July

July 31, 1998

HalfAmp I had this in mind for a while but never got around to it. I present HalfAmp, a skin for WinAmp. So now you can listen to those Half-life MP3's cause I know that's all you listen to, right? Put this in a 'HalfAmp' directory in you WinAmp/skins (ver 1.92) or use the -d parameter on the root. Release date? Well today is July 31, os tomarrow must be, yes, JULY 32!!! Get ready. -Dann - 7:50 P.M. EST Editorial On Half-life Haven there is an editorial up titled: "Out of the Loop: Do Fellow Gamers Know Enough?" At first glance Half-Life would seem to be on every gamer's mind as there are alot of fan pages. Half-Life has won best game of the show and best action game at E3 beating heavy weights like Trespasser, Sin, Prey, Duke Nukem Forever and countless other games in other genres too. New Site'ings TF2-Life has moved to PlanetHalflife, which is good along with the redesign. There is a new Half-life related site called The Half-life Vortex and they need some staffers there too. Half-life Ad Lisa from Valve released the ad of Half-life that is appearing on magazines and stuff. Check it out here(609k, BIG PIX!) Seen that from Halflife.org -Runabout - 12:46 P.M. EST

July 30, 1998

Future of Halflife.org Halflife.org has a lot of things in store for the Half-life community, I'll just paste the post here... Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 Radio Show HalfLife.org has hired two very talented individuals that will be doing our very own radio show. This will become a part of HalfLife.org and will air weekly or bi-weekly, bringing phone interviews with Valve Software and TFS, new Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 information, exclusive screenshots and movies of Half-Life and Team Fortess 2. I promise you will be waiting for this to be uploaded every week! Hardware Section This section will bring reviews and previews of hardware that is essential in the gaming world. This great resource is coming very soon! -Runabout - 11:19 P.M. EST Midori Interview OzTF scored an interview with Midori, who works for TeamFortress. Here's a little snippet: What kind of power does the TF2 mapc give to you as a map builder? You can control and link the actions of most entities to functions within mapC and also create new entity types. With this you can control the order of events and their outcomes, so that the goals of the map can be quite varied and or complex. All goal sets that TF1 could handle (or semi handle) ; ) can be done in mapC quite easily, problems that map makers had with the TF1 map code have been fixed. TF2 will be released with a variety of goal types, all the mapC source code for these will be released also. Map makers could take our mapC source modify it and then use it in their own maps without too much trouble. From that I think we will start seeing some different goals in maps as people get more familiar with mapC and what the TF2/HL engine can do... -Runabout - 3:19 P.M. EST Decal Tutorial On Contaminated's Wavelength there is a tutorial on how to create your own decals based on the information released by Valve Polls At Blackmesa Half-life Center has a poll up: "Which of the known weapons is your favorite?", I know that the game hasn't been released yet and the weapons are still being finalized (like the flamethrower). Just vote on it ok? -Runabout - 1:19 A.M. EST

July 29, 1998

SiN Impressions I wrote up a small thingy on my SiNs er something. Read it here and view screenshots here. Gameslice The Gameslice SiN demo review mentions Half-life briefly. ....With Half-Life promising "one click" Internet play this fall, Sin will have to do better if they hope to really get people playing the game online in droves. Speaking of Half-Life, it will be Sin’s major competition come this fall as it promises similar features, including an integrated plot, scripted game elements, and dynamic characters...... -Dann - 3:03 P.M. EST Quake2Fortress Not much is happening on the TF2 front, but Quake2Fortress is changing there names(I just saw the header on their site...) to Half-lifeFortress2. Seen that on PlanetFortress Half-life Female Player Model Lisa from Valve, just released a shot of the female player model. You could see this on the new ads of Half-life (Deathmatch Screenshot) on CGW's magazine or here. Sin Demo This is not Half-life related.... But,Rituals first person shooter "SiN" rocks!!! There are some iffy glitches and stuff (Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Ai, Multiplay- it will be addressed I'm sure of it!). It is one of the best action games that are coming out with Half-life. Check out the reviews of SiN's demo: OGR GameSlice Thresh's review Half-life Haven 3D-Unlimited Visual Effects on Half-life Harry Teasley from Valve spewed out some info on Half-life: We have fog, but since it hurts software performance, we're not using it anywhere except underwater. We have lenticular halos on lights, but we're not putting them on, say, every damned light in the game. Only on those lights that look like they would reasonably have them. Not everyone likes rooms that have 500-watt halogen spotlights as light sources.... -Runabout - 11:59 A.M. EST

