October 2014 General Chat

1st October 2014

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

October is upon us.

Leaves changing colour, more rainy days meaning no more excuses to not be in front of our computers playing Half-Life mods!

Got any modding plans for this winter? Gonna build your first mod? You should. In fact, so should I!

Want a remix of some HL music?

Thanks to ALex from LambdaGeneration.com. for linking me to this.

This Month’s Sci-Fi Movie

In June, I started to use a poster from a classic Sci-Fi move as the background for the post image. This month it is from Not of this Earth (1957). “An alien agent from the distant planet Davana is sent to earth via a high-tech matter transporter. There he terrorizes Southern California in an attempt to acquire blood for his dying race, the result of a devastating nuclear war.” Sounds kinda cool!

28 Comments

  1. Always a lot of ideas, never enough mapping juice to finish.
    I should start bringing together maps with similar ideas and aesthetics.
    Also, been doing a really slow replay of Half-Life 2, savouring the autumn-like weather in-game is much more fulfilling than actually going outside.

  2. Mega Sean 45

    Well, you may or may not have seen the email I gave you, I do have a bunch of ideas for mods. If making a mod was as easy as just thinking about it, maybe this website would have 10x the amount!

    If you’re planning another competition soon, I would recommend CityVille. It would be nice reliving Battle of City 17 and what’s been happening before Gordon and Alyx come back from Nova Prospekt, or what is happening at the opposite side of the citadel. The city maps are always my favorite!

  3. I recently bought a Nook ebook reader and am very happy with it. I then saw you could change the screensaver and took the opportunity to personalize it. Here is the result:
    Half-Life logo on my Nook

  4. Ade

    I don’t like the remix to one of my fav tracks in that hr long set, at min 45 and the ending felt like a cheap self pat on the back, but the rest was ok heh

  5. Something Something Space

    Something Something Space

  6. i would love to build a mod, i simply do not have the patience or consistency. ive tried but sooner or later i give up. but my new map is looking good so far. so thats that.

  7. Blue Lightning

    I like that Something Something Space piccy. I wonder why we haven’t had a “Gordon in Space” challenge? Something like Duke Nukem’s Lunar Apocalypse levels…like Gordon is on an orbiting Combine base or what not. Could be good fun!

    1. Blue Lightning

      Uh oh Phillip! I think we have a new idea for a contest! 😀

  8. OhSnap

    Working on the early stages of a mod I’m going to make for a portfolio piece. Last 2 weeks of gainful employment is taking up my time though before I get embraced by the unwelcoming arms of unemployment.

  9. What’s wrong with Steam ? My account now shows as a girl and messages from another guy in cyrillic says it’s his account…took Steam 2 weeks to get me back in to my own account, only to find I seem to be sharing it with 2 others…there ya go, make things more complicated than they need to be and this is what happens. Steam sucks.

  10. I downloaded the windows 10 technical preview today .. and first impressions are positive …. the start menu makes a return which was the most negative aspect of windows 8,and what happened to windows 9 ?
    well it seems more gamer freindly and windows 10 will ship with direct x 12 …. information regarding this new api is thin on the ground but more info can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/directx/archive/2014/10/01/directx-12-and-windows-10.aspx
    so will we see hl3 with windows 10 ? …. is that why the most patient gamers in the world have waited for 12 years for the next offering of half life… well your guess is as good as mine !

    1. Mega Sean 45

      I was actually thinking that HL3 was gonna be released along with Left 4 Dead 3 and Portal 3.

      1. I’m not sure I want a Portal 3. THe first Portal game had a great ending and no one really wanted or expected a second game but valve delivered and the ending of the second was even better than the first. Could Valve really create an even better game?

      2. JG

        Personally, I’d really like to see more new IP than sequels coming out of Valve.

  11. Phillip told me to stop calling him “The Half-Life God” anymore, but here is the evidence: http://i.imgur.com/vuH0OL4.jpg

    You see Phillip, you are the Half-Life god, may crowbars be upon you.

    1. here,here …. without phillips daily supply of half life (and 2) maps and mods my day would be not so fullfilling … !

    2. Your Photoshop skills are astounding Alex 😉

      1. How do you know it was photoshopped? That could really be me.

        1. Photoshopped? This was just a normal picture of Phillip.

          Our Lambda God in Xen,
          Phillip Marlowe be your name.
          Your Source SDK come,
          your maps be done,
          in Black Mesa, as it is in Xen.
          Give us this website our daily headcrabs,
          and forgive us our poor level design,
          as we also have forgiven Alfred.
          And lead us not into other games,
          but prevent us from complaining about Half-Life 3.

          Galanga!

  12. So I am preparing myself to get back into mapping after a 6 month break. I have never released anything and my break aims to end my scrapping spree.

    I started by organizing my maps folder. I now have one folder for each month named 2014 October, 2014 November and so on. I don’t know how this will help me finish my projects but its nice to be organized. I will forget my usual workflow and start over. I have hundreds of Ideas, but to start of, I will go with a level with some classic Half Life 2 gameplay we all know and love.

    So, I guess I’ll see you around and I’m looking forward to showing what I can do.

    1. Alrighty, I am happy with my progress so far. I have began mapping again and I discovered a neat little trick that helps me immensly in getting forward. Maybe I will reveal the trick when I have released my very first map. Its such a simple trick but it could be the difference between a succesful map and a bland and boring map, at least for me.

  13. Has anyone heard any more about HL3?
    its been a while since those in-valve screen shots were posted.

    maybe their waiting for Christmas,, 2020!!

  14. Hello PlanetPhillip chat,

    Over at LambdaGeneration there is a Q&A with the guys behind an amazing looking new Half-Life fan film called “Half-Life:The Downfall of Evolution”. It is set during the 7 hour war in-between HL1 and HL2 and will be released for free on YouTube as 4 x 10 minute episodes.

    More info about the film: http://hl-themovie.com/

    If anyone wants to send in thoughts or questions about the film for the team to answer, there are some details how to do so in the article below:

    http://lambdageneration.com/multimedia/half-life/questions-and-answers-with-half-life-the-downfall-of-evolution/

  15. So, for everyone having problems with the error: Error Launching DLL something, here is what to do. You have to verify the files of HALF LIFE 2, not EP2 or 1. Just the normal one. Then it should work. It worked for me at least.

    1. Worked for me to, thanks TolisXTRM!

  16. I’ve been playing Half-Life 1 lately, and I was playing the mod called “Lost World”. It’s great and all, and it works fine, but the thing is when I go watch the plants, there is this blue overlay around them. Can someone help me?

  17. Unq

    If you want to see screens from the best sci-fi maps ever made for the Goldsource engine, I’ve just started a week of posting all the official Natural Selection maps at http://goldsourcegold.tumblr.com

    1. Hey Unq, how is that new Half-Life Scram mod going on? I really want to try it out!

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