Introduce Yourself

17th July 2012

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

Hello and Welcome to the site.

We are a friendly bunch here and welcome new players and visitors with open arms.

Many sites have a forum thread for new visitors (and old) to introduce themselves and make the leap from viewer to commenter – this is that thread.

You can tell us as little or as much about yourself as you want.

Stuff like how long you have been playing FPS games, how long you have been visiting the site, favourite games etc etc.

You don’t even need to be a registered member to comment on this, or any other post!

Also remember, that every comment with a link has to be approved by me, please don’t try to bypass that control.

Thanks to Ade for suggesting the idea.

So, with that out of the way, it’s over to you….

786 Comments

  1. William

    My name is William, I enjoy long walk on the beach and have sandy blond hair…

    Back in 2003 I worked for a website called halflife.org, in fact if you can dig far enough you can find one of my original articles entitled “To Steam or not To Steam” — it was written on the release day of Steam beta and was a highly critical article that circulated quite well among the press.

    Soon thereafter I worked for GameSurge Radio — an online IRC radio station, we celebrated things like CPL (Cyber Professional League) and the release of Half-Life 2.

    I worked on GamersUnited Radio, contributed to ModDB then started Podcast 17 with PlanetPhillip.

    I am a self proclaimed Half-Life historian, but there are others out there who do a much better job at that.

    Either way, I’ve been part of the half-life community for many years under many names:
    – NeoGeo007
    – CubicVirtuoso
    – cvirtuoso
    – William

    You can check out all my latest endeviours over at http://www.podcast17.com and on my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/thepodcast17

    1. John

      I’m an older gamer, maybe not so skilled in the configuration side of things.
      I love the Half Life franchise. I cut my gaming teeth fragging aliens on Duke Nukem 3D.

      I’m pretty much single player only, I enjoy the space to explore and poke about.

      I love this site, it’s a great resource for non- builders like myself.

      Perth, Australia

      1. Hello, and thanks for having me!

        I’m bboyl3r (buh-boiler), a rudimentary writer and an avid lover of the Half-Life franchise. I live in America, possibly somewhere on the East Coast and bordering Canada. Though I myself haven’t modded (yet), I enjoy all of the amazing mods and mapsโ€”along with the intricate stories, as wellโ€”here on runthinkshootlive.

        I am mostly a writer, though I have tried sketching out some basic maps for a Combine-occupied Cityโ€”and trust me, that did ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต go well.

        I still, however, like planning projects for when I start modding, perhaps after college sometime. One of my primary projects is that of a man deciding to head for North America, to find out for the Resistance why there has been little to no information concerning the western hemisphere of Earth.

        Let’s just say that he’s in for a surprise…

        He’ll be traveling by boat, across the rampant waves to North America. It’ll be in the HL universe, though there will be much more freedom in the story.

        More information is forthcoming, as I culture this story.

        Anyways, thanks for letting me ramble and introducing myself!

        โ€”bboyl3r

    2. shaunsefton

      I like your mod playthrouhs

    3. Hi, I’m Liam and I’ve been a fan of half life for a long time (planning a Gordan Freeman cosplay for my local comic-con) but just found out about this site through VNN.

    4. Hello folks, thought I’d say hi as well.
      Been mapping since pretty much forever, started with Starcraft 1 and got stuck with the Hammer Editor in the end.

      Looks like I won’t escape it’s claws just yet.

    5. Hello i am looking for some help, i want to know if its possible to add working gargantua for my hl2 map.

    6. Nice to hear, William! I hope you never forget the glorious game series that is Half Life. Oh, yeah.
      Don’t forget to pray to Gabe Newell.

    7. Heavy Breathing

      Hello! I just joined because I like Half Life 2 including Half Life!
      I find mods really enjoyable! Because it like a new campaign to play. Also keep releasing more mods

    8. RZD Trains

      Hello There

    9. Greetings, my name is UnknownInfinite. Though you call me Unknown.

      I love the gold source and source engine a lot, and Half Life is one of my favorite games of all time.

      I am trying to get into modding and mapping for Half Life 2 and the episodes.

      I’ve played Half Life 1, Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Lost Coast, Half Life 2:EP1 and EP2, Half Life Opposing Force.

    10. Wow…The last comment was in 2012??? Is this site even active anymore???
      I was unable to leave an “Introduce Yourself” post, and the “Contact” link is inactive…
      There is a note that unless you comment within three days of registering, you will be deleted. So, I guess this is my comment…

      I know, I’m late to the party, and didn’t bring any beer…but I didn’t know there was a party going on until I looked for H-L mods…

    11. I just want to make a lot of cool maps, honestly <3

  2. I am Miigga and I also go by the name Brutwarst.

    I’m a 20-year-old Finnish guy who makes singleplayer maps for HL2:Ep2.

    You can find my maps here: http://www.planetphillip.com/miiggas-maps/
    And you can find my interview here: http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/audio-interview-with-miikka-erkkila

    I am also not very verbose so I don’t know what to add.

    1. Brutwarst? Isn’t that supposed to be “Bratwurst” instead? (Be warned, I’m German!) ๐Ÿ˜›

      1. There was a time when I went by the name Bratwurst. Then I swapped some letters to make it Wratburst instead. People kept calling me “Wrath”, which was not my intention so I changed it to Brutwarst.

        And yes, bratwurst is in fact a type of German sausage.

        1. I see. “Wratburst” was just killing me! ๐Ÿ˜€
          Just loving games with words or mixed letters, so much pun! ๐Ÿ™‚

        2. yeh miigga … i used to live off brakwursts when i was based in germany ( with the british army ) and i was based in a small town called fallingbostel …..
          ive seen some so called brokwursts in the uk shops but they dont taste anything like they do in germany ….. we used to call them brokkies … and the wagon would turn up at midnight just when we were stumbling back from the local pub/tavern …. good old days

  3. SPY

    My name is Leon (SPYmaps) Brinkmann (48) and am around on PP.com and the total HL2 community for a lot of years now. Back in 1999 I started with SP-mapping and have been doing so from that time on. Many fps games I used for making sp-mappacks and sp-mods. As soon as Hl2 was released I started with that game and I have been using it and its episodes to make severel large sp-mods that can be found here on PP and on other sites. For instance Strider Mountain, Coastline to Atmosphere, final Project Diary, Leon sp-mappack. And the last 2+ years I have been working hard on my 5th and last big HL2 (ep2) sp-mod called Episode 3 (check moddb). I hopefully will release this one before the summer ends, this is however my last Hl2 project (for now). After this I finally will start with my first own indie fps.

    Leon

    1. Hi leon
      How have things been going …. are you still ok ( in regards to what you went through last year ) ….. and anymore news on the next mod ?
      ive been looking at reviews of your mods on other sites apart from planetphillip (damn,im still using that name ) and one thing that you find is theres guys ( such as me ) who absolutely love your mods and maps and then theres some who think there ok,and finally theres a small few that dont like them ( poor people ,what are they missing )
      final project is the only game i run every month… infact ive probally got just as many gaming hours on that than i have on half life 2 ! … and i never get bored of that game …..
      if i was to be honest my favourite mod/map is final project and the leon map pack … these could of easily been converted into a mod,however due to the size of your other maps it wouldnt of been received well ( not because of the quality but the size )
      anyway all the best leon and good luck for the future
      take care mate !

      1. SPY

        wow, thank you so much!!
        And i am amazed to read that you play Final Project each month!
        I am very flattered by that!

        ABout how things now go, well, still mapping, still modding!
        You talked about the size of my mods, well, they all will still look small compaired with the one i am now working on because the total play time of it will be at least around 20 to 25 hours, really!
        Its by far the biggest and most detailed one i ever made, and i spent also by far the most time on it building it, 4,5 years now. I am very glad to say that i am about to rap the whole thing up. I know i said many times before that it would be done by then. And each time i had to delay the release due to different issues. But, now i can say that it will be released this summer. Hopefully June or July at the latest.
        (mod name; Episode 3; The Closure).

        thank you very much for the kind words, and i really do hope you will like this new one to.
        Leon

    2. Can’t wait Leon. Your maps are always first class.

  4. Au-heppa

    My name is heppa, and I am Phillip’s inner child.

    1. I wondered what that annoying voice inside my head was. Always asking for ice-cream and candy.

  5. Dukwheat

    Hi All! First, man o man do I love this site. Big thanks to Phillip for his years of work and dedication…seemingly all for our enjoyment!? Amazing sir, amazing.
    I saw you shut it down last week and my heart sunk, but I understood. Then, days later, it’s baaaaaacccccckkkkk!

    Been playing video games since about 1978. PC games since the old floppy demo days (Apogee) and I still play games to this day.

    Currently enjoying the Steam Summer Sale where I bought the Hitman series and Painkiller Resurrection…

    My favorite games of all time are:

    1. Half Life series
    2. Thief series
    3. Deus Ex series
    4. Elder Scrolls series
    5. Super Maryo Chronicles

    Sure I like GTA, Fallout, CoD, FarCry and all of the rest of them…but these above games do it for me.

    My favorite HL/HL2 mod has to be Research and Development.

    The only MP game I play is HL2 Deathmatch…you’ll see me on servers as NugsKillah. Haha…

    1. Ade

      My favorite HL/HL2 mod has to be Research and Development.

      mine too!

      The only MP game I play is HL2 Deathmatch

      me too!

      1. You must be twins separated at birth.

        1. Ade

          ahhaha that made me laugh so hard, thx ๐Ÿ˜€

  6. I am Alex “Kaito Kid” gilbert. I am 16 years old, and I have been playing Half-Life since I was 8. I only played the original game and the expansions for a lot of time, then about 1 year ago I discovered unofficial mods, and most of them are pretty cool. I also discovered speedruns, and started training to become a speedrunner too. I played at least 40 different sp mods, and I play a lot of deathmatch and adrenaline gamer deathmatch. I also like Half-life too and source games, but I will always prefer goldsource.

    1. Ade

      does that mean you won’t be trying ag2?

      1. yes, yes I will be. I play hl2deathmatch frequently because I love fighting with the gravity gun, but I find gameplay too slow compared to hl1. if there ever is a ag for hl2, and the gameplay is faster I’ll surely play it alot

  7. andyb

    I’m andyb,47? from Canada.Been hangin around here for ever it seems.Played to many Portal2 mods lately and got sick of it so am currently in a HL1 mod craze playing everything over again.Just finished Adam and Hour Glass today.

  8. I am Tobias. A normal swedish guy who lives in the forest.
    On the internet I go by many names, First It was Tabe but I figured it people would call me name-stealer cuz of the popular CoD player Tejbz.
    I have not really decided yet, but right now I go with anything with the word Tab in it.

    I fell in love with the Half-Life series about 10 years ago when I played the demo of Opposing Force. I was a kid so I thought it was scary as he**.

    Anyways, I’m also into the Elder Scrolls series with is like the second best games ever made after Half-Life.

    I started mapping years ago but I never finished or released a single map. Unknown Hazard in the DoorVille comp was my first map to get onto the internet. After that, it returns, I begin a map, make a room then quit. I have read lots of information on Mappers Block and stuff but I think I just need to plan my maps better.

    Anywas part 2, I really enjoy this site and was horrified when Philip threatened us with closing the site. I know its hard work, but always know, its VERY appreciated by many people.

  9. 2muchvideogames

    Played over 400 HL1 SP mods, mostly thanks to PlanetPhillip ๐Ÿ˜€
    I also have experience in mapping for goldsource, as well as some part of coding. Also currently making a mod for HL1 myself, but I’d appreciate if mappers would help with the project, since I’ve just done a bunch of new entities for the mod too. About Planetphillip: I remember back when Stef, mel, goddess alyria, piledriver and friends were on the site, so I think I’m pretty old too. lol.

    1. Ade

      I wonder where they are now ๐Ÿ™

  10. Passerbyluredbackbyalltherecentruckus...

    As old as the metaphorical hills (in gaming terms).

    Thinks of PP as a relative newcomer to the HL scene (3dmaprealms is where I started downloading mods back in the day).

    Nowadays only lurks and only comments when there is a really good reason to…

    (Good to have you back Mr P.)

  11. I’m Gambini. I’ve been building maps for games since I was 14. And being 31 now, I have two of my three kids building maps too, which is like an heritage.

    While most of my work has been done for Duke Nukem 3d, i’ve been trying to do stuff for HL too for a loooong time. I’m pretty young for the internet (i have internet since 2008) but still got an awesome response over the work I did for Duke Nukem. I left undone at least two projects for Half Life 1 and still on the works with a big one for HL2. The only thing I have ever released for HL2 is a map for the ElevatorVille contest.

    Lately I have been taking a rest from modding and have played a lot of games.

    1. Howdy! 17 years mapping is a long time. Way longer than I have been running this site.

      You should have a family mapping day.

      1. Yeah when I come back from work my older son is already waiting to fill my brain with his questions and to show me his progress on whatever he’s doing.

        And funnily enough I did never to make him follow this hobby. He just began with it alone because of seeing me doing it so much. Most of my efforts toward him point to make him do other stuff, like outside sports ๐Ÿ˜›

        1. That must be so cool: having your son interested of his own accord in your hobby.

  12. I have been enjoying Planet Phillip for many many years and Phillip runs a clean fair fun ship. The mods are checked and the contests are for real.

    You can have a great time, with lots of people who enjoy playing and participating in the Half Life Universe.

    when episode 3 is released the mods will flood us and we will have so many to play. In the meantime, developers keep generating great mods and some of them are so professionally made the content, storyline and graphics make you wish valve would “get with it” and produce something.

    anyway, welcome friend.

    1. Welcome aboard, me hearty!

  13. I am Dr. Amazing. I hail from the land of corn (Illinois). I am 14 and have OCD, ADHD and am generally anti-social. I like My Little Pony: Friendship is magic. I’ve got 2muchtimeonmyhands (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs) . I am just a little bit crazy. I love Half-Life 1 and retro gaming. I am currently permanently banned from The Whole Half-Life and Half-Life Creations. My favorite film of all time would have to be Dawn of the Dead (1978). I love music from the 80’s. I like to go to Goodwill and try to find games. I call it GoodWill Hunting. I do not like the Call Of Duty series. I hate it when mods have mismatching arms on the view models. I also hate wheat bread.

    Well that got off track.

    1. Ade

      was that u in kbx the other day? ๐Ÿ˜›

  14. Aaron

    I am Aaron aka BlueWolf72 been following PP for a long time. I started out making models and went to make a mod for HL called Water wars. I gave up making mods to help launch HL radio and moddb.com. Created the Mod of the year awards for the site and interviewed mods so word would get out. Did the public relations for mods. Created radio shows for gamesurge and my own.

    Joined PHL and HL2.net to help keep focused on the community. Decided to launch my own site to support steam the way I wanted with SteamContests. I am working on launching a new project soon that will focus on less fortunate gamers all around the world who would never get a chance to play video games. The site will allow gamers to get games for free.

    the group will stay open please join I will be giving games away from the summer sale http://steamcommunity.com/groups/contests

    if you need any models use my stuff ๐Ÿ™‚

    http://www.moddb.com/members/bluewolf72/addons

    1. You are being modest. You started the ModDB Mod of the Year awards too, I hear. Plus prolly lots of other things.

  15. Duke

    Not much to say about me really, name’s Duke, 58 year old Biker, English but living in Bulgaria, loves Half-Life, scuba diving and cooking. My gaming started way back with the release of Realms of the Haunting (still wish someone would re-make that), then all the Doom series and clones…I can’t make maps or mods, been “online” since “95. That’s about it. (or at least all I want to share here)

    1. What bike are you currently riding?

      I think I mentioned once I use to Have a Vincent Comet, with sidecar as I hadn’t passed my test. I used to go to Steam Fairs and ride a friend’s Black Shadow. I remember going somewhere with a disused runway. I went up and down that for ages. No helmet, no goggles, water streaming from my eyes to my ears. Probably wasn’t really fast but I was 19ish at the time and it certainly felt like it.

      1. Ade

        big boys don’t cry!

        1. I have no problem admiting when I cry, but this was just water from my eyes because of the speed.

      2. A Vincent Comet? wow. My other hobby is bikes too, how I could forget that? I’ve always been a mechanics enthusiast and therefore built a small garage plenty of tools to fix and restore my bikes and my friends’ ones. Never owned big bikes because I used to live in a small house where a big one would not fit through the door, and now that I moved to my own large house have no money for them because of the mortgage. I’ve restored my own 1979 Yamaha GT80MX which can face up any twice or three times larger motorized bike though ๐Ÿ˜‰

        1. So it was a choice: Big house – no bike or small house and small bike. That’s a tough one.

          I love that era of bikes. Not too big, easy to maintain yourself etc. Nowadays, it’s all about power and style. Retro for me!

      3. I currently have a Yamaha Dragstar (V Star in the USA) 1100 classic, customised.

  16. Mazur

    Hi, I’m Mazur.

    I’ve been mapping for HL1 since it’s release in 1998 and still do. I only started to do stuff on source in 2008, but quickly ended up with more than 1500 hours in the Source SDK.

    Beyond that there isn’t much. I like to make maps and will be releasing a few on PP. That is, when they’ll be done.

    1. Well hello there. 1500 hours is quite a lot, can’t wait to see some of your maps here.

  17. Kyrii

    I think after so many years, I think it’s about time I said hello ๐Ÿ™‚

    I’m Kyrrii, I just turned 20 and I’ve been an avid FPS fanatic since I first watched my dad play Doom 2 back in 97′. Naturally, after procuring enough funding I decided to build my own game collection, and naturally, on the PC.

    After many bouts of trying to convince my mother that steam isn’t a criminal organization hell-bent on stealing my money and that Half-life doesn’t involve killing naked prostitutes, she finally let me buy Half-life… in 2007.

    Ever since then, I’ve been downloading prolifically from PP and I will continue to do so until the sun burns out, hopefully XD

    I just can’t believe how such a site could be such a massive resource for my two favorite games, ever. Half-life 1 and 2 were incredible alone, but considering how many hours I spent playing and adoring maps and mods, It makes me wonder why companies these days are refusing to give their customers SDK.

    I do know for one thing, however, is that the Half-life modding community is far from dead, and I will continue to love their work, and the dedication of Phillip and his wonderful site, to the end ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Ade

      Well hello there, Kyrii, and I’m glad you finally made this step to say “hi” ๐Ÿ™‚ May this be the first of your many posts here.

    2. Yes, Hello there. Sorry to hear it took you mother 10 years to allow you to play HL.

      Whilst Steam might not be built by a criminal organization, Valve sure want your money!

      Have you never thought about learning to map?

      I have to admit, I assumed all gamers your age did a little bit of mapping.

      1. Kyrii

        I had some interest in developing maps for Half-life 2 back in 2005, when a friend of mine showed me the demo and some custom-made maps, but after viewing some tutorials, I was overwhelmed by how much work went into making even the simplest of maps and over time, I abandoned the idea.

        I might take it up again in the near future, but who knows ๐Ÿ™‚

        And yeah, my father was very laid back (Hence why he let me play Doom 2) but my mother was the over-protective kind, it wasn’t till I was 14 she relinquished control of whatever I played. However, she had full control of whatever I wanted to buy at the time, hence why it took so long to get Half-life D:

  18. Hello dear readers,

    first of all I’m no mapper/modder just a true gamer from Germany.
    I’m a 30 year old (?) fart but I look and feel (and sometimes act) like a 20yo ๐Ÿ™‚
    Been playing computer games since 1992, the first games were “Battle Chess” (great sound and animation!) and “A-10 Thunderbolt” which I couldn’t understand how to play ๐Ÿ˜›

    Then there were a few years I was playing only Super Nintendo games.
    Back in 1996 or so I started playing PC games again and found out that I love FPS games, so I played “Duke Nukem 3D”, “Quake” series, “Hexen”, some other Build Engine games like “Shadow Warrior” and “Redneck Rampage” until some very neat masterpiece saw the light of day – “Half-Life”.

    I soon started to play HL1 singleplayer mods like the classic “They Hunger” series, “USS Darkstar” etc.
    Then there was a “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” phase but sooner or later I went back to HL…

    Having played around 1000 HL1 SP maps and mods I’m like a tiny database for that, so if anyone has trouble finishing a map or mod, just ask me for help ๐Ÿ™‚

    My computer was getting old so I couldn’t play HL2 all the time until the late of 2011 where I finally bought a new one and that was the first time I played HL2 and its Episodes (shame on me, I know!).

    Been here on the site for almost a year now, but there’s just no other place for me to hang out for HL related stuff and I like the site’s look more than every other HL site (dark background, white letters!).

    Now and then I also play other genres like Action RPG’s, so at the moment you can “find” me often in “Diablo 3” ๐Ÿ˜›

    However, I visit PP every day and checking all new comments and posts and altho I don’t comment a lot here I do enjoy reading, it’s always a great atmosphere somehow and readers opinions are usually very interesting.

    Enjoy your stay here on PP people, and all the best wishes to Phillip! You’re doing a very good job so thank you once more!

  19. RossBondReturns

    My name is Ross Cooper but online I’ve been known as RossBond and now RossBondReturns. I just turned 36 years old and have been writing since the age of ten- I’m also from the U.K. but live in Southern California.

    In 1998 I got a used desktop with a floppy drive and used it to write, I also picked up Half-Life and a CD-Rom drive. I played through all of HL in software mode for my first play through. After installing more RAM and a Riva TNT I played through again accelerated. Ahh the memories.

    Since I’m a writer of fiction, short stories/manuscripts/screenplays I found it natural to offer my help to the HL modding community as a writing/concept developer for modifications. Sadly none of the mods I wrote for ever came to fruition- my recent short Waking Nightmare is my first HL fiction in years.

    I’ve been coming to PP for quite awhile and have enjoyed the entire experience.

    I have done most of my writing in the Terminator Universe and have three online full length scripts that can be downloaded through

    http://www.terminatorfiles.com/media/scripts/#fanmade.

    In fact I have to thank James Cameron for encouraging my screenwriting since the age of 19. Hopefully soon you’ll see my name up in writing credits. I have two Independent scripts that are set to be made into films…and am currently acting in an Independent Christian film called The Thief in The Night.

    http://www.facebook.com/TheThiefinTheNight

    Other than that I have all the time in the world.

    Cheers.

  20. Yoven

    Hello,

    My name is Gordon Freeman, I’m a scientist working at the Black Mesa research facility. Last week something bad happened, we had a system crash and PlanetPhillip went offline. This made me very sad. From then on out alot of crazy sh*t happened, aliens attacked the facility, marines started shooting up the place… oh well you know how it goes. Luckily we’re safe for now. What’s that Barney? Something about a beer? Sure I’ll be right there.

    Oke, for real this time.

    My name is Yordi and I’m a huge fan of the Half-Life universe. I’ve played and continue to play alot of mods ranging from Half-Life to Episode 2. Alot of those mods I’ve downloaded from PlanetPhillip. At least once a week for the past 5 years I’ve visited the site and read the articles. I almost never post a comment, but I thought this would be a good time to come out of the closet ๐Ÿ™‚ Thank you Phillip and thank you modmakers for the joy you have brought me.

    1. Hello and welcome Yordi. I’m glad you made the first step and commented. What’s your favourite mod?.

      1. Yoven

        Wow, let me think for a moment. I’ve played so many it’s difficult to choose. I still hold warm memories for the HL-mod Azure Sheep. I think it’s one of the greatest mods out there.

  21. Names Richard, AKA Rikersbeard, 45 year old ex Telecom Engineer.
    Interests included SciFi, film soundtracks (especially Jerry Goldsmith’s work), film SpFx, 2000AD comics (early), F1, Tour de France, air & space flight and astronomy.
    Model maker, both actual and virtual when using “Imagine” on the Amiga or PC. Could not get on with “Lightwave” or “Real 3D”!
    Favourite real model is my 4ft high dragon, poised on a mountain top, wings held high in a ” V” ready to fly. It is a mod of a very crude resin sculpture which took me about ten years to complete, with a new tail, wing membranes, all 36 teeth and numerous horns and one or two repaints! The first paint was red and green!
    Best digital models so far are my “Space 1999” Eagle transporters with “realistic” internal cabins and my 16-crew Manned Mars Mission designs. With the crew in a 0.6g habitat ring and two landers.

    First computer game played, Dragster Racing, played via a teleprinter! (1978).
    First computer game played on monitor via a keyboard, Start Trek on a mainframe where the Klingons were “K”s! (1980).
    Favourite arcade game was “Tail Gunner” (b/w vector graphics game).
    Home computers: ZX 81, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 (used as my games console while I programmed on the ” QL), Sinclair QL, Commodore Amiga 500 and 1500 then PCs.
    Games consoles: binatone TV game, Mattel Intellivision, (lots of game carts & voice module) and Colecovision, (ton of games)!
    A few of my Favourite Games: Kennedy Approach (C64), Dungeons & Dragons (Intellivision), Donkey Kong (Colecovision), Super Frog (Amiga), Falcon (Amiga), FS2004 (Heavily modded at 40.9GB) (PC), Alien Trilogy (my introduction to an fps on the PC), AVP (PC), System Shock 2 (PC), Deus Ex (PC) and, of course, the Half Life series of games and they’re multitude of mod titles, very especially “G-String”.
    Thanks to PlanetPhillip.com, which I discovered a few years back somewhere around the time “Strider Mountain” was released, I found many HL mods easily instead of trolling around the net or nabbing them off a magazine CD. Although I did find a brilliant Russian language HL site for a lot of my early mods, but speaking only English and bad English this site was a challenge to navigate. But I had downloaded a few planes for FS2004 from Russian sites so I had an idea what to click, sometimes!
    Never liked “Doom” and for some reason have no interest in games consoles, especially their hand controllers, its mouse and/or joystick for me.

    Most memorable Half Life moment:
    Loading my new “Half Life 2” game and discovering “Steam” for the first time and the joy of a daylong installation thanks to my dial-up connection! Then I heard about all the trouble people were having with steam worldwide and some of the things they were saying online were quite rude! One American said that all he had was a $30 silver disc! Me, I had no trouble and just played HL2!
    I was “got” a few months later, when I could not get my password recognised for a couple of days!

    I think that’s enough!

    1. Welcome Richard and thanks for the bio.

      Looks like you have plenty experience in a variety of things.

      Do you still have all those old computers? If so, if you ever get time, please put them together and take a photo. I’ll publish it. Maybe even get people to do their games collection photo, like I did with the desk setup a while ago.

      Actually, I think I will do that. I’ll have to allocate a morning to it though, as all my games are in boxes in my basement.

      1. I’ll give it a go. My Intellivision and Colecovision were still working the last time I tested them before their loft imprisonment. As was my QL and Amiga 1500. I’ll see what’s up there and take a photo of all the games devices, games and a couple of handhelds. Even my old LED Space Invaders game that still works!
        I fear my specky, C64 and Amiga 500, were sold or trodden on by someone working in the loft, poor 64. and my sack, yes sack, of C64 games may have been ditched!

  22. Herr_Alien

    My name is Alex, I’m 30 years old and I’m a coder.
    I did some modding, but not for the Half-life games, but for AvP2.

    I started visiting PlanetPhillip.com after hearing about it on Podcast17, and I stayed for its interviews and (non HalfLife but gaming in general) articles.

    I like games with a nice story (doesn’t have to be happy mind you) and a well created atmosphere, and I loathe games that offer only eye candy. Besides games and coding I like to do a bit of stargazing once in a while. I’m no stranger to electronics but the last time I touched the soldering gun was two months ago (after a break of more than 6 years) when I built an (ugly, but working) automated feeder for the dog.

    1. Welcome Alex.

      You have been WAY to modest. Just so people know, Alex is the coder who made MapTap possible! Without all his hard work there probably wouldn’t be MapTap, except as an idea in my head.

      Thinking about your automatic dog feeder, you now need to build one of these:

  23. Hec

    I’m HEC, my name is Hector and I live in mexico, i’m a pure HL and valve, gamer, so much more a mod gamer and reviewer, I got addicted to review moods since I use almost daily PP.com since 2009 or so…

    I just love to play the mods and review them, I love this site because it also allows me to practice my writing in english that some or many times is loosy in the comments, so sorry about that if you found some wierd writing in my comments, i’m not an english native speaker, but I make myself to understand.

    Anyway, I allways love when some of my comments started a good point to discuss about and I also enjoy to read what other gamers have to say about the mods and maps we experienced.

    Soo, regards to everyone and as we say in my country, LARGA VIDA A PLANET PHILLIP Y HALF LIFE!!!! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Hola Hector.

      Do you know if they made a South American Spanish version of Half-Life 2?

      1. Hec

        MM, I don’t think so, better I don’tg have idea!, the verssions here in Mexico of HL, has that peculiar spain spanish accent…

  24. Hey I’m Blue Lightning. It even says so on my birth certificate.

    Actually, Im Tim, and my age is somewhere in the 40’s. I of course love HL2, Ep1 and Ep2. I thought Ep1 was better than Ep2, probebly the only one that thinks that. I DL and play HL2 mods. I’m not crazy about HL1, although I liked it…but I dont play HL1 mods.

    I’m a long time member (5 stars) on the Steam forums also under the same name of Blue Lightning.

    I’m a long time member (super duper) on the 2K forums, under the same name. I love Bioshock and Bioshock II, espicially for their atmosphere. Looking forward to Bioshock Infinite in Feburary.

    I’m a member of the JR clan on Red Orchestra/Darkest Hour online mulitplayer. Our clan mainly deal with driving and operating tanks, in WWII. Our clan puts up the most populated server.

    I am a member of Duke4Net and love the original Duke Nukem 3D (1996). I regularly dowload and play the single player maps made for that game, as it has a nice community of fans who make maps for it.

    I’m of the opinion that Dark Messiah Might and Magic is the most overlooked underatted FPS of all time, and the best overall single player FPS ever. And Arkane did it using Valve’s Source engine! But Valve didnt learn anything from Arkane’s use of their own engine. Sad.

    The SDK was not released for Dark Messiah because Ubisoft wouldnt allow it (damn publishers). However I heard that it was “leaked” to the public but it is full of bugs. As far as I know, no single player mod has been made for that game, but some people are rumored to be “working on it”.

    And that’s about it I guess. Oh, I think PlanetPhillip is the best HL2 source out there.

  25. Merril

    My name is Merril.

    I have a bookmark folder for HL related websites, mods and wikis. I really enjoy the HL story so I glean as much as I can. Thats why I follow PP. I’m not a mapper or modder, but greatly appreciate all of those that create community content.

    I was a big fan of HL1 and CS/DoD, but I didn’t really appreciate HL1 for more than an amazing modding platform.
    When HL2 came out I found it lived up to its hype and then some. I love the story telling, the graphics and the variety of weapons (in that order).
    I’ve become somewhat bored of HL2 mods and gameplay… mostly because of the aging AI code and mapping limitations.
    Now I’ve found myself spending most of my time playing portal 1 mods. I think I just like the spatial puzzles, portal 2 mods bring too much into the equation.

  26. lj4linux

    Hello, I’m Laviniu from Romania

    48 years old, playing HL since 1999. When I met my (second) wife she thought that I’m not quite sane… playing HL for hours…
    But that was ONLY THE BEGINNING.
    Now she considers that as normal… :))

    Thanx for being part of my life PP, really a great work you make!
    Hola para todos nuestros amigos ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Ade

      Salut si bine ai venit!

  27. Unq

    Unq here, aka Unquenque. Real name is Don although for the internet it’s Unq.

    Bought Half-Life the week it came out and have loved it ever since. I started mapping in mid-1999 and have loved that ever since, too. I still prefer Goldsource partially because of familiarity, partially ease of use, and partially the challenge.

    Been aware of Planetphillip since its inception but really only became a true regular visitor less than a couple years ago. Last year’s Summer Days of Nostalgia event cemented me in place as a very frequent visitor and occasional contributor. I really enjoyed the podcasts we did, I guess I just love talking about Half-Life 1 maps. I wrote a bunch of reviews at Ten Four and still fondly remember the old review sites like Radium, 3D Map Realm, and Hangar 16.

    I have several short HL1 mods and projects designed and partially built. Working on a new one now that was inspired by the TREE event and is hopefully coming in the near future.

  28. Zekiran

    Hi, folks!

    I’m Zekiran (on Steam and assorted online venues), also known as lethe-gray on deviantart. I’m proud to be a middle-aged woman into fps and sci fi. I wasn’t introduced to Half Life until very late in the game, when Portal came out I bought it and THEN picked up the Orange Box. The rest, as they say, is history.

    I’m a huge half life universe fan. Though I’m nowhere near as good at the modding side of things, I do write constantly, and have a variety of HL related items in my DA gallery. Notably I’m writing a massive fanfic mashup of the HL/Portal and Fear universes, Repurposed.

    I really enjoy playing mods and maps, and when I have time I like to give commentary. I wouldn’t mind doing some voice work though I’m not a pro by any stretch. Some day I hope to work for Valve, but then who doesn’t.

    Anyway, I’d like to thank Phillip for creating a site like this where I don’t have to muddle through all manner of crap to get to the gems. It’s great to see so many talented modders and fans able to get together and enjoy their favorite subjects.

    1. Ade

      Oh, hi there! Welcome to the site, the female committee is growing!

      1. I was we had more female members.

      2. Zekiran

        We’re out there, but it’s kind of difficult to get us all in one place. ๐Ÿ˜€ Generally I’d say we started out as Portal fans, though a good number are “played console/gaming as a kid” too. I’d love better demographic representation, honestly. ๐Ÿ˜€

  29. mrhappy

    Hello, I am Mr. Happy but I also use other names that contain happ because variety is the spice of life. I have been reading PP for years. I love this site! PP is one of my go to pages and a site for which I will proselytize quite vigorously upon meeting someone whom knows not of it. Sometimes I try to make maps though I have not made any for HL2 that are good enough for release yet. If you make maps we might have met on the battlegrid throwing Hammers at each other.

    This is one of my favorite sites on the internet. I don’t use many websites regularly anymore since I am bad at the internet but PP is in my top 4 that I still look at. Without PP I never would have played many mods and without that I doubt I ever would have stuck with trying to use Hammer. I have made TF2 and Portal/2 maps. I hope to participate in a 6×10 contest although I am overwhelmed with something at the moment.

    I am a massive Half-Life nerd. I carry a crowbar at all times and dream of conversing with vast atmospheric intelligence’s. Right now I am wearing a headcrab hat. Now my dog is wearing the headcrab hat. Now my dog is biting the headcrab hat. Now the headcrab hat is biting my dog. Hold on I’ll be right back this isn’t good.

    I have commented/reviewed on a few maps here before so hello to anyone that I have talked to before and hello to everyone that I have not.

    1. Nice to meet you MrHappy. You’ve got some great work in your portfolio. Is it okay if I add Wavelet next week?

      I really hope the other 6×10 themes interest you.

      I’m so happy that my site might have contributed to your continued use of Hammer – things like that make all the hard work worth it.

      1. mrhappy

        Nice to meet you too! Thanks for your kind comment. Absolutely please add Wavelet to the site! I’m afraid I don’t market my work very well, somehow I wasn’t able to put two and two together and realize you might be interested. I will definitely send you any and all future SP work.

        All of the 6×10 themes and previous contests have interested me, it is only other aspects of life and commitment to other ongoing projects and obligations that have stopped me from entering.

  30. My name is Mitten Romney, and I change my Steam username a lot (from Mitten Romney to The Obamatrix: Unreloaded, you get the point.) I like to play Half-Life, since I completed Source. Now I just play lots of Mods.

    I may or may not be contributing to this site, I do have the tools necessary and the Hammer 3.4 set up thanks to a tutorial by HLCRAZY on ModDB. I love to play TF2 some times, but for the most part lots of Brink. Oh, and I’m an Atheist.

    I will be on lots of this site for this time being because I found a bunch of cool mods I want to install. I hope I get something up in time!

    1. Ade

      Hi, Mitten(s)! ๐Ÿ˜€

    2. Well, hello there.

      Welcome to the site. Hope you manage to start making maps or at least review some!

  31. Urby here. I’ve been a fan of Half-Life for as long as I can remember and I picked up Hammer for the first time in 2000. Since then I have worked on countless maps and mods, zero of which have been released. All of that will soon change however. For the past two years I have dedicated a lot of time to a Half-Life mod called ‘the Core” which is gradually approaching its long awaited release.

    When I’m not mapping I’m usually working or gaming. I play a ton of BF3 as well as the usual mods for HL and HL2. I’m also a part of the MOTM (map of the month) review team at TWHL. I also record the occasional video blog when I remember to.

    1. Ade

      Welcome, welcome!
      And on behalf of the BetaTestersCollective, may we offer our services for your future release? ๐Ÿ˜€

    2. Yes, as Ade said, welcome, welcome.

      12 years is a long time to have worked on maps but never released anything.

      Glad to see you hear and I’m sure I speak for everybody when I say we can’t wait for The Core.