July 26, 1998

Half-life Photos On Atomic Half-life there is a bunch of photos (ok, four scanned shots/ads =) ) of Half-life. Here they are: shot 1 | shot 2 | shot 3 | shot 4 -Runabout - 10:59 A.M. EST Its SiNday, BLOODY SiNDay! Not Half-life related but, it is one of the good FPS games that are coming out along with Half-life. Ritual Entertainment, Activision and Gamecenter will release the demo(37 megs) this noon (or any time by now) and a lot of mirror sites will pop up (its going to be a slooowww d/l)... The demo will include 4 levels: 2 single-play and 2 multiplay. For SiN related news? Click here. And as we speak, there is a demo release party at #sin on irc.3dnet.net:6667 (and its gonna be a loooong waiting party). -Runabout - 4:48 A.M. EST

July 25, 1998

New Sites! With news slowing down, more Half-life sites are spawning up. Check them out! The Half-life Times hosted by the guys at Warzone. This site will be covering a wide range of information, news, and more about Half-Life. Half-Life Times will also be hosting quality Half Life sites. A new TF2 site opened up on Valveworld named: TF2 Embassy. -Runabout - 1:09 P.M. EST

July 24, 1998

Gabe Speaks-REPOSTED There have been some mixup info earlier on the post of Voice-overs on Half-life, it is between Rocket Mag and Gabe. I removed the previous post and corrected it.... Rocket Mag: Someone from Valve mentioned recently that Marc Laidlaw has done placeholders for all the voices in Half-Life so far. Have actual voice actors started finishing up and doing their part for the final game (you know,recording the real scientist/guard/ect voices)? Gabe Newell: The studio work for the American voices is about two weeks away. You hold off as long as possible since more and more voice is being added all the time (between scripted sequences, all of the different AI states that have to be exposed, sentence triggers, and so on). I'm not sure what the English, German, Spanish, French, and Japanese recording schedules are as they are being done in Europe and Japan (probably a couple weeks later, if I had to guess). Rocket Mag: By my estimates, this is probably the absolute last thing (besides bugfixes) that has to be implemented. Around the 30th of this month, the voices will start to be recorded. I am extremely confident that Half-Life will ship right around the 8th of August, because of this. Aproximately 1.5 weeks after the voice testing starts, the game will go gold. Of course, this is only my guess, but it's a very educated one at that. Thanks Blitz! -Runabout - 5:23 P.M. EST Decal Specs Wavelength on Contaminated has acquired some initial specifications on the decal system to help mod makers and players to get started. err...Aerotic Software There is a new site opened at Contaminated, called Aerotic Software which is doing an "ultra-conversion" for Half-life, which is also looking for help on their project Arcanus Descensus... -Runabout - 5:04 P.M. EST PlanetFortress PlanetFortress a new site up from the PlanetQuake Network that deals with TF1 and TF2: We've come a long way baby! And we want you to come with us. To accomplish this not so insignificant task, we present Planet Fortress! The source for all your TF and TF II news. The Team Fortress Newswire was proud to be one of your top TF news sources. We are now evolving to the next level to try to serve you better. With the imminent release of TF II for HalfLife, the race was on to give you the best and most up to date news site available. With the help of Planet Quake we are going to do just that. -Runabout - 1:59 P.M. EST Details on Decals Lisa has sent Halflife.org some info on the decals: Guys, Here is preliminary information regarding decals -- this should be enough to get people started. We are working on a full write-up of how decals are implemented in Half-Life, which will be available soon. Remaining questions should be addressed in that document. Decal are monochromatic 8-bit paletted images. Maximum size is 64 x 64 pixels for clan logos (though mod makers can include decals of up to 256 x 256 in their WADs). The index of the palette corresponds to the alpha channel of the decal. The color in the last palette register (register 255 when starting from 0) is the color of the decal. We will probably offer some support for animated or multi-frame decals, which would allow for multiple colors, but individual bitmaps can be only one color. Have fun! Lisa -Dann - 7:05 A.M. EST Half-life Preview at 3D Gaming 3D Gaming has a long exclusive preview of Half-life, included are 2 exclusive shots. Read it all here. TF2 Interview There is an interview about TF2 on The Citadel. -Runabout - 12:54 A.M. EST

