Amateur video game filmmaking website Style-Productions.net has launched a competition offering a €300 prize pool for the winning submission.

If you followed our first Source SDK tutorial, you should have gotten to grips with the basic features of Hammer: you can use brushes to create rooms and corridors, change textures and place props. Your level is still mostly lifeless though, so it’s time to use Triggers to make things happen.

Is your map looking a little bit flat? Does it need that extra zing? Then High Dynamic Range can help you add that warm glow to your creation.

HDR is a subtle effect; a simple explanation is that is the effect of your eyes adjusting to a dark room after being in the bright outside. This means that darker areas will be darker initially, and will then rise to a brightness level more suited for interior gameplay. This dynamic balance of brightness adds contrast to your map, meaning an overall brighter and vibrant experience.

Under the Radar is a series of articles on LambdaGeneration featuring maps and mods in the Valve Community that you might have missed.

Okay, so the last Under the Radar article was approximately forever ago, but work with me here! Under the Radar is back to bring you some obscure, under-appreciated or just downright weird maps and mods…

The once Source mod, now Greenlit game “No More Room in Hell” has just recently released version 1.08.

Changes in this version include the FN FAL weapon, the highly demanded suicides by gun shots, two new official objective maps, two community maps, difficulty levels and new player spawning.

Welcome to the first of our new Modding & Development Tutorials. In this installment we’ll help you take your first steps into creating a map in Valve’s Source SDK.

Creating levels can be challenging, fun and very rewarding (albeit sometimes frustrating) and you will be able to release your creations to thousands of players worldwide.

Whilst many of us have been waiting very patiently (or not so patiently) for news on the next Half-Life sequel, web designer Tom Bennet has been busy putting together a rather stunningly designed retrospective in celebration of Half-Life 2’s 10th anniversary.

Recently Valve introduced new tools for the Dota 2 Workshop. But these are no meager ‘Authoring Tools’, this a full blown, updated, next gen, set of tools. Complete with a new version of Hammer, a Material Editor, and a Model Editor. 

My name is Jim Partridge and I’m a modder primarily for Half-Life 2. My previous work includes Half-Life 2: Deep Down, Half-Life 2: Daylight and numerous PlanetPhillip competition entries. I decided to join LambdaGeneration this year as a contributor for the site’s Modding & Development section. My primary interest is in level design with a focus on gameplay, I’m a gameplay nerd in fact… Join me in my nerdiness!

PlanetPhillip has updated his ‘MapTap’ software to make it even easier for you to install and run single-player maps for the Half-Life and Portal series.

The free application, now updated to version 2.5 (release candidate 1), allows anyone to download, install and run hundreds of maps made by the community.