      1. Of course, I agree with you 100% there. It is a very long time indeed.

        Sadly, until recently I never really had much interest in multiplayer so everything I worked on was singleplayer. As such, development times were much longer and because I worked alone I often lost interest and cancelled the whole thing.

        I dare say the same thing would have happened with The Core, however after posting media online and getting support from the community, I was able to enlist a couple of guys to help keep me motivated, as well as producing some stunning work themselves.

        I owe them, and of course the fans, a great deal indeed.

        1. Please don’t think I was criticising – just observing.

          It’s interesting what you say about the media response keeping you motivated.

  32. Hiya everyone, I’m Daniel! I’m from South Africa and have been into computers since I was about 6 (2002). I first played a valve game in 2005 (Half-Life) and they have been part of my life since then ๐Ÿ™‚

    I’ve never really gotten into Source modding, but my interest has been renewed by this site! Also, I’m currently working on a game engine of my own and am hoping to get some experience with content creation and mapping using Source so that I can release something with it one day.

    Looking forward to sharing stuff with y’all!

    1. Welcome Daniel.

      Might I suggest participating in my mapping competition to help you get some experience in mod time management?

      1. Thanks for the welcome ๐Ÿ˜€

        I’m planning on entering the 5th contest when it starts ๐Ÿ™‚

  33. Rossi

    I have been with you guys since 1998, I never had time to post any condolence for Jasper RIP, wish you would have played the black mesa release Jasper. Anyway I have tried to keep the same handle “rossi” ever since back at the HANGER 16. I have been away at school to try and build a career for the second half of my life. I played HL last weekend for the first time in 2 years, same as how long it has been since I visited here. Hope to get time to come back soon.

    1. Ade

      Wow, welcome back ๐Ÿ™‚

    2. Yes, absolutely, welcome back. Hopefully, you’ll find some interesting content.

  34. Hello everyones, my name is Nikolas, but you better call me Tosh.

    im from Canada, but my parents are bulgarians, when i came in bulgarian y never speak very well my language, I’m studying English non stop, i just speak Spanish cause i live about 12 years in spain.
    For the first time in my life I’ve tried to play Half Life when I was 9 years and I love this video game, not only for Action, no weapons. But by the story that the game. When i finish Half Life, iยดve play a lots of Mods and i like it so much :D.

    i play Half Life 2 and the episodes, and i begin a play these mods with good work like (Underhell, ect.)

    well, i glad to register this side just for share my view about the mods ๐Ÿ™‚

  35. Hello everybody!

    I am Emnu, a mapper from Finland. I started mapping in 2008 or something, and I remember this site from bashing my “awesome” maps ๐Ÿ˜›

    These are my “awesome” maps:
    http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/escape-from-shalkamaz-half-life-2/
    http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/mall-of-the-zombies-half-life-2-ep2/
    http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/apocalypse-half-life-2-ep2/

    Nowadays I’m known for my popular tf2 map and my horror maps. I decided to register here and maybe I’ll participate some of the contests (If I remember to check in to see when they start :P)

    P.S. Why isn’t this PlanetPhillip anymore?

    1. Hello Emnu and welcome to the site! I just checked your “Awesome” maps. Everybody has to start somewhere and I respect anybody who builds and releases something. The Hell’s Island Horror Map looks pretty good. Will it run in Ep2?

      I hope you do decide to enter the competitions.

      I changed the name to help the site grow and reach a larger audience.

      1. Technically you can play it in EP2, but it has puzzles that can’t be bypassed without having 2 players in there :/

  36. Hi everyone, I’m Tom, FPS-loving gamer and Half-Life enthusiast from Italy.
    I love this website and I deeply respect all the people that made the effort to produce this huge library of Half-Life maps/mods, owner of the site and mappers/modders/reviewers alike.

    I’m very interested in learning some mapping and modding myself, though I’m a complete n00b and in serious need of help. I already started going through the Source SDK documentation, and I found some tutorials here and there even though I don’t have a specific direction, but I do want to try and create some kind of map to begin.

    Does anyone know if there are any specific resources I should be looking for to start?

    1. Hi Tom607, welcome to the site.

      I can’t offer any advice about the mapping, since I don’t map myself – sorry.

    2. Well, I’m in the process of teaching myself level design. The best way to learn is probably by doing. Aim to complete something for a 10 day time limit in order to keep it small fairly small in scope. A lot of the ville map competitions work with this limit and it’s a good way to keep your scope limited to increase chances that you’ll actually get something out.

      If you run into problems the forums at interlopers.net are a great help when you’re stuck on something (search the forums first as it’s probably already been asked), there are also some pretty good tutorials there.
      There are a few worthwhile articles at worldofleveldesign.com as well.

      I would also recommend the betatesterscollective.com as we can test your map and give you advice on how to make it better.

      Finally have a look at vmfs of other mappers there were a bunch released with CityStreetsville so that’s probably a good place to start although they can be quite disorientating if you don’t know what you’re looking at. To that end VMEX is a very useful tool that lets you decompile maps to view them in hammer. Though sometimes the maps don’t decompile right. If you’re doing this bear in mind that it’s OK to learn from this but it’s not OK to directly copy stuff unless you have the creators express permission.

      Hope this helps.

      1. Thank you for all the useful resources, I’ll definitely try to make the most of them.
        I already started looking through some tutorials in interlopers.net, but I’m really at the beginning and I still have to learn how to use most of the tools, so I’ll stick with something simpler and just add up stuff when I feel I can learn something new.

        Unfortunately right now I don’t have the time to spare to create something in a limited set of time, but I’ll try to do that when I’ll get the chance. Thanks again for your suggestions.

    3. JG

      Perhaps we should start by defining a simple direction. Pick an idea you want to do. Maybe it’s some setting in Half-Life 2, or some kind of gameplay scenario you enjoyed. Then, aim to create your own version of that. I find it’s much easier to take that next step, beyond the high-level “This is how you build a room” tutorials, when you have an idea of what you want to aim for. Don’t be afraid to start small either. Things have a way of naturally getting more complicated as they go along. ๐Ÿ™‚

      And once you think you have a grasp on things, get others to look at it, like the BTC or here. I think you’ll find that once you get into the feedback loop, if you enjoy building maps, the enthusiasm will start to grow on itself.

      1. Right now I’m following the “Your First Map” tutorial in the Valve developer community Wiki, just to get acquainted with the tools and the very basics, but I have some kind of idea that I want to try out.

        It should be some kind of “office complex” type of map based on a real office floor, and I already have a (very rough) basic layout for it. I don’t aim for anything particularly original or pretty, just something I can fiddle around with and try stuff out.

        Thank you for your advice, I’ll see if I can produce something in the next few weeks, though I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to mapping apart from the weekends, but I’ll definitely be glad to show it and get some impressions when the time comes.

  37. Stefan Wagner

    I look for a HL2-game : shoot with a Pizza. Can you help me ?

  38. Hey People, I’m Julian, I like mapping and playing games, currently as of April 2015, I’m creating a puzzle mod for Half Life 2 and a map for RaisingTheBarVille, I’ve played Half Life 2 in 2010 and absolutely loved it, from that point on, I started mapping.

  39. Hi
    My name is brian ( aka brianthesnail ) and ive been using both planetphillip and runthinkshootlive for many years … and i came across the site when looking for single player hl2 mods and maps ……
    apart from half life 2 i also enjoy other first person shooters especially older titles like “chaser” and “alpha prime” and im also one of the only guys in the world who actually likes the game “you are empty” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbRbBF1b3Sw ) …. the reason for this is the way the developers “1c company” went out their way to make the game look crazy …..
    i also build pc,s for freinds and mates and recently built a core i7 based pc with twin “msi HD7950,s” in crossfire …. along with 16gb of ddr3 ram and a 256gb samsung ssd (550mb read ) and 2tb of storage it goes like a rocket …. ( images : http://forums.aria.co.uk/showthread.php/135970-HD7950-crossfire-nearly-there-! ) ……
    to finish i would like to thank phillip for the work he has put in to make this site what it is today …… granted there are other sites were you can download sp half life maps and mods but none are as user freindly as this … so thanks phillip … its much appreciated
    cheers and peace !

  40. Hey all, I’m Red (which is short for my actual name), I’m an English teacher, living and working in Malta.

    I don’t map, just play, although I’d like to maybe have a crack at mapping sometime.

    I was brought up (so to speak) on Goldeneye 007, then PS2, took a long break from gaming and have only really discovered the joys of PC gaming in the last few years, so I’m loving the work of the modding and mapping community, it’s been a revelation.

    1. Welcome Red. Have you been lurking or are completely new here? I see you just reviewed G-String. Did you know that the author is working on version 2 and has a slight hope that it could be released later this year? If the modding community is new to you, you have many, many hours of gaming in from to of you.

      BTW, I’m an English teacher too.

      1. Thanks Phillip. Yes I’ve been lurking for a little bit, I downloaded and played Spherical Nightmares and Calamity from this site before I signed up, I might post reviews of those soon. Yes, I do know about G String Version 2, I’ve seen the preview video on ModDB, I’m really excited for it.

    2. JG

      Good old Goldeneye.

      I mean, yeah, it’s aged terribly. But for its time… heck, even now when you understand the technical limitations it had to deal with… it’s pretty impressive. Read up on WIkipedia about the hardware shortcomings of the Nintendo 64 and you’ll rack your brain trying to figure out how Goldeneye worked at all, let alone Perfect Dark: the console’s texture cache was only 4 KB.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_programming_characteristics

      1. Yes, I’ve read a lot about Goldeneye and Perfect Dark’s developments, those guys were miracle workers (the TimeSplitters games they made after leaving Rare where great as well), although they’re dated they’re still the pinnacle of console shooters for me, just a shame about the stupid N64 controller.

  41. asterixer

    Hi My name is asterixer,
    Im working as an sys admin for Linux. I try to play all mods under linux. if i put a comment here the reviews i post is only a comment on if the mod is running and how.
    My Game Machine: Core i5, 12gb ram, Suse 13.1 amd64

    1. Welcome asterixer. We are pretty much a Windows community but it’s always good to know whether mods run under other systems. Perhaps in the future I could create a TAG or custom field related to Linux and MAC.

    2. JG

      Out of curiosity, when you run mods under Linux, do you run them in the native HL2 and Steam clients, or the Windows versions through Wine? Last year, when I was messing around with Linux Mint, I actually felt that the Wine method worked better.

      Also, Hammer sort of works in Wine. You can build maps, browse models, compile, etc. The only thing – and it was rather annoying – is that the viewports didn’t update properly. So, if you moved a brush in one of them, the change wasn’t reflected in the others until you hovered the mouse over each one.

      It’s taken a long time, but Wine is a real beast of a program these days. I played through all of Borderlands 1, in online co-op no less, using Wine. And with Steam voice chat! While I had to disable some graphical features for performance, the fact that this worked as well as it did was amazing to me.

      I’ve no doubt that, if I didn’t have Windows for some reason, Mint would be an absolutely viable alternative. As someone who has dabbled on-and-off in Linux since 2000, my experience with Mint was the first time I walked away completely impressed.

      1. asterixer

        I run all mods under Linux directly with the Linux Version of HL2, Ep1, Ep2. That’s the reason some ports doesn’t work other without problems. If there are some modifications done to client or server DLLs then this will not work for Linux.

  42. Hello, everyone!

    My name is ZikShadow, been playing and modding HL since i was in my elementary school days.

    My Valve gaming history is rather garbled, starting with CS, Redemption retail, Wanted Retail, HL2, HL1 “The Escape” (From someone’s personal website, horrible map), DavSub, numerous custom HL1 maps, EP1, finally actual Valve’s HL1, EP2.

    I’d rather not talk about it.

    I preferred modding for GoldSource than Source, i don’t know, it’s easier.

    I’ve been on PlanetPhillip for a while, possibly during it’s early years, when it actually hosts maps other than HLs, i even recalled downloading an RTCW map from here back then, decided to join today because i’m late like that.

    The only mapping experience i had is mapping for Cry of Fear, creating maps such as :

    Second Community Collab Chapter 9 : Psycho
    Halloween Community Collab Chapter 5 : Psycho Continuation
    http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-scrolls-of-shaimoon-20-full-version/
    http://www.moddb.com/mods/nostalgia

    I have this urge to mod practically anything when i can, even if it’s simply a sound or graphical change, examples such as :

    http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-gate/addons/the-gate-re-modded
    (Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRCnISXhcE )

    http://www.moddb.com/mods/tour-of-duty-redux
    http://www.moddb.com/members/zikshadow/blogs/the-stalin-subway-mod

    I have this entire folder of mods that i have practically tore apart and reshape, but of course, with my weak arse internet, that is currently not possible, perhaps when i have the speed.

    That’s all i guess.

  43. Name’s Larry.

    I’m an older guy from GA who used to be an officer in the U.S. Army. Now that I’m retired and my daughter is adult and out of the house, I started gaming. I mostly play FPS but I also like point-and-click games, puzzle games and alternative games (like The Stanley Parable). From time to time I also play strategy games and racing games but those not so much.

    I started playing HL mods quite late and now with the internet around it’s really easy to get my hands on most of them. And since I’m a HL 1 fan, I thought “Why not?”. So now I play HLSP mods a lot – my Steam screenshot database speaks for itself. I’ve been watching this site for a while and today I finally decided to register.

    Anyway, nice to meet y’all. Make sure to leave me a message if you want to talk.

    1. Howdy Larry, welcome to the site.

      Where’s GA?

      As a retired Army guy do you enjoy the gritty realistic FPSs? I could never get into them myself as I much prefer SCI-Fi stuff.

      Please tell us more about the minor texture hacks you do.

      1. JG

        Probably the state of Georgia? ๐Ÿ˜‰

        1. Yeah, probably and I could have easily looked it up, but I wanted to engage him.

      2. Yup, it’s Georgia.

        Well, I treat FPS games like a work of fiction. I mean, nothing can describe those tough situations you sometimes find yourself in, really. Better not think about it. I like both FPS and sci-fi genres though.

        About those hacks: I use Milkshape and my hacks usually just consist of slapping one model’s head onto other model’s body. Then I add custom textures and what I get is something new. I managed to make a “military stalker” (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: SoC) recreation using this method.

    2. Unq

      Welcome, Larry. Good to have another Half-Life 1 lover around. Although your avatar is tempting me to smash his face in.

      What are your favorites from the HL1 mods you’ve played? The Hall of Fame is always a good place to get ideas for what to play next.

      1. Heh, I’ve got a few things in common with that guy in my avatar. More than a few actually.

        I’ve already played almost every SP mod for HL1 I found. It’s just that I registered here kinda late and thought I might want to write a thing or two about them as a review. In order to do that I’ll have to replay them again though.

        I really dunno which mods are my favorite. To be honest, I like pretty much every second mod/map I try. I’m not very picky. There aren’t even any specific requirements for a mod, so I end up trying everything. I’d say I’ve got a soft spot for Black Mesa themed mods. You know, new points of view.
        I like playing bad mods too cause that’s usually quite educational as you can see all the mistakes done by the author and, let’s not lie, even have a laugh at some decisions like “new textures” made in paint or author’s face slapped onto NPC.

        These are just some examples of my favorites:
        Absolute Redemption, Afraid of Monsters, Azure Sheep, Brave Brain, Half-Life Visitors, Half-Quake Amen, Ispitatel 4, Issues, Life’s End, Paranoia, Poke646, Portrait of Freeman, Reissues, Survive in Catacombs, Sweet Half-Life, They Hunger, Times of Troubles, Todesangst, USS Darkstar, Vlokam 2

  44. Hello! I played a lot of HLSP up until a few years ago, and now I’m going back to play the classics, and newer releases. I pretty much scourged TenFour and Hangar16 back then. Now doing the same with RTSL. Fantastic to have a dedicated resource to the original Half-Life – and know I’m not the only nostalgic.

    1. Welcome Cardinal. What made you stop a few years ago? You must be enjoying all the new (new to RTSL anyway) HL1 maps and mods I have been adding lately.

      1. I guess just having played through most of the mods, and with few new releases my attention drifted elsewhere. Most importantly – Team Fortress 2. I’ve been meaning to join the planetphillip community for a while, and with the relaunch I had no choice ๐Ÿ™‚

  45. Hi, I am Peter Brev, I am a level designer for the Source Engine since 2004.

    I am currently working on a new HL2DM map called dm_hydro: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=434894382
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=434894305 (WIP)

    I have been playing the Half-Life games since I am 5 (I am 18). I played many HL1-HL2 mods too.

    I am really happy to be on this site because I feel like we have a family here and we can share our thoughts without any hassle.

    I am looking forward to some new challenges because I just love mapping ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. Welcome Peter. Good luck with the DM map, I love dams.

      We are a family.

      Just a quick note, for really long mods, the review has to be at least a few paragraphs before you can use a Rec. image.

  46. Been lurking for a long long time. I sure appreciate this site!

    1. Hello turbochris. Thanks for making the jump from lurking to commenter. Do you play maps and mods for all games or just one or two?

      What’s the one thing you would change about the site?

  47. Hi, i’m Bitl, and I have been modding the Source Engine ever since 2010. I’m mainly a coder, and I have worked on mods like Half-Life 2 Beta Deathmatch, and my 2 upcoming projects, FIREFIGHT RELOADED and SURVIVOR (SURVIVOR being a remake of Half-Life 2 Survivor v2.0’s Battle Mode). I plan on hosting some of my mods here later.

    Haven’t really came to this site much, but since I registered I hope to have a pretty fun time here!

    1. Hi Bitl, welcome to the site. What’s your favourite Source SP Mod?

      1. Black Mesa and Missing Information

  48. God morgon! I am Superlundh, or as my Steam name may say, Avast: Magical Biohazard. I have great intrest when it comes to mapping and level design. Since I am rather young (about 16) and have not had much experience with mapping, I still have a lot to learn (coding for example).

    I’ve been playing people’s maps from this site before and decided to get an account for my own uploads. As time goes on, my creations will most likely improve in quality.

    alsoigottagetagripwiththickskinifyouknowwhati’msayin’

  49. Oh gosh, most of the folks on this page seem to have some pretty impressive backgrounds and qualifications regarding the Source/GoldSrc community. I’m Faith, I just play video games.

    I’ve been slowly getting through mods for years, since I was much younger. I’m pretty sure that the first mods I ever played (as far as I can remember) were Combine Destiny and Antlion Troopers Deuce (something I could never make much progress in). Since then, I’ve slowly played through the more popular, polished, and classic Source mods that I’ve spotted on Moddb.
    I only recently found Run Think Shoot Live, and it’s given me a lot more exposure to mods and maps I’d personally consider more obscure, which I’ve definitely appreciated.

    Uhh, as far as personal quirks regarding Source mods go, I think I should definitely mention that I suck when it comes to tension and the possibility of scary stuff. I have a pretty unfortunate mental list of mods I’ve been unable to finish because I couldn’t keep going, though I’ve managed to knock through a few, like Dissolution, and really enjoyed the rest of the experience. I don’t figure I’ll ever finish Underhell, of course.

    Sadly, I haven’t played a single GoldSrc mod or map; I simply haven’t bothered to find my old Half-Life disc, but maybe I’ll get around to it sometime soon.

    I’m obviously just putting down whatever comes to mind, but, whatever;
    Heya!

    1. Welcome to the site, Faith, glad you decided to introduce yourself. Don’t feel bad about not having an impressive background as most of us don’t. I’ve dabled in Hammer (the editor for making the maps) but have nothing to my name and it’s quite possible you’ve played more than I have.

      The main thing is that you play and continue to look for interesting releases.

      I’m not into scary mods either, so we definitely have that in common.

      What would you say your favourite mods are from the Hall of Fame?

      Oh, and I hope you get around to looking for that Half-Life disc because with the Classic of the Mod event running, you could be having some serious mod fun.

      1. Ooh, there’re a lot of personal favorites of mine in the Hall of Fame. I loved Mistake of Pythagoras, CSS SCI-FI 3: Hardwired (RIP), Research & Development, Mission Improbable, and Human Error, all for fairly different reasons.

  50. Hi, Geoff here, played half-life when it came out in 98..still playing mods and maps now…may it never end! cheers all.

    1. Welcome to the site Geoff. I wonder how many people who played Half-Life back in 98 are still playing the game and its mods?

  51. Hello im Rafael, and i like play HL2 mods, hope i found some! thanks for the web page it is nice.

    1. Hi Rafael, welcome to the site. What are your favourite mods?

  52. Hello ! I am big half life fan ( maybe hardcore fanboy ) and I enjoy playing good maps and drawing .

    1. Hello melc311, welcome to the site. Do you draw Half-Life stuff?

      1. Yes I do draw half life stuff . I like to draw concept levels to pass the time but I never got to making a map because I am setting my standards too high and I end up scraping it .

        1. Do you have any links for us to see?

          1. Sadly no because I usually draw on scrap paper and I usually loose them . Actually I ll try to search for some of them :p

  53. Hello, I’m Gabriel and I am a big fan of the Half-Life series.
    I start to make half-life maps since 2008 i think, but i never make a full half-life mod until i decided to make Prototype 98, not a great mod but i hope for a better one.
    I also have trouble with english.. ^_^ but i’m trying to learn it.
    BTW, I’m glad to see people still playing half-life mods.

    1. Hello Gabriel, welcome to the site. Protoype 98 was quite good, you should be pleased with yourself. Don’t worry about yopur English. What are your favourite mods?

  54. BABYAVERY

    Hey, I’m Spencer. I’m a huge fan of the Half Life series, in fact I just finished Half Life 2 for the 4th time (though I have met people who have played it 10+ times). The story, characters and everything are just amazing. I enjoy drawing stuff too, mostly from Half Life, also I kinda wish i had joined this site a while ago, I’ve always wanted to get in touch with more of the HL community.

    1. Hi Spencer. Yeah, 4 times isn’t really that many. Perhaps the new guide should be: if you haven’t played Half-Life at least once every couple of years then you aren’t really a fan. Just kidding. Don’t worry about taking a while to join, you are here now. How about a link to some of your HL drawings?

  55. Yo, I’m Alex. I come from Cardiff in Wales, I really like Half-Life and the series, I’ve being trying to get into mapping for a while now but I’ve never really made it to far as I’d always scrap something when I started to make it. I think the only map I’ve ever released was on the recent shitty maps night on Interlopers.net. I hope that I can motivate myself enough to start mapping again, I enjoy seeing all of these challenges that happen! I also enjoy exploring abandoned buildings though, I’ve seen most of them in my area since we have so little, I think I still have a imgur gallery of some of them somewhere, I’m also planning on buying a camera to continue making short films as I found that I enjoyed them from my media college course, I’m unsure when I can actually upload it to youtube though. I’m also planning on taking Game Art for a University Course so I gather I’ll learn a bunch through that, too. ๐Ÿ˜€

    I think my favourite multiplayer mod was the first Zombie Master, which I racked up so many hours on. I really like Neotokyo and singleplayer-wise I enjoyed Black MEsa and Transmissions: Element 120.

    1. Hi Alex,

      Welcome to the site. My family on my mother’s side are from Wales and I have visited Cardiff many times – I like it a lot. Abandoned buildings are fascinating, although I never really done it, if you don’t count breaking into empty factories as a kid!

      Sounds like you have lots of plans, which is great. I hope the Game Art course works out for you.

    2. Hi Phillip, it’s Spencer. I had to make a new account, I couldn’t get into my other one. But as you asked, here is one of my HL drawings. In fact, I think its one of the first drawings I did digitally. Also, I have a question: I read that my account will automatically be deleted if I don’t comment within 3 days of creating the account. Does this one count?

      1. Hi Spencer.

        It looks like a link to one of your drawings is missing from your comment.

        Yes, that comment will ensure your account is not deleted.

  56. Hello! My name is Oscar/Superlundh/Avast: Magical Biohazard. I am a 16-year old male Swede with great interest in source mapping and modding (altough I still suck at it). My focus mainly lies on Single-Player mapping. Big fan of Half-Life and its mods, as well as of TF2, Hotline Miami, Payday 2, Portal, and so forth. I hope my content will be appreciated ๐Ÿ™‚

    My Steam Account: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198049598800

    1. Welcome Superlundh. Glad to hear your focus lies in SP rather tham MP, at least as far as mapping is concerned. I just had a look at your Steam Profile: 907 hours of TF2. I wonder if there is a special reward for gatting to 1000?!

      1. Heh, wish there was. Like a special item or something.

        Now we just got conga and skins.

  57. Hi, I’m Skeezix and I’ve been a lurker on RTSL for a long time. I live in the United States in a sleepy Midwestern town.

    I’ve owned a computer of one kind or another since I was 13, which is saying something considering I’m, as of this writing, old.

    I came by Half-Life in a roundabout way. My CD copy was given to a friend of mine by a work acquaintance who said he was “done with it”. My friend couldn’t get it to run on his computer and he mostly just liked racing games, so my friend gave it to me.

    That was around the turn of the century, and I haven’t been “done with it”, yet.

    I always wished there would be a Half-Life movie, but then they made one and due to an apparent clerical error, it was called Resident Evil.

    I have a cat. His name is Tiger. I think that’s the default name for cats and since he was here when I moved in, I just went with that. Since he’s a cat, he thinks the house is his, and he may have a point, what with being here first and all. He’s a big cat, so I’ve considered renaming him Cat Food Vacuum but I think he has delicate sensibilities.

    My other interests include classic Sci Fi, MST3K, Marvel movies, creative writing, photography, and flashlights.

    Anyway, I thought I’d lurked long enough.

    P.S.

    You can call me Zix.

    Mom does.

    1. Welcome Zix. If your mom calls you Zix then so shall I. I doubt I’ll ever be “done with” Half-Life, CD or no. Tiger probably thinks of you as just another interloper (see what I did there?) and as you say thinks he owns the place, which in a way he does.

      Flaslights is unusual hobby – care to enlighten us (OMG, I am on a roll!)

      1. Ah, Phillip, you punny fellow! And I’ve not searched the site, but I wonder if your name isn’t a pseudonym, since it’s the same as a certain character from a classic movie. Not to mention the name of the movie but it’s set in the city of Casablanca. If that’s really your name, I’m so envious, because I got stuck with Skeezix.

        Yeah, mom calls me Zix. My middle name is Tarantula.

        (I suspect she was hoping for a girl.)

        Anyway, you really don’t want to get a flashlight nerd started. Yes, there’s more than just me. We collect them, we mod them, we rate them, we spend absurd amounts of money on batteries. And on flashlights.

        I didn’t really mean to start collecting them. I was trying to think of something that I could buy to commemorate the turn of the century, and with Y2K hysteria running high, I thought a flashlight would be a good idea (not that I suspected for a minute that the computers actually were going to crash at 12:01 on Y2K, nosir, not me, buddy!). It was a nice shiny 3 D cell Craftsman with an aluminum tube and adjustable beam. (And I didn’t buy it because I was concerned that the lights would go out. Nope.) Anyway, after that I started noticing flashlights so when the really neat LED lights came on the market I got me one of those. And as they got smaller and brighter I kept finding new, interesting designs, and then suddenly I had a lot of flashlights.

        Some flashlights cost well over a hundred bucks and are dazzlingly, blindingly painfully bright.

        (I just realized that one of the reasons why I like Half Life so much is that nifty self-recharging flashlight.)

        1. No, my actual real name is Phillip Marlowe, but mine has two Ls, whereas the private dick has one.

          So, in your part of the world girls are name after poisonous spiders?

          I’m slowly becoming and EDC man, so talk of flashlights doesn’t scare me off. I only have a few rechargeable ones around the house, in the car and in my daily shoulder bag, oh and one right by the bed. What’s your favourite?

          1. And I just realized that Marlowe wasn’t in Casablanca. Bogie’s character in Casablanca was named Rick. Sorry Bogie!

            A favorite is hard to choose, and I have some real mutants in my collection. But here’s one that I wanna get–a Fenix HP25 which looks very flexible and very sexy and would serve my plan to move to only AA battery lights for EDC.

            Since you’re sorta into flashlights too, I’ll mention that being a flashlight collector definitely has a practical side. I live in tornado territory, and having a few dependable, rugged flashlights for myself and for others has come in mighty handy.

  58. Hello, I’m James, I live in Scotland, work in IT, and I am currently making Half-Life Echoes, which I hope will appear on these pages one day!

    I just want to say thank you to everyone who has contributed, or has an interest, in Half-Life modding. Half-Life is still my favourite game, and I love to see it still has such an active community!

    Not long after Half-Life blew me out of my chair for the first time way back in 1998, I was astonished at the variety and imagination of the custom maps and mods coming out for it, all being released at an incredible rate.

    I am glad to see that people still are still creating, and preserving all of this content, large or small.

    I attempted to try out mapping myself not long after the game had been released…

    http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/operation-randomosity/

    A half-baked mini map based for a competition that never went ahead.

    Hopefully, my next attempt (after almost 15 years) will do this great game justice!

    http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes

    Although I am still following the good old Black Mesa storyline, I hope to surprise people still, and perhaps bridge a few links to later instalments in the series…

    See you in the test chamber!

    1. Welcome to the site James.

      I’m looking forward to Echoes and as you say hope it will appear someday (soon!). Do you map for other engines?

      1. I am glad you are looking forward to it!

        I have never tried modding for any other engine, or game for that matter. I do not have any background in art or design, and so the limitations of the GoldSrc engine really work in my favour.

        Once Echoes is finished, I may create a mini-mod for Half-Life 1 again, but I doubt I will try something on Source, as the scope for that engine is much larger.

    2. Unq

      Yes definitely looking forward to Echoes, I had but a taste last year when I tested it for you. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Good to see someone from the old Valve ERC days too!

  59. Supercapo999

    Hello everyone, my name is Supercapo999 and I absolutely love Hฮปlf-Life mods, I even have a whole series dedicated to them on my channel and it’s been running for 7 years now ๐Ÿ˜€

    Anyway, someone told me about this site and I thought it was amazing, I can find lots of good quality material to work with here and hopefully I’ll get to know some modders and mappers along the way

    I think that’s all, I just love this website, too bad I didn’t find it sooner

    1. Zekiran

      Yay! Welcome! It really is an amazing place, with all the single-player goodness you’ll ever need. Plenty of great mods with excellent reviews and hints if you need them.

    2. Hi Supercapo999, welcome to the site. I’m sure you will find plenty of mods to use for your channel.

  60. Pleasure to meet you guys, name’s Bastion. and maps are the only thing I like to do with my time.

    Currently I hold three competitive count strike maps under my belt as well as a few other maps for community gamemodes.
    I am a freelance mapper and currently have two jobs that have been giving me funding to improve my computer in order to be more efficient and comfortable with my creations.

    Half-Life is one of my favourite games and is a delight to map for, I still have a old bsp file of one of my earlier attempts at a proper level, turned out well in my opinion.

    See you soon, I’ll make sure to play as many mods as I can get my hands on.

    1. Welcome to the site Bastion. Maybe you’ll enter one of the mapping challenges soon. Is that BSP you mention, single player? If it is, would you like it released?

      1. Think I will bring it up, its SP EP2 map so it should fit in ๐Ÿ™‚

  61. hello my name is Zachary and if I have to be honest im only 12 years old and I have only been playing hl2 and hl1 for about 2-3 years now. My dream is to make at least a decent hl2 map. Im working on it right now actually but it’s so confusing ๐Ÿ™

    1. Hello Zachary, welcome to the site. You could well be the youngest member here. Good luck with your map. I won’t bore you with too much advice, but try to keep it small but of high quality.

  62. Hia, my names Badhamknibbs. I’ve been doing mapping for about 2 years, but never really finished and released anything decent. I have a couple of one-off maps in the steam workshop, and made some community-exclusive maps for some communities I’m in.

    I’ll probably join into a few mapping contests here and there, and hopefully I’ll get somewhere with mapping. Right now I just do it in my off-time and experiment with different ideas.

    That’s just about it for me, not much else to say, and hopefully I have a warm welcome here.

    1. Zekiran

      Yay I hope that you do find the time to enter! Always love seeing new folks join in.

    2. Welcome to the site Badhamknibbs. That’s an interesting name, how did you create it? Are your maps SP? Looking forward to playing your maps, as Zekiran said, it’s always nice to have new members, especially if they are content creators.

      1. I got the name through a random name generator, I ran it a couple times, swapped out stuff and eventually ended up with this. Most of my maps so far have been SP, My most popular one being the FNAF map I helped Keithy with on the Workshop.

        I was hoping to get into the horror mapping contest because I had some pretty good scare ideas, but currently I’m swamped with tasks and I might not be able to get it in within the deadline.

        Also, as a general sidenote because I didn’t mention in the main post, but my favourite level designs include either water or very tall heights (Citadel and the likes).

        1. Have you made any HL-related SP stuff?

          1. Currently, all of my maps have been made for ZS (A gmod gamemode, 40+ multiplayer). I’m planning to do some more SP stuff since I’ve gotten here.

            I’m personally a bit overwhelmed by this forum layout (It’s much different compared to most forums I’ve used), but I should manage.

            1. Iโ€™m personally a bit overwhelmed by this forum layout (Itโ€™s much different compared to most forums Iโ€™ve used), but I should manage.

              It’s a standard blog format, which if you are used to forums (which this site isn’t) it can seem strange.

  63. Uh, hi! Figured I should start somewhere.

    I’m Mythos, long-time Half-Life fan and member of a few related communities over the years. I own a “site” (well, it’s barely a site) called Metrocop, where I host a bunch of comics created using the Source engine, some of which may be familiar if you were around sites such as PHWOnline back in the mid-00’s.

    I’m perhaps best known for a series of comics called The Adventures of Hercule Cubbage, an action-adventure story (I refuse to call it a comedy as it’s not exactly written to be hilarious) about the son of Odessa Cubbage you never knew about, unless you’ve read the comic already, in which case let me thank you for that. It even got referenced at Kotaku once on a veeeery slow news days, which were my 15 minutes of e-fame and I will not let anyone forget about it, ever.

    In any case, the closest I’ve gotten to modding is doing reskinning/’hexxing’ of models for use in comics, but I felt like it was time to join the site at last as a member of the community. So, yeah, hi! Thanks for letting me in, it’s safer here.

  64. Hello everyone, nameโ€™s NintendoOcho. Long time Half_life fan and absolutely love playing random mods and maps.
    I heard about this site on the Half-Life subreddit quite a while ago, and I finally decided to stop by and join on in! Iโ€™m hopping to become part of this community, so hereโ€™s to you all!

    1. Zekiran

      Oh my if you’re just getting around to THIS site… you’re in for a treat. ๐Ÿ˜€ So many mods and maps. And the Villes. The mapping competitions are wonderful showcases for the talented modders around here. Welcome!

    2. Hello. Welcome to the site. As Zekiran says, You are in for a treat. There is a lot of great stuff here. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

  65. Hey guys, I’m Weperlol and I’ve been lurking around this website for a while now and it’s about time I start interacting with you beautiful people ๐Ÿ˜€ .

    I’m 14 but I started playing like a 19’s kid I guess XD I started with a nintendo and so forth.

    Half life series is like a gift from the gods to me. (Lord Gaben that is.) and I am slowly learning about making goldsourc maps and perhaps one day I will make my own mod ๐Ÿ˜€

    1. Welcome Weperlol. Thank you for calling us beautiful. Maybe not on the outside but we all are on the inside. Well, all except Breen. That guys is evil – selling the Earth out like that.

      Good luck with your mod making, hopefully one day we can feature a release on this site.

  66. Hi, I’m Seth.

    I’ve been playing HL mods for only a short time, but since I realized computer game modding was even possible a couple of years ago, I’ve developed a love for mapping, texturing, sound design and most other things that go into making a map. I don’t think I have the creative ability to actually make a map, but I’d like to think I have some technical skill with the amount of time I’ve spent reading/watching tutorials and messing about in Hammer. Despite my lack of creativity, I have a tremendous affinity for pretty and fun maps, whether they be in Half-Life or any other modifiable game, like TF2, the Counter-Strike series, Insurgency, and Quake to name a few.

    I’ve known about and downloaded mods from this site for awhile, but my friend Corvatile recently submitted a map to the HalloweenVilleTwo contest so I finally registered to review his and the rest of the entries. I’ll probably go on a reviewing frenzy in the next few days and go through as many old mapping challenges and mods as I can. After all, playing maps objectively is one of the best ways to improve as a mapper. Authors can’t be good authors without reading a lot; the same is true for mappers.

    Check out my YouTube channel, I’ve recorded a few mods without commentary if there aren’t already enough of those.

    https://youtube.com/channel/UCHleZN3moybxzu349IaWRFw?

    1. Unq

      After all, playing maps objectively is one of the best ways to improve as a mapper. Authors canโ€™t be good authors without reading a lot; the same is true for mappers.

      I agree wholeheartedly. Welcome to the site!

    2. Hi Seth, sorry it took me nearly four months to welcome you. I must have missed your post as I have replied to others.

      Anyway, hope you enjoy the content and let me know if you have any questions.

