Wednesday, January 19th 2005

Last week marked the end of the Half-Life 2: Deathmatch level design
contest. We received over 200 submissions, and we're going through and
playtesting each one. There are a number of great maps in here, and
we're already having trouble picking the clear winners. The release of
the winning maps will coincide with a release of Half-Life 2:
Deathmatch, which will include two new weapons: the Slam and
Stunstick.

Also of note for level designers and Mod builders: there will be an
update to the Half-Life SDK this week which most notably will include
source files for six Half-Life 2 maps.

Lastly, work on Dave Riller's new map cs_compound continues, along
with the other projects we're working on here at Valve. We'll have an
update on the map and our other projects next month.