July 23, 1998

Clans/Squads/and whatnot Guardians of Darkness (G.o.D.) have redesign their page and are looking for 15 new memebers. Found on Twisted Pages ValveWorld has hosted a TeamFortress2 Site called The TeamFortress2 Embassy Help Wanted The newly formed Half-Life Vandalism at Contaminated.net is looking for a few people to help receive and upload the decals that users submit. ValveWorld is also looking for someone to update news at their site. Contact them at news@valveworld.com. -Dann - 8:22 P.M. EST Play-testing No, not you, this is just a story about the job you all want over at Seattle times. Found at Halflfe.org -Dann - 7:36 A.M. EST Contest Artist Beware is a new Half-life contest on Halflife.org to be judged by the creators themselves, Valve. Artists that are interested must design and create a piece of conceptual art (art that you design to capture a peticular scene you, the artist, wants to see (i.e. Government Grunt chasing after you down a hallway with grunts at the other end of the hallway shooting rockets or bullets at you). This art will either be sent via mail (for those of you who draw on paper and have a scanner or can get it scanned at office max) or via e-mail (for those of you who have the ability to design and create art with a artwork program) for the Valve Software artists to judge. The winners will receive Half-Life accessories courtesy of Valve Software. -Runabout - 5:14 P.M. EST

July 22, 1998

Pages New site up at xoom, called The Black Mesa Half-Life Center and I'm sure they're looking for a host so HOST THEM! Stories |ceman of Halflife.org has written Story #6 over at Twisted. Go check it out. -Dann - 7:19 P.M. EST S.T.A.R.R. STARR clan/squad has relocated to Halflife.org. Check out the site for it has a nice backdrop/story and graphics. -Runabout - 5:48 P.M. EST Help Haven Half-life Haven needs some help, here's the post: Ok, we need another hand or two here at the Haven. First off, we need someone who is compulsive about details to take on the task of creating and maintaining our Life-Forms pages. In depth knowledge of HTML is not terribly necessary, although ability to work with tables is a plus. Much more important is the ability to form complete, coherent sentences. Masters degree in biology or biochemistry a major plus. Second, another general purpose news updater would be welcome. Tasks would include updating the news page (without screwing it up), adding links to the links page as new sites surface, and scrounging for news items. Ability to follow a given format is required, as is moderate HTML skills. For more information contact Zhyla. TF2/Robin Walker Interview Robin Walker of TeamFortress software interview is up on Halflife.org. Discussing the development and features of TF2. Read it here. -Runabout - 11:50 A.M. EST

July 21, 1998

Decals Site There is a new site called Half-life Vandalism which deals with decal/spraypaint publishing. Saw that on Contaminated.net -Runabout - 11:56 P.M. EST Poll There is a new poll up on Gamepost. Which poses the Q: What game are you most looking forward to?  Hint: vote for Half-life! Server listing Info Yahn, creator of BSP and multiplayer honcho on valve, chatted with Impaler on how to find servers/listing on your site: Impaler: Will it be possible to have a list of servers availible on the web? Yahn: There will be server list servers than can be queried in certain fashions to determine the existence of active servers. Impaler: This arrises another question, how will we access that server? Yahn: TCP/IP. You open a socket to it, send the request and listen for the response. This is all subject to change, of course, but it should be pretty easy. We'll make sure the request protocol is known. Found that at Halflife.org Unmasked Man...err Grunt! Cool from VoodooExtreme posted a pic on Contaminated's forum which looks like an unmasked grunt. Check it here New Clans/Squads There are a lot of new clans or squads forming up for Half-life: Anthrax a new deathmatch and TF2 clan/squad for Half-life hosted by Halflife.net A new TeamFortress 2 clan/squad who calls themselves Soldiers of Fortress (SOF) TF2 TF2workshop at Halflife.net has an article up comparing TF1 and TF2. Here's a piece: TF2 gets the attention of a wide group of players, because it shows teamplay in a whole new way, and most of TF1 players join TF2 and are willing to pay for half-life and TF2. Experts get exited about the new Teamplay features and the amazing grafx, and start a hype in game mags. The players who bought Q2 because of TF2 buy now HL because of TF2, and finally get their needs feeded. -Runabout - 3:40 P.M. EST Tutorials Valveworld's Half-done has posted it's first tutorial on "how to create weapons using skeletal deformation systems". Found on Valveworld. Pages A new Half-life site is up, the name of which I can't mention on a family-oriented page like this. Found on Half-life.net. -Dann - 3:30 P.M. EST

