Using decals/overlays for blending between displacement terrain and brushwork is really great. I suggest every mapper to try it, and to learn various info_overlay tricks in Hammer - dragging corners, setting U/V tiling manually, using render order, and scaling.

I've put together a small addon that adds background maps to Dark Interval: Part 2 (by default, it uses static backgrounds). www.moddb.com/mods/dark-in...

I contributed multiple in-universe movie posters for this, and I recommend playing.

It's time. www.moddb.com/mods/the-las...

In Idyllic for Map Labs, I gave the thermometer 4 bodygroups so that I could set its temperature for 1) daytime, outside; 2) daytime, in the greenhouse; 3) night-time, outside; 4) night-time, greenhouse. I doubt most people noticed but I don't consider this a waste of time, never.

HL2 EP1 Hackfraudery: This background map in Ep1 depicts the Kleinercast with several bullet marks on the glass surface. Yet, once you approach it yourself, no damage is visible. I shall patiently await the fix for this inconsistency in time for the upcoming Ep1's 20th anniversary next year!

Trying Valve's Commentary Editor was underwhelming. Having in-game tools is pretty cool but it's cumbersome. You can't drag a placed node around, only replace it/set its coords by hand. Audio records at 11KHz, which sounds bad. Unless the map is loaded manually before the comm. file, it will crash.

New DI article with new media (that doesn't preview in embed for whatever reason😑) www.moddb.com/mods/dark-in...

Did you know November is the most Half-Life filled month of the year? Besides HL 1&2, November in different years saw the releases of: HL SDK (25.11.98) Opposing Force (19.11.99) Decay (14.11.01) Source SDK (5.11.04) HL:Source (16.11.04) HL2:Deathmatch (30.11.04) As well as Garry's Mod (29.11.06).

It would mean a lot to us if you posted it around, told your friends, etc. We've got another game coming down the tubes and it'd be neat to have some walking-around money for it! Help us make more stuff like this... Early investors will be rewarded... store.steampowered.com/app/2467100/...

As mentioned, Lost Coast's 20th anniversary is soon (tomorrow). But I'll give everyone a head start and post now: My Lost Coast Anniversary Update! It fixes bugs and oversights and adds more detail. Readme: pastebin.com/S2ubYcxU Moddb: www.moddb.com/mods/half-li... GB: gamebanana.com/mods/629540

Lost Coast's 20th anniversary is near. For years it made it a little sad that it's filled with these small but noticeable flaws that'd take very little work to fix. The 2025 Anniversary Update mostly didn't touch LC. The flaws remain. But, and I have it on good authority, this is about to change.

DI query: How many people 1) notice in the first place, 2) appreciate or hate, that DI doesn't stop fall damage in liquids? Unlike HL1-2, you can land in a meter of water and still die from impact in DI. This is one of the times 'realism' was attempted as its own goal. How well did it work?

Presenting Source Level Editor - my personal fork of Hammer. I've been working on this for a few years, tuning it to my mapping style, with bugfixes, some automation, expanded functions, even a couple new tools. Now it's available for everyone interested on my GitHub. github.com/Cvoxalury/so...

September 2005. New school year begins and I learn from classmates about a new-ish game "Half-Life 2" (had no Internet, didn't read gaming magazines, didn't know). I've been playing HL2 for 20 years now. While I have many favourite games, this one's the dearest, and must've influenced me the most.

HL2 Lost Coast Trivia Those who pay extreme attention may notice that each time you start Lost Coast, a board falls from the sky and splashes near the Fisherman. This is because on spawn, one of the boards on Helicopter arena clips into scaffolding collisions and gets forced out by the physics.

HL2 Lost Coast Trivia. A rock near the ship wreck was intended to have seagull poop splattered over it. Except, it was moved during development. The decals ended up being too far from it, & they use the wrong class (work only on brushes). Not to worry: just shy of 20 years later, I fixed it all.

HL2 EP2 nonsense: Sifting through the code, came across command "striderbuster_allow_all_damage 0". It prevents anyone but player from detonating Magnusson Devices. "Sweet", I thought, "I'll just switch it on and let rebels blow up Striders w/ bombs." Well it works. But it also blows up the game.

HL2 EP2 Trivia: The Pumpkin Trail Ep2 adds pumpkins. The first 3 can be found at the farm before the Advisor. There're dead rebels; stands to reason they visited/used the farm. Station 21 isn't very far. Next 4 are after White Forest Inn, on the road to WF Base. The inn also was used by rebels.

HL2 EP2 Trivia: It's been known since 2007 that Ep2 Lamarr has an unused animation "lamarr_space" where she's floating. Only now I found out the pre-release version of Ep2's last level, from March 2007, calls for a Lamarr camera entity before rolling credits. The entity, however, is missing.

DI Trivia (it's been a while): DI's Combine Soldiers, Metrocops, Citizens, and Stalkers have extra AI to shoot already dead enemies "for good measure". It may seem trivial, accidental and hard to notice, but it was intentionally copied from Alyx's Episodic AI (the only such instance in the games).

HL2 Trivia: I've examined the Bridge Point train's speed across the years. 2004: max speed is 800. "game of chicken" trigger starts the train w/ speed of 245. 2006: 800/245 2009, before Orange Box engine switch: 800/245 2013-2024: 800/245 2024, Anniversary update: 800/240 2025: ??? (info pending)

HL2 investigation: The broken pistol texture in Arkane's Ravenholm is the usual pistol texture from HL2; they must've changed the UV and not the texture. I painted the recognisable elements here. The dead giveaway to me is the little circle above the index fingertip, comes from the grip part.