  67. I guess I should start by saying… hi?

    How did I get here?
    I was looking at the mods Synergy supported and one of the mods was on RunThinkShootLive. I downloaded the mod, played through it, and when I came back to close the tab, a screenshot of “Truss” from VerticalVilleTwo caught my eye. So I decided to click on it and see what it was about. I played through the contest entries and decided to have a look around the site.

    Who am I?
    I’m Niker107. I like playing Half-Life 2 Roleplay in Garry’s Mod, making 2D games and maps for the Source engine. I’ve been mapping for a few years (I honestly don’t know how much) and I managed to gather quite a lot of experience. I don’t think I have any finished projects, though. I always make test maps and concepts that drive me to do something else instead. It doesn’t mean I can’t finish anything, but I never get around to doing it unless I really need to. I enjoy mapping, but the internet seems to just have tutorials from 2008 and long-forgotten forums. So, naturally, I am quite happy that I found RTSL. This is, at least, a bigger community than I managed to find so far. I’m mostly attracted to the mapping challenges, not to win, but just to get told to make something interesting and get given a deadline for it. I hope to participate in some. I also like knowing that there is now some place where I can show any work I do, since before it seemed to me that the only way to show your maps would be to make a mod on Steam, which probably wouldn’t even make it past Greenlight (seriously, how do you get greenlit in that system?).

    Hopefully, the community here will accept me and I might post stuff I do in the future, as well as give reviews for mods I can find.

    PS. I am actually sort of disappointed that I didn’t find this site earlier. I’d have loved to participate in the mapping challenges since a few months ago.

    1. Welcome to the site Niker107.

      I’m glad to hear you like the mapping challenges and hope you enter at least one. While you are waiting, why not select on of the previous challenges and make something in the same time frame as the original?

  68. Greetings RTSL community! My name is Alex and I’m the guy who spent ~4 years in hammer. I’m fan of Half-Life universe and sometimes trying to work with it (mostly with Portal so far). I’ve released some texture packs and E3 recreations for Portal and Portal 2, helped with P2 “Cosmogony” mappack and currently trying to get into HL2 mapping. I hope I will become valuable user here one day.

    1. Hi Alex, welcome to the site.

      I really enjoyed both Portals but found too many of the mods too hard to finished, so I stop playing them.

      Hope to see an SP HL2 map from you eventually.

  69. Trolldozer

    Heyo everyone! I am Trolldozer, and before you jump into conclusions about my name, let me tell you one simple thing: I do not actually troll. I honestly just LOVE watching others rage and troll, and I just love memes. Wouldn’t like to call myself Lord of Le Memes though, as that sounds too predictable. My first game was Worms 3D, a turn-based shooter 3D platformer by Team17. I soon got interested into Half-Life after playing the Left 4 Dead 2 demo and the Orange Box demo (which all the demo contained was the Half-Life 2: Episode 1 or 2) on the XBOX 360.

    I am that kind of guy who usually just wants to be cool with everyone but also not wanting to be involved in most serious situations about depression or stuff like that (I fear that I might be a terrible support). I am really just a gamer, though I am in the process in trying to start a Youtube Channel. I am planning on deleting my Youtube Channel to create a new one (hard work for nothing, though I might create my channel first and get everything onto that channel before deleting my old channel, so it will be like a fresh start on a preset). Though I do not want to mention my old channel as I think that will technically count as making a link, and I need permission to do that, so don’t ask. Anyways, I look forward to meet others, and be part of this community.

    Edit: I am dearly sorry if this counts as spamming, but I did not know I wasn’t logged in, and will log in to my account. If anyone can, remove this, as I am reposting the same message but with my account instead of an anonymous account.
    Edit (2): I need help. XD I have no idea why but the links to confirm my account just takes me to the same link where it says my confirmation link is invalid all the time.

    1. Welcome to the site. Don’t worry about your name, I’m not a planet either.

      Are you a big fan of mods or mostly games?

      I have emailed you regarding your registration.

      1. I’m quite a fan of both, though it’s hard to look for mods. And thank you so much for helping me out, I was a bit confused.

  70. im new here,but ive visited this site so many times when it was planetphillip. im glad to be apart of this community and wish the best for all the modders to make the best they can make,cheers!

    1. Welcome BlazerZX, glad to hear you keep coming back.

      Do you mod or just play?

  71. Jeroen

    Hello!

    I am from the Netherlands. I’ve been a Half-life fan from the beginning. I played all the games from the beginning to the end at least 5 times. So now I found some beautiful mods to play. The guys who make these mods did a really great job!

    Gr Jeroen

    1. Jeroen, welcome to the site. How long after the release of the game did you play it?

  72. Greetings, RTSL! I join the likes of other Half-Life fans and I’ve been doing mappin with my friend for the last two years, working on a project, which was just finished! I’m hoping to upload it soon and get some feedback on it after many many hours of work.

    I play a lot of games other than the HL-series, but Half-Life will always be the dearest to me, because they were the ones that introduced me to the world of PC gaming with my dad. Now that my dad doesn’t play games anymore (family takes time) I hope to still keep on playing until my old days.

    1. Hello iRocket, welcome to the site. So sorry to here your dad doesn’t have time for gaming. Have you shown him your work? I’ll be posting it tomorrow here on RTSL.

      1. He has actually played and enjoyed this thing we’ve been working on! It was fun seeing old Half-Life habits coming from the old man’s fingers. We sometimes play some Mario games on the Wii U, but otherwise work, relationships and otherwise trying to make a living takes his time.

  73. Hello everyone at RTSL, I’m FRAG!

    Been visiting the site on and off for a few years, always wondered why I never joined so here I am!

    I’m currently a level designer for Operation Black Mesa, I like mapping a lot but after many years of my head in an editor I’ve started some courses to expand my skillset into 3D modelling & C++.

    I love Half-Life, it’s my first love and still is, even if the wife can’t accept that but she’s accepted the fact that our daughter gets ever closer to learning about it, and that day will come.

    Anyway, love the stuff you do here!

    1. Hi Frag! Welcome to the site. I’ve seen your work and love it. I will feature it on the RTSL Tumblr and FB page early next year. Let’s start a new project. Instead of “Take your Daughter to Work Day”, let’s create “Teach Your Daughter Hammer”. What’ya say?

      1. Hey!

        Very happy your enjoying the media, would be awesome to see it featured ๐Ÿ˜€

        I think you’re on to something there with that “teach your daughter hammer” maybe an idea for a future feature ๐Ÿ˜‰

  74. Hi, I’m Newgoods! I’ve done some Portal 1 mapping in the past (even though I didn’t release anything) and I’m looking to move into HL2 mapping to get a bit of practice in. There’s nothing I love more than good lighting, pretty level geometry and proper use of space, so that’s what I mostly focus on. (Currently in an open relation ship with toolsblocklight and env_projectedtexture. :P)

    1. Welcome to RTSL Newgoods. Glad to hear you are looking to move into HL2. Hopefully, you can enter one of the upcoming mapping challenges.

  75. Hey there!

    So, I’ve been playing games since I was a kid, there hasn’t really been any one point in time where I just got into games.
    It’s just been as natural to me as watching TV is for most people.

    Naturally I developed an interest in how games are made, both the technical side and the artistic.
    Most of my time growing up I’ve spent learning about these things, which branched my interests and made me learn other things not strictly related to the field of games, like filmmaking.

    Other than programming, level design, 3D modelling, animations, and other such things, I’ve also accumulated skills in cinematography, editing, visual effects, motion graphics, audio engineering, etc.
    I’m constantly trying to apply everything I’ve learned to my own projects, and continue learning from that.

    Unfortunately most of my projects never go public, they’re mostly shown to friends and family.
    Mostly because I don’t deem them to be good enough to be put up for display.
    Any good game or film requires a lot of time, thought, and resources to be put together well enough.
    Time happens to be one of those things that come in short supply, so I’ve never been able to get a foot in the door and prove my skills on a professional level.

    I’ve dabbled in everything from writing my own engines, AS3 and Flash, to Unreal engine 3 and 4.
    Even had some short films on display in film festivals.
    Nothing ever came of these things though.

    I’ve been to this site before when I used to play a lot of mods, but I paid no special attention to it.
    I recently stumbled upon it again after hearing about mapping competitions, and I figured if there’s any place I can reignite my pipe dream of getting into game development and share my creations, this is as good as any.

    A little too personal pehaps?
    Anyway, glad to be a part of this community, let’s create some amazing things.

    1. Welcome to the site. Thanks for describing your background, it’s always nice to understand the motivation of users.

      Hope you consider entering the next mapping challenge, which happens to start tomorrow.

    2. Zekiran

      Oh yes please participate! Creative folks who actually know how to use the tool sets! ๐Ÿ˜€

  76. Hey, everyone!

    My name is Marten and i also go by the name Docta.
    I am from Estonia and after so many times, i’ve finally got myself an account here.
    I have done some mapping for hl2, ep2 and csgo, but theyre quite basic and im still learning.

    I have been playing hl2 related games for 6 years now, when a classmate showed me episode 1,
    which was super spooky and full of adrenaline, because we played lowlife. It was when I was about ten and that makes me feel like i am one of the youngest people on this site because im getting 16 now and most of the people on this site seem twice as old as me. ๐Ÿ™‚
    after that I got myself a steam account and my first game was episode 2 which i loved alot.

    I now play SP mods and hl related stuff quite often. I also play alot of games that is also have on my library.

    I have done some artsy stuff and some mapping but nothing professional as i said earlier.

    I enjoy scenic, details, scripted scenes, etc in maps the most. about 60/40 overweighing gameplay.
    Anyways, I hope that i will love being in this community with all of ya!
    Thanks for being awesome.

    1. Hi Docta,

      Glad to hear you love the HL games and don’t worry about your age. We treat everybody here based on what they say and do, not on the number of times they have orbited the Sun.

  77. twitch

    Hello,

    I’ve made around 20 half-life maps. Mainly multiplayer maps like ag_crossfire, dabo, many ctf maps for mods, some castle maps and other maps with tons of secrets. I love half-life

    1. Hi Twitch, welcome to the site. You say “mainly” multiplayer, have you made and released any SP HL maps?

  78. Dan M

    Hello,

    I’ve been a fan and a follower of Half-Life custom maps and level design in general for over 3 years , but only now I decided that I wanna be part of this unique experience.

    1. Unq

      Welcome, Dan. Do you do any level design yourself? If you’re interested you should definitely keep an eye on the mapping competitions here (the “Ville” mods)!

      1. Dan M

        I’ve done a map for tf2 and a lot of small maps from which I learned to use the hammer tools and I will definitely participate in the ChasmVille2 of this year !

    2. Hi Dan, welcome to the site. I’m just catching up on welcoming people. Glad to see you entered the mapping challenge.

  79. Quinn

    Hello I’m The Butterman.
    I run a bad let’s play channel and been coming to this site a lot for mods to play.
    Been playing Half-Life since 1999.
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgSVGAfW4ZfmghjiNxdXUFg that is my channel if you want to give it a go. I will say its pretty bad.
    I decided to join after many of years of sitting on the side line.

  80. Hello I am the Butterman.
    I’ve been a lurker since god knows when. Guess back when planet Half-Life was a thing.
    I come here a lot to find mods for half-life 1. I do have a lets play Channel The Evil Squid Foundation its a channel my friends and I started, sadly its been mostly me, and my terrible play through of games. Just felt it should be time to register to be part of this community.

    1. Unq

      So many lurkers coming out of hiding, and new visitors! Great to have everyone registering and hopefully participating! ๐Ÿ™‚

    2. Welcome to the site. Are you still uploading videos to your YouTube channel?

  81. RossBond

    I’ve been following and reading and downloading since the old days over at Planetphillip!

    Finally I’ve signed up and will be commenting a lot.

    Thanks for this place I check in every day.

    1. Hi Ross, welcome to the site. hope to have some interesting discussions with you.

      1. Unq

        This should probably be a “welcome BACK to the site” – I recognized your name, and also noticed a post from “RossBondReturns” much earlier on this page! ๐Ÿ™‚

        1. True. I did a web search of “ross bond” because the name was familiar.

          1. RossBond

            True.

            I was just too lazy to get a new password probably. ๐Ÿ™‚

            Too excited to play Wilson Chronicles.

  82. Hey all, my name’s Nick and I’m honoured to be a part of the RTSL community.

    I’ve been playing Half-Life since about 2003 and started messing around with Hammer 3.4 in 2008. Despite the long amount of time I’ve had to learn Hammer I’ve been pretty slow as it was more a hobby than anything I was dedicated to, though that’s changed in the last year.

    I’ve started various projects for Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and I also intend on participating in the Hammer Cup as a way to build my skills in level design. I have no real intention (or expectation) of winning but I am very happy to simply be a part of what will end up coming out of the competition.

    As for my other technical skills, I have some knowledge of modelling, texturing and sound design. I also have a small amount of knowledge of c# in Unity but that’s as far as my programming skills go. I mainly focus on level design as I intend to one day pursue a career in it, preferably at the AAA level.

    Aside from all that though, I’m a horror fan and love any game with an engaging story. My favourite mods are Afraid of Monsters: DC and Underhell, and some of my favourite games are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Doom, System Shock 2 and Half-Life. I’m also a massive fan of Titanfall, despite it being multiplayer only.

    That’s pretty much all I have to say for now. I look forward to hanging out here and getting to know you all!

    1. Hi Nick. Welcome to the site. Thanks for a well-rounded introduction. It’s also good that have you your finger in a few development pies. Glad to hear you will participate in the Hammer Cup.

  83. Hey, my name is Walter, thank you for letting me join the RTSL community.

    I enjoy making video games and it has been too long that I have avoided jumping in to the Source editor and systems. I’m interested in making SP mostly but I am happy to learn as much MP stuff as I can. I was looking for a place on the net where I could learn more about using Hammer and making SP levels. I am looking forward to trying out the mapping challenges that I’ve read about (I think I’m a little late for the current Cup). My plan is to learn a bunch from the community and hopefully be able to give out some knowledge once I have more of it!

    I’m mostly a scripter by trade and I can understand enough code (C#, etc) to read what may be going on. Art and sound are my weakest abilities and mapping ability is low because I don’t work it out enough. The Radiant engine is the system I know the best.

    I like a lot of games and always freeze up when I talk about myself. I’m looking forward to learning from other mods and becoming helpful to the community.

    1. Hi Walter, welcome to the site. We are glad to have you here.

      You are not too late for The Hammer Cup but definitely for the first challenge.

      Anyway, I look forward to seeing and playing your work.

  84. Hey, My name is Inti or juanchoclo, i’m 15 years old, iโ€™m Chilean and my inglish is kind of bad.

    I dont make maps or mods but i love Half-Life and anything that let me kill more headcrabs.

    Beside Half-Life, i mainly play indi games such as Darkest Dungeon and FTL, my favorite mod is Point Of View and i barely play MP games.

    i’m looking forward to be part of this community.

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome ๐Ÿ˜€

      I know lots of people who have learned English by playing games, don’t be afraid to also post in your native language if you can’t figure out the ‘right’ words!

      What’s your favorite headcrab-killing weapon? I like the crowbar best for that.

      1. Hey there!

        I learn English through WWll shooters at the PS2, By trying to figure up the objectives, at that age, i don’t even know about Half life

        I normally use the 2 bullets of the pistol, but using the shotgun its extra satisfying

        Thanks for the greetings, Cheers

        (Any hidden gem mod that you can recommend?)

    2. Hola Juanchoclo, welcome to the site. Don’t worry about your English, it’s good practice for you to use it.

      It seems we all love killing headcrabs!

  85. GamerNinjaX

    Hello, my name is GamerNinjaX. I am 18 years old and have been a Half-Life fan since I was around 12 to 14. My first Half-Life game was Half-Life 2, I have played through all of the games in that series, and many years later I played through Half-Life 1.

    I am not a mod creator or a game dev; I am simply a fan who is interested in this website and the many mods it carries. I have a very outside passion for video game design and love to analyze games in a review format. I have done a lot of articles on Screwattack.com under the name of gamerninjax206 and while I currently do not review or blog on that website; there are still many reviews archived there under my account. I am a big fan of the Half-Life series for it is my favorite IP from Valve.

    I actually have not played very many Half-Life mods, I have had experience with Black-Mesa, The Stanley Parable (yes I have bought the retail versions of those games), Goldeneye: Source, and I am currently waiting for Prospekt to come out. This is why I have registered for the site, to experience and play more Half-Life mods and occasionally give my thoughts on them.

    I am glad I have registered and I will try the best I can to be an active member of the community and play the mods they have in store.

    1. Zekiran

      Oh you will really enjoy a lot of the mods that have been collected here! Welcome to the site!

      For both you and juanchoclo – I would recommend going up to the ‘Play’ section in the top of the page, and click on the “Hall of Fame”. (and yay Phillip thanks for putting an easy link to Gauge there too!!)

      There are a LOT of very good mods that showcase what clever things people have done using the Source and Goldsource engines over the years.

      You might also want to sort through the mods by ‘rating’, or other things. You can search for specific things now, and read the comments to see if that mod is for you. Some might not be, even I’ll admit that I didn’t much care for a few on the Hall of Fame list, but many did.

    2. Welcome GamerNinjaX. Looks like you been a Half-Life fan for almost one-third your life. You really are the Half-Life generation.

      I hope you find time to start review or at least playing all the great mods here on the site.

      If you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

  86. TurboBr0

    It’s Turbo Man, I go by many different names, and I’m officially the candidate of playing sum’ games ๐Ÿ˜Ž

    In all seriousness, I made this account to track my favourite and upcoming mods from the community. I’m loving the web design and ease of use when downloading mods (no timers or ads!). Sadly I won’t be contributing much (other than possible donations) as I have zero experience in goldsource and source mods but hey, when source 2 SDK is finally out I’m going to be very tempted to give it a go (I don’t like the quake tier tools from source 1).

    On the other hand, I will try to play as many mods and review them so maybe expect me in the review sections of the mods ๐Ÿ™‚

    I don’t really have much to say other than thank you for this glorious website. Bon voyage and best of luck in your future endeavours.

    1. Zekiran

      Fair reviews and well-thought-out critique will make the modding community better! Welcome!

    2. Welcome TurboBr0, let’s hope you get to start making maps with Source 2 SDK.

      As Zekiran says, having great reviews also makes the site better.

  87. Hey I’m Greencapps. I have only recently gotten into the Half-Life series (I’ve only beat HL1 through Blue Shift and I’m currently having a go at Decay*)but have been playing various other valve games since 2013, specifically Portal and TF2 lots and lots of TF2. I also already have some experience with playing mods because of Portal so making the jump from Portal mods to Half-Life mods wasn’t to jarring.
    To be honest I’m here out of necessity the reasons being:
    1. I want more Half-Life but I can only run GldSrc at the moment , Source runs at a smooth 13fps with all settings a low so even though I own HL2 and its episodes I cant play them.
    2. This is the best site to both get mods and keep track of what you have played, which is why I’m reviewing things.
    Then again the reason why I’m here isn’t important what is, however, is that I am and I’m going to attempt to play and review all the mods on the site.
    See you in the reviews section!

    *No HL2 spoilers please!

    1. Zekiran

      Having had my one main desktop go belly-up shortly before (literally12 hours before) Portal 2 dropped, I had to resort to using my old XP laptop to play *anything*. Still runs Goldsource but no source games on that rig.

      You’ll enjoy a LOT of the HL1 (and blue shift and op4) mods and maps, many of them are quite challenging these days, but since what you’re coming off of is more half life 1 they may prove less of a difficulty than for people like me who went the other way (from portal to half life 2, to half life 1). I notice you just reviewed Someplace Else ๐Ÿ˜€

      1. Yee I love challenging shooters, well at least ones that are fair (Still stuck on T&R in legendary mode on HaloPC), because of that the older HL games and mods have really hit the spot. ๐Ÿ˜€

        I’m also a HUGE fan of good stories in games so mods like Poke 646 (a mod I should be reviewing once I’m done with my current playthrough), Someplace Else, and Point of View really excite me.

        Sidenote: Why does Blue Shift not have it’s own tab under play? Is it because it adds nothing new or are there just not enough mods for it to warrant it have a dedicated link?

        1. Zekiran

          I suspect that it’s mostly just repeated stuff that is not unique. OP4 has its own because of all the new critters and weaponry added. I guess I more meant Blue Shift as a style – playing someone other than Gordon, which is also done in OP4 but it’s got all that extra stuff to build on.

    2. Welcome to the site Greencapps, sorry to hear about your PC. Sounds like you need a rich uncle to buy you one. Fingers crossed.

  88. I am Fox McGee (I used to go by the name UCeNSHNOW). I have been playing mods for Half-Life since the year I bought it. I’ve always wanted to get into modding or mapping, but I never knew anyone who had similar interests in the place I live and Valve’s Hammer editor was confusing for me to start off with. However, I got myself to start a map via Jackhammer, and I think I’m doing pretty good. I am still currently working on the map.

    My top 5 favourite games in order:
    Half-Life, Doom, Metal Gear Solid 3, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, and Halo 3

    My favourite mod would be Sven Co-op

    My least favourite Half-Life game would be Episode 2… I just can’t stand Episode 2. I never beaten it, although I know how it ends.

    1. Unq

      Always glad to see new mappers participating. TWHL is always a good place to go for mapping tutorials and help by the way. And check the forums for info on Sledge, an open source Hammer replacement that is about on par with Jackhammer.

      Have you tried the new Sven Co-op 5.0 yet? Some neat new maps and modes to play.

      1. When I started I was a bit lost, but I remembered when I was attempting to use Hammer the first time I was learning from the tutorials on TWHL. If it weren’t for TWHL I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.

        I have sadly not played SC 5.0 yet because I was busy with work, transferring my old hard drive to a new one, and working on my map.

    2. Welcome to the site Fox McGee. Good luck with JackHammer. I’d love to release your work, so just let me know when you have something ready.

  89. Hello RTSL.
    My name is Jamie Dietrich, i love Pikachu and Huskies so i got the nickname Pikachusky from that, but you can call me Husky if you like. I’ve been mapping for many years, I started out with a program called Red Editor back in 2005. Does anyone remember Red Editor from Red Faction? Red Editor took me several weeks to figure out anything basic since there was not to much info on it.

    I’ve Discovered Source SDK sometime in 2007-2008 when i first got Steam. I discovered steam when Steam had nvidia offer for HL2:DM, HL2:LC, Portal First Slice was out. than i looked into The Valve complete Collection. Ever since 2008 i’ve been a Huge Valve addict! i own every valve game from Half-Life 1 to Counter-Strike Global Offensive, and probably played all there was!

    I’ve watch multiple youtube videos and read about level design from interlopers when i first started, after i got the basics down i started mapping for Half-Life 2 Deathmatch. My first and only released map i ever did was an edited version of dm_lockdown and i had my own server at the time. Ever since then up-til-now i’ve been doing lots and lots of test, reading more info, gathering new stuff for my knowledge of hammer. I have done test from Advanced Doors, up to puzzles and such.

    Since i discovered Source SDK Wiki Level Design page i heavily rely on this. I know a lot about mapping, but i always double check everything with this.

    My Favorite Games Are:
    Half-Life 1
    Half-Life 1: Opposing Force
    Half-Life 1: Blue Shift
    Half-Life 2
    Half-Life 2: Episode One
    Half-Life 2: Episode Two
    Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
    Portal
    Portal 2
    Left 4 Dead
    Left 4 Dead 2
    Counter-Strike GO (sometimes)
    Garry’s Mod (even though not released by valve)

    I have a lot i want to do. I do a lot of Level Design analysis so if you need help i can help!

    Here’s Projects i want to do i have alot of potential and i want this year to be the year i start publishing maps!

    #1: Remaking dm_lockdown
    I want to do this because i had so much fun before doing this it will be awesome to see what i can do now!
    #2: Enter in Mapping Competitions
    Everyone seems to have fun, but the only difficult part is i work 12hour shifts so 19 days turns into 10 days, and i have 2 kids so juggling between anything will always be a challenge.
    #3: Start a single-player mod
    always wanted to do this!

    You can Contact me on Skype! (Huskyx94) if you ever have trouble mapping or anything of the sort, or just to talk, i love to talk about Hammer Editor and Map Design! its like my gossip lol.

    Feel free to ask or comment anything on your mind!
    Thanks guys!
    Hope to chat with anyone!
    Can always Skype me, I’ll talk whenever i can!

    1. Hi and welcome to the site Pikachusky. I know we have already chatted privately and sorry for the trouble getting you registered.

      Anyway, looking forward to your being part of the growing community.

  90. Hello. My name’s Ian, and i’m here for the mods, so don’t expect much from me. ๐Ÿ˜›

    Have a GREAT day!

    1. Hi HellHoundWarrior, welcome to the site.

      Don’t worry, we don’t expect everybody to write long reviews etc.

      Enjoy the site.

  91. Zekiran

    heheh Welcome Fox, Husky and Hound!! ๐Ÿ˜€ Such an influx (and such wow, much canine… shoot me now mmkay) of folks!

    Even if ‘all’ you do is play mods or maps, always consider leaving a review or a comment about them as you play them. When others see more replies in the Recent Comments section, or a new mod pops into view, that means more folks will play them, and that’s always good.

    1. Such an influx of folks!

      This might be to VNN shouting out RTSL in his newest vid but its just a hunch….

      1. If not for VNN’s introduction, I wouldn’t have known that PlanetPhillip lived on as RTSL – though, I tried REALLY HARD to like his channel – and failed.

        Hmm… doesn’t matter anymore ๐Ÿ˜€

    2. Thanks Zekiran! I do a lot of mapping just never released anything besides an edit of dm_lockdown

  92. Greetings from China.

    Haven’t seen PlanetPhillip for a long, long time, wondering where it’s gone.
    And it’s here. And alive. Best fricking news for me, after digging through a mere of 400+ mod updates on ModDB, stating those MODs themselves are dead. Turns out that I’m totally left behind on RUNNING – so I suppose I’ve got to catch up and do some more THINKING and SHOOTING.

  93. Last Test For Phillip ๐Ÿ˜›

  94. Hi all, my name is John and i’m from the U.S, Specifically Illinois near Chicago. I am 15 years old and i’ve been playing FPS games for more than 10 years now. My first games were brought to me by my dad actually when i was about 5 years old. He showed me games like ocarina of time, counter strike(the old original xbox version), and half life 2. Half life stood out more to me and ever since 2005 when i first played it, it’s been my favorite game ever, along with the expansions and sequels.

    I got a laptop about 2 years ago which was only able to run gmod and half life 2 at 40 fps, but it was good enough for me. I got a better pc about a year ago and started downloading lots of half life mods. Some of my favorites are The citizen, Precursor and Get a Life. I also started watching videos on youtube that related to anything valve pretty much. SFM animations, things about valve game histories and other things. A specific channel i watch is valve news network whom i started watching about a year ago when he made videos about the half life 2 beta.

    I have a decent experience with mapping, i made a couple maps for myself on gmod and actually made a map that got put on the suicide barrels server in gmod. So i know most basic and some intermediate things about hammer. I have some pretty good ideas for mods for hl2 and maybe some day ill actually take part in a mod developement. But i wouldnt consider myself an expert by any means.

    Thanks for reading!

    1. Zekiran

      Awesome, welcome to the site!

      Definitely look through the hall of fame and game-specific areas, there might be hints on how to do things you aren’t familiar with or haven’t gotten around to doing in mapping on some of them, particularly the Villes and Competition pages because the mappers actually do communicate some hints and tips there.

      Maybe you’ll work on something for the upcoming challenges, too!

      …. Also way to make me feel like a geezer, lol. you’ve been gaming 2/3 of your life. Kudos to your dad (who’s doubtless closer to my age heh) because he introduced you to games! that’s wonderful though ๐Ÿ™‚

    2. Welcome to the site Tooshady. It’s amazing that most of your life has been playing Half-Life – that is so cool.

      Glad to hear you have a better PC, let’s hope you decide to enter some of the mapping challenges.

  95. Eyy. I’m Neon, and I’m obsessed with Half-Life like we all are here. Future me is probably making a mod, but current me is just here to write reviews. Off I go then.

    1. Hi Neon, welcome to the site. You mention Future You and Current You, what about Past You?

      1. Past me is a lot of different mes, a lot of which I’m not too fond of. Present me is the best me there is, although maybe future me is better.

  96. Hi!
    Iยดm Kosan, a 10th-grader from Dรผsseldorf, Germany.
    Half-Life was my first FPS and itยดs also my favourite game of all time.
    My favourite HL singleplayer game is HL2 Episode 2 and my fav. multiplayer game is HL1DM.

    You could say it changed my life. Itยดs the reason Iยดm interested in the games industry after I finish school.
    Probably as a level designer and/or 3d artist. I love making maps for source engine (I wanna learn UE4 too though) games (especially CS:GO), but I havenยดt ever made a singleplayer Half-Life map.
    If I have enough spare time, I will very likely make a map for The Hammer Cup 2016.
    I have plans on making a HL mod one day, but maybe that will turn into a Source 2 project, once we all get our hands on it.

    I love this site btw, nothings better than free DLC for my favourite game franchise.

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome to RTSL! ๐Ÿ˜€ It’s good to see that you have interest in making something for the competition. Sometimes what you need is a direction and rules to put your first works together. Definitely keep branching out for different systems too, because if you intend to get into the industry that is the best way, knowing many types of engines. It keeps you flexible!

    2. Hi Kosan, welcome to the site. Hard work and a focused attitude can accomplish many great things, so I hope you reach your gaming goals.

  97. Hi everyone!
    I’m Nush and I’m a 16 year old Canadian.
    I love everything about the Half Life community and it was introduced to me by this site (It was planetphillip Back then). I was holding off making an account until now, but I hope it will be worth it thanks to the great community on this site. I’d love to make a Half Life 2 map but all of the tools are just so overwhelming. I started off making a (Crude) CS:GO map, which showed me a basic way on how to map. Trying to make a Half Life 2 map was something else. All of the scripting really threw me off. But having finally made an account on this site I hope to learn how to make much better maps!

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome, Nush! I’m sure that you will find a lot of helpful ideas and comments from the more experienced modders here. Don’t forget to read the comments of maps or mods that you’ve enjoyed, because sometimes there are conversations about aspects that gave the map maker issues, or how they could do them better. I’m sure if you ask around you’ll get great advice.

    2. Hi Nush, welcome to the site.

      I truly wish I had enough time and experience to make tutorial videos for HL and HL2. I really do want to help more people become SP modders.

      Anyway, good luck creating something we can all play

    3. Hey, Nush! We should really talk sometime! You can add me on steam @That Guy Bishop

  98. Hello, i’m Sejievan i’m from Brazil, i do mapping for quite some time 4, 5 yrs i think, most of my work is for Portal 2, but i kinda wanna expand my horizons and improve my mapping skills for the other valve games too. I hope to make a full game (or mod) someday, but for now i’m happy with just playing mods and mapping. =)

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome to RTSL! I do hope you participate in some of the competitions, or even just make something inspired by another mod or map.

  99. Howdy!
    My name is Chris, but I go by Bishop!

    I’m 17 and I’ve been a fan of Half-Life and FPS’s for as long as I can remember! I’ve been a lurker on this site for awhile and I just recently decided to make an account.

    Let me start off by saying I love this community! I get a huge kick out of seeing very talented and capable mod makers get recognition for the work they do. I just wish I was as talented as you guys are! One talent I would say I have is voice acting. It’s always been a passion of mine. If any of you need a voice actor, I’d be happy to help! ๐Ÿ˜€ But yeah! I’m a huge fan of Half-Life and Half-Life mods!

    Thanks for reading,
    Bishop

    1. Hi Bishop, welcome to the site. People are often looking for voice actors. You should definitely put a demo reel together.

      1. Where could I post it?

  100. Hello!

    I’m Cherry, but I do use Kyo Comics on some sites and for an old comic series I did.

    I’ve been playing Half Life games for a while, had the first Half Life on the playstation 2 back in the day loved it even in that form.

    I have some skills in Hammer but nothing really useful for single player maps but I do hope to change that with maybe making a few for Half Life 2 or maybe even for the first Half Life.

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome Cherry and Bishop!

      I do hope that everyone can benefit from learning more about mapping, you’ll find lots of helpful modders around here (and more every day).

    2. Hi Cherry. Hope you get the motivation to make some SP maps soon.

  101. Hey guys, names Agameofscones and I’ve been out and about on Mapcore.org, occasionally Interlopers and most actively that place called Facepunch. While I usually hide behind a front of Team Fortress 2 related mapping, HL2 mapping will forever hold a special place in my heart. I started mapping in 2014 in CS:GO and quickly swapped over to Garry’s Mod. Since at the time that seemed to be my only outlet for HL2 related mapping. Boy was I wrong. I was steered here like probably many a new member by the one and only Tyler McVicker who recently did a video concerning briefly the Hammer Cup of 2016. Truly an exciting prospect. Hopefully not only will I get to meet fellow like minded HL2 mappers I’ll finally get something to chew up my free time (I’ve got a lot of it.) I may be young compared to most of you, but I can only get older no? It’s a promising future, and I hope to see some damn good maps in the end.

    Perhaps I’ll finally find someone who appreciates painful amounts of over detailing.

    1. Zekiran

      You might get older but you don’t HAVE to grow up ๐Ÿ™‚

      Welcome, welcome to RTSL. It’s… well, I dunno about safer. <_<

    2. Hi Agameofscones, welcome to the site.

      I LOVE detailing, so we could be friends!

      Age is not important here.

  102. Hello!
    I’m luck.
    I joined this website because i really like valve source engine games.
    And i want to say hello to everybody. ๐Ÿ˜€

    1. Howdy Luck. Welcome to the site.

      1. Thanks for the welcome :P.

  103. I am a gamer who loves everything created by valve. My dream job is to work at valve as a level designer. Whenever I have spare time, I like to learn more about level designing. I joined RTSL so i could compete in the hammer cup 2016.

    1. Zekiran

      Looking forward to seeing what you’ll make! Welcome to RTSL!

    2. Welcome to the site. I’m glad you joined by there is no requirement to join the site to enter any mapping challenges.

  104. Hello, my Name is David von Diemar

    โ€“ No Iโ€™m not nobility xD

    โ€“ Iโ€™m a German Teenager who has fallen in Love with Half-Life

    โ€“ Iโ€™m currently running three different YouTube channels

    โ€“ No Iโ€™m not nobility xD

    โ€“ Iโ€™m a Motion and Graphic Designer

    โ€“ If you have any questions feel free to ask ๐Ÿ™‚

    โ€“ If you are interested in my Computer Specs or Setup this might help you ?
    >> http://pastebin.com/bwCi9NSx

    1. Hi byCyber, welcome to the site. What YT channels do you run?

  105. BatConMan

    Hello everyone my name is Andrew i’m 18. and i used to be a mapper but gave up along ago.

    I really wanted to get into it again but again i don’t have the time to do it, because of School and a job but one day i will get back to it. I’ve been playing half life games since 1999 and every since, i became a big Half Life fan with a lot of mods that i play. I also got to work on a mod Called Black Mesa : Resonance as a concept artist but sad to say, it got scraped.

    I hope to be able to work on another black mesa mod in the near future.

    BatCornMan

    1. Hi Andrew, welcome to the site. You mentioned BM twice. Is that the only place you want to re-create?

  106. Zekiran

    Welcome BatCornMan! ๐Ÿ˜€ With a big workload no one could possibly blame you for not putting in the hours that it takes to make a mod or map. Hopefully you’ll get some time, but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t.

  107. This page is getting way too long.

  108. Hello there!

    My name’s Michael, currently 20 in college for game design, and I’m just your average gamer. Of course, Half-Life is my favorite video game series of all-time.

    Don’t have any modding experience unfortunately. I do hope to learn one day, but right now, I just settle with playing the awesome mods made in the community. Some of my favorite HL mods include Underhell, and of the course the fantastic Black Mesa.

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome to RTSL! You’ll find so many great mods. I’ve been replaying Research and Development, which imo is probably the best ever. ๐Ÿ™‚

  109. Hello, My name is SleekBones, okay it isn’t, my full name is Noah Luna, I love to make things in hammer, Source is my favorite engine, I am new to hammer, and working in the source engine, I want and am currently making a zombie type horror map, You should expect that in the comming months hopefully. I really want to make horror maps that aren’t just in the same area for about the whole map, different places give more diversity. I have 231 hours in Half Life 2, yes I know I have a problem, I would be amazed if one of my maps ever got it to the Hall of Fame, that is my goal, I have no idea if that will ever come true, but I hope you like the maps I will make. ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Zekiran

      Sounds awesome, welcome to RTSL and I look forward to seeing your maps! You’ve got a good goal set up – no place like here to practice.

    2. Welcome to the site Sleek. Great to hear you are working on a map. Let’s hope you release a HOF map, my fingers are crossed for you.

