March 2018 – General Chat

21st March 2018

Spring will soon be here. I kinda like the rain and cold though because when I am at home most of the weekend on my PC, I feel less guilty than if it’s warm and sunny. I feel as though I have an excuse.

What about you?

Anyway, yes, let’s address the pink with green spots elephant in the room: I have only just posted the March chat (Wednesday 21st March 2018).

Shame on me for A: not doing ti and B: for not noticing until somebody emailed me.

What plans do you have for the final 9 days of March? Me? Well, I have some unpaid leave from the 29th until the second week of April, and I hope to do a thousand things but will be lucky to do 5.

24 Comments

  1. I finally got around to setting up Steam big Picture and my xbox 1 controller to my PC on a big screen. I’m really loving the controller support on steam now. I enjoy playing half life with a controller now believe it or not after all these years.
    Can’t wait to get stuck into some new levels this weekend.

  2. ‘Finishing Half-Life is just the beginning’…or at least it used to be…now with so many broken mods, the ‘Hall of Fame’ has turned into the ‘Hall of Shame’. Why all that broken content is still there is beyond me. I’ve moaned about it before but nothing gets done, so that’s all I have to say on that. Have a good month, what’s left of it and lets hope something else comes along soon. 🙁

    1. As in not working with the current steam versions??

      1. AI

        I uploaded my entire HL2 gamefix collection (85 fixes) to Phillip a while back, I don’t know if they got posted!

    2. *sigh* This is now actually the 4th time I am telling you this: The reason why all that broken content is still in the Hall of Fame is simple, it’s actually not really “broken”. Back in 2013 Valve changed with the so called “Steampipe Update” how Source engine games are handled. Most if not all mods that either had Half-Life 2, Episode One or Episode Two as the base stopped working since the structure of the filepaths was different than before. Everything that had SDK 2006 or SDK 2007 as base remained intact however. Some time later a guy named Malortie released a patch which ports the maps over to the SDK 2013. This is what you have to install, it’s not hard to do either. This is a long time known issue, don’t really know what you’ve been doing the past couple of years.

      1. Yes, I know that, but my point is the consumer shouldn’t need to fix broken products, (it’s ‘broken’ because it doesn’t work as is)
        that’s the realm of the manufacturer. Sure, Steam breaks stuff, but the developer needs to keep on top of that or what they have made is useless, we shouldn’t have to keep patching and mucking about to get something to work right.

        1. Well I actually understand where you are coming from. It definitely sucks always having to look up. I asked Phillip if I could update all of the HoF downloads, as well as many others on this site to already ship with the patches, so people won’t have to download them from somewhere else. If I do get the permission to do so, you won’t have to do any more extra work. Also I am sorry if I sounded so rude to you all this time, I really didn’t mean to.

          1. Anon_1624532

            no worries…I just want things to work if they are listed and downloadable….good luck with your request by the way, it sure would smooth the path for people that have no idea how to tweak things.

            1. That was me by the way, just forgot to log in ^^^^

              1. Phillip agreed to it and I patched all of the Hall of Fame downloads. The updates will be uploaded within the next days. If you download a mod and it doesn’t work by default, don’t hesitate to write it in the comments and I will take a look at it as soon as possible.

        2. zoe

          Wow, a complaint about FREE games. The audacity of those mod makers…not fixing their maps. Gosh, I should get a refund.

          If I were Phillip, I would be charging you (and only you) to download the mods he hosts.

          Try putting some thought into fixing it yourself. Google is your friend.

          1. Thanks for your contribution to a subject I feel strongly about. Unfortunately I’m not a mapper, coder or any other kind of person that creates such content or knows how to alter things, apart from which I don’t have the time to sit around in front of a PC all day in the forlorn hope I can fix anything. Reminds me of the time I went to a Harley dealership and saw a bright new shiney bike parked outside and the sales rep came out and said ‘Hi, want to take it for a spin’ ‘Sure’ I said…..then handing me a box of wrenches he said…’You’ll have to fix it first though of course, it doesn’t actually work’

            1. I don’t think repairing a bike and fixing a mod is a good comparison. Neither do you have to be a content creator, nor do you need a know how on altering things. What you have to is being able to press a download button and the basic knowledge on how to drag files from one folder to another. The rest is already done for you.

              1. Whoosh…that was the sound of something going over my head…never mind, said my piece, time to move on…thanks for your help. Wonder what April will bring.

  3. AI

    Well well, the end of March! We might still get some more snow here in Minnesota, But I don’t care — I just had my 72nd birthday last month, and got myself two nice B-Day presents! A 32″ HDMI gaming monitor and to go thru the snow with ease a 2011 Ford 4×4 offroad truck, equipped with a 5.0 Mustang engine (365hp) It was unfortunate that my GTX970 video board in my PC took a dump, Oh well crap happens!!! BTW in my last post above I forgot to mention that all of the 85 game fixes I uploaded, DID come from “Malortie” and they worked just fine, I converted all the mods involved!! I almost forgot to mention Happy Birthday to Phillip!!

    1. Well, it’s a good thing you got some nice presents, because it’s a really unfortunate time for your GTX to croak. GPU prices are absolutely insane right now because of all the idiot cryptominers gobbling them up.

    2. had wondered recently, what is the most ‘must have’ video’ card out there at the moment…

    3. zoe

      I hope I’m still playing when I’m 72! Rock ON!

      Maybe HL3 will be out by then!

  4. Simply looking forward to the Easter holidays, where I shall lounge around doing as little as possible whilst overindulging in chocolate. As it’s mostly likely going to poor with rain I won’t even feel guilty about it.

  5. Hec

    Hey Phillip! There’ll be a HDTF post here in RTSL, in order to leave a recommendation?? I’m eager to leave mine!

    1. Yes, I really should do that. I promise to do it soon.

  6. Easter Holidays. Lots thereof. In other news, sleep, more sleep, some more sleep, and an extra serving of sleep. Also pizza, I should hope.

  7. I just thought – since Gauge doesn’t support Black Mesa mods (yet?), perhaps it’d make sense to switch “installed manually / via Gauge” for “installed manually / via Steam Workshop” on Black Mesa maps? Some maps (Escapade for instance) are available both on the workshop and for manual download on RTSL.

  8. raisethebarville2 please

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