July 20, 1998

The Outhouse For those who want Team Fortress 2 news when you really need to go, go to the Outhouse. A nice new site. -Dann - 5:10 P.M. EST Whee A big thanx goes out to Dreamline for about 90% of this design. And please visit his page here -Dann - 4:24 P.M. EST Stories Story #4 at Twisted has been added by James again. A good read. Haven Hosts The Half-life Haven has hosted their first site. Here' what the hosted site has to say: We a group of people gathered together via ICQ and this very web site in order to play Half-Life addon multiplayer levels with one another. Since the dedicated servers won't have anything to do with 3rd party levels, we have assembled in order to play ip games with the newest addons. We use ICQ as a means to communicate and organize games. Half-Life players have been blessed immensely with the great level editor, Worldcraft. For the splendid levels made with this powerful tool to go unplayed would be a crime. The point of HLMAG is simply standardization. With all members having the same levels, skins, and perhaps even mods, you can easily get a game going of the latest and greatest addon levels. HLMAG is not a squad, it is merely a large group of people joined together to play addon games.... -Dann - 3:07 P.M. EST New Half-life site There is a new Half-life dedicated site called Half-life down under, check it out...but come back afterwards. :) Valve Preview... I saw on Halflife.net that Cool from Voodooextreme had visited Valve and there will be a little preview on the game soon.... Included is a pic from Half-life you could get it here. Job Openings Halflife.org is looking for new staffers on their site. Positions opened for: Newshound Teamfortress 2 strategist If you think you are qualified for them, then e-mail Impaler or check the site. -Runabout - 11:50 A.M. EST

Stories

Haven Hosts

-Dann - 3:07 P.M. EST

New Half-life site

Valve Preview...

Job Openings

• Newshound
• Teamfortress 2 strategist

-Runabout - 11:50 A.M. EST

Planet Half-life

-Dann - 4:29 P.M. EST

Updater

And VX Half-life now known as Halflife.org gets a new facelift, check it out!
There is a new TeamFortress site opened up, called TF2-Life. Check this one out too!

The Unknown Clan/squad also redesigned their site and they need 2 members more. So what are you waiting for...

-Runabout - 10:20 A.M. EST

Sites

RIYF has moved to The Daily...oh wait I already know that.
All this found on Half-life.net.

VX half-life has revived and is back in action.

Story

Story #5 has also been added to by Abevec, dealing with umm...I'll quote Twisted because I don't get paid for this:

a long, militaristic story that frequently changes focus on different squads throughout the story. The characters are seemingly disposable and most are just extras on a journey to their deaths. There is also one or two pretty gruesome deaths such as a giant magnet pulling a guy's stock of bullets up through his body

Help wanted

VX half-life needs a replacement for Soultaker as a news hound. (note to Soultaker: don't visit #half-life for a while).

Hosting

I'm an idiot

- 10:11 P.M. EST

Poll

Pages

And a Team Fortress page has popped up called TF2-Life. All this found on Half-life.net.

- 10:01 P.M. EST

Pages

And Atomic Half-life has a poll about release dats of Half-life and how Unreal will fare to Half-life.
All this found on Half-life.net.

- 10:01 P.M. EST

New Storys

E pa, Some anonymous guy wrote an addition to Story #3 Go read it at Twisted Half-life.

Our in-house homey, Mike, has started Story #4. Gordon is finally the center of the story and is the way he seems to be in the actual Half-life game. It's long, so you'll have something to do during work. Go read it at Twisted Half-life.

- 9:42 P.M. EST

New Story

- 7:12 A.M. EST

The Rocket Tube

- 4:28 P.M. EST

Released

Crime..that's Organized

Bg's

VX2sleep

Thanx

- 7:06 A.M. EST

Guardians of Darkness

- 7:17 A.M. EST

Video mirrors

- 2:57 P.M. EST

More thanx

- 7:23 A.M. EST

HL101 01 Summer Session #2

- 8:40 P.M. EST

3rd movie

- 4:36 P.M. EST

2 screens

3 movies

Thanx

- 9:30 A.M. EST

Release date

Old School

- 11:06 P.M. EST

RIYF

- 10:05 P.M. EST

Daily unDead

- 9:12 P.M. EST

© 1997 Mail me