  110. Hi Everyone,

    I run a small YouTube channel that focuses on Half-Life. I do full length walkthroughs all in a single video, in 1080p60FPS and NO Commentary… I think you’d enjoy my stuff!

    You can check out my channel @ http://www.bolloxed.com

    Enjoy!

    Bolloxed

    1. Hi Bollox, I just realised I haven’t welcomed you officially.

  111. I am Sphoonerino. I’ve been playing shooter games ever since I could remember, and I love above all Half-Life! I’ve played them all multiple times (I can recite the beginning of HL2 from Gman by heart) and I’ve played Half-Life and mods for more hours than I can recall. Rocket Crowbar anybody?

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome to RTSL ๐Ÿ™‚

      And bonus points because I suspect you always read the word ‘difference’ as ‘difffffference’.

    2. HI Sphoonerino, welcome to to the site.

      I challenge you to type the opening Gman’s lines from memory. Obviously, I can’t see if you have cheated, so we will have to trust you.

  112. hello! i’m a… late bloomer? when it comes to FPS. i bought Half-life 1 in the 90s… but didn’t have a good enough PC to run it reliably. PC gaming was never really part of my life (or other gaming? my newest console is a Wii. no U)

    in 2015 i went to PAX East. i already had a Steam account at that point, and a few games here and there. i started in March of 2015 playing through Half-life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, and Lost Coast.

    then i backfilled and played HL1, OF, BS. wanting more, i started trying to get mods to work on my Mac (i have macbook pro 3.1ghz i7 w/iris 6100 graphics). a few worked, but ultimately i knew i needed to boot Windows. so i BootCamp’d Win 10 and moved most of my gaming to that partition.

    in addition to the HL universe i absolutely love Portal & Portal 2, i’ve played through them both a couple times now (lately with my kids watching! they were so bummed about Wheatley). they’re not quite ready for Half-life yet tho (currently 5 & 6yo) but someday.

    i’m working on building out a dedicated gaming rig, i should probably have that done before Source 2 is released, right? ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome! You did the same kind of back-tracking as I did, though I started with Portal 1 and moved to the Orange Box, myself, before hitting the HL1 anthology.

      Most systems will run HL1, unfortunately many older rigs (including my own laptop) won’t run Source so I know that pain.

      1. Zekiran i kinda figured we had similar situations, i really liked your review of the ep3 mod, very close to my experience.

        my laptop can play pretty much anything, except some games, even ones that aren’t super 3d heavy make the cooling fans run so hard i can barely hear the game (like Gone Home – why did that melt my laptop into an aluminum ingot?)

        1. Zekiran

          Thankfully I have a pretty powerful desktop machine. But my own laptop is an ancient XP device with an onboard chipset and zero chance to upgrade. ๐Ÿ˜€

          Anyway – I look forward to seeing what you think of some of the terrific mods here, there are soooo many, with wildly different styles and expectations.

    2. Hi Bloomer, Welcome to the site. I keep thinking about building a gaming rig but don’t have enough time or money.

      Fingers crossed yours is finished in time for Half-Life 3!

  113. I’m Anders. There are many mods I like, including Black Mesa, Missing Information, Black Mesa: Hazard Course, MINERVA, Dear Esther, Mission Improbable, Half-Life Decay PC port, and more :-D. The newest mod I want to play is The Closure mod, aka, episode 3, but I cannot get it to work :'(

    1. Hi Ander, welcome to the site. Have you managed to get The Closure to work yet?

      1. Hi Phillip
        More than a year later I finally managed to get it to work. It’s an awesome mod!

  114. Hello

    I am a small Youtuber known as Slevans92. Some call me Sarah….and some call me Serena…either way you can call me either name…i am a part time student attending a local community college for an Associates Degree in Cyber Security Specialist and a Masters Degree in Photography and Art…i am also working on a minor in Journalism…after i finish my minor im going to be getting a Degree in learning how to create video games and such…but overall i am busy all the time….whether it be with college homework,appointments irl or making content for my subs….youll find i am a go-with-the-flow type of person….

    1. Welcome to RTSL Sarah. Quite a range of courses you are taking ontop of a youtube channel. What kind of content do you make on youtube by the way? is it playing maps (because if so there are so many to try here) or do you prefer to make videos on other things?

    2. Zekiran

      Yay, welcome, another Sara(h) (mine’s no h hehe)!

      I look forward to seeing reviews and commentary here!

    3. Welcome to the site Sarah, hope you enjoy your time here.

  115. Hey everyone,
    I’m Ryan and have been mapping properly for a little under a year.
    I’ve played Half-Life 2 for around 100+ hours on one of my steam accounts (old family shared account) and many many more on my private account, thanks to my urge to replay it at least once a year (and that usually ends up turning into a Half-Life spree, with me playing Black Mesa, Ep1+2, HL1, going crazy about it etc.)

    Every couple of years or so, I would try to learn mapping – creating a basic room and so on. But I would never actually stick with it until almost a year ago when I started mapping for Black Mesa. Now, I’m working for a GMod map for an RP server and also a singleplayer mod for EP1 (on the 2013 engine of course). It’s more of a map pack with a running storyline then a mod, but hey, it has its own custom main menu and etc.

    I’ll be having a look into the upcoming mapping challenges as I think they will benefit my mapping skills. You’ll see me around!

    1. Zekiran

      Oh sweet, I hope to see stuff you’ll be making. It’s definitely the case that Villes and other mapping competitions can really flesh out skills and help with questions you have. The existing competitors rarely hold back their hints and tips, it’s a friendly competition here!

    2. Hi Ryan, welcome to the site. I like the sound of the SP for for EP1, hope we get to play it soon.

  116. G’day everyone,

    I’m one of the developers of car-poral keys. I do mapping, modelling, scripting, texturing, subtitles and sound for it.
    I’ve done more ‘serious’ work on counter-strike maps, which you can find on my steam profile if you really want to.
    I look forward to entering some mapping challenges and putting my own spin on things (nothing as insane as cpk, I promise!)

    1. Welcome Rekurer. Sounds like you have a wide range of skills. I hope you find the next mapping challenge theme interesting.

  117. Hey, I am Evan, I f*&king love Half-Life, I play Half-Life 2 roleplay on gmod alot.

    1. Hi Evan, welcome to the site. No swearing please.

    2. Gmod Roleplay huh?
      Which server, I might use the same one as you.

  118. Hi! I’m Florian.

    First, it took me long to find out about RTSL, but that’s definitely the best place to find quality content! So much good mods. And the community! So active on the comments and reviews.
    I love it!

    I’ve always loved half life (the sci-fi environment / the panic when the first head crab jumps on you).
    HL1 must have been the first FPS i played.
    Then came hl2 (let’s not talk about anon-beta, but yeah, I was there too).
    Physics, physics, physics. I’m still amazed by the source engine, and still think it’s yet unbeaten concerning physics.

    I’m a web developer during the day. The kind that loves gnu/linux, and nerdy stuff.
    Which makes me trying to make everything work on linux.

    First natively, wine otherwise.
    HL2 supported on linux was such great news!

    But still, most of the mods here don’t work out of the box on linux.
    Hopefully, you guys work with the SDK 2013, with steampipe content.
    Which makes it easy to fix.

    So this is my usual story with RTSL.
    Download a mod, and modify its sources (mainly gameinfo.txt) to make it work on linux.

    I wanted to know if anyone here is also a linux gamer?
    If so, I’d love to hear about it!

    Cheers!
    Flo.

    PS: Phillip, your website is a wonderful idea.

    1. Zekiran

      So you know, some of the comments indicate that there are ways to make many mods work under Linux but you’d have to search for those yourself – at least one person specifically seems to be looking out for that functionality.

      Welcome to RTSL!

      1. Thanks ๐Ÿ™‚

        @Zekiran: Ho, I should have searched previous posts first.
        Indeed, @asterixer posted the same kind of linux related-stuff. Hi @asterixer ๐Ÿ™‚

        I’v found some topics on this subject (mainly http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/828938532638150996/ and http://steamcommunity.com/app/220/discussions/0/405691491119676588/ )

        The good news is that I’m able to run most of the mods here!
        The only thing is that I need to slightly reconfigure it ๐Ÿ™‚
        I’d like if the mods were packaged with a universal gameinfo.txt.

        I made a (very) simple shell script that allows me to install any mod here, without having to do anything manually.

        Cheers!

    2. Hi Florian/docteurklien, welcome to the site.

      It’s always nice to hear from people who love the Half-Life games, especially when they have been playing them for a long time.

      I’ve thought about trying to do more with Linux with regard to the site, for example, have a TAG for mods known to work with it but it’s a little problematic as that may change over time and the TAGs shouldn’t be like that.

      1. Hi !

        Thanks for the warm welcome.
        As stated in an answer to @Zekiran, I made a simple script to play on linux (native).
        As soon as it’s an hl2:ep2 mod, it will work out of the box!

        So, in theory, if you repackage the mod correctly, every mod should work on linux.

        The script is so simple I’ll paste it here:
        https://gist.github.com/f9867744e8cf6fa2df01fb5fcdc647d9

        You can provide a custom config.cfg (and videoconfig_linux.cfg), but that’s optional.

        Hope it helps!
        Cheers.

  119. Razman

    Hi everyone, my name is Lucas, and that is all that you will know about my personal information as I am not a fan with sharing my stuff on the Internet.

    I first started with the Half-Life series and Valve by purchasing The Orange Box on the Xbox-360. After completing all 4 games, not TF2 as I don”t particularly like it, I loved the series and wanted more. So I started watching YouTube videos on Half-Life 1, its expansions, and mods. Then I branched into Half-Life 2 mods and such stuff. After getting a Steam account soon later and purchasing all the Half-Life games in a sale bundle, I found a RTSL member’s YouTube channel, I’m talking about you Bolloxed! After watching some mod playthroughs, I saw the link to this page and yeah, thats where I am now…

    As for mod and map creating, I have no idea about how to create one or even download one, yet I really want to. So as time progresses, I will figure that out and start to review and create maps/mods.

    And so that ends my introductory comment… Pretty boring I know, yet I hope to fill it with new ideas and facts involving RTSL.

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome!

      In order to use many of the mods on the site, you can download and install the ‘Gauge’ program, which used to be called ‘Maptap’ (so if you see references to Maptap, it’s new name is Gauge). It’s found up at the top of the site, in the PLAY tab, bright blue, you can’t miss it.

      It will help you browse for, download, install, play, and uninstall the many maps and mods found here. *not all* work properly in it – some are too large to be downloaded BY Gauge, some are just kinda ‘broken’ due to the many changes that Valve has done to their systems over the years. But by and large Gauge is the right tool for the site!

      Enjoy!

    2. Hi Lucas/Razman, welcome to the site. I’m glad you found your way here. Installing maps and mods is pretty easy but don’t ever hesitate to ask for help.

  120. Hello,

    I’m Strontvlieg (but in real-life known under the name Mark) and I thought it couldn’t hurt to register on this site.

    I’m not an avid gamer anymore these days and I tend to focus on Indie games like Kerbal Space Program, but always liked the Half Life series. Messed around with map editors in 2003 and 2008 but never succeeded in fabricating more than some blocky maps crammed with enemys. Decided to give the Source SDK another spin two weeks ago and managed to squeeze out a map that’s actually coherent and more or less resembles a Dutch neighborhood under Combine occupation. Perhaps I could publish this map on this site if permitted? Its 95% done as I speak.

    1. Zekiran

      Ooh I would love to see such a thing. If it doesn’t have much plot, you might consider it for Gmod, where people could just wander through it.

      Good to see another new person! Welcome to RTSL!

      1. Well, it has a (thin) plot; get from area A to area B in order to escape the Combine. Nothing epic though.

        Environment resembles a typical Dutch residential areas build in the 60’s and 70’s. There are some custom made textures that I fabricated from stuff I photographed myself and stuff I found on the WWW. See if I can upload it tonight … !

    2. Hi Mark, welcome to the site. Fingers crossed it sparks more creativity from you.

  121. Well, it has a (thin) plot; get from area A to area B in order to escape the Combine. Nothing epic though.

    Environment resembles a typical Dutch residential areas build in the 60’s and 70’s. There are some custom made textures that I fabricated from stuff I photographed myself and stuff I found on the WWW. See if I can upload it tonight … !

  122. Hello Everyone

    I found out about this website when look for mod for half life 2 and i saw the when i was in the google search page and i though to my self “wow this site is great” the i started to download mods that i like even the mapping challenges the are good to play and i love them,

    Now a little about my self

    My name is Parker Oeltjenbruns, and i love video game i been playing them for about 3 years way be for i knew what steam was at the time and i love steam i meat to friend on steam the gift me game and the hole half life 2 and half life games, then i got garry mod and Conter Strike Source.i started to play on one of the best server on Garry mod and it name was noxiousnet.

    (sorry if my spelling and sentences are bad sorry about that)

    1. ModernGT, welcome to the site. I’m glad you think the site is great. Hope you keep participating.

  123. hello all.

    My name is Trevor, And I live somewhere in Wisconsin.

    as a new user to the site, I come here with not that much info regarding the community, I have mapped before, but many maps would be like the kind that you would never show anyone. plus, i am not very good at working on maps for long time periods. I hope that the community is not as vile as some other communities

    Thanks, and I hope to enjoy my stay

    1. Howdy Trevor, welcome to the site. I guarantee that this community is friendly, helpful and knowledge. I retroactively moderate each and every comment personally and I will not hesitate to edit or delete any comment that I feel may cause offense. If ant any time you see a comment that you think is rude or offensive, just email me and I will double check.

      Hope you can try to make a map for one of the Ville (not vile!) mapping challenges.

  124. Greetings RunThinkShootLive,

    My name is Derek. (I used to use the screenname 1upD, so I’ll use that here as well.) I’m a college student studying Computer Science in Michigan.

    I’ve been a fan of Half-Life since 2008. I discovered it on an old CD in my dad’s PC game collection. By that time Half-Life was about ten years old, but it still blew me away. The level of immersion and interactivity in the environment had me captivated the whole way through, and going in without so much as watching a trailer made it all the better; I had no idea what to expect. As you can imagine, I was only more and more impressed as I progressed through Opposing Force, Portal, and Half-Life 2 and the episodes.

    I’ve played quite a few Half-Life, Portal, and Half-Life 2 mods over the years. Sadly, I’ve only reviewed a handful. I really regret not getting involved with the Half-Life 2 community until now. I used to make mods for Star Wars: Empire at War, and having people actually play and enjoy content I made was a really rewarding experience. I haven’t really had any serious interactions with the internet since then, and it feels like something’s missing.

    I signed up here because I’m interested in participating in the Mapping Challenge / Ville competitions. I’ve been using hammer for fun for years, but I’ve never completed anything that could be published online before. I’m currently working on a Source 2013 mod with at least one other person, but we don’t plan on announcing it until we have something to show for it. I still have a lot to learn about Hammer and game design in general before I can fully realize the mod.

    I’m excited to follow and hopefully participate in upcoming events here.

    1. Zekiran

      Awesome, welcome to RTSL!

      I love how many new folks we’re seeing and that plenty of them have some amount of interest in the competitions!

    2. Hi 1upD,

      Welcome to the site. Glad to hear you are interested in mapping for the challenges.

  125. Jacob James-Machin

    Hi my name is Jacob I am 16 years of age and I love the Half-Life series. From Half-Life 1 to Portal 2. I love the games. I love going on this website to see talented developers doing on their own spin on. I always dreamed of making my own HL game in the future to publish here and on steam.

    I also play other games such as Life is strange, Team Fortress Classic, Deathmatch classic,Outlast, Sven coop, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 dead, undertale and etc

    Anyways that’s enough about me. I hope I can contribute in this site in the near future Thanks for reading.

    1. Hi Jacob, welcome to the site. It’s always good to meet new HL fans.

      1. Jacob James-Machin

        Thanks man. I hope to make some Half-Life mods/games in the future. And contribute to this website. I am looking forward to the things that this place will be planning. ๐Ÿ™‚

      2. Jacob James-Machin

        Its me again. I am planning to make a series of games in the future set within the HL universe. I haven’t done any major work but I did wrote down on some ideas. https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/4gc4wx/a_game_idea_i_had_lambda_stories/

        With this site I am hoping to learn more about level design and basic coding.

  126. Hi! Nice to be here, following PP from many years, I was a little disoriented at first, but we can’t live without P. My name is Andrea, I like to play FPS as well as RPGs, and of course HL mods and maps.
    RTSL is an inestimable resource for HL fans and I hope You flourish for the years to come. I’m not very discursive, but I hope to make some appropriate comment in the future, thanks for let me join.
    ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. Hi harrison3001,

      Glad you took the plunge to register. Fingers crossed the site flourishes for many years to come.

  127. Hola, I am Robert. I am here to play as many mods and maps as possible.

    1. Zekiran

      Well are YOU in luck! We happen to have a TON of em! ๐Ÿ˜€

    2. Hola, Robert. If you want to play hundreds of single player maps and mods for the Half-Life series of games, you have come to the right place!

  128. Greetings, I am GreenPepper and am currently working on a singleplayer modification for Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

    1. Zekiran

      Excellent! Looking forward to seeing what you do! Welcome to RTSL.

    2. Welcome to the site. I’ve been following your work.

  129. I am Nightfang118 and I hope to play some of the best Half-Life mods around.

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome! When you play them, be sure to leave commentary! Also of course, keep in mind that some of the mods are very old, may not work, or may have weird bits that need to be tweaked in order to run. I recommend using Gauge (formerly Maptap) found in the blue section of the Play dropdown. It will help install most problematic mods and maps, and let you run them without needing to start up the full games and use the console.

    2. Hi Nightfang18, welcome to the site. I have a feeling you will find some pretty good mods here.

  130. Hi, I go by Paynamia. Longtime lurker, first-time… register..er…
    Um…
    I do a little miscellaneous modding and stuff. I’ve never had much of a consistent place to release such little titbits, so they kinda float everywhere.
    Recently I’ve been working on a bigger project, but it hasn’t been going too well. Lots of issues I can’t seem to pinpoint.
    Anyway, glad to finally join the site!

    1. Zekiran

      Hi and welcome to RTSL!

      Don’t be afraid to ask questions of the folks that you see posting their Ville and other maps in here, they’re all remarkably cool ๐Ÿ˜‰

    2. Glad you registered. As Zekiran says, feel free to ask your questions in the general chat threads.

    3. Hey, I know you! Welcome to RTSL!

  131. Hello Everyone! IntelMercs here.

    Huge Half-Life fan, as well as most classic FPS games. Was hoping to start streaming and thought Half-Life mods would be fun. Searching for just that, I stumbled upon this amazing site! Now I’m itching to start showcasing some of the great stuff here!

    Also excited to leave reviews as I go through it all. I don’t even know where to start!

    1. Zekiran

      Welcome!

      I would say, start with the often-played and often reviewed mods, but there’s also the ‘random’ button in Explore. Since we all have our own preferences, it’ll be interesting to see another new reviewer looking over some of the stuff in here, just to see whether many mods and maps stand up to new standards!

    2. Welcome IntelMercs. I’m sure you will find some great mods, may I suggest LiberationVille for Episode Two. It has some amazing entries.

  132. Hello, I go by Balimbanana on most platforms.
    I mostly design support for sp mods to be played co-op in Synergy.

    1. Hi Balimbanana, welcome to the site. I really should try Synergy again – one day I will.

  133. I’m Jan (yes I am a male)an older player I’m almost 57. I live just south of Atlanta. Like some of the other folks here I generally just play single player except for some Modular combat and Seven co-op. I have steam and I like hunting around for new single player mods.

    1. Welcome to the site Jan. I’m sure you will find plenty of great SP mods here.

  134. Greetings,

    My name is Max. I’m what some might call ‘late’ to the gaming world in my mid-fifties. How I got there isn’t so strange however. I was one of those teen boys in the arcades back in the mid-seventies, stuffing every quarter I could get my hand on into Pong, Asteroids, Tron, Galaga, and many others as they debuted and faded. But girls, partying, the military for many years, marriage, divorce, marriage, & family ultimately occupied the intervening years.

    As chance would have it, one lazy summer work day in 2000, at a local HVAC company I worked at, the owner showed me Half-Life on his laptop, which he got from his twelve year old son. I was memorized. I felt like… I was viewing it from Edison’s perspective or something because, for me in that moment, it was remarkable on so many levels from what I had seen and played years ago.

    He installed the game on my laptop and I spent, quite literally, the next thirteen hours or so completely immersed and dedicated to… Finishing. It. It was so f*&king long (hope the color is ok, or colour if you preferโ˜บ). Took me days. Frustrated, exhilarated, & frustrated me. My boss and I would call each other in different sections, not understanding what the puzzle was. Obsessed my free time. Missed work to play it. Played it sick. Hated Xen. Glad that was last, in hindsight. Had enough of it to last a lifetime, or so I thought.

    That was my introduction to modern gaming ten years ago. About two years ago I picked up a screaming deal on a native LCD (400W!) 1920 X 1080 native display for my computer, an aging, but relatively fast quad core 2.66, 8 mb of RAM, with a Radeon 5600 video card. I could achieve playable fps of 30-40 at that high res which was incredibly immersive, especially since my monitor is approximately 40 inches away from my face when playing. It’s like sitting in the third row of the theatre (that was for you Philโ˜บ). It fills just about fills my field of view. The fps was better at 1600 X 900, but honestly, I was willing to trade fps for quality video.

    Recently, my roommate and daughter’s gpa, simply out of kindness, bought me a new computer. It’s an i7 quad (virtual 8) and it. just. screams. CPU clocks out over 3.8 ghz under load. Lower video specs that my old box but 60 fps pretty consistently at 1600 X 900 even with the card settings bumped up a bit for quality. HL2 gets reinvented for me once again.โ™ฅ that old man.

    So here I am, back into into an entirely NEW Half-Life series with HL2 and the episodes (and Black Mesa, โ™ฅ Black Mesa) but eventually, even playing them in slo-mo with low gravity (15) at host_timescale .15, they DO get old (no-clip on at the apex of the slo mo ascension for most entertainment… really fun after a tug on the pipeโ˜บ Plus, it’s a nice vantage point for crossbow use. The RPG in slo mo is badass when you zoom in immediately after firing. โ™ฅ watching those gunships explode in slo mo, zoomed in. It’s cinematic). If any developer made it to the end of this paragraph, I’d like to pitch higher ceilings (roofs?) on your mods and consider the view from say, 300 ft in the air. Take an aerial view in HL2 or the episodes and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The view is pretty nice up there. Just sayin’.

    So off to Google to see what there is to see and yet again, I’m dumbfounded to find a dedicated community of developers and supporters who keep the game fresh, alive, and more importantly, take it in creative new directions. I especially love the outside-the-box efforts I’ve enjoyed, Underhell in particular. I must compliment each and every developer and lover of the series here for making an old gamer like me who’s rediscovering the genre feel like he’s sixteen again. Major kudos for that.

    I live in the US state that is farthest north, west, and… east. Before you challenge me on that, consider the planet’s meridians. Wins me a drink at the bar in other regions of the US. Just sayin’. My twelve year old went through an Undertale phase (glad that’s over… that one did nothing for me), and I have a parrot, a cat, and a fat tire bike. Thanks for having me here, and I look forward to getting to know anyone who’d like to reach out, and enjoying more of the great content you all make happen.โˆžโ™ฅ

    1. Hi Max, welcome to the site. Thanks for a great introduction. It’s so cool to read other peoples’ stories about how they first discovered the series. I have no idea which state you leave in, but it sounds s fun puzzle to pose to people.

      Tell me more about your fat tire bike. I’ve seen them for sand and snow but do you ride it on the streets or mountains?

      1. Phillip,

        The fat tire bike goes literally everywhere. I ride it on the streets and trails as well. 3.7 in (94 mm) tires on 26″ rims makes it feel like a 29er. Low pressure in the tires (13-20 psi) means bumps get soaked up like a full suspension even though the bike has no intrinsic suspension system. I also run a ST Thudbuster on the seatpost for a little extra cushion.

        I have another conventional mountain bike and it’s fast and sleek. Kinda like a Ferrari. In comparison, the fattie is like a pickup truck with balloon tires. And just as fun.

    2. Unq

      Welcome, glad to have another “old timer” here. We have to stick together!

      I never knew Alaska crossed the international date line. Learn something every day.

      1. Thanks for the welcome. And you figured it out! Nicely done. Nice to know I’m not the only ‘old timer’ here.โ˜บ

  135. Medi-Yogurt

    Allo everyone. Since I didn’t want my account to be banned, I decided to come here and introduce myself. I’m a young teenager who loves the Half Life series. Besides playing the great games of the past and Indies on my potato laptop, I also play a few Nintendo games now and again, though infrequently. This seems like a great community to try joining, and I hope to try to lean how to mod HL and HL 2 soon

    1. Hi Medi-Yogurt, welcome to the site. I love some nintendo games. I think I would prefer to own that than a playstation of Xbox.

  136. I’m gamenew09, a programming that can mod Half-Life 2. Decently. I’ve been diving into C++ more and more, and I’m starting to get to the point where I can actually make a decent mod. I’ve also been mapping for other games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and I’m hoping to get into mapping for Half Life 2, which I know is the same but I just need to find what I could do.

    I hope I can get back into Mapping for games that aren’t just Global Offensive.

    I’m also bad at jokes.

    1. HI gamenew09, I hope you can release an SP mod on here one day.

  137. Hello all.
    After years of playing COD I have found half life… Love it.
    Will be trying the mods asap.

    Cheers

    1. Hi MrDaz, Glad to hear you’ve got the Half-Life bug.

  138. Hello everyone, I am a 15 year old boy from Finland, I have started learning mapping and animation, still a beginner in both.

    I have only made test maps, released none of them.
    I hope I will start creating more Half Life singleplayer maps.

    I started playing video games when I was little, on the PlayStation 1. My first ever game was Ant’s life. I still have some of my PS1 games such as Spyro the Dragon, but sadly I have lost some of my favorite games in the past.

    Anyways, my favorite game series would be Fallout, Half Life coming on the second place.

    I am terrible at writing anything or chatting in general, so I really don’t have much more to say.
    Thank you for reading this introduction.

    1. Hi Siphon, welcome to the site. Glad to hear that you will start making a single maps soon.

      You have great English, BTW.

  139. Hi there! I am Agustรญn, I’m 18 and I live in Argentina. I am soldier, but when I’m not on uniform, I like running, listening to music and playing HL!

    I used to play Pac-Mac, Super Mario Bros, Bomberman, and Battle City . When I was 12 (2010) my parents bought a PC and the first PC game I owned was Carnivores, a very good game about dinosaurs.

    One day I downloaded Counter Strike, but it came with another game in its folders, it was Half Life, the best FPS of the history (I do not need to explain, you all know why is it the best)

    The first mods I played were Absolute Redemption, Azure Sheep, Point Of View and Sweet HL (Absolute Redemption is still my favorite… of those four)

    I started drawing maps for my own mod in 2011, I also downloaded VHE, but it took me two years to configure it correctly. I managed to run a map that same day, It was a box with 8-10 zombies, a crowbar, a pistol and a revolver. I lost that map, it would be a great remind ๐Ÿ™ I made several maps like that, each map was worse that the previous one. lol

    One day I started to map but my mapping skills were null, so I started “writing” it. A guy from Facebook read it and he got interested. He made several maps for my mod ( several awesome maps ) but I was eager to map by myself so we took different ways ( anyway he is still helping me)

    It’s 2016, I make maps for CS and I am also making a short mod for HL, my mapping skills are still poor, but I know the most important tool is the imagination. If I imagine a detailed room, that is what I will get. It won’t have sequences or light effects, but it will look good, I am sure. My goal is to make a mappack, short and detailed, like HL uplink, but longer if possible.

    I am a defensive player, as I said in my profile, I do not run in games, I hold the SHIFT button to walk silently. I test every mod and map on HARD difficulty ( my goal is to finish Half Life on hard without any single death, not F6 / F7 allowed, if I die I must type “c1a0” )

    Ok that is all for now. I am a very friendly person, if you want to talk or ask something, do not think twice!

    Have a safe and productive day! Sorry, but my english is still very bad

    1. Hi Agustin, welcome to the site. Thanks for taking the time to write such a good introduction. It’s interesting to note that you never run in mods. I think I need to try that more often.

      Please never apologise for your English, it’s great and much better than my Spanish even though I live in Spain.

  140. Hiya! I go by Astraxis, and Iโ€™ve been a fan of Half-Life 2 and all its subsequent mods for the past five years (out with my PS3, in with something much better). While I myself donโ€™t have the skill to make mods, I highly respect and encourage those who do; thank you for the fun times! I canโ€™t wait to see whatโ€™s in store!

    1. Hi Astraxis,, welcome to the site. Let’s hope you find plenty of SP mods to rock your boat.

  141. Hi

    It’s Petrick

    I love old school Half-Life stuff.

    ps. I still miss Half-Life Radio ๐Ÿ™‚ Ye’re the Jerk!

    1. Hi Petrick,

      Welcome to the site. Sorry it’s not Half-Life radio, but hopefully my videos will partially replace it.

  142. Hello RunThinkShootLive!

    Before I introduce myself i want to say how much i love this website as a whole. This website contains Modders and Mappers that are Valve-Grade-Quality, all the way to starters who still try and do decent stuff. I hope I can fit in somewhere here.

    About me i’m more of a Mysterious Person, I promise you will learn more about me as time goes on. For now i must leave it as this.

    1. Welcome to the site!

      Are you a mapper yourself or do you just enjoy playing them? ๐Ÿ™‚

    2. Hi CyberHusky,

      Welcome to the site. I’m glad to hear you like the site. Looking forward to hearing more about you.

  143. Hey all, I’m Oradull, lurker extraordinaire.

    I’ve been playing Half-Life and its mods since sometime before Blue-Shift was announced, can’t remember exactly when I started. My favorite thing to do back then was to bounce around the various HL mapping sites and check out the competitions to see what people could do. Ever since those sites all petered out and died I’ve kinda stopped looking into maps and mods too much, but I’m glad to have found RTSL, what a nostalgia rush. Really glad to see there are still dedicated sites to single-player gameplay.

    I’ve dabbled in mapping, but have never learned enough to make anything release worthy.

    1. Unq

      Welcome, Oradull! If you’re wanting to jump back in to playing HL1 maps, a good place to start is the Hall of Fame here, or the Classic of the Month streams that I’ve been doing. That page is here although it’s slightly out of date.

      And if you’re still interested in mapping, we’re only on Lesson #3 of the Level Design Academy, where I’m tutoring Phillip on mapping for Goldsouce / HL1.

      1. Thanks, Unq!

        I’d actually planned on doing just that, once I’d played through the competition maps, as old habits die hard. Looking at the HL1 Hall of Fame is like looking at a childhood mod list, I think there’s only 4 or 5 I’ve never played. Of course that was back in the day where “sv_cheats 1” was a requirement for me, so going back through them now that I can actually beat Half-Life without god mode will be a treat.

    2. Hi Oradull,

      Welcome to the site. You’ve now gone from Lurker to Commenter! YAY.

  144. Hello everyone !

    I’m Shepard62700FR, I live in France and I love playing and modding video games, especially when it comes to Half-Life series. Unless there is another Shepard here on RTSL, you can just call me Shepard for the sake of simplicity ^^

    Some people will recognize me from TWHL and/or ModDB (Shepard62FR), I’m one of the developers of the well-known Half-Life : ARRANGEMENT, the leader of another less known mod called Revenge of Love and one of the programmers behind Hard Duty (that’s a lot of HL1 mods).

    I’m also known for teaching/helping beginners that dive into the journey of programming for the Gold Source engine, I like to “pass the torch” by sharing my knowledge and techniques.

    If you have any other question about myself and/or the projects I’m working on, feel free to ask (or interview me) and I will provide my best answer (unless it’s a silly question like “Can you say ‘baguette’ in your microphone ? xD”)

    Little question to RTSL admins : is it normal that GMail consider RTSL e-mails as spam ? I had some trouble finding the validation e-mail.

    1. Hi Shepard62700FR, welcome to the site.

      I’ll be checking out your work soon.

      With regard to the emails, I have heard some people say they have had trouble with the email, but I can’t seem to find a solution.

      1. Thanks for the welcome Phillip ^^

  145. Greeting users of RTSL,

    I am Monkeymo and I’ve been part of the Half-Life community since the first game came out. I’ve lurked on this site since ~November 2015. I’m generally a quiet person that doesn’t speak much; I hope to change that by making an account here to review mods and interact with the community.

    I found out about RTSL through the Human Error mod. I found the character ‘Larson’ particularly interesting and studied more about him. I saw that the voice actor was none other than Phillip Marlowe and started to notice that name coming up more often in Half-Life 2 mods. After a bit of research I found his site and here we are now.

    If you’re interested in what type of gaming I do, you can check my Steam profile (it’s linked on my profile here). I like to diversify my games, try a bit of everything, though, I lean more toward strategy or games that make you think.

    I have become somewhat of a Half-Life fanatic; I want to know all there is about the game and the engine it’s built upon. I’ve read the entirety of the Overwiki and watched countless ‘Half-Life documentary’ videos just to satisfy my need for knowledge. To say that I’m hyped for Half-Life 3 would be an understatement.

    Well, I believe I’ve rambled long enough, I have it on high authority that my time here will be worth it. See you in the future!

    -Monkeymo

    1. PlanetPhillip

      Hi Monkeymo,

      Welcome to the site. “They say between love and hate is a thin line”. Glad to hear you found the site through my voice acting.

      It’s pretty impress to hear you have read the whole of the Overwiki. I might have to ask you to create some quiz questions for me.

      1. Thanks for the warm welcome Phillip; I can already tell my time here will be splendid.

        I’m pretty sure I could beat you in any ‘Half-Life lore’ quiz. There should be a Half-Life lore challenge on this site to see how much everyone here knows.

  146. Hello, I’m Salakirby! I’ve been on this site for a while, but I was very nervous to make an account ^^;

    I’m a mostly silent person, I’m not very good with conversation, so sorry if I don’t post much.

    I’ve always loved every mod people put their hard work into, and I love playing the HL2:EP2 mods the most!

    I own nearly every Half Life game, and I consider myself very good at HL2 the most! Sadly, I have no mapping experience, so I can only play for now, but one day I’ll consider it! ๐Ÿ˜€

    Also, I love to break every single breakable in a given map. It’s my bad habit! >w<

  147. Hello everyone, my name is Luca.

    I’ve been using RTSL for a long while now, but i had never thought of making an account here. I’m someone who doesn’t really speak a lot, unless i’m told to.

    I made an account here so i could voice my opinion about the mods hosted here and other things of which i can’t think of right now.

    I have in my library the complete Valve collection of games, and i guess i’m good at Half-Life (don’t try me please). I play on Hard every single map/mod i download, because i like a good challenge.

    As for modding myself, i have next to no experience. I have watched tutorials on YouTube and made a couple test maps to see if i get the basics of mapping atleast, but it’s as far as i’ve gotten.

    Since the commenter above me pointed out his bad habit, I guess i should too. My bad habit would be arming makeshift barricades before any kind of battle.

    I look forward to getting along with all of you! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Hi Luca, welcome to the site.

      When you decide what opinions you have feel free to share them.

      Let’s be clear: Arming makeshift barricades is NOT a bad habit but a glorious one. It’s pure coincidence that I also happen to do the same. As can be seen from image 24 on the Courage page.

      I’m sure we’ll get along like a zombie and a headrab at a party with free pizza and a disco light.

  148. My name is Tyler (mostly known around as fattback). LIke most of you, I have been playing Half-Life and many other games for a bit now and enjoy them greatly. I don’t know much about modding or creating maps myself, but I came here with interest and a will to learn. I want to improve my skills by learning from others in this community and am excited to see what I can eventually create!

    Edit: I also OF COURSE am going to check out all the maps/mods on here and leave a constructive opinion to help enhance it’s appeal!

    1. Welcome Tyler, glad top hear you plan to review the maps and mods here. I’m looking forward to reading them. Please don’t hesitate to ask anything related to the site and I’ll do my best to respond quickly and helpfully.

  149. Sulli1

    My name is Samuli i am a finnish teenager who has an interest in half life and modding it.
    Yes i am going to play all the mods here or atleast try them.

    1. Hi Samuli. welcome to the site. Hope you find something you like. Don’t hesitate to ask any questions you may have.

  150. Hi there. My name is Hiran Patel, but you can call me Scout, Scopy or Real Beta, doesn’t matter what you call me, to be frank. I’m from the United States and currently reside in Arizona, where it’s literally an oven.

    I became a fan of Valve and the Half-Life series somewhere around 2009 when I played the Orange Box on Xbox for the first time. After that, I loved it so much, so, around 2012, I decided to actually join the community.

    Currently, I’m the creator and storywriter for the HL2 mod, Genetic Variation. My future plans in the works are to start modeling and animation, so I can pursue work in the gaming industry.

