#planetphillip

[lambdageneration]

PlanetPhillip, also known as RunThinkShootLive.com recently announced he will be leaving the website and the Half-Life Community.

This is incredibly sad news. Phillip has been absolutely monumental to the Half-Life community over the years, and was also one of the people who inspired and helped us to create our site back in 2010. 

For this and everything else, we cannot thank him enough, and wish him all the best.

[bltngames]

A few years ago I played something on PlanetPhillip.com called "HalloweenVille." It was a mapping challenge, where users on the site had to create a spooky Halloween-themed map, and at the end of the challenge, everything would be bundled together and released at the end of the month. The winner would be given a game on Steam.

I played HalloweenVille back in the day, and while not every map was a winner, a couple had some interesting ideas and overall, for the hour or so I spent going through the five maps, it was mostly enjoyable. 

So when PlanetPhillip (now called RunThinkShootLive.com) announced they were going to do another Halloween mapping competition, I kept an eye open.

Which brings us to today: I have now played, and completed, HorrorVille. The verdict?

Not as good as HalloweenVille... sort of.

Six maps are on offer here, and they predictably fall across a rather large spectrum of quality. I'll just say this right now: The Host is the stand-out entry in this collection. It's good enough to be its own unique game, separated from the rest of the competition entries... but without it, HorrorVille would be slim pickings.

I suppose I'll just run through each map, one at a time.

Drip Leg is the first map in the list, and I was excited for how polished it felt. It features original (and legitimately good!) voice acting, and polished visuals... but it's not scary. Not even remotely. It feels like a sequence that fell out of Half-Life 2: Episode 1, where you have to cover up Antlion tunnels. Cover up three, and the map is over. A good start for a mod, but it's not horror.

Escape the School is next, and I'm going to admit: I didn't finish this. I couldn't. The map's premise is that you're in a big school, I guess, but the mapping is EXTREMELY simple and repetitious. At one point I came across a door informing me I needed a key from the Teacher's lounge. Returning to the hall, I was greeted by a loud noise, the sound of a monster seeing me, and then a few seconds later I was dead. After multiple deaths I figured it was an invisible monster chasing me down, so I locked myself in to a nearby room. That would delay things a little, but inevitably I'd still die from something I couldn't see. I have no idea what this map expects from me.

Miter has you stranded in a prison-like environment. There's a cool theme to this one, with having to build a weapon, but again, it's just not scary. Once you get the weapon built, it kills everything in one or two hits. Sometimes enemies can knock the weapon out of your hands, which can be stressful, but if you take it slow and steady, you are basically invincible.

The Station started out in a way that brought to mind modern Japanese folklore of train passengers getting stranded at mysterious train stations that don't exist on any map, and being overcome by demonic entities. The end result is a lot less cool: a very dark map, cheap instant-kill hazards, simple geometry, and a confusing layout. Might be the worst of the batch.

The Host is, as I said, the stand-out of the bunch. It's a little slow to start -- as good horror typically is -- but its got a fantastic atmosphere that really does a great job of setting you on edge. It also does a lot with a little -- I'm obviously trying to talk around what the primary gimmick is, but the basic premise is that you play as an prudish old man who seemingly has OCD and must complete a specific task on each day of the week. Obviously, that gets increasingly difficult as time passes for reasons you'll have to find out for yourself. It's a bit tedious, but it's worth it.

White Walls is the final map on offer, and it starts out with an interesting Portal-like gimmick... which is then instantly abandoned and the map goes in four different directions at the same time. Imagine compressing a full-length, hours-long game down in to just five minutes; it becomes an unintelligibly fast blur of locations, mechanics, and atmosphere. No time for anything to sink in or be absorbed. And then, after a hilariously cartoonish "final boss," it ends.

So, yeah. I think this is worth downloading just to play The Host, especially if you're in to psychological horror. Give it a shot.

[goldsourcegold]

Focalpoint by Dimitri Vujicic

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/focal-point-half-life/

http://www.moddb.com/mods/focalpoint

[lambdageneration]

There is truly no time to rest in the world of Half-Life 2 custom maps at the moment. The first 3x10 mapping competition (Ambushville) yielded nine levels for your enjoyment, now Defendville ups that number to ten!

Read More: http://lambdageneration.com/modding/half-life/defendville-contains-ten-new-half-life-2-episode-2-levels-where-you-defend-villes/

Published: December 6th 2013 • By Daz

[lambdageneration]

What shall I build? How will the ambush work? Am I excited about building this level? These are all important questions that I asked myself when I first started out brainstorming for this project. As is usually the case, my mind was completely blank. Read More: http://lambdageneration.com/modding/source/how-not-to-build-a-level-in-ten-days-ambushville-retrospective/

Published: October 30th 2013 • By Daz

[lambdageneration]

Isn’t it always the way – you have no Half-Life 2 maps to play and then nine come along all at once! Read More: http://lambdageneration.com/modding/half-life/its-a-trap-planetphillips-ambushville-competition-released/ Published: October 29th 2013 • By MisterAddy