Many Half-Life mods have made it to ModDB’s Top 100 Mods of 2015. But the battle isn’t over yet, as one of these mods will be crowned Mod of the Year overall.

So it’s been a little too long since our last instalment of In Development. Let’s rectify that, shall we?

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.

Hello and welcome to the freshly relaunched LambdaGeneration.com! I am Darren “Daz” Weekes and I love talking about level design in games, so much so in fact that I’ve been doing it on my youtube channel for over a year now focusing on the Half-Life and Quake series of games. My videos aim to entertain and perhaps educate people on the design process behind game levels, so if you’ve ever had an urge to design your own level for a Half-Life title then hopefully I can provide that first stepping stone into the nebulous space that is game design. That’s quite enough about me because today I have something quite special to share with you…