    About me, I’m a quiet guy in real life and I used to play trumpet. If you talk to me, I hope I get to know more about you ๐Ÿ™‚

    http://www.moddb.com/mods/genetic-variation

  151. Hi Everyone,

    I am an Ukrainian youtuber who regularly uploads videos about Half-Life 2 mods and I am the only one who does this in the Russian segment of Youtube.

    You can check out my channel @ https://www.youtube.com/robosergtv

  152. Hi, I’m Pev.

    I’ve been a Half-Life fan since its release. I remember the feeling of awe I had playing Half Life 2 and lately I’ve been wanting to get back into that feeling. So I have been playing through the series again and playing mods.

    Searching for communities to help me has brought me here.

    When my eldest son was small he was the shooter furiously pressing the ‘ENTER’ key as I drove Gordon through the episodic games. My ammo would deplete quite quickly, still it was great seeing the enjoyment on his face. Now, at 15 he’s a bit too big for that. He’s great at CS:Source, and spends a lot of time. When I watch him play HL, I can’t keep up with his speed of play and thinking.

    I made a promise to follow my passions and be the best dad I can be, and so I’m currently indoctrinating my youngest son into the world of Half-Life too, and he’s loving it.

    I’ve given up on my daughter!

    I write stories as a passion too, and see games as a way of exploring my writing. I will be trying out the mods, broadening my HL horizons to give me more insight into how stories can evolve.

    And maybe in time I will branch out into learning about creating my own maps.

    Great to be here ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Hey Pev!

      Its great to have you here. You will not be disappointed with the amount of mods on RTSL and the quality of many of the mods. Its great to see veterans at Half Life still interested in maps and mods!

  153. Greetings all! I’m Alex and I’ve read/downloaded from RTSL/PP probably since around 2009, so I decided to finally make a permanent account. I used to comment here (and still do on ModDB) under the name Mr. Walrus.

    I’ve done a bit of mapping and worked on several mods (which hopefully will one day be released…) and made one entry to a ville competition some time back in Doorsville.

    Just wanted to introduce myself and say this is an absolutely fantastic website! The reviews, discussions, and accepting behavior of the people on this site makes for such a friendly and interesting Half Life group, not to mention the incredible work and time put into this wonderful site by Phillip. Thank you all!

    1. Welcome to official membership.

      Fingers crossed you will release something else soon and thank you for your kind words about my work.

  154. Hello there, fellow Half-Life fans! ๐Ÿ˜€

    I’m Kacper, but I am more commonly known as blueshit199, Blue Shit or simply Blue. I live in southern Poland and I’m gonna go to college this year.

    My cousin introduced me to Half-Life universe when I was a lil’ headcrab, then I’ve played Half-Life 2 and it’s Episodes for the first time in 2009. And so, I’m now a loyal fan of this series, I love it’s atmosphere and the attention to details.
    I’m known for commenting on Half-Life related vids and other media on internet. I used to work on some mods for games like Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, but nothing for Half-Life yet. But I have a couple of ideas in my mind ๐Ÿ˜‰

    And btw, I have a YouTube channel and a ModDB account.

  155. suolasilli16

    Welp, here i am again doing this thing because something went horribly wrong with my last account.
    Hello my name is Samuli and i am a finnish teenager who loves the world of half life after playing for the first time in 2010, yeah it took me that long to discover it. Plans are to play a lot of mods and try to make some myself.

  156. Hello all. I’m an American teenager who has been attracted to Half-Life for a while, but not as long as some people on here. I’m really big into movies and books and currently torn about wanting to invest my future in cinematography or journalism. I hope to be involved in some mods eventually. I plan to try to involve myself in the community one way or another.

  157. AJ

    I’m a Source and GoldSrc modder, I’m currently doing some of the voice acting for a HL1 Alpha mod called In Deep, I’m also working on a few other mods. I also do some writing and occasionally I do videos for YouTube. I am planning on porting the 12 Half-Life Decay maps to Source for a full remake of the PS1 co-op mod (not the cancelled one).

  158. Hi I’m Brad and 30 yo, for years I’ve been playing fps games however Half Life is by far one of the best out there. I’m a non-builder for now so I won’t be of much technical use on here which is cool there’s no barriers around here. I’ve learned to speed run on games and many little tricks that do not involve any cheating I am against cheating on HL! By now I can play any mod and totally nail it so I am pretty aggressive in the Half Life universe of mods and maps that blow my mind every time.
    Not much else to say other than cheers good luck and have fun!

  159. I am not sure how to describe myself. I guess you could say I am a mod developer, but I have never released any sourcemods, and the one I am making may never even see the light of day. Before I get off topic, I have every Half-Life game and a variety of mods. My playing style differs between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, but it typically involves explosives, a shotgun, and a revolver. I guess you could call that aggressive.

    I am going to admit. I played Garry’s Mod long before I played Half-Life. It was funny how little I knew. I thought Eli and Alyx were a married couple and the Combine arose after a zombie invasion or something. This was years ago, so please don’t make assumptions.

    My modding experience isn’t very vast. I’ve created a few popular add-ons for Garry’s Mod, but I’ve also been making a mod for Half-Life 2, which is far more relevant and was mentioned at the beginning of this post. This probably isn’t the place to talk about it, but it is more than a map pack. (Probably too late to the modding party for it to be as popular as other mods.)

    Anyway, from what I’ve heard, this is a great site with my kind of people. I am looking forward to my time with RTSL.

  160. GREETINGS!

    I am A-J(shortened) and I am a huge Half-Life fan, from the west side of Canada. A few years ago, I got a Steam account just to play TF2, after seeing a bunch of TF2 SFM & G-Mod videos on YouTube. About a year later, I got G-Mod and I played it for hours on end. I downloaded some maps but the textures weren’t working right. So after looking at some guides, I needed to get Half-Life 2 and CS:S. Seeing that I had 12 dollars left in my Steam account I went ahead and bought Half-Life 2 first. That’s when I fell in love with the Half-Life series and the FPS genre in general.

    I’m still learning loads of things about the GoldSrc & Source engines, and I love seeing what’s happening in the modding community. Expect to see me around here often!

  161. Hi, I’m Alessio…strange name, huh? Well, I’m Italian, so don’t consider my name strange ;D
    Anyway, I have a large gaming carrier, even if now I’m 14 (shortly I’ll be 15).
    Back when I was 6, I started playing Flash games on CDs that I bought back in the day (I hadn’t Internet at that time). Meanwhile my parents gave to me “Magical Racing Tour”, a Disney car game.
    When I was 8, me, my mum and my dad transferred to a new home, and we bought a new computer (the one I’m using now): a Windows 7 (the best Windows of all time). Back in the old house I had a Windows XP. At the same time We’ve taken a Wi-Fi Router.
    When we’ve moved I got Halo: Combat Evolved from my uncle; my first FPS and “real” game, so excited after the installation. I still play it now, so contact me if you want to compete, I’m pretty good at it :D.
    At 9 years old I got my Father’s GameBoy, with a lot of games, such as Tetris or Super Mario Land 2. And that’s how I got into Retro Gaming.
    When I was 10 I’ve started playing Minecraft…Not one of my favorite games, but I still play it (not a lot).
    At 11 I got a Nintendo DSi XL with a R4.
    Finally, at 12, I’ve discovered three things: Retro Games Emulators, Steam and the Half Life World.
    I first saw a HL2 gameplay/walkthrough in my recommended list on YouTube, so I decided to get informations about it. I got almost all games of the series plus HL2 Deathmatch (not HL2: Lost Coast and HL: Blue Shift).
    Meanwhile I got into general FPS gaming.
    At 13 I started playing Geometry Dash, one of my favorite games now.
    At the same time I’ve started to play Half Life and Half Life 2 mods, Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic and the second one, GTA: San Andreas and Warframe.
    From the past year I’m interested on the leaked content of Half Life 2, and still now I’m searching very well built mods about this. Meanwhile I started to follow Valve News Network on YT (starting with his Beta Content videos XP), and I started to play a really famous MP mod for HL…Sven Coop (Now it’s even a game. YAY). Now I’ve a Windows 10 OS (the PC is the same, by the way), and three months ago I bought Garry’s Mod.

    1. Welcome to the site! ๐Ÿ™‚

  162. Hello, I’m Isaiah. 99% of people misspell my name, so if you mess it up I really wouldn’t care.
    The first Valve game I played was the Xbox 360 Port Portal 2, later on I played Half Life 2 and the Episodes, Portal, and then completed the main Half Life story by buying the original Half Life on Steam. I’ve now purchased 90% of the Half Life series on PC. Minus Blue Shift and Opposing Force
    I started mapping with TF2, never got very far, then later purchased Half Life 2, and that’s where I really started to improve, later on I got Episode 1 and Episode 2. Now I’d say I can create some nice looking interiors, and now I’m trying to improve my skills with outside areas. I’ve now learned how to map with GoldSrc (I’m not very great at it, tbh), Source, and the Doom Engine (barely).
    I’ve decided to join the Source community only today, I’ve lost quite a few friends, and I’ve been pretty down in the dumps. So I’ve decided to try to join something like this and hopefully will boost my self esteem and maybe I’ll make a few friends along the way.

    Sincerely,
    Totinos,

  163. Howdy, I’m Kawoofish.

    I was a huge fan of the PlanetPhillip site back in the day, as it really got me into the Half-Life 2 universe and stuff, but I never made an account or commented (which I really wish I did). I’ve mostly done mapping for Garry’s Mod, specifically for the NoxiousNet Zombie Survival Server (not trying to promote), in which I’ve made multiplayer maps and edits to existing older maps. I enjoyed doing it as a hobby, but recently I’ve really been interested in doing singleplayer maps, as there’s a nice opportunity to tell a story though an interactive experience. I’ve been mapping since 2010 (although I’d say it was mostly dabbling and learning for about 3 years). I haven’t used RTSL recently, but I’m planning on checking out a lot of my favorite mods from the past again and seeing the new ones as well. My fav mods were Minerva, Station 51, and Transmissions Element 120.

    Recently, I was taken up as a level designer for Hunt Down The Freeman, and the main reason I agreed to help (I initially declined) was mainly because I wanted a new experience in working with a mod team and I usually have a terrible work ethic so my own mapping endeavors were going by very slowly. I did a lot of work for the HDTF demo, and although I was somewhat pleased at the final result, I feel that due to the time constraints and other stuff I had going on in my life, I wasn’t able to get the full experience out of the first map the way I wanted. I’m a fan of the HL2 storyline, and the beta storyline (which I found to be an interesting parallel). I look forward to seeing new mods and maps on RTSL, and hopefully in the near future I will have the time to contribute towards the site with new maps.

    1. Welcome Kawoofish! ๐Ÿ™‚

  164. Bob

    I’m an old guy who’s been gaming since ‘Leisure Suit Larry’ in 4 bit colour on a 386 with 4MB of ram. I’ve played EVERYTHING FPS from the first Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, and Castle Wolfenstein. I loved…absolutely loved the HL universe and have played most of the single player maps from Planet Phillip and other mod sites. After a long hiatus due to work and hobbies, I’m back to kill zombies again. I’ve retired after 41 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and now have some time to waste-spend-enjoy with Gordon and his crowbar.
    Bob

    1. Pleased to meet you Bob. Not sure how long your hiatus has been but there should be plenty of great mods for you to try.

  165. Hey guys, I’m Count ( real name is Derek ). Been playing maps and mods from this site for a while now and decided to sign up and partake in the community. I’ve been a dedicated pc gamer since I was just a toddler. I grew up mostly playing Doom, Quakes 1 through 3, and Diablo 1 all of which were introduced to me by my dad. As a teenager I pretty much spent most of my time gaming and exploring the world of modding. I have a decent bit of experience mapping for source games, although I’ve never actually released anything. I’ve also spent a good bit of time mapping for Doom and a bit of modding for Bethesda games such as Oblivion and Fallout 3.

    Today I live with my girlfriend who is a great mapper. I’ve learned a decent bit about hammer from her and my interest in mapping has increased as of late due to her. Hopefully one day I’ll release a map or two to share with you guys. In the meantime I’ll be downloading and playing a ton of the maps available on this site.

    1. Hi Count, glad you decided to join the community.

      Also, great to hear you and your girlfriend are mappers. Hope to see something from you soon, maybe the next mapping challenge?

  166. Hi everyone! My name is Sam, or you can just call me MissBubbles ( or Bubbles for short. ) I’ve been a lurker on this site for a couple of years now, ever since I first heard about the EP2 mod Mission Improbable. After discovering what a great database of maps and mappers this site has I’ve been returning intermittently to check out new content. Over the past couple of weeks my boyfriend (Count) and I have been playing as many HL2 mods as we can get our hands on from RTSL, and after taking notice of how friendly and inviting the community is I decided it was finally time to join!

    I’ve been a mapper myself for about 10 years now, but my interest in level design goes back further. I grew up playing games like Doom and drawing top-down maps on graph paper ever since I was about 5 years old. Being too young to grasp the concept of designing maps, let alone knowing it was possible for someone like me to do that, I continued playing games into my tweens until I finally discovered Hammer. My boyfriend showed me how it worked, and from there I was hooked. I spent years making levels, reading tutorials, studying other peoples work, listening to game/level design commentaries and talks and just absorbing everything I could about level design. I’m very passionate about it, but also have a difficult time finishing my projects and am generally shy about sharing my work.

    Currently I have been working on some levels for Black Mesa. I would love to see more maps for the mod and hopefully publish some myself in the near future.

    1. Unq

      Welcome, Bubbles & Count. Always great to have long-time lurkers join in. And especially mappers! Hopefully you’ll consider participating in one of the Ville mapping challenges, which are great places for small and experimental maps, and we’re always welcoming of new mappers.

      1. Thanks for the warm welcome! I’d love to participate in one of the mapping challenges provided that the theme is of interest to me. Hopefully the mapping challenges would be a good means to motivate me to create and release a small project from time to time.

    2. Welcome MissBubbles. It’s always interesting to hear other people’s stories about how they got into modding and gaming. I agree that more BM maps would be good but for some reason there hasn’t been that many. I’d love you to consider entering the next mapping challenge but I also recognize that it’s a big jump from never having released anything to releasing a map with a restricted theme and a time limit. Anyway, welcome to the site again.

      1. Thanks! I personally think that the reason for the lack of BM maps is that few people are willing to buy the retail version of the game, so there isn’t a very large playerbase, which limits the potential pool of mappers wanting to work on BM projects. Hopefully with the eventual release of the Xen content we’ll see more people dabbling in modding the game. It’s a great game full of amazing assets but you can only play the campaign so much!

        I’m eager to see what’s in store for the next mapping challenge. If it’s something I think I can create a suitable contribution for then I’ll definitely jump at the chance!

        1. Yes, you certainly could be right about the retail point. I hadn’t thought of that.

  167. Hello everybody.My name is Can ลžermeter.I born in Turkey and ฤฑm still living in Turkey.I got black curly hairs, black eyes and ฤฑm 2meter tall :).I played basketball for 9 years then ฤฑ had to stop because it was affecting my school performance.Now ฤฑm 19 years old ฤฑm studying Computer Programming in “UludaฤŸ University” which is one of best university in Turkey.So ฤฑm mapping for 5 years ฤฑ only released 1 map which is Dread City its on RTSL…so thats all ฤฑ got to say ๐Ÿ™‚

  168. Hello, my name is Kaede. I’ve been watching over this for quite a bit before I signed up last year.

    Some stuff about myself:
    I was born in Germany where I lived for the most part of my life. Since being a child, I always admired all kind of police forces and other emergency services, especially the department of crimescene investigation. At the age of 17 I decided to went to police academy, where I had a 3 year education and became a part of the German “Tatortermittlung”. At some point I moved over to Japan because of Japanese exchange students, whom I became close friends with, invited me to come over for some time. Originally I planned to go back on January 30th 2017 which didn’t happen! I am now an official Japanese citizen and continue my work in the Japanese Crime Scene Investigation. Currently I’m a rank 9 junior detective and work together quite often with SAT (Special Assault Team).

    Modding:
    With no experience I recently started working on my own HL2 mod, in the setting of an alternate Half-Life 2 storyline. I coded several cut enemies to fully functional. Including enemies such as the Ichthyosaur, Advisor, a roaming Combine Sniper and few others. They are (unsurprisingly) still quite buggy at points but I give it my best to fix as much as possible. While not in any state acceptable to be shown public, if there’s some interest in it, I’d like to give out an alpha exclusive to RTSL when being fixed the most important issues.

  169. Greetings everyone, my name is Ilya but people more commonly call me by my pseudonym siger (which is the way I prefer it). Please, forgive me my English, it’s not my native language after all.

    At the time of writing this I’m twenty years old (1996-01-15) and currently studying programming on my own. My hobbies and interests include digital and traditional visual arts such as drawing, painting and animation, software development (combination of all these leads to the computer game development), free/libre software-related stuff and something I like to call “digital archaeology” – collecting large amounts of relatively old digital content for archival. I am also a giant fan of the cyberpunk subgenre and subculture.

    I started playing games when I was around four years old and my first ever game is Battle City on Nintendo Famicon. After that I also had Sega Mega Drive console. Before I got myself a personal computer, I was a rare visitor of popular back then computer clubs. There I mostly played Counter-Strike 1.6 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

    My first experience with the Half-Life franchise can be traced back to the birthday party of my classmate where he was gifted a copy of Half-Life 2. I fell in love with the game at first glance due to the fact (I think) that it was the first game where I could experience the so familiar to my eyes and dear to my heart post-soviet urban setting with amazing localization (which might be the reason behind such popularity of the game in the Post-Soviet states). When I finally got myself a PC around 2006 and one of the first games I installed was Half-Life 2. At this point I can’t remember where I actually got myself a copy of Half-Life 2 but I bet it was one of the unofficial DVD anthologies because getting anything official back then was virtually impossible. Funny thing to notice, the PC I got had literally the same case design as the in-game prop model of the white computers that you can find in some locations (it was a sign).

    Due to the fact that I had no Internet connection back then, my only source of modifications for the game were CD- and DVD-disks that come with video game magazines. I was mostly buying the magazine called Igromania. Such disks usually had a bunch of maps, skins and less often fully-translated modifications (such as The Citizen).

    After some time I got myself another DVD anthology with Half-Life 2: Episode One on it and playing it “ruined” my belief that Half-Life was made by a Russian developer because the game had only text translated. This anthology also included the WON versions (for some reason) of the previous games from the Half-Life series and fan-made modifications. Feeling shameful now but back then when I launched Half-Life my first thought was “This can’t be the original Half-Life! The graphics look too crappy!”. Though, after finishing it I fell in love with it as well. Playing the modifications included on that disk made me respect and love any kind of fan-made content despite the quality or the quantity. At this point I can’t remember all the mods included on that disk, all I can remember is that it had original Day Hard map-pack before it later become a full modification, Half-Life: Retribution, Xen Forces: Breath of Xen and the mod where you have to destroy some kind of a giant cube with a face that talks with the voice of the Combine Overwatch (I still haven’t found this mod after all these years).

    Some of the modifications on the Igromania DVDs were requiring Steam version of the game and forcing them to work with my pirated version is pretty much how I started modifying the game myself. At the same time I was getting into Adobe Photoshop (CS3), so, I also was fooling with the textures.

    Sooner or later I had to play Episode Two and Orange Box in general, so, it happened. Being honest, I didn’t like Episode Two as much as I liked Episode One for two simple reasons: the atmosphere of the first episode is absolutely stunning in my opinion and I consider the setting of destroyed City-17 more appealing and original then some caves and woods that you can see in millions other games. Though, I understand that Episode One doesn’t offer much new in comparison to Episode Two. Playing Portal at first made me think that it was some fan-made modification that pirates had put on the DVD again but as it turned out later it was an official game by Valve. The game still stands as the gold standart of the great atmosphere for me (which can be easily ruined by the sequel). Obviously, I couldn’t play Team Fortress 2, so, the only thing I could do with it is what I was doing with any multi-player-only game I got my hands on – running around the empty maps and looking at stuff.

    Later in life one of my classmates told me about Garry’s Mod (10) (though he never really was a fan of Half-Life) and I finally learned how people were making all these “funny” pictures I kept seeing in the readers-made section of the magazines. Together we were playing Garry’s Mod and by “together” I mean we were making stupid poses and constructions and sharing the screenshots and save files with each other. To get add-ons we had to go to the other friend of our and use his PC that had the connection to the internet. Though, our fun was ruined later when Garry’s Mod Related Files started requiring logging in via Steam to download files. This is also how I learned about machinima and got hooked up by it.

    Finally, in 2009 I connected to the internet and the the first things I started doing include downloading tons of fan-art of Half-Life and Portal, maps and mods for them and, most of all, watching all the Source machinima I could find. The first on-line game I started playing was some fan-made “distribution” of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. Sure, I installed Steam but I couldn’t actually do anything in it since most of the functions require you to purchase at least on game, something that was pretty expensive for me at the time because all the prices were in U.S. Dollars. I also was playing Alien Swarm quite a lot when it came out. When I finally got enough money I bought myself Team Fortress 2 on the 4th of December, 2010 and was playing it non-stop. At this point I was really into the idea of machinima and was a fan of one Russian machinima-maker. One day playing Team Fortress 2 I completely accidentally found them playing on the same server as me and added them to my friends telling that I’m a huge fan of their work. That later somewhat opened me a way into machinima-making. We had our own small closed-off community of people passionate about the thing they were doing where I met all the people who later become my closest friends and even loved ones.

    So, basically this is the reason why Half-Life (and the sequel in particular) is my favorite game (if not the “thing” in general) of all time. Because thanks to it I found myself friends, the loved one, learned English language and it generally made me who I am right now.

    Years later I found myself being able to experience only a fraction of what once was one of the greatest community ever. Source– and GoldSrc-related web sites were shutting down left and right, content was disappearing and so on. I can only compare this to GeoCities (when Yahoo! decided to shut it down) i.e., a giant part of the history being destroyed. This made me genuinely mad (mainly because I never had a chance to be a part of that community) and I set myself a goal to preserve as much of this history as I can, even if I’ll have to do it against the will of the content’s authors. Right now I have tons of maps, mods, fan-arts, tutorials and whole web sites related to Source, GoldSrc and other engines on my hard drive and I’m not planning to stop anytime soon. In my plans to later sort all this data and make it available to everyone.

    Besides Half-Life and all of the pre-2010 games by Valve, I also love such games as QUAKE, DOOM, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, the original Crysis and many other games most of which are first-person shooters and usually included in the “video game necrophiliacs starter pack”. My favorite film is Stalker (directed by Andrei Tarkovsky). In terms of music, the array of the genres I like goes from the Portal-like ambient to the Russian post-punk, depending on my mood, so it’s really hard to pinpoint what I actually like.

    After finishing college I plan to start mapping more and actually release something, spend more time learning about software development and my biggest dream is to make a game completely from scratch.

    The only other thing I can add about myself is that I love to nitpick the smallest details and an awful perfectionist which some consider very annoying. And some people might also hate me for my views on certain subjects due to the fact that “political correctness” isn’t my strongest side but I usually try not to talk about controversial topics.

    I knew about PlanetPhillip ever since I started looking for mods on the internet but only registered now because I felt the urge to be (or at least feel like) part of something bigger and I want to thank you personally, Phillip, for doing the god’s job and keeping this web site more than alive for all these years (though, it would be really nice to see Portal mods and maps here, now that web sites like Thinking With Portals are no more).

  170. Hi there everyone! My name is George or xTasteless as i like to call myself over the internet. I was born in England in the year 2000 and moved to Sweden a year later and i am fluent in both languages. I have been wanting to make mods and maps ever since i saw a YouTube video about someone who had made his own level for Half-Life 2 back in 2008. I always thought i was too dumb so i never tried it out so i told myself in 2014 that it’s finally time to try it so i loaded up the CS:GO SDK and had fun for HOURS and i made 2 or 3 different maps to upload and play on with my friends! They weren’t as excited as i was for the maps but i did end up making a map that i still update and play with them to this day. I have been on this website for little over a year now downloading and viewing what people have made but i never made an account so here i am now.

  171. Hi I’m Kyle,
    I’m fairly new here but I love all things Half Life. I got tired of waiting for Half Life so decided to check out this. I wanted a new community after being with the Fallout wiki for a while. I really like what I see on this website and hope that I can join up with you guys. I have very limited knowledge on Half life mods or how to make them so sorry. I started out with G-Mod and then TF2 and finally to half life. I live in Illinois in the U.S.A. and spend most of my time reading or playing video games.

  172. Hi there,

    I’m totally new to Gauge (found it via ModDB) but have been gaming since the original Pong. Began at home with a ZX80, then a UK TRS-80 compatible called a Video Genie, then a Spectrum, Various Amigas & finally (after a while with my beloved A1200) I jumped ship to IBM-Compatibles & have never looked back.
    Been playing – & loving – Valve games since WON, & greatly enjoy trying out all the Mods, TCs, etc. so should have a bloody good time trying out the ones I never discovered/got around to with this wicked app, Gauge!

    Many thanks for putting this thing together – I’m gonna have a blast!

    Cheers,

    zarathustra =]

  173. Hi there!
    My name is Andrew and I am the native resident of Russia. I am undergraduate software engineering student, fond of video games and everything related to game development. My obssession with Half-Life series began since I was introduced to HL2 while visiting our former family acquaintances. I was 9 at the moment, so I begged to play some videogames after seeing the shiny and modern rig in the nearby room. I was playing NFS Underground 2, since it was my favorite game at the moment, but then one of the hosts decided to show me other games like FarCry and Half-Life 2. I got really fascinated with all the presented graphics and open-world possibilities in FarCry, but, when I turned to HL2, I pretty much became speechless after the G-Man’s introduction sequence. It seemed like I hadn’t seen something similar even remotely. Lip-synced language-localised dialouges, state-of-the-art graphics, lots of physics-powered interactivity, the Post-Soviet vibe of City 17… It was the most charming first impression I could get from a computer game.

    As time passed by, my old cheap PC setup had been replaced, so I could experience the brave adventures of Gordon Freeman in the most genuine way. Well, sort of genuine, since there was no conceivable way to obtain a licensed copy of HL2 via Steam, so I had to play a bootleg CD version with broken saves and occasional ai_disabled 1. These small inconveniences led to hours of gameplay full of frustration and despair, because not only I had to play entirely from chapter to chapter to save my current progress, but also some of the important disabled NPC sequences rendered the further walkthrough impossible. Thank god I was told to type ai_disabled 0 to get rid of the last issue, but still the game was too hard for me to deal with, considering my young age and complete lack of first person shooter skills.

    When I got access to the Internet I finally could be able to dig deep into the franchise, including all the episodic content and the grand GldSrc trilogy: HL, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. I fell in love with Valve games and Valve related content. It was a neat era of Orange Box and Garry’s Mod 9. I really miss these days, when I started tinkering with GMod after reading the Concerned comic. I was full of ideas about my own GMod comics, although I couldn’t really keep my patience to finish a single one. I also tried a bit of Hammer mapping following the simple tutorials. I firmly believed in the bright future of Valve as a company, capable of delivering great products for their wide and creative audience.

    Back then I couldn’t really think of weapon skins, hats and other digital cosmetic items. I couldn’t admit the fact that such a benevolent company is able to take this profit-inducing direction. But it happened at some point. I don’t want to blame them for doing what they decided to stick with, but I don’t feel this enthusiastic spirit tied to their work anymore. Maybe I’ve drawn too ideal picture in my mind or maybe I am too old to feel the same pure sensation. One thing for sure: it feels like these guys are not the same anymore. They’ve promised to show something interesting next year though, and I wish it would be something I could be stunned with. We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

    Speaking about this particular site, I was wondering if I could find an active platform, where people talk about mods and mapping, after indulging myself in nostalgic feelings of good old Source-powered days. Thanks to Bolloxed, I was able to find this great, still mantainable community. I am looking forward to grabbing some mods to regain the sensation of playing HL for the first time. I wasn’t really following the modding scene a lot, but I might as well give it a try. Maybe I will be inspired enough to pick Hammer Editor once again and come with my little creation of myself, who knows…

    1. Quite familiar story, heh.

  174. Kaede pretending to be PlanetPhillip

    Hello, my name’s Phillip and I created and run a website called RunThinkShootLive.Com which lists and reviews singleplayer maps and mods for the Half-Life series of games. In addition to the reviews, I also create articles, videos and podcasts directly related to the content. I created this site back in 2003 and it’s been a hobby ever since but now I want to take it to the next level.

    1. Kaede, please don’t make comments like this.

      1. My apologies for that Phillip, however it wasn’t actually me doing it. Guess I really can’t leave those girls alone here without them doing some kind of mischief. I’ll tell them to not do anything like this again while using my PC. Again sorry for that.

  175. bkadar

    are you going to become a fps game? ?

  176. Why Hello, everybody
    My name is Mark, I have recently come to this community.
    I have been dabbling with Hammer: world editor for a while but never released anything before.
    well, I tried to submit to Hard!ville, but something happened so maybe you will see my map maybe not. I’m currently living in Ohio, US. I Train parkour and also teach it.

  177. Good morning/afternoon/evening everybody! I’m Txiki, a young French(Basque) Gamer and a Map/Mod maker!
    So, there is no much to say…

    My mod idea

    I’ve got some idea for some mod, here they are:
    -Maze: The four elements
    -Country side
    -No Jump

    You can learn more on my profile!

    1. No WAY! KAIXO! I live in Amorebieta, Bizkaia. Where are you. Iparralde?

      1. NO, are you kidding me? I live in Urketa, near Baiona, Lapurdi!

  178. Hello reader(s).
    My name is Ryan, or as I am known online, Xtron5. I live in North Carolina, in the United States. I have actually have been on this site for quite a while, but decided to make an account to hopefully start reviewing, and with some time and lots of practice, eventually upload something to the website. I enjoy playing video games, swimming, and reading. I’m glad to be a part of this community.

  179. Hi, my name is Javier, last name’s Jimenez. I’m Mexican American, and I tend to game a ton. Love walking at night, like to go out for a bit of bike riding as well. I draw, listen to music, play an instrument, and do something different once in a while, like mapping. I would love to one day take mapping seriously, and make it one of my career choices, but I’ve also considered career paths that have something to do with hardware, or software. Voice acting is up there as well so I’ve got some thinking to do.

  180. Hi, I’m AJ AKA CharlieHadronTimeAgent, I voice the Irish scientists in the Half-Life Alpha mod by Jackathan, In Deep. I have a lot of ideas and very little ability to follow them through but I am learning as I go.

  181. Hi all,

    Half-Life Fan since launch in 1999. Fondest childhood memories of playing the Uplink demo on my Pentium 200 mx with 32mb of Ram in Software mode running at 400×300

    Never forget!

    10 four was my go to place for years. Great to discover this gem of a site. Can’t underestimate how well this is run.

    I grew up with PC gamer magazine disks which first introduced me to mods for HL1

    They Hunger & Uss Dark-star the most memorable of those.

    I still have the original Disk for both game and the mods itself.

    Anyway, great to join the site. Hopefully I can contribute with some reviews.

    1. Its nice of you to join us mickie50!

  182. Hi, my name is Aleksandr, I am map/mod maker, fan of Half-Life franchise and just a nice guy. I am living in Estonia. I came to this community to hone my mapping skills and look for others works.

  183. Hi, my name is Daniel, and I’ve been a fan of the Half-Life series since 2014.

    I purchased the Orange Box for the original Portal, and I decided to play Half-Life 2 as well. Soon afterwards, I discovered this website and the wonderful community around it. I recently made an account so that I could post my critique of other’s creations and maybe post some of my own maps.

  184. Hello everybody, my name is Eusebiu Marincean (AKA Spyde3r) and I use hammer for a while now and wanted to see what I can make and post here.

    I was a fan of half life since a was 5 years old and I enjoyed every moment of the game. I was always fascinated by games and how where they created so I found this program which is called hammer and tried to play with it and wach tutorials on the internet until I got the hang of it.

    For anyone who wonders, I seen this website by watching bolloxed’s gameplay on his channel ๐Ÿ˜€

  185. Greetings, RTLS

    It is wonderful to still see a thriving community, which focuses on not only the games that I’ve loved and played for the good part of my life, but also the creation of content for those games.

    I am Christian Petersen, a developer and designer by day and game- and level design enthusiast by night.

    Since the early 2000s, I’ve been captivated by games such as Quake, Half-Life and their countless mods created over the years. After spending the good time, playing and understanding those games, I became increasingly interested in creating content. I have always been fascinated by the level design in those games, especially after discovering the limitations, that made me appreciate them that much more.

    I have had a great amount of free-time to learn, explore and improve my experience with level design tools, especially for GoldSrc. The limitations gives me so much more room to be smart about things and still make spectacular things, that I couldn’t believe was possible.

    The best of times are when I share my knowledge and learning from others, which is what leads me here.

    Best Regards.

  186. Jack

    Hi, my name is Jack, I love Half-Life and all Valve games. I dream of working for valve and making games. I also want to create Half-Life mods for the time being. I would love to get involved in the community and get to know everyone who makes mods.

    1. Hi Jack, welcome to RTSL. How long have you been mapping?

      1. I haven’t been mapping for too long, only about 1 month or two. Sorry that I uploaded to this twice but I finally made an account. However i am very excited to play all these maps and learn more about map making. Thanks for getting back to me. ๐Ÿ™‚

        P.S This is Jack Btw

  187. Hello fellow RTSL members. I am Zach, and I have found this website while looking for HL2 mods because I was bored. I have been a member of Steam since September, 23, 2013. And now on January 3, 2017 I have found my dream website. A mapping community that has not died off to have only 2 dedicated active users a day, but is also not mainstream enough for me to feel like I am just another user on this website. Just how I like it. I will love to be apart of this community and post things of my own, not like I have anything else to do.

    1. Hi Zach, welcome to the site. We are more of a playing community than mapping but there are plenty of mappers here. Looking for =ward to reading your reviews and hopefully playing your releases.

  188. Hello, Im FoxMarine, and I want to learn how to model my own player models.

    I came across this sight some time ago to get support for a old outdated version of half-life. but it was outdated, so yeah no dice. but I came back, for the modding community. and the want to make Models.

  189. Hi, my name is Jack, I love valve and all their games. I want to learn how to mod and want to speed run all half-life’s. Can’t wait to get to know the community.

    1. Hi Jack,
      Welcome to the Half-Life (2) modding community. Glad to hear you love valve and their acclaimed games. Hope to see some of your work published and see some screenshots of pre-production.

      Little notes to help you out!

      *Source Engine Mapping: you can find written tutorials and information on Source SDK Wiki!
      ** Just Google “Source Engine Level Design”
      *Mods: If you are creating a mod i would suggest put everything on Moddb and stay active on it. this way we can see your progress and than show Phillip your work when completed since everything goes thru him before its uploaded here!

      Happy Modding/Mapping,
      Pikachusky!

  190. Hello guys, I’ve been here for a while now yet I’ve not posted for some stupid reason! I’m pretty much a simple gamer who is addicted to the likes of Doom 1-3, Left 4 Dead and the Half Life series. Little more beyond those for “modern” gaming… I’m always impressed by the whole HL2 universe and have even funnily enough had many dreams but that’s not something I usually admit to in public :] I play using my Apple iMac through Steam, which I think is superb. Anything to get my Source fix ๐Ÿ˜‰
    I also enjoy retro gaming and run a little humble website called AtariCrypt (Atari ST) but HL2 is about as modern as I get, if I’m honest. There’s no need for much else, this game is incredible and I thank Phillip for running this brilliant website. Okay, it’s best I stop waffling on and leave it there…. ๐Ÿ™‚ Cheers all, Steve

  191. Hey peoples. Been somewhat of a lurker around here for the last few years, but decided to get an account set up in preparation for the next challenge of THC ’17.

    A little about me:
    I’m currently a 24 y.o. college student working on getting a CS degree. Been mapping for Valve engine games for over 16 years now (started early!). Someday I’d like to start my own company, but as of right now, I just map as a hobby.

    My first experiences with FPS started back with Doom 1, and my first multiplayer FPS experience started with Quake. I also played a lot of CS and TFC back in the days before TF2 and L4D came out.

    I first got into level design back in 1998/99 when I played the mod ‘Absolute Redemption’ for HL1. At that time, you could access some of those mods directly from the HL: GOTY disk, as well as from sources like PC Gamer and whatnot. I ended up playing a bunch of the oldies like They Hunger, USS Darkstar, and wanted to learn how they made them. I found out about Worldcraft being on the disk and I was pretty excited, cause back then I thought you had to pay for the program (I was 8 years old at the time). The rest is history from there really. Took me about 4 years to really get the hang of the program, but I’m happy I decided to stick with it because it’s become one of my favorite hobbies and someday I may decide to turn it into a full time profession.

