Congratulations to Omnicoder for winning the most recent contest over at myApertureLabs! Quark has been our Community Spotlight for a week or so now, but in light of being the contest winner I'm going to keep it up as the Spotlight for another week.

Go download it and give it a try, it's definitely a great map.

Download Quark by Omnicoder.

Also, be on the lookout for a contest from ThinkingWithPortals, sponsored by F7Lans! We will be having several huge prizes, including cash and Steam Gifts.

I wish i could map...

SL89 wrote:
I wish i could map...

It's not that difficult. Just read some tutorials on Hammer and dive in.

Do the contests have any sort of theme? and what decides the winner?

yohoat9 wrote:
Do the contests have any sort of theme? and what decides the winner?

Well, here is the winner thread over at their website. They have a judging system, but I don't really know anything beyond what it says there at face value. I'm sure someone can shed some light on it though.

This contest was the first to use a new judging system so it's not perfectly calibrated yet, but the basic idea was that you got points for custom textures, models, using turrets, having outdoor areas and other criteria like that, and whoever had the highest rating got points for that as well.

msleeper wrote:
SL89 wrote:

I wish i could map...

It's not that difficult. Just read some tutorials on Hammer and dive in.

Yes, it is that hard. You see, I don't have hammer or steam

Steam is free, Hammer comes with any Source game. Which is also free, since Alien Swarm is free and runs on Source. It's not Portal, but you can definitely map with it.

I think the judging system was a little harsh on map filesize...I got 100 points off cause my map was 22 mb

Yeah I thought that was a little crazy. This isn't 1999, we aren't on dial up anymore, who cares about file size.

Australians care. Over here we have limits to how much we can download.
Before a couple of months ago, most only had 20GB of internet, at the most. 20mb file is a hard decision to make halfway through the month when you only have 1GB left.

That seems really backwards to me. I am truley sorry for your lots.

hanging_rope wrote:
Australians care. Over here we have limits to how much we can download.
Before a couple of months ago, most only had 20GB of internet, at the most. 20mb file is a hard decision to make halfway through the month when you only have 1GB left.

Im an aussie and 1 have 55GB

Yeah, I have 150GB now. But many people I know still have less than 20gb, and 6 months ago I only knew of 2 people with anything over 20GB

i really do wish i could map like you guys!

I really don't get it why do people bump topics like this? He didn't even talk on topic anyways! o_0

Whysopro? wrote:
I really don't get it why do people bump topics like this?

It's not like people are trying to cause irritation, most of the time new members are just looking for ways to jump into conversation and find an interesting topic to which they respond without taking notice of the last post date.

Alright I see that. Maybe we should setup a system that only shows the "new posts" to a newcomer if that topic is fresh enough.

Whysopro? wrote:
Alright I see that. Maybe we should setup a system that only shows the "new posts" to a newcomer if that topic is fresh enough.

Did you know I still have not gotten rid of all the "new posts" in every single forum? I have to check dates for things rather than look to see if the icon is red. Posts should automatically be "read" after a certain amount of time or something.

That's odd...when I had a website for a while, mine did that automatically I just had to set the time for it.