A proposed Russian magazine entitled ‘LambdaPreviews’ is looking for people to help kick-start what could be an interesting community project.
Managed by PivotBot a.k.a ‘John Freeman’ of the VK Half-Life Community, ‘LambdaPreviews’ aims to showcase the works of the Valve community via a free online magazine.
Happy New Year! Okay, it might be a little late for that, but things have been a bit quiet in Source modding lately. But never mind, because here’s a great mod to keep you entertained during these cold winter’s evenings (or summer if you’re in the southern hemisphere, I guess).
The year is 1998. A previously unknown group of game developers known as Valve Software has just released Half-Life. Of course it becomes an instant hit, entertaining a generation of gamers worldwide. But beyond that, buried away on the CD-ROM inside that ridiculously big cardboard game box is a program called “Worldcraft”. According to a note at the back of the instruction manual (remember those?) this program would allow fans to “create a replica of their garage or a fantastic alien world”. And create they did. With this tool, now known as Hammer, at their disposal, the possibilities have been almost endless. From Counter-Strike to Ricochet, from Black Mesa to deep space to World War II France, the community created a tidal wave of new adventures, far beyond what anyone might have anticipated. Fifteen years later, we show no sign of stopping.
Update: According to Deniz Sezen on the Black Mesa forums, the rumors about Black Mesa being ported to Source 2 are false: “Just to dispel a large rumor (and I know I’ll be viewed as the grinch that stole christmas): We are NOT on Source 2. It wouldn’t make sense for a company to license tech they haven’t proven yet with a released title to a mod team. Our [visual] however, WILL be improved. Don’t get me wrong though, we’d love a Source 2 license but our fans would be waiting another 9 years if we had to port again.”
Can’t say I didn’t warn ya.
Since I am sure many of you will have mixed feelings about the news mentioned in the title, I just want to make it clear right out of the gate that an updated Black Mesa will still be available for free and will be supported!!! Now, onto the details…
Play testing and the process of gathering actionable feedback on game levels can be a tricky thing. Everyone plays games differently, and I’m sure we all know that guy / girl who gets stuck on the most basic puzzle sequence in a level. As level designers we try and limit these progress blockers as much as possible with clear and understandable designs but inevitably some will slip through. But wait, there is hope! A group of individuals exist whose purpose is to test, test, test until these wrinkles are no more. GladOS would be proud of the men and women of the Beta Testers Collective.
Do you want to learn more about Half-Life? To see the obscure? To witness the oddities? Then you’ve come to the right playlist!
The ‘Half-Life Fact Files’ is a small project by Rikki D’Angelo or more well known to the Half-Life community as Marphitimus Blackimus (or Marphy Black for short).
Self-described as “an instalment in this series of Half-Life educational film strips”, the project is focused on exploring the outlandish knowledge, obscurities and fascinations that lie behind the very fabric of Half-Life.
It’s no secret that I am terrible at multiplayer games. Whether it’s Counter-Strike or Team Fortress, I’m often that noob at the bottom of the scoreboard, so it should be no surprise that I stick to the single player side of modding. I occasionally make an exception to that rule though, and I’m glad I did for this mod – because Pirates, Vikings and Knights II is a lot of fun.
It can be hard to keep track of things in the modding community. Unlike the multi-million dollar marketing campaigns of triple-A releases, us mappers have to rely on word-of-mouth or places like ModDB to have our creations discovered.
A result of this is that a lot of brilliant releases slip “under the radar” and fade into obscurity. To help rectify this, here is the first of what (we hope) will be a series of articles highlighting smaller maps and mods released recently which we think you should download and try out for yourself. They’re free!
Zombie Panic: Source will most certainly live on as its successor, Contagion, because its Kickstarter campaign has surpassed its goal! Thankfully, Contagion has joined the ranks of the 50% of campaigns that actually succeed on Kickstarter and should be ready for release this fall. But just because the game has reached its goal, doesn’t mean the adventure’s over.
As much as mods like No More Room In Hell and Zombie Panic: Source have captivated fans across the Half Life spectrum, and as much as I have put my support behind Contagion, it’s nice to see a multiplayer mod that doesn’t involve killing zombies. Hell, even something that’s not a first person shooter! …not that I have any problem with first person shooters. It would be quite ironic if I did. But still, it’s nice to see something different. There are a slew of Half Live 2 mods that have turned the first person genre on its head. From experiments in story telling that we’ve seen in Dear Esther and the Stanley Parable. To projects that can rival some triple A experiences like Black Mesa or Underhell. But there don’t seem to be enough Half Life 2 mods that break the ‘perspective mold’ and give us a different way to ‘view’ games.