    Over the years I’ve become pretty experienced with both the GoldSrc and Source engines, having made maps for various mods/games, such as Sven Co-op, TF2, CS: Source, and Left 4 Dead.
    Some of my most notable releases:

    CH Cyprus Park for Contagion (official map)
    Fatal Freight (2015) for Left 4 Dead 2
    Black Mesa Nightmare (2007) for Sven Co-op
    MVM Oilrig (2013) for Team Fortress 2

    I was coerced by a friend into signing up to participate in the next Hammer Cup segment, which is why I am here. But it’s also nice to see a close-knit community revolving around one of my favorite engines. So hopefully I’ll meet some of y’all and maybe try out your maps!

    – Zorbos

    1. Welcome to the site. Just so you know, you don’t need to be a registered member to participate in The Hammer Cup 2017.

      It sounds like you have been around a long time within the mapping community, even though you are still pretty young.

      Anyway, I’m looking for to playing your creations.

      1. Oh ya I know, I figured it was a good time to finally make an account anyway ๐Ÿ™‚

  192. Anoop

    My name is Anoop,
    I’ve always loved Half-Life and I’m looking for ways to squeeze more playtime into my beloved games. I hope this site will help me do that!

  193. Hello, my names Andrew. I’ve been playing the Half Life series since 2010. I have some experience in the Hammer editor, but haven’t released anything worth looking at yet. I’ll be honest, I’m still a newbie at heart when it comes to Hammer. I’ve been to this site a few times before, when it was PlanetPhillip. I look forward to playing more of the content the community has on offer here.
    Thanks!

    1. Unq

      Welcome (back) to the site, Andrew. Good to see more mappers joining and participating in the community! A good way to practice your mapping is to make a map for one of the Ville challenges here – ToxicVille was just announced today!

  194. Hi, I’m Sasha, but I’m a guy. First experience with Half-Life was Half-Life 2 in or 2005 not too sure, even though I was a huge game fanatic by then Half-Life 2 was special even though my Pentium 4 could barely run it.

    The atmosphere plus the fact that the architecture reminded me of home so much (Ukraine) it was very surreal experience at the time.

    In fact I remember the moment my friend let me borrow it in a school locker room and another friend of mine said the antlions were scary as shit, I don’t remember how I got any other game.

    I wanted to learn how to map since about 2007, but only got my hands into it around 2009. I’ve never publicly released any of my projects, I’ve done beta testings with small communities but I don’t have a single finished map that has been released on workshop or any mods, pretty sad, I just can’t release something until I feel like it’s perfect.

    I’m here to lose my bad habit of not releasing and I will enter into ToxicVille and release the map no matter how far I get, as long as it’s functional of course ๐Ÿ™‚

    I’ve been a lurker on here since 2015 and played many villes and mods released or featured on here. My YouTube has some clips of a map that’s still WIP and has been since 2015. (Check my Profile) Excited to enter the Villes, not for the prizes but for interesting projects and seeing others ideas!

  195. Hi, I would rather not share my real name but i can say that i have loved and played the Half Life games for about 3 years now and when i discovered mods it all changed. Like i used to (and still do) watch Bolloxed and i always loved seeing these mods people made and so after looking around and testing with other mod websites like mobdb and game maps i found RTSL and the gauge tool (Which is way easier than going into my HL files) And so i’ve been downloading mods and maps from this website for a while now and I’ve finally made an account. And i just want to say thank you to all those modders and website admins that inspired me to create my own maps and just enjoy HL mods in general.

  196. Hello, I’m Ridonkulous.

    I’ve been stalking RTSL for quite some time and making levels for Source even longer, and only came out of my shell now in light of the up-and-coming ToxicVille competition. I was impressed with the welcoming attitude of the community and decided now would be an appropriate time to introduce myself to another pool of Sourcemod enthusiasts.

    Have a great day; I can’t wait to get to know everyone here.

  197. Hello!

    Half-Life 2 has been the first game I’ve made a map for, and ever since I’ve discovered the amazing world of mapping, I’ve tried to find new and fun gameplay for Valve games for 10 years. English is my second fluent language, and I started learning it in 2007. Meeting new people online in communities has always been an adventure for me, and I can’t wait to experience what this great community has to offer!

  198. Hi All,

    I’ve been lurking since I discovered this site last year, but since I’ve just submitted a toxicville entry I thought I should say something.

    I’m in Australia, so the live streams are usually at a bad time for me. I watched the start of the recent fundraiser, then woke up early the next day hoping to contribute. All I heard was Phillip saying “adios” and the stream stopped! I hope I can arrange things better next time.

    May the community and the site live long and prosper!

  199. Belting site…hardly any work done since I found you ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Glad you like it. Sorry to hear you haven’t done much work.

  200. I’m Bockismtor. I enjoy the Half Life series and the content that stems from it. Learning to make my own content seems like a fun endeavor. That’s all.

    1. Hello Bockismtor, welcome to my site. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

  201. Hi, I’m Fake, I’m an avid lurker who’s been here for a couple months now, and spends an unhealthy amount of time on Reddit, browsing mods, Hammer tutorials, and grammar editing my internet posts. I’m avidly teaching myself how to map, and will probably release some.

  202. Hi, I’m Robert, and I have zero experience in making mods, but would love to start playing them. Especially if they take place in Black Mesa

  203. Mazinger

    Hey!!

    I’m Mazinger, i’ve known this site throught reddit. English is not my main languaje so sorry if i don’t speak perfectly. Something like this site is what i’ve been searching for years. I love half-life and i used to play a lot of half-life 1 mods, but when i was younger.

    Now it’s seems that i’m going to start playing again, this time more and better mods. I don’t know where to start…

    Greetings!

  204. Is this how it works I don’t know >///< anyway
    I'm Tristan
    I'm basically a no one I'm just a kid with way too much free time well I haven't been a Half-Life fan for long only for the past couple of months but no community I've been in has been so nice and well not toxic. My favorite game in the Half-Life series is Episode 2. I haven't worked on any mods or anything like that I guess I would like too learn hammer one day nor do I do voice acting, like I said a nobody. If you want anything add me on Discord Sweddy#3611 I'm basically always on.

    1. Hi Tristan, welcome to my site.

      As the intro to HL2 says “It’s safer here.”

      Just because you don’t create, doesn’t mean you aren’t valued. Imagine a world with people who only created media but didn’t consume it.

    2. Hey there. I’m Lord Grabby. I’ve had around 2 years of private mapping experience making maps for me and my friends in CS:S and CS:GO, etc. but I’ve wanted to get into more single player / story-based experiences. Although my skills aren’t the best, I hope I can improve my skills by creating more maps.

      1. Hello Lord Grabby, welcome to the site. Good luck getting more into the SP scene.

  205. JamaicanDave

    Hi, I’m JamaicanDave and I’m an alco… Sorry bad joke (or is it??).

    Anyways I’ve visited the site on and off for a year or so now, and following on from Phillips tweet thought perhaps it’s time to add my name to the official introductions.

    What can I say? I enjoyed Half Life 1 and Opposing Forces. I think Half Life 2 + Eps are hugely over-rated (quick get the pitchforks) – but like looking at mods people make for it. I currently play and map for Black Mesa and am looking forward to Operation Black Mesa.

    I have a few small Black Mesa map releases to my name, which can be found on this site and the official BM workshop.

    That is all.

  206. Hello, I’m HighFire, I am a new mapper, who started by making maps for csgo, my current csgo project is on hold because I can never think of what to add to it, but I almost never have the motivation to finish it anyways. I started making hl2 maps when I found RTSL, I started with ToxicVille, where I started on the Friday before the deadline and ended up with something that is not very good. But even with that, I am always ready to learn something new, even outside the world of sourcemodding, and can’t wait to make more maps.

  207. DAwnofReeman

    Hi,
    I I really appreciate all the mods for Half Life you guys make. I am older than probably many here,and i didn’t get into pcs until about 2001. I remember buying a Half Life CD from Ebay about that same year, and did not know I had to have a KEY to play on Steam. I did get a refund. So i then played Duke Nukem, Quake,2 and 4.Unreal Tournament, then I got Half Life on Steam about 4 years ago. Yes, that’s right, I did not play HL till recently.Bummer…..FPS is the best for me, all the time while my sis tries to get me to play WOW…….haven’t yet. To me, HL franchise is the best there is. I probably will not be making any mods, cause my strength seems to be pc hardware, learned most by experience, Anyway. I just LOVE your site, and maybe soon I will review some mods. Blessings to all……

    1. OMG, 4 years ago. You might be the newest player to the community. ANyway, welcome to my site and community – It’s safer here.

      BTW< have you played any of the other HL games yet?

    2. I’m GreenViking, I love pretty much all of Valve’s games! I used to play tons of gmod and TF2 but my favorite Valve game of them all is HL2. On gmod I got involved with HL2RP and return to it periodically. Anyways, I hope to find some good mods on this website.

      1. Welcome to my site GreenViking. I’m sure you will find plenty of great mods.

  208. Hi, I’m JargonJC, (known alternatively elsewhere as “jccreszMC“, “jccreszMinecraft” or simply “Jacob“.

    I started mapping in Portal 2 first using the PeTI editor, and then over the course of several years finally learned the Hammer Editor. Quality control is high priority with me so unfortunately it slows me down.

    I’m a level designer by heart and nothing else feels right to me. Hammer is my go-to tool for creation.

    1. Welcome to the site JargonJC. Quality is always good as long as it doesn’t stop you from actually release maps!

  209. Sunfish Jones

    Hello! I’m Jones… Sunfish Jones
    I came here expecting nothing more than a compilation of mods…
    little did I know the amazing care that has been put on this website and the awesome community surrounding it
    I’m a friendly and kind guy. I’m more than happy if you decide to talk to me

    1. Hello Sunfish Jones, welcome to my site. You are right, there is an awesome community here. Feel free to chat in the monthly chat posts.

  210. joe

    Hello all, i have joined because I like to play half life and the mods. I currently live in Colombia, South America– long story, married a Colombian girl 15 years ago, and stayed here. Originally from Houston Tx.

    1. Hi Joe, welcome to my site. Just so you know, there’s no need to join to download mods etc. Only reason to join is that you can use the Recommendation System, which allows you to add recommendation images to reviews and easily find maps and mods you haven”t reviewed.

  211. Hey everyone.

    Discovered this site a while back in my quest to find new source mods/maps. Haven’t visited in at least a year though — saw a notice for a new release and now I’m back. Thought I’d make an account and discuss some of these releases with you guys!

    1. Howdy Pretender, welcome to RTSL. May I ask where you saw the notice of the new release?

  212. Hello, RunThinkShootLive!

    My name’s Winterman! I discovered this site because I was wondering where did Bolloxed get his maps from. Even though my profile said I joined in June, I just be able to log in yesterday because somehow my password was broken XD

    Am I the only one who’s from the East here? I’m also maybe the youngest here. (Nevermind, 2nd youngest (?), I saw HighFire’s profile)

    Half-Life 2 is the first FPS I’ve ever heard of in my entire life, just be able to play it a few years ago. Seeing a lot of people playing it made it kinda easy for me. But I think some people never noticed that they were playing on Easy. Because shotgun can 1-shot almost anything in the game.

    It pretty much made me think it’s so OP until I actually played it.

    I’d be checking out mods and custom maps. Whatever that catches my eye, and also I’d love to give my feedback on the Hammer Cup maps. (Have played DefendVille 1-2, ToxicVille, MinimalismVille and just finished BridgeVille before typing this)

    For some reason I love playing -ville maps, they act like custom map packs and I can learn about how to design a level right. Because I have a dream job making shooter games.

  213. Hi, im griffin22

    I know rtsl for 4 years. Its previous name was planetphillip. Idk how but i just found out this site and i thinked it is cool. So i downloaded some mods and mapping challenges. That days i didnt had a original hl2 on steam so maps were buggy and i didnt play them anymore.

    But in 2016 i found the bolloxed youtube channel and i remembered planetphillip. I typed it to google and there was no planetphillip. Cuz it changed to RunThinkShootLive.com. Today i have hl2,hl2:ep2 and hl2dm on my steam

    When it comes to mapping im trying. I try mapping for 6 months. I know basics of the hammer but im lack of designing ability. I’ll do my best. Who knows maybe i join to a mapping challange?

  214. Hello i’m ThunderVIII
    I’ve been playing Half-Life games for a long time, and the first Half life was also the first FPS that i have ever played. I enjoy all kinds of videogames , but my preferences would be FPS, JRPG,
    Hack-n-Slash and Stealth games.
    I don’t really play online a lot, except for games like left 4 dead 2 , and sometimes i like to instal counter strike and play it for a few days , but unless it’s co-op , i lose interest quickly in multiplayer games, even if i do have a lot of fun.
    I’m not really THAT good with mapping, but i made some maps, and released a left 4 dead map on
    the steam workshop. I don’t really have anything else to write here , sorry if there are a few mistakes
    as i’m not english, and i hope to have a lot of fun with you guys.

  215. SNW

    Hello, I am SNW. I’m mainly here for the occasional source map competitions as I find playing other fan-made maps pretty cool. That’s about it… don’t expect a long lecture about myself here… :3

  216. Hello, I am PortalStorm4000. I like long walks in circles and LED lit computers…

    I do robotics and program. I also really, really like the Hammer tool. I normally make crappy puzzles and ugly looking maps for Portal 2, one of my favorite games of all time. But recently I think I’ve been using the hammer tool too much for Portal 2. So, I have taken the obvious solution, using the same exact tool. I’ve been trying to make my brushes better, but that is still a work-in-progress.

    I also like saying random stuff and walking in circles.

  217. Hi everyone!

    I’m HashtagMC (also around as “Black Eyeliner” or, when it comes to music, “Timothy Age”). I’m doing maps for Garry’s Mod, a mod for Portal, and picked up BM:S mapping for the 2017 Black Mesa DoorVille contest. I like Episode 1 much better than Episode 2, but Half-Lifeยฒ beats them all.

    I’m no use at detailing, so I usually make very bland-looking rectangular rooms, but I like to think I’m rather good at map logic and scripted sequences. Couldn’t do nice textures if my life depended on it, but I can do my own soundtracks. Mapper/modder, guitarist/bassist/vocalist & gay as fuck.

  218. TheAutisticGamer

    Hey everyone I’m TheAutisticGamer!

    Half Life is the game that got me into first person shooters to begin with. With such a huge collection of mods for HL 1 and 2 and the Episodes, I feel like belong here. I have very little experience with playing mods as I’ve only played a few such as Transmissions: Element 120 and Estranged Act 1 which I absolutely loved.

    Now I don’t do modding but I love playing mods. I have been a Valve Fan ever since I played the original HL and loved every minute of it. I also have a youtube account by the same name so if you want you can check that out!

    1. Hi and welcome to my site. I’m sure you will find plenty to interest you here. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have a question about installing or playing the mods you download from here.

  219. Hello, my name is Wallace Moura, aka Tabajara. I’m 23 years old, from Brazil. I’ve been mapping since 2009, where my first game I used Hammer on was in a Half-Life 2 modification called Zombie Panic! Source. I did many custom maps, with different types of gameplay: objective, survival, deathruns and such. I tried making some for Half-Life 2 as singleplayer maps and was worth a try. I learned many things and tools watching and reading lots of tutorials, videos, other people’s maps and playing different games to focus on their own and unique level style.

    I’m currently working for Tripmine Studios, guys behind Operation Black Mesa and Guard Duty (HL Opposing Force and Blue Shift remakes), as a Level Designer since 2014. Also I’m Team Lead Developer and Level Designer for Zombie Panic Source for a long time. I’m excited to try out few community-made mods and sp maps from RTSL website and upload my upcoming HL2 SP map soon here after many years of hiatus!

    Before leaving, I want to thank you who have played my old SP maps where I was just a beginner in this level design area – specially you Phillip – for trying out and reviewing my previous work. I’ve been doing my best since then.

    See you guys around.
    Cheers!

    1. Hi Wallace and welcome to the site.

      I’m looking forward to playing more of your SP work and to seeing the levels you make as part of the OBM and GD mods.

      1. Thanks Phillip! I’ve one question tho: how do I submit a HL2 map here?

        1. Currently, just send me an email with all the details.

  220. Hi, my name is Michal Kamaryt (kary), I’m a 25 yr old dude from Czech Republic…
    I grew up with Half-Life and its mods and I will never stop loving the GoldSource Engine. Whenever I finished a game I looked for ways of modifying it, and as a teenager I had a lot more fun when making mods/maps than when I had just playing games. For the past 8 years I had a long break with everything Half-Life, but recently I stumbled upon some of my old creations on this site, I got nostalgic and hyped up for some Half-Life mods.

    My first map pack was “kill all greenpeace“. It is pretty much bunch of very poorly designed killboxes I made when i was 13 (released in 2006).
    My second project was much better “Blbej Den“- It still has tons of issues, but in the end I’m pretty proud of it (released in 2009).
    After Blbej Den, I was working on a very ambitious mod called “From Beneath“, but than I went to college, life happened and It was never finished (and it never will be). Over the years I also made tons of Deathmatch and Counter-strike maps of various quality, which have mostly gotten lost in time.

    I Started doing Lets Plays of HL mods on one of my youtube channels. I plan to finish all the Czech mods first (because I can translate them and offer some trivia as I knew the community), It’s my way of archiving these pieces of work. When I’m done I will move on to other mods as well.

  221. Hello, my name is Linus AKA Sir Tokialot and i’m from Sweden, some of you may already know me. I’ve been playing the Half-Life series for as long as i can remember.
    I’ve been on this site for a couple of years although i didn’t make a account until now.
    I’ve always wanted to join a ville on this site so I’ve been trying to learn hammer recently, hopefully i can get a map out for EP2 later this year!

  222. I’m Wise Person. I just found out about this site yesterday, and it seems pretty cool. I love the Half-Life games and I can’t wait to play some mods.

    1. Hi and welcome! Rather new myself ๐Ÿ™‚

  223. Hi. Just a fan of the game and this site. I get the itch to play HL2 mods every once in awhile and stumbled upon PP years ago, now found it in its new digs.

    Wonderful site and some great work by the modders!

    1. Welcome to the site as a member. I wonder how many current users remember PP?

  224. Krunoslav Marinic

    Hello,
    just registered here and wanted to say something smart, but can`t think of anything…
    So my only question is can i type all of my future interactions with u guys in Croatian, since i`m born and raised in Osijek,HR?
    Its kinda easier that way…

    P.s. I love HL:EP2 and would love to play some mods or maps for this game so please feel free to suggest some ๐Ÿ˜‰
    thnx

  225. Hey all,

    My name is Lee, and I have been playing FPS games ever since I got Halo: Reach on my Xbox 360 almost five years ago. Ever since then I have branched out, eventually reaching the Half-Life franchise, which I became obsessed with. I soon built my own gaming PC (which I have recently rebuilt). I have beaten all of the HL games, and have played many mods. Speaking of branching out, I have found some of my favorite franchises thanks to that. Mass Effect. Deus Ex. Halo. Mega Man. Portal. Left 4 Dead. Overwatch. Sniper Elite. DOOM. All great games that I love playing. I love video games and I wish to work in the industry as soon as I graduate. It’s my dream to have or work for a respectable game company.

  226. I am DiseGames, aka SABIAN56. I began playing HL1 in around 2014, and I’ve always loved it. That’s probably why I own every HL game. (XD) I also really like the Portal series.
    This year I founded a modding group called “Apex Modding” with a few members.
    We’ve created a couple mods, like Half-Life: Version One & Portal: Enhanced. (we’re mainly focused on PE) You can check us out on ModDB

  227. Hey, i’m “leplubodeslapin” (Sylvain MENGUY).
    Like everyone here i guess, Half-Life games changed my life and vision about video games. It lead me to open a software called “Worldcraft” 10 years ago for Half-Life and Counter-Strike 1.6, and since that time it became my passion.

    I decided to work more deeply on level design and visuals on my projects at some time and created few Counter-Strike maps. Since the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, I only worked on projects on this game and made few successful maps (csgo version of fy_pool_day, de_print) and i’ve been working for way too long on a map called “Archives” (hostage rescue map).

    I’m here to try to make a short singleplayer map for the current FusionVille contest, I’m learning stuff about scripting and the making of a singleplayer layout, so it should be pretty basic/straightforward on that side. I’m really happy to be able to create something in the Half-Life 2 universe !!
    I hope i’ll be able to finish the project in time (events during the coming weeks might force me to stop working on it)

    Beside all this, i’m a mechanical engineer, i’m using 3DPrinting daily and i can build computers for people if needed ^^

  228. Hey!

    I don’t want to bore anybody with my life story, I’m just interested in mapping!

  229. Hello! I’m Lem, and it’s nice to meet you all. ๐Ÿ˜€

    I was introduced to Half-Life at a very young age, and when I discovered it came with Hammer I immediately set about making some incredible eyesores of my own. From there I grew to tinker more elegantly by the time I was in high school. I’d regularly neglect homework to work on various ongoing projects in Gmod, Source or GoldSrc (or Cryengine 2, at times…!). Mostly mapping and level design, but not necessarily limited to that. I have very little of my work from those days, and all that survives now is screenshots. I failed to preserve it properly or share it online in the ravages of depression.

    I feel like I’ve come a long way trying to pull myself free from that particular pit. Right now I feel like the next logical step in beating those demons is to rediscover a creative outlet I loved when I was younger. Especially because seeing so many people still doing it so passionately is genuinely inspiring!

    In the meantime, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in your creations some more! ๐Ÿ˜€

    1. Hi Lem and welcome to my site. It’s ad to hear you have lost some of your early work as it’s always interesting to see ones progression.

      We look forward to your new steps in mapping and hope you will be able to release something soon.

  230. Hello, I’m Tanger. I don’t remember exactly when I discovered Half-Life 2, but the very moment that I learned how to install mods I’ve been in love with them.

    I am particularly interested in maps that are unusual in some way, shape or form, so if anybody has some recommendations I’d be happy to hear them!

    1. Hi, pal!

      If you’re looking for unusual, I’d recommend looking up Leon Brinkman. All of his maps are here on RTSL, if I recall correctly, and they are rather polarising, in that one half of the reviews thinks they’re utterly useless and the other half thinks they’re the best thing since sliced bread. They’re rather unique, that’s for sure. Also, Ethosaur made a thing called the PTSD mod a while ago which seems pretty psychedelic (and according to him has nothing to do with PTSD).

      Welcome!

  231. Hey everyone!
    I’m pretty bad at sticking with the aliases I create, so I think my real name, Rasmus, will do for now.

    I think I first stumbled upon RTSL when I was juuust getting into mapping for Half-Life, but back then my English was so bad I wasn’t even sure what RTSL was all about. I’m glad I do now, as I feel a strong desire to get into mapping again and learn the more advanced parts that my younger self never felt like taking on.

    And who knows? Perhaps I will join one of the upcoming Lambda Cups in 2018. But even if I don’t, I appreciate sites such as this one. It’s what makes mapping worth it.

    1. I Rasmus and welcome to my site.

      Great to hear you may enter the Lambda Cup, it’s always good when new entrants become involved.

      Don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.

  232. My name is Odรญn.

    Born in Cuba, living in Venezuela.

    Playing Half-Life for over a decade now, expecting to keep playing it for another one hundred years.

    Nice to meet you all!

    1. Hello Odin and welcome to my site. Let me know if you have any questions. I’m looking forward to reading your reviews.

  233. Hiya! Most people just know me as Saph.

    I have a love for art (I mainly do digital painting) and have an interest in architecture. I’ve been messing around with Source for years now, especially when it comes to mapping. I’ve been through various games, but haven’t been able to settle for a little while.

    Last week, I received the wonderful Half-Life 2 saga since I haven’t gotten to play it in seven years. Being able to fall in love with the game – visually, in gameplay and design – was a blessing for me. I hope I’ll be able to contribute to the community and continue on with design in the years to come.

    I’ll be trying my best to pump out a map for a couple of the contests, but we’ll see. Mostly need to figure out the new entities. Can’t wait to delve into the amazing content already produced here!

  234. Hello there,

    My name is Angelo but call me Wedge – I’ve been using this nick for 21 years, yeah.

    I started making maps in 98 for Half-Life then shifted to Counter-Strike. Created about 15 maps for CS, TFC, UT and for some other mods. My last attempt to level design was when HL2 was released. I was making a DM map, but life called and wanted its time back, so I had to attend to some other things. Moved to another city, work+college during the weeks and relationship on weekends. Anyway.

    I’ve been trying to get back to level design for some time, but was lacking some motivation/inspiration. Last attempt was a CSGO map. But made this 2018 resolution to get back on track. I’m on the process of blocking a Quake Single Player map, about 50% done, then I found this community and hopefully I’ll participate in some challenges and make some good HL2 maps. Let’s see.

    I also want to improve my modeling skills on Maya and learn Blender.

    Cheers!

  235. Hi everyone!
    Name’s Alex. I’ve been lurking since 2011 or so, and, yeah, for some reason it actually took me THIS long to actually join. Now, however, I’m finally here and ready to contribute. Really looking forward to participating in one of the future -ville contests, even though I’m not an avid mapper by any means and haven’t finished a single level despite getting into mapping way back in 2013. Oh, and also I make bad electronic music sometimes, so there’s that, I guess.
    Anyway, I’m glad to be a part of this community and just want to say that I appreciate all the time and effort Phillip put into keeping this place up and running.

  236. Hello everyone!

    My name is Dadema. I have some experience with Hammer, especially for Team Fortress 2. I have also mapped for CS:GO and Portal 2.

    I would really like to map for HL2 and its episodes, because I personally think they are one of the best games ever made.

    Anyway, I hope that I can participate in some of the challanges.

    1. Hello and welcome, Dadema. Looking forward to seeing if you accept any of the challenges. It will be cool to see how you approach SP games as it seems you previous work is mostly in MP.

  237. Eyo! I’m PlatinumJesus, and I’ve been a fan of Half-Life and mods of it for quite a while. I’ve been planning to make a mod for Half-Life myself, though I have pretty much no experience with modding aside from making MVM missions for TF2. I’ve also been working on and off on a 2D Atari-style horror game called DELUGE, though its in the very very early stages of development.

    1. Eyo to you too and welcome to the site.

      Sounds like you already have a few things planned for this year, so good luck and I hope you find/make the time to get into HL SP modding.

  238. TSG

    Heya! I’m TSG! I’m just a guy who loves Half-Life!

    1. Hi TSG, welcome to the site. I’m pretty sure we all love Half-Life here, so you will have lots of new friends.

  239. Hi, my name is Kanji. I don’t have too much to talk about, but I thought it was better to talk a little about myself.
    I currently live in the U.S. I have a job where I work at a fast food restaurant and I am going through college to earn an Art degree.
    I first gotten interested into Half-Life 2 while I was messing around with Garry’s Mod. It was a game that I wanted to try out after watching videos from a Youtuber named “Kitty0706.” Surprisingly, if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have been able to get into the Half-Life series for a while.
    After hearing about this site, I thought it would be very fun to join in to try out a few mods since Half-Life 2 was a personal and nostalgic favorite that I would ever have.
    I hope to have a great experience in this site!

    1. Hi Kanji, welcome to the site. I am sure you will have a great experience here, we are all very friendly and helpful.

      Good luck with your art degree. Have you made anything Half-Life inspired?

    2. Just making sure I reply to PlanetPhillip, I actually did make something related to Half-Life. It’s a movie poster that I created back in high school. It’s supposed to be about a parody film titled “Confirmed,” where it is about Gaben Newell with his secrets hiding the legendary Half-Life 3. If you can give me permission to post a link to Reddit, I can show you my poster!

      1. Sorry, but the poster needs to have been created for this event.

  240. It’s free real estate. Nah not rly, just me, FlawlessFPS. Most people just call me flawless in places I use this nick. What can I say? I love Half-Life and any game that has anything to do with it and I have for most of my life. I found out about this site on ModDB when I was looking for some mods for Half-Life, and now here I am, because finishing Half-Life is just the beginning ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. Hi FlawlessFPS, as you say, or as I say, Finishing Half-Life is just the beginning! Welcome to the site. Have you played many mods from here yet?

  241. I finally made a profile here! I love this site and I hope it never stops to exist.
    I’m super happy to see the Half-Life Community so lively after all these years.

    1. Finally! Good to see you on the main site. Looking forward to Boatless and all your mapping challenge entries.

  242. Hi! I am uco73. Coming from Serbia. My english is terrible. I hope you understand me. I’m new here and I love old games like Half Life series. Bolloxed is great Half Life player. Thanks to him I was started playing same games.
    Cheers!

    1. Hi uco73, welcome to the site. Don’t worry about your English, it’s much better than our Serbian! ะ”ะพะฑั€ะพะดะพัˆะปะธ ะฝะฐ ะฒะตะฑ ัั‚ั€ะฐะฝะธั†ัƒ.

      It’s very interesting to learn that you started playing Half-Life after watching Bolloxed’s videos.

  243. Hello everyone, I’m Darakuu, hailing from Italy!

    I have been interested in the fascinating world of game development ever since I played the first Halo on the original Xbox, and after discovering Source thanks to HL2 and Gmod, I started to make maps!
    I’ve been making maps for a few years, but only recently started to release my work. I have two public Gmod maps on the workshop under my beltand a failed HL2 mod (I was very unhappy with it by the end of the project) which might be released at some point in the future.

    I wanted to make maps again, and wanted to do so on Black Mesa, because I love having access to all of the HL1 features (and more) on an updated engine. Just as I was tinkering with the new lighting features, a good friend (goes by the name of Bastion on this site) told me about the Mesa Cup, and I have decided to join in!

    1. Hi Darakuu, welcome to the site.

      I hope to see an entry from you in the next Mesa Cup. Have you played the original Half-Life or just Black Mesa?

      1. Only now I see this reply… I’m terribly sorry.

        I’ve played every valve game in existence, and I’m practising with the Black Mesa fgd, as you can see from the quality of the map that went into the competition ๐Ÿ˜‰ I hope to make better maps in the following competitions.

        1. No need to apologise at all.

  244. hello I’m Celeste, or Sam, whichever you prefer, I’m l have started with the orange box back in 2013 which motivated to get a pc to play the original half life, and now I’m trying to break into modding myself. I’m very new and only gotten a incomplete grip of the hammer map editor. I want to reach the point of being able to make a half-life marathon crossover mod when my skills are developed enough to make that goal attainable.

    1. Hi Celeste (I prefer that over Sam, it sounds more inspiring), welcome to the site.

      It’s always great to hear from not only new members but perhaps more importantly new MODDERS!

      There’s plenty of information available about modding, so it really comes down to your time and motivation.

      Good luck with your crossover, I suspect it will be a few years until you feel ready.

  245. Hi everybody! I’m Langeskov. I’m fascinated with atmosphere and feel of Half-Life 2 (Old european cities, lifeless wastelands, you know ๐Ÿ˜‰ ) and becasue of that, I’m trying to get into mapping! It’s so nice to see that HL community is still going strong, after all these years! Here’s to another years full of Running, Thinking and Shooting in Half-Life!

    1. Hi Langeskov, welcome to the site.

      As I just said to Celeste, it’s great to hear of new modders. I agree the feel of HL2 is fascinating. BTW, what happened to “Living” in the “Running, Thinking and Shooting”?

      1. In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon – Dr. Manhattan

  246. Hey there! I’m AppsolusZero (‘Appy’ for short).

    I’m interested in video games development and trying to get into it by modding. Hope the community will help me! Thank you in advance!

    1. Hi AppsolusZero and welcome to the site.

      We are not a modding community really, more playing, but we will do our best to help.

      Have you made anything yet?

      What are your plans?

  247. Hello. Been lurking the site for a couple months but I’ve decided it’s time to make an account. I have really enjoyed the Half-Life series and all of the community content that’s come out of it; I’d say HL2 is my favorite game of all time. I’ve also been on the discord for a couple months, and it’s really been an enjoyable time. I’m planning to participate in all of the Lambda Cup challenges this year, and possibly make a couple of mods in the near future.

    1. Hi jman005 and welcome to the site.

      It’s great to hear of some many new modders appearing here.

      No more lurking for you, now you have to (not really, there’s no obligation to) review some releases.

  248. Just your average die-hard fan of Half-Life. I recently decided to be more serious about my goal of trying out every mod on this site, except for multiplayers, so we’ll see how it goes! I’m especially a sucker for anything with Japanese/Chinese voice/subs/textures, but I dislike levels that are ridiculously challenging or ridiculously easy.

    Hi!

    1. Hi mousemuffins and welcome to the site.

      Just to be clear there are no “average” die-hard HL fans – we are all unique and special!

      Good luck with your goal. You won’t find any multiplayer maps or mods on this site, so don’t worry about that.

      Let me know if you have any questions.

  249. Hi there,
    I have been a fan of HL ever since the first game came out.
    Been waiting for HL 3 too long now.
    I stumbled across this site by pure luck, and I hope to find
    some good mods here.
    It feels like I have found the right place for that…

    Cheers to you all

    1. Hi fonty95, welcome to the site. I’m pretty sure you will find some great mods here. Let me know if you have any questions.

  250. Name’s Dumania, you can call me D if you’re a lazybone, and I like to play Half-Life 2 mods. That’s all you need to know.

    1. Hello Dumania and welcome to the site. How did you find it?

  251. Hey there! I make maps sometimes and just recently found RTSL. Been streaming some of the mods on here, although some of them have frame rate issues. Might as well register so I can leave some reviews!

  252. Hey I’m Ben,

    I only got into mapping very very recently but so far i’m enjoying it. I haven’t really played all to many mods but i’ve been playing Half Life games for 5 Years now so I thought maybe I could post some of my more polished maps here.

    1. Hi Ben and welcome to the site. I’m happy to post what you have but if you are new to mapping, be prepared for some honest feedback. Just email me your maps and I’ll post them.

  253. Name is Eric, But you can call me by my username Gameboy555. To start off I am from Illinois, born from Chicago. For an occupation, I am a Graphic Designer that focuses in web design, UI/UX, and Illustration based work. I heard of this site long ago and recently while working at my design position I stumbled upon some of the old podcast and interviews on this site. By listening to these I had a sense of nostalgia back in my highschool days when the Half Life 2 Mod scene was booming.

  254. Hello everyone, I’m Marut, I’m currently 25 years old and I only started playing HL about 2 years ago, but I have been completely captured by the series. The games are great, and the mod/mapping community is impressive, honestly. There’s such a huge amount of fan-made content created for these games I’m overwhelmed. I’ve played several (including the *Villes), but there are so many I still have in plan to get around to… I don’t know when I will ever find the time.
    I also like speedrunning, from time to time, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert on that. I tend to prefer the routing part, rather than the “grindyness”.

    Apart from Half-Life I’m an old-time Jazz Jackrabbit 2 fan.

    And yes, I submitted my status report to the administrator, the other day.

    1. And you won, but I haven’t heard back from you.

      1. Yeah, sorry… I didn’t expect to actually win and real life was phagocytising me, so I didn’t check back for a while. Anyway I received the email and everything’s fine, I have redeemed the game on Steam. Thank you very much for the game, I’ll make sure to play it further down the line.
        I’m happy you liked my entry btw, there were several cool ones this time!

  255. Jmp

    H e l o , I am Jmp, just a pretty talented mapper wandering around looking for new maps and ideas to work on. I make maps for the PvB (Players vs. Boss) game mode in Gmod. Sometimes, I also make maps for other game modes, but nothing really extraordinary. I can also make custom textures if I really want to. I came here in the hope that I could find new projects to work on other than just my usual time in Gmod. Hopefully I can be a welcome addition to this community.

  256. Hello! My name is GloriousRigby.

    I am a YouTuber, writer, voice-actor, animator and amateur Source Engine mapper. I create whatever is on my mind and whatever looks cool.

    I run a small YouTube channel called GloriousRigby where I make mostly Half-Life/Valve related video’s with high production value.

    I also create Source Engine maps. I’m currently busy with a few which may or may not be released anytime soon. Some of them are visible on my YouTube channel.

    When I get anything done, I might submit a map in the future. But for now, I’ll just be downloading and enjoying the site.

    If you’re interested in my works, check out my YouTube channel:
    https://www.youtube.com/c/gloriousrigby

    Thanks for reading this and allowing me to introduce myself and many others here.

    -Rigby

  257. Hi guys, I have been playing HL and HL2 based games since the beginning, but just now found this excellent site. I thought the mod community was dwindling, but it just moved! I’m so glad I can dive in again.

  258. Hello. My Name is Artoxwolf.

    I started to play FPS Games with HL2, it was an amazing game so I bought everygame from that Series. I played whole series thourgh and found out (thourgh YouTube) that there are amazing communities Creating and Reviewing amazing Mods/Maps.

    In the Past I tried to Map or Mod myself but I would rather stay with playing Modded Stuff. I live in Germany so my Grammer in English might be a bit off.

