HalloweenVille Mapping Competition

3rd October 2011

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

Time for something different.

In association with JustMakeGames.Com and TheHappyCloud.Com I am pleased to announce a PP mapping competition with a difference.

HalloweenVille is all about scariness and atmosphere.

The winner of the competition, is the level that is the scariest and most atmospheric. Your level can be a room, corridor, house or even a street, the choice is yours. Combat is NOT required, but is allowed.

It’s all about scaring the pants off the judges. Levels can include any legal custom content and can use any version of Source.

The size of you level is NOT important – so don’t make a big level thinking you have more chance of winning.

The level must allow the player to move about.

The winner will recieve a copy of Amnesia: The Dark Descent via the The Happy Cloud service.

Closing date is 11:59GMT 31st October 2011.

For all the details, please visit its project page:

HalloweenVille

39 Comments

  1. Arma

    Yes! I have many ideas. Although I was hoping to make a fun clich Halloween night thing about trick or treating and exploring an old mansion, I have some great ideas for horror as well.

    1. I look forward to playing them.

  2. Poison_Berrie

    Phillip I think the competition site still has the text for GravitygunVille.
    Also did I miss that competitions end, or are the results still coming?

    1. Fixed, thanks. Forgot to upload the local version I was testing.

      I am hoping to published GravityGunVille this weekend, just waiting on the final judging reports.

  3. Hec

    WOOOWW, Im alredy wanna play this!!!!!!!!!!!, hope it’ll be a sucess

  4. Dammit, I’m trying to keep a tight mapping schedule for a SP campaign mod at the moment, but I don’t think I can stay out of this contest. Had an idea that I don’t think I can leave untried.

    1. Good, the more scary entries, the better.

  5. denizen50

    FANTASTIC IDEA 🙂

  6. s.anchev

    Awesome!!!

    I Hope you will scare me to death… Please ^^

    Nightmare House 2, Torment, They Hunger, AOM… So Many of the best mod’s are scary ones!!!

    Even Dangerous World has awesome scary parts…

    So… Good luck everyone 🙂 Do whatever you wish, expand your imagination, think of the most (suggestive) horrible and put it on mod’s!!! Yeah’

  7. Suitable prize. I hope there will be a good bunch of mappers submiting their entries, I’ll be keeping my eyes on this one. Horror themed releases are some of which I enjoy the most, especially some of the unsettling maps made for Sven Coop, or the tense and atmospheric missions made for Thief.

  8. SPY

    hello, long time no see!!

    a new mapping competition, and a scary one too!
    whoehoe!
    funny though, because I am just making a map that is as scary as I can make it!!!
    and yes, I am still working on that Rooftop Retreat HL2 ep2 SP-mod. that started out with those 2 maps that I made for that previous mapping contest RooftopVille, lol.
    The mod is almost done, after nearly 1,5+ years of hard work.

    i would love to add a map(s) again to a new contest here, but I have to be honest and I am not sure if I have the time to do so, considering the staggering amount of work that I still have to do on the mod. Maybe I will sent in the scary map that I am making now, as advertisement for the whole mod. but that I am not sure yet, because this could backfire on the whole mod, and, also could it mean that I have to delay the release of the mod because the contest hasn’t ended yet.

    so, much to think about for me.
    all in all, great concept for a new contest Phillip!!!

    1. Holy smoke!
      This is excellent news.
      You are one of my favorite mappers, man!

      Thanks to Phillip as well for a splendid theme for this competition 🙂

  9. Mega Sean 45

    Whoa! Slow down Phillip! We just finished GravityGunVille and it’s not released yet! LOL! It’s fine though, good idea of making this contest! You know when GravityGunVille’s gonna be released? I’m patient, but it would be nice to know.

  10. Dr. Amazing

    Phillip, whatever happened to the month of Opposing Force thing?

    1. I had to postpone it due to work commitments.

  11. Frohman11

    Im not sure that I will even try after my embarrising fullbright level in GGV.
    Had no time to do that , but I will give a crack to horror design , just to try.

    1. Lol xD if anyone makes a horror map in fullbright it would be a winnier in my eyes 🙂

  12. Shadowmancer471

    Aww hell, I really like the idea, have had an idea for this for ages!
    Unfortunately Ive played Amnesia thrice through already D:

    May think about making something anyways

    1. Remember, if you win you could give it to friend.

      1. Shadowmancer471

        Most of my friends also own it…
        I’ll make something anyway

  13. Derbler

    So…I take it if we build this in GoldSource, it instantly gets rejected?

    1. Yep, Only Source entries are allowed.

      1. Derbler

        Do you anticipate any of your future “Ville” contests using the GoldSource engine? It’s the only engine I know how to use and I haven’t been able to participate in any of the past few contests for that very reason.

        1. Anon_279930

          it’s pretty similar to the normal source engine, though. Just the new entities to learn

          1. Derbler

            are there any tutorial videos you might be able to recommend, anon?

  14. Hemuuuli

    Awesome, I’m in!
    Though the timelimit is _very_ short and I have more than plenty of game projects going on at the moment. The prize is great, I am big frictional games fan so anyone who wins it will have their Halloween thrills (just don’t pick me, I already own the game :D).

    1. Yes, it is a short time limt but since it’s just a small scene it seems a fair time period.

      1. Hemuuuli

        It depends what is “a small scene”. My scene is at the moment a fully-explorable mansion where player need to solve some enviromental puzzles. Luckily for me I am really a speedmapper so I think I can manage, especially because my roommate wants to help me with the map. So it really is just me that is making myselft to do “extra” work. I just had more than one good idea in my brainstorming session that I’d like to work on so I am combining several ideas into one map.

        But I am not complaining about the timelimit now, I just think you should have atleast 2 months in every mapping competition in furure. Not only because one month is a short period of time, also because it can take up to a month to just reach most of the potential competitians.

    2. If you win, you could give the game to somebody else.

      1. Hemuuuli

        Yeah, maybe I could. But the prize isn’t my motivation, it is to make people poop in their pants. ^^

  15. Shadowmancer471

    To clarify, what is being judged?
    I have a design sorted, but it contains no combat, but also very little challenging gameplay.
    The one or two puzzles are very simple.
    The idea is that the scenes and story make the map

    Think of it more like a interactive cutscene (e.g. Kleiners lab)

    Is challenge/gameplay (e.g. puzzles) being judged, or is it entirely how atmospheric/scary the whole piece is?

    1. No gameplay elements are directly being judged, it’s all about atmosphere. An interactive cutscene is exactly what we are looking for.

  16. Noface

    Brilliant Idea. I prefer smaller competitions also.

  17. Quantumdylan

    Yes! Seeing as I don’t have time to do long maps. Whew!

    Stupid school…

  18. Adrian Lopez

    Excellent news to hear of another competition. Sorry for not participating in GravityGunVille, school ran up on me. Perhaps this is a different story…

    Bring it on =)

  19. Hemuuuli

    Yai! Valve broke SDK again and I planned to finish the map on this weekend because I will be busy for next two weeks. Lets see if I can even get an entry now. 😀

  20. Noface

    Yeah, valve broke the sdk a little :/

    1. Noface

      although now they have fixed it!

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