News posts

A trailer for the new feature film 'Deep' was released yesterday. It uses new cinematography tools for the Source engine used in many trailers and shorts done by Valve themselves.

That's pretty cool, but the interesting take on this film is that because it's developed through a game engine, work has already been started on a playable level to be distributed through Steam.

The film Deep will be directed by Shane Acker of "9", with Ireland's Brown Bag Films, Producer Gregory R. Little and Author J. Barton Mitchell.

“The collaboration with Valve has been a wonderful experience for all of us,” said Little. “The opportunity to produce it in this groundbreaking way gives us great creative freedom and allows us to leverage new distribution channels and platforms.”

Check out the trailers on YouTube:
Trailer 1
Trailer 2

You may have heard of the "Call for Communication" Steam group? They've started a lot of ruckus back in February when they announced their "Red Letter Day" event where over 13,000 fans all loaded up Half-Life 2 at once on Steam to bring it to the top of the games list in the Steam stats, and of course, to grab Valve's attention. The effort is to remind Valve that their fans have been waiting in silence about any new Half-Life game for over 4 years!

Their newest tactic is to take thousands of photos from fans and patch a mosaic together to form one of the classic artworks for HL2.

You may upload as many images as you'd like, but they ask they be varied enough. They have an official site now: messagetovalve.com More information can be found there. If you like the idea, be sure to join the official Steam group, as I'm sure until Valve says something new about the future of Half-Life, we're probably going to see more events from these guys.

Here comes more late, but essential news for you to digest about Valve and its future plans! Back in February, The Penny Arcade Report released an interview with Gabe Newell talking about his thoughts on open platforms and the future of Steam. As well as a varied photo tour of the Valve offices.

Gabe Newell said:
"I mean if you look at the revenue numbers and the profitability numbers of the game space versus the movie space it’s clear that we’re moving a lot faster, and if you look at within the game space and you look at where a lot of the interesting things happening whether it’s World of Warcraft, whether it’s Facebook and social games, whether it’s innovations in things like free-to-play, they happen where people can experiment and do different things and they don’t happen in places where there are rigid, enclosed rules that restrict people."

And if you read closely, you will spot mention of possible Valve hardware having to be produced if they have to. Details on what might exactly be included in this 'Steam Box' can be found via a report by The Verge.

The Verge said:
"...though it will likely ship with a proprietary controller. It's possible that the controller will even allow for swappable components, meaning that it can be reconfigured depending on the type of game you're playing. Think that sounds odd? Well Valve filed a patent for such a device last year."

It seems there are more exciting ideas and things on the way from Valve.

Although somewhat belated, SnarkPit makes it into 2012. Hurray for us! While there have been much happenings in the world of mapping and of everything Valve since August (our last news posting), I'll only touch on the most recent event that has caught my attention. And also because, you know...... we're not much for news postings. And maybe I should stop talking in the 2nd person because I'm the only one who writes for these things... Big surprise? -I know.

Well in recent news, the ever popular Combine Overwiki, the seemingly premier wiki for everything Half-Life related, has taken up shop with its very own URL, thus finally leaving the tight grips of the ad-driven Wikia network. Everything moved, and status maintained, the wiki deserves some recognition over the past several years for being quite the stand-up site it's been. Contained within its pages are some highly unique articles and details on facts and trivia about the Half-Life/Portal Universe and their development, that this is the place to go to become the local Half-Life scholar of your community. It's definitely one of my favorite HL sites to visit.

The site is currently running noticeably slow, but much is to be said for moving an entire wiki to an independent domain, and should improve eventually as work is not finished. The old Wikia version will remain intact for the time being, but I don't believe it will be supported any longer by the creators.

Enjoy the new year, and I plan to get back into the swing of keeping semi-regular updates for the main page.

Phillip from PlanetPhillip.com has started yet another new level design challenge.

Key here is the judging. Do you wanna know how your level design skills rank in the professional world? Well, submitting an entry to this competition won't get you judged by Phillip, but rather by real level designers in the biz. It's underway now, so If you're interested in it check out the link below for any details.

Also, winner could win up to $100 via PayPal!

If you have questions, feel free to post them here.

If you haven't been keeping up with the rumors, then this will be a complete and total surprise. Unless you're really good at guessing surprises. Valve announced yesterday that Team Fortress 2 is now free to play for everyone forever!

Check the free-to-play splash page: here

Oh and also, the new Meet the Medic video has been released! This is the largest update the game has seen yet, and it only keeps getting better and better!

Now go make maps for it already!

SnarkPit has been updated with a database entry for Portal 2! Now accepting all Portal 2 maps!

Also, What do you think about SnarkPit retrieving maps from authors who don't post here and adding their maps and descriptions to the Pit?

Join the discussion here

Podcast 17 finally scored it big time with founder/managing director of Valve Software, Gabe Newell! -and software designer, Kutta Srinivasan.

They hold an extremely awesome info-packed interview.

On the episode they talk about:

• Steam as a social platform.
• Steam for mobile devices.
• Source SDK and Portal 2 Authoring Tools
• DirectX 9, 10, 11
• Will GoldSource be released under GPL
• Portal 2 ARG
• Valve’s first steps into a non-fps genre.
• Ideas and backstory behind the Crowbar.

and much more! You can find the interview landing page here

Thanks Podcast 17 for the awesome interview!

A recent article was posted by an awesome member of ours Mr. Thiago Klafke on his website thiagoklafke.com. It's about the making of his latest Half-Life 2 Deathmatch level: DM_Zest and features a lot of insightful details on workflow management and texture creation!

Read the full article here.

Likewise, you may download his map and see his SnarkPit profile here.

Also earlier this year, we interviewed him and if you still haven't checked that out, it's worth it! Click the link below to see the full interview (part of our SnarkPit Interview Series).

[img]http://snarkpit.net/pits/riven/interviews/fpp_bar_1.gif[/img]

Yesterday Valve released the new updated tools for the Source engine allowing you to tweak Portal 2 until your hearts content. Grab them by downloading the authoring tools beta in the tools section of Steam.

Also in other news, an in-depth interview of one of the writers for Portal 2: Erik Wolpaw talks about the game and the state of game stories in the business. It's pretty lengthy at about an hour twenty, and full of interesting insights. Give it a watch!

Also as a follow-up to the Mike Morasky interview from a week ago; the live interview fell short due to technical difficulties and was postponed. The interview carried on behind closed doors and is now available to the public. -Really interesting stuff!

Check it out!