    Well i have nothing alot to say about my, I just enjoy playing Games. So thats it for my Introduction, Hope you enjoyed reading it

    -ArtoxWolf

  259. An introduction to me

    Hello, my name is Despon and I’m 15 years old. I have been a part of the Half-Life / community for about 4 years now. Half life has been one of my many favourite games since I entered the gaming community fully back in 2014 and joining Run Think Shoot Live after a while of me acknowledging it seems to be pretty good so far.

    I live in Scotland, United Kingdom. My favourite game of the Half-Life franchise would be Half-life 1, my favourite fan-game would be Black Mesa. I take a hobby in creating art in Garry’s Mod, checking the artwork on my steam profile could give you the idea on what type of art I do ( https://steamcommunity.com/id/Despon/images/ ) and it’s not just Garry’s Mod artwork, I do artwork in other such games such as background pictures and etc. As of the modding topic, I don’t make mods but I play alot of them such as Crack-Life, Brutal Half-Life, etc. I also recently tried modding but lost interest in a short while due to my lack of knowing how to mod stuff in a game.

    I also have a YouTube channel if you would like to check it out, I do Garry’s Mod animation, gaming videos / playthroughs and other various stuff ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2RLkAXSh9iUDmh1DCrl-DA/videos?view_as=subscriber ). I have recently hit 2k on it aswell so if your from here and are a subscriber then I thank you to the heavens.

    Now that I’ve introduced myself, I hope I have a warm welcome into this part of the community and thank people who made this nice-looking site.

    1. Welcome to my site, Despon. Congratulations on reaching 2k subscribers.

      You mention the HL games but not the mods. Do you play many?

      1. Why yes, I do play mods though as said before; haven’t made any.

  260. Hello there.

    Hello and let me introduce myself, my name is engi, I’m a 17 year old Croat currently trying to figure out how hammer works, while i have little knowledge of level making, i know the basics like scripted sequences and the likes, hopefully i can learn more about it as time progresses on.

    Thanks for reading this and have a wonderful day.

    1. Hi engi, welcome to the site. Keep working on your mapping, it may seem hard at first but it does get easier.

  261. Roy
    Old Man – Loves Gaming

    Retired now, but I’ve enjoyed lots of electronics and computer fun. I even had my own TV Repair shop. LOL

    Old enough to have programmed TRS-80 Model 1’s in Z80 Assembly, BASIC and Fortran.

    Navy Tech, Tandy/Radio Shack Engineer in the TRS-80 and the first IBM PC clone years. Went on to be a kernel hacker for IBM and Motorola. Database data debugger for cellar billing companies and INFRA creation. Last work was as a IT Director. Well enough of that.

    I love all the Half-Life games and I have played all the 4 and 5 star games here. This is the only website I go to for gaming (well steam too.) Of course you can not forget the stand alone Black Mesa.

    The other games I am playing now are Pinball Arcade, INFRA, Serious Sam and Doom.

    I have all the Pinball Arcade tables and as much fun as it is and the time I have spend it is a bargain. If you haven’t picked up the Williams and Bally tables by now, it will soon be too late.

    My first FPS was Doom. It came on diskette and almost ended my marriage until I networked Linda’s computer to mine and we played co-op. Then we didn’t have time for love making. Oh No!

    Serious Sam is another favorite. Co-op is to way!

    I don’t have a TV and I don’t need one as long as there is Half-Life and RTSL!

  262. Hi my name is Victor,
    started playing Half-life 2 back in 2013 (a little late to the party) and fell in love with the entire franchise. Now I’m more interested in playing different mods and experiences.

  263. Forgot this page even existed. May as well introduce myself.

    I am Bendy, just an average everyday ink demon. Regardless of myself, I have been a longtime lurker here, casually playing the many Villes and other assorted mods this place has to offer. I guess i’ve finally had an urge to come out of the shadows.

    Half-Life’s always a game I come back to, whether it just be a playthrough of the base game, or another excursion into the countless mods and maps it has spawned.

    Perhaps i’ll add some reviews and thoughts to some older mods here, to give me an excuse to go play some oldies again.

  264. Hi! My name is Phil!

    Always been a fps player. Discovered Half-life when I was like 12 years old. Team Fortress Classic was my 1st multiplayer game ever so it holds a special place in my heart !!! I remember being terrorized by the Itchyosaur back then haha!

    Nowadays i’m more of a Quake player (Quake Champions being my main mp game)

    But I’ve been pretty nostalgic recently and I want to revisit half-life 1 and 2 and maybe do runs at max difficulty. I’d like to check out some mods that I might have missed in the past too!

    So that’s pretty much it!

    1. Well, hi there, Phil. Welcome to the site.

      I am sure you’ll find some mods you’ve never played before, however, I can’t guarantee they’ll be “good” mods.

      I, too, have been meaning to replay HL 1 and 2 on HARD. One day.

  265. Hi my name is Jason, or Mr.Frie Frie if you want.
    I love the Half-Life, Portal, and Left4Dead games. I have been making simple maps for a few years now but have gotten more into it recently. I hope one day to make around or above Valve quality maps for Half-Life 2 and Portal. I found out about this website from a competition that happened a bit ago and it got me excited to one day join one. I love playing community Half-Life content as I believe it’s the closest thing we will get to a Half-Life 3.
    -Jason

  266. Hello to All !

    I’m a 19yo French student and I’m a Half-Life fan since 2008, when I first finished the masterpiece that is the first game. I discovered it almost as a coincidence, I had a really old PC and that was one of the few games that worked with it, so I bought the CD version at a flea market, installed it and fell in love with it !

    That computer is now dead, and I’m going to try and replay all the good mods that I completed back then, such as Invasion, Azure Sheep etc…

    I’m a versatile videogamer, I play mostly retro games, the ones I have in my collection. I’m a classic-FPS kind of guy, fond of Wolf3D, DOOM, Quake, Blood and of course, Half-Life, the gem.

    I also have a gaming youtube channel, in French at the moment, I will make videos as soon as I have the right material !

  267. Hi there! I like Half Life 1 and it’s expansions and Half Life 2 as well (as much as I hate to see it on a cliffhanger) and mostly mess around with mapping in Hl1 ever since I’ve found Phil’s tutorial on YouTube. Aside from that, I primarily screw around with scripts in Left 4 Dead 2 and make personal mods for it and Alien Swarm. I’m from the U.S., am Male, and I am making this comment! So, uh… Hi!

  268. Hi! i’m azney, I have played half life since 11 years, i’m actually 19. I tried a lot of mod for Half life and others game too (Stalker <3).

    Unfortunately i don't really have modding skill (Tried hammer tho, was pretty fun). So basically i'm just here for enjoying mods ^^.

    Have a nice day.

    1. Hi Azney and welcome to the site. Hard to imagine that you have spent almost half you life playing Half-Life!

  269. Hey!
    I’m Sorin, and I have a strong passion for Half-Life and anything Valve related (yes, Artifact too). I’ve grown up playing Valve games, my dad introducing me to Half-Life and I just played the hell out of it. I do yearly playthroughs, either by myself or through Synergy with my friends just to mess around. Despite being born shortly before Half-Life 2 came out (and it being my favorite) I really enjoy Half-Life mods as well. They Hunger, Echos, Caged, only one of which was actually released in that time period, but what the hell the new mods are great too!
    I’m still running through high school, and I enjoy writing and playing games in my free time, mostly just Half Life mods or something on my favorite games list over on my profile. Kinda young to be in this scene of modding at 16 probably. I’ve dabbled in a bit of hammer for L4D2 survival maps (and geez, they suck so much), and I love creating stories that would play out great if I could figure out how to actually use hammer to the best of my abilities.
    I strongly enjoy how alive the Half Life modding community is still to this day, and I’m just praying that Source 2 has even better capability for mods!

    [Wow, this comment box is at the bottom of over 600 comments!]

    1. Hi Sorin and welcome to my site. It’s always great to hear younger players still play Half-Life and enjoy it. Yes, let’s hope that Source 2 will make it even easier to make and distribute mods.

  270. Hi I am HalfMemes, making memes are the only things i’m good at…
    Strong fan of Valve when they cared back then but i’m hoping that episode 3 or HL3 will come to us eventually, list of things I play after schools.
    CS 1.6
    Garry’s Mod
    GTA SA
    GTA 4
    Half Life (and mods)
    Half Life Blue Shift
    Half Life Opposing Force
    And many more, I wish people here are respectful than any other modding community

    1. Hi HalfMemes and welcome to my site. We all hope that eventually Valve will release HL3 but who knows. Yes, this community is very respectful, so you don’t need to worry about that.

  271. Hey I am Ravenholm, I do walkthroughs, and Let’s Plays of Half Life mods, and I didn’t like the formatting of ModDB so I decided to search the wild west of the internet and found here. I am 21, I’ve been playing Half Life games for 2 years, and I own 3 copies of Half Life 2.

    Not good at modding, but I can Voice Act and I can review mods, so I’ll stick to what I know best.

    1. Howdy Ravenholm and welcome to my site. Have you played the original Half-Life games?

      1. Yeah i have finished HL1 and HL2 I need to get around to owning the 2 episodes along with Blue Shift and Opposing Force

  272. Hi, I am Bean Bean Mr. Clean Hashbriwn, Bean Bean Mr. Clean for short, Bean Bean for shorter, and Bean for extremely Short.

    I make maps for different Source games like Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2. Currently working on a mod for Half-Life 2: Episode 2, that started as a mod for Half-Life: Source.

    Ive mapped for a while now but still not as experienced as most people are.

    1. Hello Bean,

      Welcome to the site. It’s always nice to hear from new readers. Have you released any SP stuff?

      1. Anon_1705997

        The only single player piece (I assume that is what SP means) is a test map I made for a source mod, only as a test.

  273. Hello there! My name is hammernewb, and I just recently started mapping for the Half-Life games, mainly HL2. Some of my favorite mods are The Masked Prisoner, Freeman and Bob, Research and Development, and Entropy Zero. I started playing the Half Life games around 2010, and I have loved them ever since. Some non-Valve games I enjoy are: LittleBigPlanet, Need For Speed, Battlefield,\
    Fortnite, and Star Wars Jedi Academy/Knight.

    Fun Fact!
    I actually have a Oculus Touch! Neat, eh? OK i’ll stop bragging…
    My father actually introduced me to the Half Life games, and Portal aswell.

    That’s pretty much it!

    1. Hello hammernewb and welcome to the site. Good to hear you have started mapping, we need as many mappers as we can get. Does you father play Half-Life mods too?

      1. To answer your question, no. He lost interest in the Half-Life games, but he still occasionally plays them, and plays some HL2 Deathmatch with me every once in a while. I don’t even think he knows what mods are. He just played vanilla Half-Life lol.

  274. Hello, I’m Mr. Sakamoto!

    I’ve been playing Half-Life since the release of the Orange Box, but only got into modding very recently. This was due to playing the Orange Box on Xbox, before eventually getting a Steam account around 2010, but only got Half-Life (the complete pack) in 2014, because I didn’t know the modding scene was a thing, and I had it on Xbox.

    However, for the past 2 years, I have been playing mods from this site, and thought to myself “Hey, why not make an account after all this time?”. This site is probably my favourite resource.

    I have not delved into modding much, but decided to join PhaseVille just to see if I could. This has got me interested in making maps, and I am excited to join the scene (even if I am 10 years late).

    1. Hello Mr. Sakamoto and welcome to the site. It’s always great to hear of new modders and even better when they submit entries to the challenges. Good luck with your future mapping endeavours.

  275. ACR

    Howdy, I go by ACR
    I played through the Half Life franchise in reverse order and have been obsessed for many years since, and true to the tagline, finishing Half Life is only the beginning. I look forward to participating in the community I’ve been following from the sidelines for so long!

  276. Hi,

    I realized I never formally introduced myself.

    I’m a french player in his thirties.

    I’ve played hundred GoldSrc/Source maps and mods, since 2006. I was here when HL1 was announced at E3 1997 and when it was released in november 1998.

    I’ve also sub-translated Cry of Fear in french.

    My public profile says I was here since 2010 but in fact I first came here in 2007 – having finished HL1 and HL2, Orange Box, and searching to “expand” my adventure, I searched on the internet and came to know the “mod’s”.

    Google directed me here when it was stil called “PlanetPhillip”, and then I discovered the wonderful world of “mod’s”. And slowly I left the “other” games, be it mainstream or indies’, now I play, for years, only map’s and mod’s, maybe now hundreds… of them…

    Be it “vanilla”, or “total conversions”… be it “easy” or “difficult” or “impossible”… new “challenges”, new mechanisms, new skins, new weapons, new enemies… Nearly everything has been done in mod’s be it GoldSrc or Source… And yet some people manage to impress me again (HL Echoes… !!!).

    As for myself, I was 13 when HL1 came out, I got my first PC on January 1998, during the “Golden Age of VGs” with such games being sold such as FINAL FANTASY 7, STARCRAFT, RESIDENT EVIL 2, TOTAL ANNIHILATION, UNREAL….

    This madness of quality was so high that came out the same month GRIM FANDANGO, TOMB RAIDER 3, HALF LIFE, and SIN… Nearly every other game was crushed by our beloved FPS, still.

    HALF LIFE was a fatal blow in my face, that game, those innovations, the story, the NPCs… It went so high…

    Anyways, 20 years after, I’m still here, got a job, a wife, 2 kids and I’m not as “free” to play mod’s as I was before but still, for great and/or important releases, I’ll always manage to find some time to play them.

    And the future, even with more scarce projects, is still full of hope with TIME’S END, G STRING, THE CORE, etc…

    We’ll see what comes next.

    Besides,

    I’m usually friendly in my reviews because mod’s are free and need hard work from usually amateurs.

    However, I’m a diehard opponent towards mods put on sale, becoming retail games. Donation is a better system for this kind of things.

  277. Hello everyone! I am a big Half life fan from The Netherlands. Instead of doing productive stuff in my my youth I played video games, and some of my favorites where the HL games.

    I have never really tried the modding scene from the Half-Life games tho. And i thought now would be a better time than never to get started!

    I have wanted to make a HL map for a long time now. But I never really got around to finishing one due to most of them being unoptimized mess. I did gain some experience from these maps however, so I may finish one in future (or not!).

  278. Hey all!

    I run under the simple nickname MisterYij because I tie my real identity with it, which in turn keeps my ego in check and makes sure I won’t say anything I wouldn’t dare to in real life.

    I was around 12 when Half-Life came out and it’s had a massive impact on me! Asides from combining shooting, narrative, puzzles and exploration in a single package, it was the first game that got me dabbling into map making and modding, thanks to the inclusion of Worldcraft on the CD. Being halfway between a kid and teenager, the very idea of being able to make your own levels and worlds in your favourite video game just blew my tiny mind! I’d read tutorials on the web that would take ages to load on my 56k modem, draw out map plans in my notebooks at school, and force my friends to play my maps (and unknowingly bugtest them). Note to game developers: include modding tools WITH your games to kickstart creativity in young people!!

    I discovered RTSL after searching for decent Half-Life community made content (and by decent, I mean actual PROPER stuff, not 5 minute memes or banana shaped guns). So far, RTSL has proven to be the best out there! Very pleasing to look at, simple to navigate, and the wealth of information about each map/mod is second to none. Not only is the description and pictures detailed and enticing, you can really tell if the map/mod is your cup of tea. Unlike, say, ModDB, where trying to decide if you’ll like something is like playing Russian Roulette.

    Every now and then I get an itch for playing Half-Life 1 and 2, and always go to RTSL for content, thanks to the clean website and extensively detailed descriptions (plus user feedback) from each map/mod. I tend to lean towards Half-Life 1 stuff more as the content is more polished, focused and it’s still just as exciting (and terrifying) fighting the HECU now as it was 20 years ago! Plus if I put the game in Software mode at 1024×768, grab meself some Cola and Monster Munch, I can pretend I’m 12 again.

    I find Half-Life 2 maps/mods tends to be fairly buggy and seriously overuse driving that stupid car, physics puzzles and forcing use of the gravity gun. Please, I don’t want to be driving down endless stretches of road or using my gravity gun for 50% of the game: that stuffs already been done to death by the last mapper, and the mapper before that and the mapper before that. Try something original for once. Having said that, when HL2 mappers get it right, it provides 10x more entertainment than brand new AAA shooters released in the past decade.

    Anyway that’s enough from me, it’s great the Half-Life community is still going strong and from what I gathered, RTSL seems to be one of the most mature and informative communities out there.

  279. Hello everybody! My first FPS game was Castle Wolfenstein 3-D in 1993. If I recall, it came free with some other software. I really enjoyed it at the time but didn’t think too much about it until much later. “Later” arrived in 1998 when a friend installed Half-Life on my computer. The immersive nature of that game was something completely new to me and got me hooked on the franchise. I had no idea when I first played Wolfenstein that I was witnessing history.

    I have played all of the Half-Life series except for HL2Ep2. Somehow I managed to avoid that one, probably because I was so immersed in HL multiplayer at that time and running my own server. Lots of fun memories of playing with people I never met in person while drinking mass quantities of alcohol.

    Thank you to Phillip and all those who make this site run, particularly mod authors. You guys are helping keep alive the game that is so special to many of us. This site is exceptionally well organized and helpful. I hope it will be here for many years to come.

  280. SolemnGong

    Hi. Long time lurker, first time poster. I’ve been a huge fan of the Half-Life series since I first played Half-Life in 1999 when I was only in middle school. I’ll never forget the first time I watched the intro. Riding the train through the Black Mesa complex was the first time in my life that I was completely blown away by a video game’s presentation.

    After finishing the HL singleplayer campaign, my father introduced me to maps and mods, and I spent hours each day trying to track down every singleplayer map and mod on the Internet. I would check review sites several times a day, and I was overcome with excitement every time something new was posted. It’s unfortunate that RTSL didn’t exist back then, because having every SP level in one place is so convenient.

    Just recently, I’ve been revisiting the classic HL mods, such as USS Darkstar, Absolute Redemption, They Hunger, Someplace Else, etc. The HL series permanently changed the way I look at video games, for the better, and I hope that I can give back by contributing to this wonderful community.

  281. There are a ton of really cool stories on this thread about peoples first experiences with half-life ect. so this introduction is probably going to be underwhelming but here goes.

    I’m an amateur game designer looking to broaden my skills and maybe find some inspiration for a project or two I’m working on in the source engine.

    I’m new to modding but not half-life or half-life 2 as I’ve been playing those since elementary school more or less. I’m not one hundred percent on this fact but I think I originally played Blue Shift & Op For prior to even playing half-life, which is kind of weird but introduced me to an amazing universe, and for that I’m grateful.

    Like I said I’m here hoping to find some inspiration from the many source mods available and hopefully learn some really cool stuff and maybe have a mod featured here down the line.

    Also I just wanted to say I really enjoy the site layout/design as of right now. It’s easy to navigate and looks great, please keep it up!

  282. Hey there! Just thought I’d stop by and introduce myself

    My first introduction to FPS games was probably back in 2005 with Call Of Duty and the United Offensive expansion pack back on an old XP computer, since then I’ve Adored them, although nowadays I’ll play anything

    After playing Half-Life 2: MMod, Mission Improbable, and Half-Life: Echoes this year I’m really excited to go through the backlog and figure out what I’ve missed. Hope I’m gonna dig out some real gems

  283. Kotion

    Hello!

    Hello my is kotion iv’e been playing and being a fan of Half-life For Nearly 3 years. (as of 2019) anyways just to today i joined to review and download some mods and etc. And i hope to have a good time on this site

  284. Hey, everyone! I’ve been lurking at the site for quite a while and found registration disabled until I gave it a try today.

    Been a Half-Life fan and a follower of the HL and Source communities for many years. I enjoy the mapping challenges hosted or featured here as I find them a somewhat consistent flow of new Source content, which increasingly becomes scarce as I run out of things to play.

    While I’ve considered getting involved in the map/mod production scene I’m not really sure where to start or whether I’d have enough time to do much after getting started. I don’t mind settling for being a spectator/player though, and I look forward to any future RTSL content that may come out.

  285. armut

    Hello guys, im the new guy. i always wonder is there a program to make mods, or else ? would you help me to make half life mods, what are those steps for a making a mod. thanks a lot.

  286. Hi everyone Just found this wonderful resource, currently playing through all the awesome maps and mods
    I host several deathmatch servers and have done since 2007 my members are populated by “silver surfers” We are all enthralled with the variety and complexity of your submissions.

    We wondered if it would be possible to play them on a “synergy” server that we run to help the less able to get maximum enjoyment.
    thanks for reading

  287. found this site when trying to find some old half-life 1 personal favorites like ETC and Chaos Theory.

    its awesome seeing this site keeping so much of the community’s work alive, especially when remembering how much stuff vanished when fileplanet was decommissioned; but not only that, it looks like the mapping scene continues to thrive here. thanks for keeping the party going!

  288. My name is Percy, I made a CS:GO map back in 2017 but I never got around to releasing it. I recently discovered this site and all the great maps on here and would like to get into HL2 mapping myself. HL2 is also my all-time favourite game.

  289. Hello everyBODHI. Do U want to know something about me? I think no. Just wanna say that I love Source engine, HL2 and mods since 2005)

  290. Anon_1793401

    Hello

  291. Hi, people. I’m Vladimir and I’m here to play and review some mods (and also hope, it doesn’t shut down the next day after I register).

  292. Peace everyone, I am The Lemming and i have been playing Half-Life since i think 2005 or 2006 since i was a young kid. I grew up watching my brother playing Half-Life and gotten in love with the game series since then. And also love playing singleplayer mods and hopefully get Black Mesa soon.

  293. Hello everyone. My name is CountryPotato; Why did I pick this name you might ask, well let me give you a little background information about myself. I grew up in Washington State (United States) the towns I have lived my whole life in has always been small farming communities, in short, that is why I love Country things and for the Potato part, well I love potatoes. OH, also I almost forgot I love history, I love either reading up on random things in history or playing game set in a certain time period.

    I’ve been gaming for quite a long time I would say; I do not remember the exact age, but the three-game that has stuck to me was; Halo combat evolved (PC), Half-Life (PS2) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (PC), and that is probably what started my gaming life. I grew to love RTS, Tycoon, FPS, and many genes.

    I want to say I came across this site probably four years ago when I was getting a major urge to play some half-life 2, I never did custom maps so I wanted to try it out and I fell in love with many great maps; for some reason, I really loved the story of “Citizen”; I honestly do not know why maybe because you start off as a citizen and the puzzles.

    My favorite game would have to be. Hmmm.
    1.”Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire”. Came out in 2003 and I found out about in like the beginning of this year. A friend of mine was playing it he did not really like that much and I fell in love with it; it reminded me of Conflict but set in world war 2.

    2. Half-Life 1 & 2

    3. Farming Simulator; Do I gotta explain why; I think we both know why.

    Welp that is all I can think of, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my post and have a wonderful day. One more thing, I want to apologize for any grammar mistakes.

  294. Serious_Samsung

    I think y’all should remember me from some time as I played many half life mods for a decade. I commented many known mods.

  295. Hello, I’m new here, I have been playing Half-Life and its expansions and sequels for years but only recently decided to get involved in the community and started trying out all the great mods released for it, I’m seeing plenty of great stuff here and I look forward to trying them all ๐Ÿ™‚

  296. hi source mapper from florida who listens to good music and plays bass guitar

  297. Sir Perry
    Hello, I am Sir Perry

    I’m what you’d consider a hobbyist! I only really map for fun, and don’t really map for any other reason.
    I do What I do because I love making maps. I’ve participated in the
    r/CSMapMakers Wingman competition, back in 2018. Recently, I’ve been mapping for Team Fortress 2, and making a few short, one map experiences for Half-Life 2.
    I also make 3D models, and textures; though that only if I dont have something already included in the HL2 Hammer.

    But that’s just a little about me, lol.

  298. decepty

    heyo , my names decy and i like playing games on diffrent gaming platforms but i enjoy pretty mutch anything , i’m looking for a good experiance with hl2 mods/maps.

  299. Hi I am Korgi. Just looking to use this website to keep track of and rate the sourcemods I play.

  300. Peter

    Dear Philip!

    I’m a long time lurker and your site is the No. 1 place I go to to check if there’s any new mod out there for Half-Life. I can’t overstate how much joy and immersion your site, as well as the mods have given me.

    You see, I’m an old school gamer, I was very critical when HL2 came out and I’m still very critical about the currently popular FPS games. But the nostalgia your site has allowed me to access has been able to effectively sooth my mind, to make me less concerned about all the negative things going on out there, in the mean world. Your curated nostalgia could distract me, in a positive way, it helped me anchor my focus on the past, in which I could ground myself to recharge, to be able to go out again and face new challenges. This focus is something my anxious, wayward mind needs from time and again to be more efficient and to get things done. For the more conservative of us, novelty, especially if not familiar, or shall I say, “familial,” is disconcerting.

    So contrarily to common belief, not every kind of entertainment is entertaining for everyone. In not all kinds of entertainment can one feel at home, thus not all forms of distractions can put one’s mind at rest. I consider this website and a couple of others as lighthouses for the earlier generation. Because for the more conservative of us, compared to the “new internet” (with all its instability and authoritarianism), these are places that we can more readily confide in and rely on that we’ll be able to visit again. We may be hundreds of miles apart but at least one’s not afraid that their comment will be removed or the person “running the show” will be deaf to their appeals. Or that there will be no one real to talk to because most accounts belonged to one person who used them only to advertise.

    Cheers,
    Neokortex.

    1. Hi Neokortex,
      Thank you for introducing yourself. It’s always nice to see a lurker converted into a commenter, even if it is just once. I suspect that you don’t know, but I stopped running the site back in December 2018. The site continues to be updated and run thanks to the kind efforts of Unq. He only adds the main new releases, but that’s enough for most visitors.

      I hope the site continues to provide you with plenty of “old school” gaming.

      Phillip

  301. Hi, im Will. I’ve been playing FPS games since 2013 and i love Half-Life, Garry’s Mod, and all Valve games.

  302. hey there,i am HeadcrabKyaru,
    actually…I’m not very good at introducing myself, so …
    over

  303. Hi! I’m not a scientist, and I started playing HL2 and related games not that long ago – in 2016.
    And I’m not good at introducing myself.

  304. Hi,
    My name is Danny and I live in Belgium.
    I speak French but I’m OK to read and write in English (not 100% fluently but it’s OK).

    I’ve been a fan since HL1. At that time I started collecting HL1 mods and maps that I saved on CDs so they wouldn’t be forgotten. I didn’t know at that time that a wonderful site like this one would gather all the HL1 mods but also HL2, HL2Ep1, HL2Ep2.
    I didn’t play any more for 15 years, and then 2 years ago I discovered that some enthusiasts had made a remake of HL1 with the engine of HL2 (yes, obviously: “Black Mesa”). I bought a PC with a good graphics card and…here I am rediscovering mods and maps. I played a lot (really a lot) of mods: those of HL1 (my first love) but also recently those of Ep1 and Ep2.

  305. Hi, i am a fan of Half-Life Series, also a fan of FPS Games, i am just browsing mods and maps for Half-Life Series and some other Valve Games, i will make sure that i will welcomed here as always.

  306. Hello. I am Pseudonym.

    My real name is Jack, from England (now you know)

    I really like your website and that you are hosting mods and events from everyone in the community.
    I have been mapping now for almost 10 years on and off and with a passion.

    I really enjoy fps shooters, but especially Half life 2.
    I have designed around 100 maps, 20 of the best are hosted on game banana which I truly hope people have enjoyed playing (https://gamebanana.com/members/submissions/maps/435692)

    I made the jump portal map which gives players hours of gameplay, testing your reflexes in a variety of puzzles and situations.

    I have contributed towards the coop community with henkys bouncyball server and won their mapping competition with coop_mushroomquest in which you go on an adventure to fight a deranged monk and save your friend, fighting monsters along the way.

    Recently life has caught up with me and I have been offline and away from hl2dm more, but in the background I have been silently creating a single player mod for hl2 which currently has 8 chapters, voice acting, a custom storyline, npcs and loads of (hopefully) great content and wow factor.

    It is not completed yet… but when it is I WILL upload it or even if it had enough length to it possibly attempt to get it on the steam store, but who knows how it will go.

    It is a labour of love and is shaping along nicely.

    If you are a modeller or have ideas about single player mods or releasing something on steam I would love to chat to you.

    Well thanks for reading my message.
    If you have found pleasure out of my hl2dm maps please contact me and if you wish to contribute towards Pseudomod (currently untitled) please do so to.

    Much love.

  307. Namaste! My name’s Veman Jadhav, or you can call me by my gamertag, The L3rNa3aN.

    I’m an avid gamer, theatre guy, artist and a student. I’m learning to make games, in both designing and development fields. Apart from all of that, I’m also an aspiring YouTuber.

    My whole life as of now is focused on playing games and making them. So, I have a little knowledge in Unity. I tried using Source before I started learning Unity, but you know what happened. ^_^ It was confusing as hell!

    I currently play a lot of COD. But I still play Half Life mods when I feel bored of COD (or if my internet is acting funny). So far, my most favorite Half Life mod is Base Defense. Because I like MP a lot than SP, the said mod combines both elements, including some RPG elements and modern elements. It creates some sort of strange feeling to me, but I love it. Unfortunately, no one plays the mod with me… :'(

    In terms of video games, my childhood was Half Life 2, Half Life: Opposing Force, Quake 3 Arena and some racing game my uncle had in that CD bundle. And as a kid, I had no idea as to what were the games all about (all except the racing game. I knew I had to finish first).

    It’s busy in college and at home. I need to look out for GDCs to attend, online articles and videos about perfecting my skills in making games. Yeah, it’s a headache, but that’s what my degree demands. And I always have a blast doing my work and assignments given by my teachers.

    Leaving the techie side, I’m the guy who’s very much into art and getting his hands dirty, an ambivertic travel freak, and a theatre guy.

    Sorry if it’s short and a bit messy. I didn’t know what to type and stuff. But that’s all. If you want to find me on YouTube, you can just type my gamertag.

    Adios,
    Veman “The L3rNa3aN” Jadhav.

  308. Hello my name is Ralf

    I am a 17 year old from Estonia.

    Computer games have been a big passion in my life for a long time, i discovered half-life through my brothers at the age 5, and instantly got hooked into the game, about 3 years ago was when i found out there were mods for half-life and i started trying alot of them out. I am in love with the fact that even an old game like this gets alot of people playing the original games or making mods for half-life.

  309. Hey, my name’s Ostrich and I’ve been playing the Half-Life games for many years. While I have no mapping skills myself, I have been playing custom maps and mods for a while. I’ve always been a bit of a lurker here at RTSL, but I hope to start reviewing things here and share my opinions with others!

  310. Hello! My name is Hannan, and i am a big big fan of Half Life series. I dreamed to play Half Life 2 since i was 8 year old, and 5 years later, finally, i achieved it! Honestly, this is one of the best game i’ve ever played. And, i also interested with mods! So, i do know this website from Bolloxed, a Youtuber. I’ve been following him since i was 9 years old, and i did not know what is actually “Run Think Shoot Live” is, so i checked it, and actually it got tons of mods, and i am interested. So, i joined.

  311. Hello. I used to spend countless days playing HL mods in my youth, and this site was my main hub. It’s great to see that it’s still running, and i’m looking forward to delving back into the awesome world of HL modding.

  312. Ovalos

    hey, I’ve been a half life fan for nearly all my life and also have a huge interest in game design, and although I have a good couple of years of mapping experience I have a few problems regarding actually finishing the things I work in. So I thought maybe joining this community would push me to change my workflow for the better. Really looking forward to participating in the next mapping challenge or event ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Unq

      Welcome! If you’re wanting mapping challenges, Map Labs is definitely the place to go (Discord). We at RTSL don’t really run the ‘Ville’ challenges anymore, other than the occasional collaboration with the Map Labs folks.

  313. Well greetings, I’m not great with introductions as I am the shy type of person. I’m normally the type of user who lurks most of the time, but when see fit will appear to leave a comment and or review here and there.

    I’ve been a player of the Half-life games for a good amount of time in my life, and played almost all the games, just take away the newest one becuase of the VR requirements. Aside from that, the games that I typically play are very much diverse, from games like Bloodborne to more niche games like OFF and Yume Nikki.

    As for interests in modding and what not, I have used the Hammer map editor and with that have light knowledge and interest in mapping. Be it, I only do such in my off time as well my free time isn’t really plentiful these days sadly to say.

    Anyways, that was my introduction, apologies if it was awkward. But neverless happy to be here.

  314. Greetings, I am Doresun.
    I haven’t really been a fan of HL until not really long ago (around 2016), but I am now very interested in the series and looking forward to having fun in the many mods for the games!

  315. Hi, I’m Hxdce. I first played Half-Life 2 back in 2005 and have been in love with the series ever since. I’ve played countless maps and mods in the past fifteen years, and Source modding as a whole was a big part in motivating me to pursue software engineering and game development as my career.

    I’m presently working on the single-player mod INERTIA (name may be subject to change!), Deathmatch Legacy (A remake of Deathmatch Classic), and also contributing to some other unannounced Source engine projects. I look forward to seeing all the great content that will be featured here in the future, and to possibly seeing some of my own work appear here some day.

  316. Greetings I am CR04K. Iโ€™m the person who lurks in the background most of the time, but when see something that i like i will appear to leave a comment and or review here and there.
    Iโ€™ve been a player of the Half-life games for a while, and played almost all the games, just take away the newest one because i am way to broke for VR. Aside from that, the games that I typically play are very much diverse.
    As for my interests in modding and what not, I have used the Hammer map editor and i am garbage with it, but i have light knowledge and interest in mapping.

    Anyways, that was my introduction. But neverless happy to be here.

  317. Hello, I am YeOldeFellerNoob. I started my game-making journey when I made games in Scratch. Needless to say, I made a really fun game and thought I can make good games. Then, I went to DOOM modding, via DOOMWorld. I made some maps, mostly for community projects and deathmatch maps. After I made “DM_UACMALL” that I thought I could do better. So, I dusted off J.A.C.K and turned on some tutorials, and started to make one. I am trying to make a mod for Half Life, which is a Meta horror game, kinda like Irusu Syndrome, or Doki Doki Literature Club. I am having REAL trouble with making level transitions. If any of you know how to do it in J.A.C.K, then please reply.

  318. Churrb

    New to mapping, making some roleplay combine base themed levels for gmod, and decided to join this website!

    1. I am making my second map, and first complete map rp_coastau for a hl2rp with me and my friend, I mostly need help with scripting currently

  319. Hello. My name is Docteur Corbeau. I speak English well and French poorly.

    Bonjour. Je m’appelle Docteur Corbeau. Je parle anglais bien et franรงais mal.

  320. Hello, I’m Zelen. I’ve been interested in modding for a while now and I wanted to join up and interact with the Half-life modding community more.

  321. hello, my name is bondingo but you can refer to me as isabelle if you wanna. i played half life recently and really enjoyed it so i decided to play more of the games and got more into the community. i’m mainly just here to find more mods to play

  322. My name is Catero, and Iโ€™m a career writer. My job is to provide job seekers with expert advice on career-related topics. I read a lot and consult recruiting professionals so you donโ€™t have to. I show you how to hack the recruitment process, create a job-winning resume, ace the job interview, and… introduce yourself, among others.

  323. Yo. I’m PhoneClockScreen because I’m, like, awfully bad at usernames.
    I’ve been into HL for more than a decade but only got into modding lately and I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on it for that long.
    During quarantine I toyed around with Hammer too, making a couple of maps for fun.

  324. I’ve been a Half-Life mapper since 2007 although for most of the time since then I went by the name TJB. I decided to join because although I’ve been mapping for that long I never actually played all that many mods or maps, so why not join and have some way of keeping track of that.

  325. Hi!

    I’m an old time Half Life fan that’s here to enjoy mods from the community. Although I have contributed to some mods in my time as a programmer I abandoned the source engine long ago in favor of others. Although I don’t contribute much to the community nowadays, I do play around with attempting to create a Half Life experience in UE4 when I get bored. Turns out it’s fun to shoot some zombies and headcrabs regardless of the engine they are in.

  326. I’m Breezy, a Fan of and amateur map-maker for Half-Life 1.

  327. Hello,
    I first started playing Half Life games around 2011. I fell in love with Half Life 2 and it’s story. I didn’t realize that it had such a large mapping community. I also have started the learning curve for hammer and have been studying official valve maps to try and figure out how it is done properly.

    I have a lot of ideas but have the problem of figuring out how to start them. Would love to get together with you guys and learn a thing or two so I can start sharing my work with this awesome community.

    1. Hey I’m currently learning hammer for the first time as well. Let me know if you want to chat on Discord or something and share some tips!

  328. Hey,
    I’ve been playing Half-Life since first release when I was way too young to play it haha. I loved it ever since and used to make crappy maps and mods when I was like 12. Somehow only just found this community, really excited to carry on playing some sick map packs and mods!

