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Discussion Topic 001

Welcome to a new category. I’ve been pondering this one for a while and decided to try it. The idea is to start a topic and just let the discussion flow. Unlike the Poll Questions which require a few choices for readers to select, these topics will be more open ended and might contain multiple related-questions.

Just like the Poll Questions, I am very happy for readers to suggest their own topics – just email me.

So, here we go.

How many people who buy the Half-Life games actually play mods?

Since this would be a guess, that’s why I haven’t made it a PQ.

I’d like to think it was pretty high, but there must be quite a few people out there that don’t know about mods.

How do you think they could be told?

The idea of a “huge” potential market is very interesting to me. A bit like I wonder how many Harry Potter (and Star wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who etc etc) fans know that there is SO much community made stuff.

1st November 2015 4 Comments

Poll Question 319 – How protective were you over the rebels?

It’s been a while since I have played Half-Life 2 and we all remember how annoying the Squad system was but what about the rebels in general?

At no point during the game did I actively protect them, especially if they had a weapon.

I’m sure some players remember better than I but did any rebels without weapons help you? I don’t think so.

3rd September 2015 18 Comments

Half-Life / Valve Memorabilia

It’s been a long time since I posted soemthing in the Reader-to-Reader section of my blog. I have been meaning to post this for a few months, but finally made the time today.

I present to you my collection of Half-Life memorabilia. I don’t own that much, partly becasue I can’t afford to and partly becasue I don’t want too many things like that.

Under each photo is a brief description, and if you have any questions just ask.

I may have a look for some other boxes of the games, might be nice to have the full collections, inclduing all the versions of HL2. I’m pretty sure I have the Half-Life Generations packaging somewhere.

If youa re wondering about the blue back in some of the photos, I keep all the stuff in that, which is a waterproof bag. I am terrified of them getting soaked in a flood (it does happen in my town but it’s highly unlikely – I’m just over-protective).

Okay, here are my photos….

29th August 2015 5 Comments

Poll Question 317 – Does playing violent video games make players violent?

To be honest, I am surprised we haven’t dsicussed this exact question before.

The only previous poll I can find close to it is from August 2007: Poll Question 043 – Are Single Player FPS games too violent? (for some reason the actual resulst are not visible and I have decided to find a plugin that will keep the poll data on the site, instead of outsourcing them).

I got the idea from a BBC article entitled Do video games make people violent?. Its headline is: More than 200 academics have signed an open letter criticising controversial new research suggesting a link between violent video games and aggression.

20th August 2015 17 Comments

Poll Question 316 – How do you feel when a mod limits access to the console?

Does anybody else remember how in The Citizen 2 when you tried to noclip around, almost immediately you ere taken to a jail within the mod?

It was kinda cool and pretty clever too. At least at first. But then later on I remember feeling that I needed it. I’m not sure if there was a bug or a script didn’t start or something, but then I became a little frustrated. I don’t remember what happened but I must have alsoved the problem because I definitely remember finishing the mod.

13th August 2015 33 Comments

August 2015 General Chat

Firstly, Woo Hoo! Summer is here and I am on holiday for a month. It’s greta knowing you don’t have to get up early if you don’t want to, although I was upo at 6:30am this morning to go cycling.

Secondly, sorry about not creating a July General chat post. It was all connected with my health issue, which I will update everyone on in the Sorry for the lack of updates post a bit later today. In short, I am more or less able to use the PC for most things, although I doubt I could actually play a game, mod or map for more than about 20 minutes still.

Lastly, I’ll begin to update the site over the coming days and might even have a little surprise project to post soon.

So, what’s on your mind?

Oh, I’m gonna post more images of my Nook screensaver this week. I now have about 5 Half-Life themed images.

1st August 2015 37 Comments

The Real World Brands of Half-Life 2 by Jason Gimba

Half-Life 2 has a lot of props, from benches in the train station to Chinese take-out boxes. As a mapper, you become familiar with them over time and develop a mental index of the different models, names, sizes and your own practices for how and when you use them.

One thing I’ve noticed is that some of the textures on these props are based on real world brands. Sometimes Valve altered them, such as the detergent bottles of “606” (instead of Formula 409), but some escaped that treatment or may have been left intentionally. Because we can zoom so closely to the props in Hammer Editor, we can view some of these details that are difficult to see in-game.

Let’s take a look at some of them!

4th May 2015 11 Comments