February 2017 General Chat

1st February 2017

OMG, it’s February already, where did January go?

I am hoping to allocate more time to the site this month and that means adding maps and mods and finishing pages I have started.

I love streaming but I need to balance that with the site content.

Anyway, what about you, what are you plans for this month?

What is this post?

Each month I create a “General Chat” post for readers to post whatever they want within the limits of being a family-friendly website.

Please don’t post reviews, questions or comments about maps and mods listed on the site – post them on the respective post – all those comments will be deleted. I do this to ensure that when a reader visits a map or mod page, all the information is in one place.

About this Month’s Image Theme

Back in June 2014, I started to use a poster from a classic Sci-Fi movie as the background for the post image.
Starting in June 2016, I started to use images taken from old FPS games.
And now, for 2017, I will be using images inspired by Sci-Fi book series

This month it is The Culture by Iain M. Banks.

“In the series, the Culture is composed of several inter-bred humanoid species, as well as artificially intelligent sentient machines, with intelligences ranging from human-equivalent drones, to hyper-intelligent Minds. “

At one time, this series was my favourite, and might still be but I just haven’t read much the last couple of years, the Minds are the most fascinating to me. There’s probably plenty of fan fiction out there, so perhaps I should invest a little time and read some.

About the featured Image

The image is a crop from the cover of The Hydrogen Sonata

26 Comments

  1. Retsibsi

    Hmmm, my clocks and calendar show it’s 31st January while I’m typing this. Am I behind the times?
    Fan fiction isn’t generally a favourite of mine, far too often it’s badly written and even though it might be a labour of love on the part of the author it doesn’t make up for the bad writing. I suggest anyone interested go read Dave Langford’s website / fanzine “Ansible” where from time to time he gives some truly awful examples to frighten off wannabe writers. The last book I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) was “The Martian”. The film cuts out a lot of the novel, so even if you’ve seen the film it’s well worth reading.

    http://ansible.uk/

  2. Same as last month, continue work on my Half-Life 2: Episode Two modification, Above the Catacombs.

  3. EpickMan98

    Same as always I suppose, focus on my mapping skills, extending and learning more techniques. And also hopefully become employed to put my skills to good use. detailing at the highest level possible no matter the challenge and striving.

  4. JamaicanDave

    Hopefully finishing and releasing a map for Black Mesa. After that a nice long break from Hammer. Maybe try and regain some physical fitness.

  5. Kaixo!

    First of all milesker 🙂 for this very good and fun website! It’s been 1 month since my register and I would say that I’m NOT disappointed at all!
    The community is amazing, you are amazing too Phillip.

    My plan for this month

    •Getting good mark in High-School.
    •Getting better at mapping.
    •Enjoying family/friends!

    Edit:•Getting better at English…

  6. Kaixo!

    First of all milesker 🙂 for this very good and fun website! It’s been 1 month since my register and I would say that I’m NOT disappointed at all!
    The community is amazing, you are amazing too Phillip.

    My plan for this month

    •Getting good mark in High-School.
    •Getting better at mapping.
    •Enjoying family/friends!

    Edit:•Getting better at English…

  7. My plan for this month is to pass all the exams for this semester, and I think that’s all that matters to me right now 😛

    1. Good luck! 😀 😀 😀

  8. Hello Phillip and RTSL Family!
    I’m excited that its 2017 and February already, WOW!
    This site is great, i love checking it Daily for new mods and maps.
    I’m not much of a Forum user myself but my love to the Valve and there acclaimed games are strong!.

    ~My Goals~

    Mainly my goals i hope to soon Achieve this month and this year is starting a Youtube channel for Hammer editor for the Source Engine!… I know i know what you’re thinking. “isn’t there plenty of people doing this?” the answer is yes, but people usually stick to CS:GO mapping or L4D2 or just 1 game! I plan on doing Tutorials for all Source Engine games (no goldsrc) I’m going to start out with basic tutorials and go into very advanced tutorials!

    If you are interested in my Idea please Subscribe to my YouTube Channel and I’ll be Posting in no time!

    Project Hammer

  9. I plan to continue making content on my channel to help mappers in their quest to…map. There will be probably 2 podcasts and what not and another interview with someone in the Source modding community like the ones it did with Etho, the PUNT team and Crowbar.

    And then there is a bunch of “real life” stuff I have have to do like work and college and other things not as fun as being on this site…

  10. Happy february to y’all … !

    First I want to complete my entry for the upcoming Defendville 2. I consider my map for 80% done but there’s still quite some work to do and some stuff to figure out.

    In real-life, I’m planning to buy a car that will be used for several trips throughout Europe this year. The first destination will probably be Berlin in the last days of february or the first days of March.

  11. Gnome

    As a newcomer to the mapping community, I don’t know how far into the development process I should test a map with other people. I don’t want to do it too early where the map feels half-baked, but I don’t want to test too late as to where it would be hard to make any changes. Does anyone have any suggestions regarding this topic?

    1. That’s an excellent topic. I will try to make a video about it soon.

    2. build the gameplay first, completely (no details, maybe even only dev textures etc.). Then test it. Since the gameplay is “complete” it’s not too early. Since you only built gameplay, making changes should be easy and it’s not too late.
      Obviously that workflow can be a little hard, boring or just different for most people, but once you get used to it you will build better maps.

  12. Been remodding (and gibberish translating) the old unfinished gangster HL mod, Bloody Pizza: Vendetta.

    Had to change a LOT of the mod’s gameplay stuff due to the odd designs and unfinished nature, but who knows, maybe it’ll be good in the end.

  13. Continuing to work on The Core. Sinking far too many hours into open world RPGs like Skyrim Remastered and Fallout 4.

    I am hoping to get my net connection upgraded soon and I intend to pick up a regular stream schedule again. It’ll be the same as before: 50/50 mapping and playing the aforementioned RPGs.

    Finally, I’ve got some voice acting work to get done, which is always fun.

    Away from the PC, I’m looking to get back into the swing of things regarding my physical fitness.

  14. University
    ARRANGEMENT
    Half-Rats: Parasomnia 1.1

  15. So One, where are the forums, And two; I want to learn how to model.

    1. JamaicanDave

      There aren’t forums as such, the monthly General Chats are the closest thing to them. This site’s more for downloading, playing and reviewing maps rather than development.

  16. JamaicanDave

    There isn’t a forum as such, the monthly General Chats are the closest thing the site has. RTSL is more for downloading, playing and reviewing maps, rather than the development.

    1. how would I model playermodels for both the source and gold-source engine?

  17. My goals for this months are to finish my first Hammer project from start to end, get past my partially-nasty habits and advance on with my backlog of games.

    By the way, nice theme you’ve got here, Phillip. I kinda miss the old one with the iconic orange but hey, change is good. 😛

  18. Agustín

    Hello! I want to register in this site but I have never received a registration confirmation to my e-mail adress… What can I do? Thanks

  19. Play mods, mods, and even more mods…
    Also learn to play around and create stuff in Source.

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