HL2, decided to freshen up this area for a side project.

In HL2, I've always loved this crude brush security camera in the first level of Entanglement. Now I just found out it has two counterparts in its last level, albeit tucked away in an out of bounds area. They serve to guide actual camera entities when Alyx uses the monitors.

If you see this, quote post with a robot that isn't from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who or Transformers. Robot Grunt from Half-Life

HL2: a test of replacing regular toxic slime (lightmappedgeneric that uses a cubemap) with flowmapped water shader (based on Alien Swarm) that combines realtime reflection and flowing sludge layer on top.

HL2 Trivia: In Point Insertion, this white window has a small wall behind it, secluded in its own tiny sky box. It was apparently meant to be visible, but the white light-emitting brush was not set up to be invisible like every other window in the level.

DI Trivia: The crane in Eli's Junkyard is mostly based on the ДЭК (DEK) 401 model. Some artistic liberties were taken here and there. The main point of it was to replace the brush-based crane from the leak. The stats, for those curious, is 3757 tris and 2048x1024 texture size.

DI Trivia: A discarded and not overly serious idea from Part 2: a makeshift flashlight using glowing Xen fungi. The fungi are attached to a pan, with foil duct taped in place to reflect the light forward.

DI Trivia: We have hollow physics on traffic cones. And HL2 does not.

Dark Interval's source code is now available on GitHub. github.com/Cvoxalury/da...

DI Trivia: The bronze Breen bust ("Mk 2") comes from the leak, edited to really sell the bronzeness, the thing with statues having wiped spots from being touched. It was added to make it possible to carry anywhere after the normal bust was shattered by a stray bullet in an internal playtest.

DI Trivia: The HEV locator, which admittedly is used for only a small portion of Part 2 right now (but more prominent in the Wasteland demo found on DI Discord) was made thanks to open source code from Transmissions: Element 120. github.com/shokunin000/...

DI Trivia: Back in 2018 Refinery was as sunny as its neighbours, Warehouses/Workhouses/Under. It was changed to make it more "beta-like", and improving rain technology helped.

DI Trivia + HL2 Trivia: Manhacks have special code to more likely smash into physics props from crowbar hits (hence it's a great idea to place manhacks in areas filled with small physical props, shelves, etc). But it never happens in DI because I made the crowbar kill them in one hit!

DI Trivia: Dark Interval's Consulcast circa June 2011. Not that I'd count it as being a direct predecessor of the final map. More of an idea piece, with some roots of the recognisable elements taking shape already.

D3 C17 08 appreciation post. This map is actually way nicer than usually said. A lot of trivial niceties that the mappers didn't *need* to add. Faceted brushwork. Displacement old brick walls. Little environmental storytelling with stashes. Visual reveals. Verticality. One of a kind setpieces.

DI Trivia: In DI I've restored the 2004 style eye glint for the citizens. It only required enforcing a few console variables (r_eyeglintlodpixels 10, r_glint_procedural 1, r_glint_alwaysdraw 1), and in case of G-man, using his 2004 VMTs. Why? Just thought it looks better. And EyeRefract is buggy.

DI Trivia: The Outer Wall vista, visible from the top of the wall's control tower, includes parts of previous maps/chapters. See if you can tell apart - here or in-game - the landmarks of APCride, Hydra, Refinery, Arcade, Docks...

DI Trivia: Some may be wondering what's up with "shadow people" and strange events in DI. Those (at least, some) are actually based on liberal interpretation of this bit in Raising the Bar. In other words, it's G-man's subtle influence. We also internally call these scripts "fugues" on our maps.

DI Trivia: Long ago (as early as 2018) small tests were made to see if Camo Elites can change their suit shape in addition to texture, to perhaps mimic different surfaces. It relied on flexes (same as facial animations in Source) and didn't go beyond a very simple test.

DI Trivia: DI's metrocops and soldiers are capable of finding and equipping better weapons, same as HL2's rebels. Because it was a later addition, maps were made without it enabled. But mapmakers can change the NPC setting or use input EnableWeaponPickup to enable this behavior.

DI Trivia: Radiostation has a "cheaple" citizen walking in the background. He has a special script that causes him to switch to running if shot at by the player. The best part, though? It's largely impossible to shoot him - and trigger that - due to fence collisions...

DI Trivia: The dropship reskin in DI is loosely based on these pieces of concept art for HL2. As our PSD file shows, the texture work started on Feb 7 2020 and ended on March 22 2020.

DI Trivia: Prototype APCride from March 2020. It was more vertical, with several drops (in-vehicle - not a great idea), some setpieces cut for lacking direction/weight, and parts of the route kept for release but reversed or seriously altered. Recorded in 2020 build. (1/3) youtu.be/UiN4hQo4Juo

DI Trivia: Stinger sounds are reversed sounds of guinea pigs and birds. Tripod hopper sounds are mostly reused Antlion Grub sounds from 2003 leak.

DI Trivia: The Synth Scanner's eye is based on a real-life, artisan scan of an oladushek (a pancake).

Beyond the Bar 2, a mapping comp for DI, has released, with 4 levels. They are inspired by Marc Laidlaw's HL2 vignettes. www.moddb.com/mods/beyond-... It is extremely gratifying. Every entrant made a distinct thing and something not tried before. We loved it and we will cherish it.