  329. Hello all. When Half-Life was released a long time ago it did not take long for me to start using Hammer to make my own maps. The way Valve made and still makes the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 series of games accessible to the user`s creativity is almost unprecedented and much appreciated. In the past I was into Counter-Strike, when I helped on a forum, made a map for a local community, and CS:S, when I released a desert map into the wild of which I forget the name, and there was a period of playing DOD:S online as a rifleman if possible. That was some time ago. Right. These days I make blocky hl2 or ep2 maps, much to my enjoyment.

  330. Hello, Iโ€™m Matthew Duarte. Iโ€™ve been interested in modding for a while now and I wanted to join up and interact with the Half-life modding community more.

  331. Hello! I’ve been building and playing half life 2 levels since 2010. I love great single player adventures, and for me that means 3 key things:

    -Fun and innovative gameplay
    -Interesting stories to explore
    -bad guys to overcome in challenging combat

    So naturally half life scratched that itch for me. I just had to find more of that half life level goodness which is what attracted me to RTSL. I’m a Texan born and raised and would be happy to help playtest mods, or provide feedback/help with scripting if anyone needs it.

    Best Regards!

  332. My name is vertigo and I’m (obviously) a huge Half-Life fan. I love the entire franchise but the goldsrc games really hold a special place in my heart. I’ve been playing since it’s release and have loved every second of it.

    I’m a Doom mapper (https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Vertigo) and I’ve just recently started learning goldsrc mapping/JACK. I’m very excited to start publishing maps and hopefully take part in some community projects (if those exist).

    I’m new to this site but I’m quite impressed. There’s a huge repository of mods and the review system seems clean and beneficial. I’ll be playing through a load of mods (not that I haven’t already) and leaving reviews. I’m especially keen to see what the HL1 community considers classics for the game (e.g something akin to Scythe for Doom).

    Cheers from New Zealand,
    vertigo

  333. After a long absence I am back.
    Use to post and review here back when it was Planet Phillip (10 or so years ago) and when the site changed to RTSL.
    HL, HL2, Episodes, Blue Shift, Opposing Force, and Day of Defeat are main games.
    Love mods as they bring new life into the game and keep it going.
    I dropped out cause my ‘gaming computer’ was my only one. It died while I was in an accelerated MBA program. I had to get another one quick. By my mistake and what I could afford I got a laptop in a desktop frame. Wouldn’t play HL2. I work from home normally and got a work only computer.

    Just a few weeks ago work sent us complete work stations. So…… what to do with the old but not that old ‘work’ computer? I moved steam over and started reloading games. Then the quest for mods.
    I loved the easy accessibility of the hall of fame. I have about 9.18Gb of installer files saved for the mods I’ve chosen to re-live again.
    Phillip I’ve been told has retired. However Don is super great and helpful.
    I want to thank him and all of you for keeping the Half Life universe going.
    On Steam I’m Chief Runamuck so reach out if you see me.

  334. I just want to play the maps idc about “community” or w/e

  335. peterp16

    Hello, my name is peterp16. I am excited to play mods, and I am planning of learning how hammer works. I started playing half life in 2020, years after wanting to play it because of hearing that it was in the Portal universe (or more accurately Portal is in it’s universe).

  336. Hi! I’m shantih, I’m 22 and I love HL games with all my being. I only recently started getting into the modding community, but I already had a little bit of experience creating maps for Quake 3, GMOD and SteamVR/HL:AL, so I know at least a bit of the Hammer editor. Can’t wait to see the awesome stuff mappers create, and I hope I’ll be able to add something too!

  337. MPS

    Hello! I’m MPS, i’ve been a Half-Life fan since, practically ever and it introduces into the FPS genre, always wanted to mod the game to create something new. So, i’ve been practicing with mapping and coding with the engine about 7 years, learning time to time and so, i’m making a mod for my favorite game. Hope some day i can be able to show it here.

  338. Ferdam

    Hey, I’m Ferdam
    You >might< know me from Opposing Force 2 mod from years ago (2008~2014)

    It is pretty cool to find this place, it feels like a time machine looking at old HL2 custom maps from like 2005.

    Speaking of old HL2 custom maps, is anyone aware of a very old custom map where you'd start with a City Scanner companion, which you could interact with and doing so it would open a holographic menu allowing you to use in-game credits(money) to buy weapons, ammo and items?

    I've tried going through each of that giant list with almost 400+ maps here, but couldn't find it.

    Anyway, again, good to find this place. I might check here more often

  339. Randy

    Hello! My name is Randy and honestly cannot believe I am just now visiting this site. I have been playing FPS games all my life. My very first game I ever played actually was Half-Life 1. At least its the very first game that I can remember and I’ve been a huge fan of the series and valve as a whole ever since then. I’m also a huge fan of TF2. A game I created so many memories playing and still sort of do to this day. I really want to get back in to playing gold source and source mods again though. It has been a while! I remember playing wanted half life and just being blown away by the shift in setting and it just still feeling like half life. Honestly you just cannot get enough half life. I’ve known about this site for a while but just never really checked it out. Anyways, that is just my introduction ๐Ÿ™‚

  340. Hi, I’m Tristan. I just got into level design when the pandemic started, and also just started with the Hammer editor. Still learning how to do stuff with the editor by watching tutorials, and I don’t have anything to show yet.

  341. Hello Folks,

    I’m Robert Wise.
    I’ve been playing Half Life and it’s offspring since they were new. I’m amazed that they’re still enjoyable after so many years! I truly enjoy this site, as it’s a wonderful source of the great mods that keep Half Life fresh!

  342. Hey, Iโ€™m Harvey.

    I come from Halifax, in West Yorkshire. Some may formerly know me by my ancient username: AfterWars.

    Iโ€™ve been checking this site for a LONG time, but thought itโ€™s time I finally take the plunge and get involved with you all. Iโ€™ve always loved the modding community and always try to remain a part of it as much as I can.

    Iโ€™m a friendly sort and always up for helping others and offering advice.

    Iโ€™m quite well known for my โ€œBlack Mesa Roleplayโ€ maps for Garryโ€™s Mod. The most popular ones being โ€˜RP_BMRFโ€™, โ€˜RP_SectorCโ€™ and โ€˜RP_LambdaCoreโ€™.

    I also used to work directly with Tripmine Studios as a Level Designer on the upcoming Half-Life expansion remakes!

    Iโ€™ll look forward to finally leaving some reviews and getting to know more of you!

    All the best!

  343. Hello everyone, I’m TubbyTapir.

    I’ve been on the site for some time now, but only now decided to make an account. I have been mapping in Hammer for a few years now, made some maps for Garry’s Mod, and now I’m trying to move over to some proper level design in Half-Life 2 (and potentially other Source games). Currently working on a singleplayer map-pack for HL2:EP2.

  344. Hello everyone, Iโ€™m Gongnad
    I have played half life for awhile and wanted to mess around with map making and level design for me and my friends was hoping to learn that.

    from the east coast USA

  345. Hi, I am Jake I like Video Games, and enjoy the Half-Life Series, decided to give this site a go again when I heard about Gauge.

  346. Hi there, my name is George and i’m crazy about half-life mods! I loved this series of games since childhood, and when i went through all the official games and addons, i got hooked on mods. I like the mods based on the original trilogy the most, but I also love various mapping challenges like map labs. Also, the ost and the half-life atmosphere prompted me to write my own soundtracks, as well as to mapping.

  347. hello, im phil. i like to play half life mods, i dont really make any myself, but i screwed around in hammer for some time. i mostly play map labs competitions since they are my favorite. thats about it really :p

  348. ‘Ello, name’s Vlad, Russian Federation. Just noticed that I visit that site a lot and decided to register – why not?
    I mostly play hl2-hlep2 mods, never made one. Know some things in sound-design and voice acting, so (I hope dms exist here) dm me!

  349. Hello y’all, my name’s Daniel. I formerly went by theallknowinggnome/Gnome but I decided to switch things up after taking a hiatus from the modding community for a few years. I enjoy RPGs and FPS games alike and I am trying to start mapping again ๐Ÿ™‚

  350. Hello, I’m Hds46 and I’m 23 now.
    I’m from Sakha Republic, Yakutia and I’m a Half-Life fan since I was 6-7 years old.
    Half-Life 2 was one of the first games I played and it still remains as one of my most favorite game.
    I still remember playing it for the fist time. There was ai_disable bug and I usually got stuck wondering why NPCs don’t move. I also remember playing Canals and Ravenholm levels.
    Later my first mod that I played was the original Day Hard 1-2-3 maps and I remember liking it.
    Next source games and mods that I played were Counter-Strike Source Beta, Garry’s Mod v6a, Half-Life, Half-Life Source. After that I became hardcore Source Engine games and mods fan. I registred on ModDB and started playing every mod that I could run on my HL2, HL1 builds. In 2012 I installed Steam and bought my first source game that was Garry’s Mod along with Half-Life 2. I did it mainly for ingame addons download feature called Toybox(Workshop precursor for Garry’s Mod). I joined a lot of russian half-life fan sites and eventually started coding my own mod for Half-Life. It was more like sandbox experience and I never released anything that I made. It was bad and basically I made almost everything through online tutorials. Still it was a good time making my own things ingame. I had a school friend who was also into Half-Life and we did a lot of random and funny thnigs related to Half-Life together. Unfortunately we stopped meeting and talking after we graduated from school. Since 2013 I started making my own Garry’s Mod addons and eventually I released over 100 popular addons. The most popular were: Magic Pack, Particle Cannon, Airboat Gun, Petrification Beam. Over time I stopped playing Half-Life mods and even stopped to do anything related with Garry’s Mod. But since 2020 I realized that old times were much better than now. I feel so nostalgic playing old Half-Life 2 mods and reading, watching anything related to pre 2012 Half-Life 2. So I decided to register on this site, and play, review old Half-Life 2 maps and mods. I had another interests in video games but right now I will focus mainly on Half-Life related stuff.

  351. Howdy everybody! My name is Joseph, although on most websites I go by Zesty Jalapeno (or sometimes Penis Butler). I’m a relatively new Half-Life fan, but over the past couple years I’ve truly fallen in love with this franchise and community. I don’t have any skills in making mods myself, but I love seeing what the community can create, and getting to experience more of this series in some form makes me really happy. I’m a big fan of other FPS games (especially boomer shooters), 2d platformers, and really anything old school. Also a huge film buff, mild anime fan, and really all the other usual nerdy things. Hopefully we can be friends!

  352. hi I’m legoware i like half-life and other classic titles

  353. ello, i’m rubysvn!
    been a fan of the half life series years back, probably even in third grade thanks to the orange box on consoles.
    through out the years I’ve gotten my hands on all the main valve games (except for dota) and some of the cool community projects like black mesa, thinking with time machines, portal stories mel, etc etc (the list goes far, far on)

    joined the site caus of two stupid things:
    1: found out about it through map labs
    2: i kinda wanna get into source mod/map making

    yep that’s all i have to say
    well uh, nice to be here!

  354. HELLO KIRBY HERE!

    always been a fan of FPS games, starting with Quake and Unreal on my uncles pc. First played half-life after renting the ps2 version from my local grocer. recently discovered the huge amount of mods these games have. a few that i have played include: p.o.v. , caged, halfquake, and cry of fear.

  355. Hello. I’m Megatokyo, and I enjoy older FPS games. Half-Life especially. I seek to play and review mods for the Half-Life games, and I can’t wait to interact with this community, thank you.

  356. Hi, i’m Daphne.
    22 y/o (23 this month) Half-Life enjoyer. Half-Life was one of the first games I ever played, and i’ve been hooked on everything about the game, the world, and the lore since. I just discovered this website, however i’ve always loved discovering new mods for my favourite series. I have some basic knowledge of mod creation, but so far i’m only really competent in texturing and voice acting (hope to get better with Hammer in the future). I’m excited to see what this site brings me! ๐Ÿ™‚

  357. Hello! I am richie9mt, gamer since 1996. Started out in DooM 2 and could not get through Map 01. Got the shareware version of DooM (1) and was sort of able to get through it, finally. When the FAQ was posted and I learned the cheats, I took off! been cheating on every game ever since!

    I use GOD mode only, and that’s because I’m not interested in any game’s puzzles or time-related triggers; I’m in it for the scenery. Single player only, play through to whatever final boss is in it.

    Half-Life and its two spin-offs has been my favorite, even though I have all the Wuakes and DooMs, and the later ones are fantastic in scenery detail. Now I’m finally getting to the H-L add-ons and they can be fantastic too, like Timeline and Poke646.

    Right now I have two installs of half-Life; one is the Platinum Collection upgraded to v46.1.1.1.2. The other is v1.0.0.9 which I found on Ebay. I like that version because I’m tired of the M16; I fell in love with the MP5 in the Uplink demo. Now I’m playing the early add-ons in 1.0.0.9 and the later ones in 1.1.1.9.

    I’m a retired machinist who missed out on a lot of games early on due to lack of PC power. Trying to make up for it now.

  358. Hello.

    New user here, but long time Half-Life fan. Been playing Half-Life since roughly around it’s release date and I’ve been loving the modding community the moment I finished the game and stumbled across mods being available on Planet Half-Life and magazine CDs, which really shows just how old I am.

  359. Hi, I’m Thechugg, I love Half life, especially horror mods of half life.

    My favorite half life mod is Afraid of Monsters, a mod that’s inspiring me to make my own horror game one day.
    I also really love half quake 2, it’s amazing what they did with the half life engine, and insane visuals really do have an impact on me.

    So yeah I’ll be around, playing mods and reviewing them if possible.

  360. Hi I’m nico o/
    I just like level design and mapping in general, been around hammer since 2010 doing stupid stuff \o/

  361. Hello. I’m a professional edgelord. Been stuck with Half-Life ever since I discovered it. I also do *some* mapping for Half-Life 2, I dunno. Never could get normal Hammer for HL1 to compile a damn thing. Anyways I like my games brutal and hard. That’s all I can say.

  362. Ello anyone
    Been doing a lot of modding with whatever the hell i find interesting, started doing Hammer stuff recently, been really enjoying it.
    Nothin much else i have to say.
    Cya

  363. Hello, my name is Jackson. I love the Source Engine and game development.

    I used to have an account on here about 4-5 years ago but I completely lost all of its info. I’ve been getting back into the community recently and thought I’d make an account. I have been modding Half-Life 2 since i got it with a new PC all the way back in 2004.

  364. Hi just wanted to say I love halflife and well I thought I was part of this community already, guess I forgot the email I used before. I have downloaded many maps from here and I am happy to be back to get some more.

  365. Hi, I’m Skay!

    I love the Half-Life series and enjoy playing mods.

    I code in Garry’s mod Lua API – GLua

    My Steam account etc. are in my profile.

    Good bye!

  366. Redha

    Hi everyone !
    47 now, I am not a new member here ๐Ÿ™‚ I have been visiting, reading, downloading from this website for almost 10 years, and it is only now that I have realized that I should register as a full member of this community and have a full member account.
    Half Life and its consecutive games (HL, HLEP1, HLEP2, BM…) are the only games I have ever played in my life besides classic Mario on PC. I love these games and always looking for new mods and map to play when I am not working or taking care of people around me, which takes me a lot of my time.
    Playing any HL game, mod or map is so relaxing a real moment of pleasure for me. I will be most probably participating in the activity of this community, and would like to like to apologize in advance if I am not very proactive in game design or development. But always happy to test, play and review new submitted games.

  367. Probably should leave a quick comment here on the intro thread before I head off to sleep.

    Heya, it’s Fan of Simon Pegg (call me FoSP, I know it’s a mouthful but I can’t come up with anything else atm). I’ve been a Valve enjoyer for most of my life, I remember my old neighborhood friends recreating Meet the Demoman with Capri-Sun pouches one summer dusk a lifetime ago, even if I didn’t actually get around to playing their games until ~2014 (IIRC a little after Love & War, around/during Scream Fortress that year).

    I’ve been following RTSL since at least that one contest 3kliksphilip was a judge for (I’d check what that was, but it’s slowly approaching 3AM as I type this & I want sleep), but only finally made an account so I can contribute with reviews on here beyond simply downloading a Map Labs pack & going “That was neat” before uninstalling. Maybe I’ll be able to get the dust off of my ancient writing hat with these reviews – something to keep me thinking while playing the latest Map Lab. Glad to be a part of it!

  368. Hello, My name is Ethan, although I prefer to go by Emma.
    I have loved playing fps games ever since I got my hands on my brother’s copy of portal still alive for the xbox, and when I learned how easy it was to use the source, goldsrc and other engines were easy to use I happily decided to start making my own, my first mod has since been deleted but I am happy to start sharing here!

  369. Hello everyone! My name is Rodion and i am very new to HL2 community. I am middle level-designer and heard many things about Hammer.

  370. Good evening (or good morning, depends on where in the world you are)
    My name is Kuba and as everyone probably noticed I am Polish
    I’m 20 (almost 21 on July 12)
    My favourite game is the Batman Arkham series (except Blackgate) and Thief
    I got to know this group thanks to the channel https://www.youtube.com/c/Bolloxed
    I am writing by google translator

  371. Hello, I’m Coralilac

    I’ve been playing mods and mapping competitions from this site for a while and decided to make an account.
    I’m mostly working on stuff for the mod No More Room in Hell, but I like to enter mapping competitions and have a couple of other projects in the works.

  372. hi i’m Hexder45 and i like playing half life mods

  373. Hello!

    Name is Matthew! I don’t really have much to say except that I just adore Half Life 1 mods. the Goldsrc charm hasn’t gotten old for me. Hopefully I will post some reviews or comments here every now and again ^^

  374. kye

    Hello! I’m kye and I always see myself coming back to Half Life because of the mods the community has to offer. I hope you guys are having a good day!

  375. On here to access the Half-Life 2 mods to play. I’ve never played Multiplayer mode, just Singleplayer campaigns. Love the site and have played the Half-Life series on PC starting with the original game.

  376. grudgemonkey

    Hello everyone, I’m grudgemonkey

    I’ve been a Half-Life fan ever since I played Half-Life 2 on the Orange Box as a teenager

    Since then I’ve played most half-life games.

    I also love mods for most games, and half-life is no exception.

  377. My name is Garth.

    Back in the year 2000, I got the chance to play Half-Life for the very first time. At the time I was playing Quake II and Unreal Tournament. Half-Life totally changed how I looked at games. Not long after I beat Half-Life, I started to get into finding mods for the game. Modding was nothing new to me since I used to download a lot of mods for Need For Speed III and NFS High Stakes. Back then, there was no planetphillip or moddb. If you wanted to find mods, you had to dig. One of the first places that was a cornucopia of mods for Half-Life was a place called HIT or the half-life improvement team. The site is long gone now, but it was prolific. Now all these years later, I still find myself playing Half-Life, OP4, BS, HL2 and it’s ilk. Hell, even Black Mesa. The game made it’s mark, and after over two decades I’m still playing these games.

  378. Hello there dear reader, name’s Edvaardo and I am a fan of this wonderful franchise since 2009, Half-Life 1 being a first game I played on PC since childhood. My profile has Favorite Half-Life (1,2) mods rated as they are most important mods to play through IMO.
    Excuse me for my grammar mistakes, since English ain’t my native language
    Have a great day.

  379. Hey everyone. I’m Oscar Mackenrott, username Firestarter – previously Avast: Magical Biohazard. It’s been five years since I was active on the website, aside from downloading the occasional mod or map to play, and I felt like a rebrand (new account) was the best way to reflect my modern day self.

    Having looked at a lot of Metal Gear Solid 2 gameplay and being inspired by the masterpiece that is Entropy Zero 2, I’m following this revitalization up with an EP2 map of my own: Half-Shell, set to release soon.

  380. Howdy, my name is reaction and I’ve been playing Half-life on and off since ’98. I’ve played quite a few mods and maps but definitely not the lions share. I’m very excited to start going through the RTSL maps/mods in chronological order and review each ๐Ÿ™‚ I actually made my own spreadsheet to track the HL mods and maps I play and this site definitely lends itself to that sort of organization.

    I’m recapturing a lot of nostalgia by playing all of this on a native Windows XP PC (Pentium 4 + GeForce4 mmx440). I’m actually using this machine to post here ๐Ÿ˜€

    I’m a fan of all sorts of mods but I’m especially interested in older content. I play a lot of other games and I also love the early mods for those too, stuff like ’94-95 Doom maps etc.

    I’m always open for suggestions of old and obscure HL content so feel free to flick some stuff my way~

  381. Lost_Echo

    Hi everyone, my names Clementine, but you can just call me Clem or whatever you want. I’ve been a *massive* Fan of Half-Life ever since I was young, the first one is my all time favorite but 2 was good too. I first played it on the PS2 port, and the second one on the Orange Box collection for 360. I’m a pretty big gamer and always have been, some of my favorites are Another World, Thief: The dark Project, DOOM, too much to really list here. I’m not the best with introductions so I apologize if this isn’t the best, but I’m happy to find a Half-Life related community ๐Ÿ˜€

  382. Hello I’m an avid Half-Life fan who really enjoys mapping for the game, however it is only recently I have actually become decent at doing so.

  383. TASbot

    Hello! My name is Cole but you can call me TASbot.

    I’ve been playing source games for a long time, they are my go to games to play and I am currently really into Garry’s Mod. I usually only play Garry’s mod by using HL2 mods as a story and using a certain weapon base to enhance my experience. I have been doing this for year now and figured I should make an account to give my review on how well mods port over from HL2 into Garry’s Mod.

  384. HI im looking to make videos on mod or mods requested to me I have left my discord in my profile for direct messaging

  385. Hi there! My name is Zero and I’m a YouTuber who has been playing and enjoying Half-Life and Half-Life mods since the late 90’s. I have a YouTube Channel where I play through assorted half-Life mods as well as some VR gaming content. But lately. It’s been mostly Half-Life mods. My YouTube can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@thegrandzero so feel free to stop by and check out my videos. I try to make my uploads weekly and so far have played through the They Hunger Trilogy, USS Darkstar, and just started Afraid Of Monsters(DC).

  386. Hello I love games, programming and music

    I’m here mostly to appreciate the community work.

  387. Hi! My name is Ali and I’m new to this community, HL2 is like a part of my soul and I can’t live a day without playing it. I am also trying to learn Hammer\Source SDK and make the mod I always wanted.

  388. Hello! My name is Phantom Imahara.
    I’m an ardent fan of the Half-Life series since my earlier days and have grown fond of it alongside countless game mods that many talented people make to this day. I also create my own content, but do not have a planned release time since I may be very occupied with IRL/other stuff.

    I have joined RTSL to explore and discover the work that can suit my fancy, as well as show the appreciation to those that are deserving of positive praise, but I will also be planning to do non-commentary playthroughs of mods, plus non mods and other games, in the future.

  389. hey im jhris

    im a hobbyist level designer, trying to perfect my craft

    yeah

  390. Call me Ishmael….. or Stephen.

    Just checking out mods, finding cool stuff. Sometimes I end up writing long reviews, happens.

    I like seeing the things people create and hope to scratch out some things myself, a little sporadic maybe but just the way life is. Best wishes folks, see ya around.

  391. Hello. Why do I have to leave a comment to not get deleted? This seems kinda hostile and scary. I just came here for the mods.

    1. Unq

      Not hostile at all. All reviews are appreciated – but it’s long been a policy of this site that you must at least comment on your experience to leave a recommendation. It really helps others, even a bulleted list of what you liked & didn’t. Thank you.

  392. Hey, I’m Radial. Started mapping around the start of 2020, first starting with TF2 and later joining Map Labs and creating multiple entries. Hoping to see some maps of my own here in the future!

  393. My name is Jacob.

    I am a enjoyer of the Universal Union/Combine
    I like to play the guitar.
    Major fan of Modern Warfare (COD)

  394. wb

    Hi, i’m someone known as just “wb”.

    I’m someone who’s become passionate about the Half-Life and Portal series over the recent years, and while I was aware of the existence of these games beforehand (mostly through GMoD), I wish I got to play them sooner, because they are incredible experiences.

    I’ve been developing an interest in Source modding, and on source mods in general.

    that’s it I suppose, hope to see y’all in the future.

  395. Greetings, I’ve been a fan of half life and its mods for almost two decades now, I recently just got into mapping so I’m going through a huge HL1 singleplayer mods binge, replaying entries which I haven’t played in several years as well as playing some others for the first time. My goal is to learn something from them and I figured it would also be fun to sit down and write reviews for them while at it.

    PS: I hope its not a problem if I end up taking half of the “last 100 comments” while doing this, if it is then I would tone it down or just publish them once every few weeks ; )

  396. Well, always knew about Half-Life as a series, as I was one to play GMod a lot, so it’s only natural that someday I would play mods for the original game itself.

    I’ll start with the oldest mods available, at least the ones I find interesting, and then I’ll see what I can find.

    Anyways, I hope to have a good time with the hundreds of files here, and that anyone who’s reading this message has a blessed day. Cya!

  397. Hey, my name is Rafael. Better known as just “dn2rafael”. I mainly make maps for the Portal 2 Workshop (that are not quite puzzles lol) but I’m also a huge fan of Half-Life sourcemods and I play them every once in a while. The reason for me being so passionate about sourcemods in the first place is because ironically, they were practically the main thing that got me into Half-Life 2 back when the only Valve games I was familiar with were Portal 1 and 2, specially the short maps from RTSL’s Villes. They were great and surprisingly fun for me, as a person who didn’t play many first person shooters before.
    I’m looking forward on making my own Half-Life mods in the future once I improve my skills in mapping, writing, level design, etc. but until there, I’m just a guy who plays Half-Life mods.

  398. Hello, my name is Dmitron! I’ve been a part of the Half-Life community for a long time now. I make maps & mods for Source Engine. I also like playing other peoples mods and to encourage fellow modders to make awesome stuff regardless of skill level… I’m currently learning more C++ so I can have a better understanding of Source Engine code. I also have years of experience with Hammer Editor. I may dabble in other creative endeavors such as writing, music, and modelling. My first ever Valve game I played was Portal 2 and now I love almost all the Valve games!

  399. Hello, I’m Jack!

    I’ve been working on Source and Goldsrc mods (mostly maps for CSGO and Half-Life) for a long time. I’m working on a Half-Life 1 mod that is still in its early stages. I have lots of experience with C++ as I have been programming it for several years.

    My favorite game is Garry’s Mod, I’ve been playing it for many years and have many great memories on it.

  400. Hello everyone, my name is Alexandre, but you can call me Alex. I have been in contact with the HL franchise and this website for a very long time, just now, I decided to make a subscription. I`m just looking for good mods to play, since I love Source games and want more of it.

  401. Hi there all;

    I’m ‘Francisco Pozo’ a.k.a. ‘DJ FrANKy EHP’, a Streamer, Informatic, and Multimedia Producer from ‘Canary Islands’, in Spain.

    I’m very glad to be part of this community since some years ago, although I have not posted any comment since years. Many of you may know of me due to I collaborated with the creation of the mod ‘The Gate 2’, as: ‘Sound Editor’, ‘Music Producer’ (Creating very short tracks), and ‘Betatester’. Also, you can know me by ‘Discord’, or due to other ‘Multimedia Productions’ I have shared thru the time, thru ‘P2P’ software and other websites, like my music at Youtube, or even my old ‘Half-Life Single-Player Mods Compilation’ I did and shared thru ‘P2P’ more than 18 years ago.

    My link with the ‘Half-Life’ modding community comes from years ago when I bought the original game the first time in CD version at the later 90’s, and I played it and its expansions thru the dissapeared ‘WON’ network, at the early 2000’s. After have finished the original game and its two official expansions, I downloaded and played some ‘Single-Player’ Mods from Internet, and started to page attention to the modding community, then I worked as ‘Betatester’ and ‘Music Producer’, for some mods that never were realeased like ‘E-Force’, ‘The Last 7 Hours’, etc. Finally, I collaborated with ‘Craig J. Beattie’ at the creation of ‘The Gate 2’, and now after time, I finally have gotten the full permissions to make a new version of this mod that I have named ‘The Gate 2 v1.5’, that will introduce very much improvements, fixes, and more things to that mod, but that nowadays is in a ‘Pause’ status, but NOT dead, till I can again take it to finish it.

    Nowadays, I’m terms of the ‘Half-Life’ and its expansions and sequels, I’m playing them and streaming all at my ‘Twitch’s Channel’, due to I love these games. In Spanish, but I can speak in English too.

    Also, I have some plans for the future to do ‘Multimedia Productions’ related to ‘Half-Life’, but it will require some time too.

    Well, this has been my presentation to the community and I hope I can be part of this great portal, that I knew about it years ago when it had another domain name.

    Best of lucks for the ‘Moders’, the public in general, and everybody outthere. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  402. HEADER:

    Hi Guys im Kerberos

    I just found this website today, so I decided to make an account so I can interact with yall. It all started when I looked into the files of the first HL mod I’ve ever played (They Hunger 1999). It had a sticky note with a link to a website called Planet Phillip saying it been downloaded from there. So I started looking into it and found out the whole story about Planet Phillip and it led me here.

    I am a software engineer student so i have some experience coding but not any modding, id like to change that in the future. Always been a gamer, but just until now I’ve been getting into the Half Life universe, better late than never.

    Hopefully I can learn something from you guys, make friends and maybe even play together some mods together lol. Also, I’ve never used any forum, this is the first time for me so this is a learning experience.

    As it said on the note: Finishing Half-Life is just the beginning!

  403. Hi guys!
    Amigus here!

    I’ve been familiar with Half-Life universe since 2011 already,started mapping since 2018 but only now decided to start release at least something (I mean starting my mapper career fully),i’ve posted a few maps to GMod workshop before i made,nothing as much.

    I do make youtube videos as well,they are not as popular and just basically short meme videos,but they do their job and it’s not my primary concern for now

    My favorite thing about mapping is that it is basically creating your own story! That’s why i love it,i love to say “Detailing takes time” Which in deed does,but i mean by that details are TOP priority to make map more ‘alive’. I decided to start with RTSL for now,since i can make HL2 maps but i am not really into making full-length long campaign (at least,not for now)

    I hope that you’ll like my work ๐Ÿ™‚ Even if not, still thanks for playing! Every comment is a person’s actual experience.

  404. Hi, I’m ScotchBot.

    I’ve been playing Valve games ever since I got my first computer, and Half Life 2 is up there with my top 3 favorite games of all time (1. TF2, 2. HL2, 3. Gmod [i love valve games])

    I also like animation, and I upload these animations to my Youtube channel of the same name.

    I’ve been meaning to learn how to make HL2 maps, as I want to make my own stories and acid-induced hallucinations. I also think making maps is very fun and relaxing. ๐Ÿ™‚

    While it might not be anytime soon, expect a mod made by me to come in the future!

    hopefully

  405. Hi, I’m Rob.

    I’ve played Half-Life and various mods for it since the early 2000s. I figured I should finally register an account here, as I visit the site frequently enough.

  406. My name is Notim Portant, what is important is that I am a soon-to-be Source modder.
    I primarily enjoy mods on the Source engine, but I do occasionally play GoldSrc mods.
    I hope to leave some insightful (although likely short) reviews.

  407. Hello! I’m mayan but you can also call me “PhP” just like my username :), I’m 18 years old from Israel and started playing Half Life when I was really young and fell in love with it since.

    I’m a fan of Half Life games and the mods that are made for it.
    I also like music from the 80’s and 90’s thanks to GTA Vice City which introduced me to the great music of this era.

    That’s all I guess ๐Ÿ™‚

  408. Howdy, I’m WilliamPony

    I’ve been playing Half-Life since a long time ago, maybe since 2010
    I know that game because of Counter-Strike 1.6, so back then I was idly looking at the game folder until I found an .exe named hl.exe and played it, kinda nostalgic eh?

    I also start my mapping journey since 2022 because of my obsession to that game
    until now, I make various maps but didn’t release it BUT now I did make a real map and have a story in it or i called it a mods, yes you heard me right I make a mods… hehe
    It’s not done yet but pray me best and hope that my lazy will be gone forever, so It will be released faster

    Oh yea, I also play Sven Co-op since january 2022, and become an admin on some server..
    I also help some Sven Co-op porter like Vaelastrasz Youtuber, (I already know her since 2022)

    I guess that’s the only I want to say

    Hope everyone likes my arrival on this website :D!

  409. Ello
    I’m sillyman
    I don’t have much to say here, but
    I discovered HL and Valve through the XBOX 360 Orange Box Demo :]
    Oh and i also played Portal : Still Alive on the same console too
    Thanks for reading i guess

  410. I’m rather new to the mods and half-life scene, but I have played all the big ones out there. All the ones that are recommended by people highly in the community. I love to discuss what makes mods great and IMO the best way to get high quality content for games we love.

  411. Hi all. I’m just commenting here in order to prevent my account being deleted to inactivity. Long-time Half-Life fan looking for some fun mods. Thank you to the admin of the site as well as the mappers and modders in the community, active and defunct.

  412. Hi there name’s PlumpZombie, just a Valve fanboy and I heard a lot about this site so why not giving a try? I’ll definitely check out some cool mods people make here.

    Also I have a YouTube channel also called PlumpZombie lol, my channel will focus on Source and Goldsrc content from Valve, and community mods too.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWzASOQLQGeMoL5EbF29VNQ

  413. What’s Up, my name is Juan, im from Spain and i have really enjoyed playing retro FPS since i first time played ultimate doom ep1 thanks to doom 2016, i have tried most of the retro FPS and my fav one is Quake counting mods, if we dont count mods then half-life 1 is my fav one.

    Im a doom speedrunner, i have set many many records in a short period of time but now i want to relax for a bit, the community is really welcoming. Im planning on speedrunning half-life and quake since i love the movement in those games.

  414. Heyy Everyone,
    iยดm just a Fan of the Half Life series and here just out of curiosity to be honest ^^

    1. Interesting intro!

      Just a recap for those finding this place. No, its not my site, I’ve just been here for eons, and know how to get around it all.

      You have reached the holy grail of free games, maps and mods, hundreds upon hundreds of them! Here’s how I find them quickly. Pick the game(s) from the drop down after mouseover “PLAY” above. On the list, change Show “10” Entries to “All”. Then notice that all columns can be assorted, ascending or descending. Try the “AvRec” column (Average Recommendation given). Open up individual mods in a new browser tab, to retain your sort. Done ๐Ÿ™‚

  415. I don’t even know how to introduce myself, to be honest, so I’ll just fire whatever comes to mind. I go by JohnRDVSMarston on pretty much anything I’m interest on, save for places where I could use this alias (like Newgrounds, for instance).
    I’m 27 as of now and I’ve been playing games ever since I was a wee child, and once I hit my teenager years, I slowly and surely started to desire working on games, so I made some projects here and there, mostly working on it myself and shelving them due to being too big for one inexperienced person. And currently, things have not changed, aside from me being way more untrusting, paranoid, and overall hopeless; so anything I’ve worked on myself either was dropped, shelved or worked very slowly, almost grinding to a halt.
    In the last year, I tried my hand at streaming, and I picked Half-Life Mods simply because the list of mods I wanted to play was growing rampant, so I decided to tackle both at once. However the growing anxiety and the feeling of being bothersome took hold after some weeks of trying it out; dunno if I ever gonna try that again, to be sincere, even if with other games.
    That’s it really; couldn’t think of more to say that could be relevant

  416. Hey, this site is back! I never had a chance to introduce myself but, here I am. I think now’s the time. Game name, Captain Crap. Youtube name, Kurber Bing. I would never reveal identity to anyone. I play Half-Life for more than 10 years and my goal here is to finish all of the games, from Half-Life to Half-Life: Alyx. Aside from that, I also wanna try to make a map/mod to contribute for the community. Unfortunately, it costed my two hard drives for some reason when I make maps. I do have little experience but it’s not as good as the ones you see in Map Labs. I also play games balanced, not too professional (I used to speedrun.) I play the mods sometimes way too serious. But when I f*** around, I usually break out of the map or kill friendly NPCs to cause softlock.

  417. Hey there I’m FramptonPhenix! I’ve been a fan of Valve and Half Life ever since I got the Orange Box for my Xbox 360. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of playing all the Half Life games as well as some incredible mods made by the awesome community. Recently I decided to create an account on RTSL so that I could share my reviews of these mods that have been created over the years. Last year I took it upon myself to play through most of the mods listed on the RTSL Hall of Fame to see if they still hold up and deserve their spot. I’ve already posted the reviews on my ModDB profile, but I plan on going into even more detail on here.

  418. Hello, I’m MyT for friends.

    Currently offering services as a beta tester (there is more info in my profile), I have been playing these games for so long that I don’t even remember what year I started. The only thing I can tell you is that I love things related to the HL universe: Mods, History, theories, a little bit of everything you could say. I must say that I created this account recently, before I was downloading mods without a previously created account until one night I said “What the hell, I’m going to make an RTSL account” and here I am hehe, telling you about me, how life turns around … it isn’t true? But anyway, I can’t tell you much more about me hehe. Have a good day, night or afternoon. see you soon mates 8)

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