post a comment or if you require a private reply, send Phillip an email: [email protected]

Your task is to create a perfectly cromulent map.

Is your map silly? Absurd? Weird? Hilarious, crazy, or a complete joke? Great! These are all cromulent maps and they’re exactly what we’re looking for.

Use this opportunity to embiggen your creativity.

If your map leaves players saying, “WTF did I just play?” – perfect!

Make players laugh, make them cry – but make them FEEL something. You have 50 hours!

GOOD LUCK!

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A couple of days ago I work up to find the site offline.

It’s a horrible feeling, especially if you don’t have time to fix it before leaving for work or worse, having to wait for somebody to do something before you can do something else.

This fairly brief post will explain the result of that outage.

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Well, this is unexpected, ay?

I got an email from somebody about mapping challenges and was a little brusque in my reply and then a couple of days ago somebody else asked about another HalloweenVille Mapping Challenge. I said “NO!”, but then I was thinking it’s not too hard to run a challenge.

I am sure you would have liked more notice, but I’ll understand if you are all busy.

I want modders to create a map that scares players. Simple jumpscares will not do. Atmosphere and build-up are what is needed, along with a suitable setting.

There MUST still be combat and/or puzzle solving. Simply making a scary scene is not acceptable for this challenge.

The deadline for submitting maps is:

Monday 31st October 10pm GMT

That’s 20 days, with 3 full weekends.

DO NOT GET TOO AMBITIOUS. If you can’t build it in 2 weekends then think smaller.

Something is bound to delay your progress. Leave time for testing, bug fixing and polishing!

Please get somebody to test the map before submitting.

I’m not sure yet if there will be prizes.

The winner will be chosen by a readers vote lasting 10 days after the release of the mod.

• Maximum two maps per mapper per entry.
• The map must be original and not have been released publicly before.
• The map must run in system with only Ep2 installed
• By entering the competition you grant PlanetPhillip.Com and RunThinkShootLive.Com the right to release the map as part of the HalloweenVille Three Mod.
• Maps must not appear on ANY other website before the release and for one month after the release of the mod.
• No assets from retail games other than HL2, HL2: Ep1 or HL2: Ep2 are allowed.
• Other assets are allowed with written permission from their original authors, which MUST be included in the entry.
• Phillip’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into about it.
• The map MUST have a proper name.
• The map MUST have a proper filename: MapName_hvt.bsp
• All entries must be sent to: [email protected] no later than the deadline.

Get the basic concept working before polishing the visuals. Being almost totally dark is not the only way to make things scary.

I will do my best to release the mod on the weekend after the Monday deadline.

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Another “out of the blue” new feature has gone live today.

You can now see the latest 25 comments of each user by clicking their name from any of their comments.

There are two caveats: One, this is only available for registered members and two only if the user has not disabled this feature in their profile.

In addition, comments with videos embedded seem to break the feature, but the comments will display until the video, so for example, if you look at my profile you will see the layout is broken and there are only 3 comments with the last one being an Embedded video.

If however, you look at, for example, Ethosaur’s profile, everything is display properly.

I am releasing this feature now because it will probably be a few weeks until we can fix it and the number of embedded videos is very very low.

Eventually, you will also be able to see a user’s latest reviews but that’s for the profile’s major update sometime in the future.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.

Lastly, I know the user profile page needs a make over to make it look pretty but I just don’t have the design skill or time.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth at least 10,000.

Here is a video of how to use the Per-Map Opinion images and a general overview of the Recommendation Image System.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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BOOM! Out of nowhere comes a new nifty feature. A page with the 10 latest post in each of the main categories.

BOOM! No longer do you have to select each individual timeline page to see what is new.

BOOM! The link can be found from the EXPLORE menu.

BOOM! I just like typing that, sorry.

Okay, so the page currently has a section for each game’s maps and mods and one for READ and LISTEN, although, I will probably sub-divide both of those into separate sections if people want me too.

The site doesn’t want to look like a magazine site but it is always useful to have one page to see what is new.

In fact, the most visited page for me is the 100 Latest Comments.

As always, let me know if you have any comments and suggestions.

BOOM!

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After posing this question as a poll question a few days ago and getting a fairly positive response, I thought I would take the plunge and try it.

Here I present the guidelines and some technical details for us to discuss, amend, remove or add.

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