News posts

Just crawling out of my cave for a bit to point out that our recent competition (recent as in ended 2 weeks ago, and me not even looking at it since... erk) entries can all be downloaded and viewed from here:
http://www.snarkpit.net/maps/comp

The plan is to set up public voting for these maps in the next couple of days, since I haven't touched HL2 with even a bargepole for the last couple of months, so please download them and have a run around- given the theme, there may well be some "interesting" maps in there!

Just thought I'd remind people of a few notes about posting news here on the snarkpit...

• Front page news must be authenticated by an admin. It will not appear immediately, and resubmitting the news will not make it appear any faster.
• Map related news should be linked with a map in your profile. There is a drop down list when you are posting news that lets you choose which map it is related to - please use it.

I am away for the next couple of weeks and have not yet been able to judge any of the (6 or so?) submitted maps, hence the deadline is being extended to the 1st September. Remember, there's a PC game of your choice for the winning map!

If you're entering our competition (which is due to finish in just a few days) then please read this forum thread post haste, since I think I'm having some e-mail inbox problems. Thanks!

That's right, it's that time of year again! The theme this year is "unrealism": make a surreal, non-realistic HL2DM level using your twisted, sad minds. Whether it be a mind-boggling mass of displacement surfaces, or a Rats!-style map set in your toaster, we're after levels that you'd never encounter in real life, and aren't based on locations past, present or future. It's a chance to get those creative juices going and to try to break out of the warehouse/Combine mapping cycle, and perhaps turn a few e-heads in the process.

Prizes are yet to be announced (there will be some- the winner can expect at least a console/PC game of their choice), and the deadline is the 14th August 2005.

Check out all the details here, and post in our forums in you have any questions or need some ideas. Good luck!

UPDATE The French mapping site City 19 are running their own competition (their HL2DM theme is "The Resistance") so go check that out if you're interested.

Uni work is one of the reason's I haven't been doing much in the way of mapping these days, and so I thought I'd post up one of my little coursework games for you all to test out. "Veil of Darkness" is a small DirectX game that involves looking around a room and shooting at ghosts. Simple, yes, boring...yes, but hey I'm happy with it for a few days work :wink:

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Download

I'm not exactly planning continued development of this, but any comments. suggestions, bug finds, and the like, can be discussed in this thread.

I've made an online batch file generator that you can use to help speed up your map compiles- it's still in beta, so please PM me with any suggestions!

I've also made a SnarkPit Steam skin, which you can download from here! Just place all files into your Steam/skins directory and choose 'SnarkPit' from the list of skins...

At long last valve have released the winning levels from their HL2DM mapping contest. All three of the maps are currently running on the snarkpit server in amongst the normal rotation, so if you want to test them out properly to see if they are worthy winners, nows the time to do it :smile: A reminder for those who have forgotten already, the winners were...

1st: dm_underpass by Kamikaze
2nd: dm_resistance by Linga
3rd: dm_powerhouse by Wolf

Yet again, sorry for the downtime, and well done for finding us! Our old hosts Oktagone seemed to have finally bit the dust (or if they haven't, I hope they do now) and, to cut a long story short, they don't seem willing or capable of giving us our snarkpit.com domain back. So please spread the word and update links to www.snarkpit.net.

Also, you may have noticed the new silver theme- don't worry, it'll be back in black in a few days (you can change the website theme by logging in!).

We at The Gamer Planet are wanting to spread the word, get people to play our style of game and give a little something back to the HL2 community. To do this we are planning a Counter-Strike: Source mapping contest. Unlike most mapping contests these days we are offering prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, including CA$H and other goodies to be announced at a later date.

Since this won't be your average map contest we are keeping most of the details secret until we are ready for a full press release. Please register at http://www.thegamerplanet.com to keep up on the latest contest news. The official rules and requirements will be posted soon. Good Luck!

Thank you,
|tGP| CS:S Admin Staff

While we're on the topic, check out some of these recently/soon-to-be released CS maps:

• DE Noodle by kin242
• CS Spetsnaz by Razorub
• AIM Dustcliffs by stino
• CS Assault ZT by Zeta
• CS Jungle by Shiroko
• CS Suburb by [DNv]Cross