iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Scornkeeper

Jane Thrace @ladyjanethrace.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A look at a new menu background map for SIGNAL LOST, inspired by the Very Large Array. A proper development update on ModDB is coming soon, hang tight. There's some big things coming.💙

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Reposted by Scornkeeper

a-shift.bsky.social @a-shift.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

So I was thinking about Valve's Prospero recently #y2k #art #illustration

a landscape of flowing purple shapes dotted with shiny glassy spheres and trees with airplane-shaped leaves. On the hazy horizon there is a city destroyed by sharp angular shapes of red and black stretching into the sky. On the foreground, a giant black woman with rocket engines in her hair locks is half-lying down, her face is a shattered void, and on her chest is painted a blood-red hexagon. She is surrounded by levitating monks with red hexagon prisms instead of heads, and is approached by a small human figure

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Reposted by Scornkeeper

Monster Urby 🇬🇧 Level Designer @monsterurby.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I've posted a new article over on ModDB about The Core and the small details we've included, as well as a brief explanation of the optimisation work that has been done in response to tester feedback. Check it out here: www.moddb.com/mods/the-cor...

Some side by side comparisons of old assets and textures, as well as a selection of whiteboards and calendars for the Half-Life mod, The Core.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Took a couple minutes and added heat transfer to portals. Very simple, <30 lines of code. Portals just scan the environment for heat sources and transmit it to the linked portal. HL2's fire system is pretty old but still quite neat and, dare I say, underused.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Gunship Bays were cut from HL2's Nova Prospekt/Depot chapter, and E3 2002 has the gunship near the Depot. Valve's late 2002 whiteboard mentions "Strider production (vista)" for the Depot, and the "e3_depot_2003" map from the leak mappack includes a Strider. Wonder if there's a connection?

Valve's concept art for the Gunship Bays that were to be located at the foot of the Depot. Image from Combine Overwiki.

The Gunship featured in the E3 2002 map, Depot. Image from the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary documentary.

The late 2002 whiteboard featured in the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary documentary. The "Depot" section includes the line "4. Strider production (vista)".

The e3 depot 2003 map from the leak's WC mappack. A lone Strider, included in the hidden by default visgroup, stands in the wasteland outside the Depot.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Also, please comment here if you use Source Level Editor at least, say... once a month? Or just however often do you use it. It feels there's barely any userbase, would be happy to know it's not the case.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

New Map Labs - Mega Mania, themed around megastructures, is available. My map in it is "The Deep Afar". Special, huge thanks to @makkon.bsky.social and @a-shift.bsky.social for the textures, couldn't have done it without them. www.moddb.com/mods/map-lab...

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

DI Trivia. Building a custom menu hasn't been the simplest road ever, but it allows for much wanted flexibility. Ex., having main & alt keybinds. This was the case w/ HL1, and I'm not sure why they took it out of HL2. It wasn't hard to bring back either. I think it just makes sense to have, do you?

Screenshot of Dark Interval's settings menu, showing the added column for alternate key bindings (two buttons can be assigned to the same action through the UI, as opposed to HL2 only assigning one button).

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Continuing with miscellaneous map updates. #halflife

Screenshot from Half-Life 2's d1 canals 11 water lock storage room.

Same room with new prop detail, decals, and lighting.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Going to plug this here. This video by @elephantsdocrack.bsky.social sheds new light on cancelled HL2 Episode 4 by Junction Point Studios. Includes interviews with developers and the project's history. youtu.be/hwMJtQ0fZxY

youtu.be

CANCELLED [Vol. 1] // Junction Point’s Fall of Ravenholm

YouTube video by Elephants Doing Crack

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

HL2: Episode 1 turns 20 tomorrow. I've prepared a little add-on to celebrate it (I'm releasing it a day early because it's a Sunday). You can get it on Steam Workshop, Gamebanana, or ModDB. Enjoy! steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/... gamebanana.com/mods/681987 www.moddb.com/games/half-l...

steamcommunity.com

Steam Workshop::Ep1 Evac Replacement

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

HL2/DI Trivia: The Xbox 360 version of the game shortens the Scanner flash duration by a lot, from standard 3 seconds to just 0.5. In DI, to lower the frustration caused by scanners, we similarly lowered the flash duration from 3 to 1 second.

Excerpt from the source code of Half-Life 2. If the game is running on Xbox 360, the scanner flash duration is set to half a second instead of the standard 3 seconds.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Do you have 'superstitions' when mapping/modelling? I've a few. Ex. when I want to rotate a brush, say, 90° but accidentally let go early and it puts it at, say, 82.5 (I usually use 7.5° snap), I'll rather undo and redo it. As if two 'non-round' rotations will secretly worsen the verts or something.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Always felt like this fence did a disservice to the vista at the Radio Tower in Ep2. More so when compared to earlier versions which either had nothing or used HL2 fence models. Replacing it with the thinner fences feels better, even if they look flimsier against the car - just will have to do.

A screenshot of the fence at the Radio Tower settlement in Episode Two. The tall fence uses logs for posts and due to overall thickness obscures the Portal Storm vista in a way that always felt unsatisfying to me.

Same place with a different fence model, a thin barbed wire fence with narrow metal posts. The fence is tall enough to stop the player without obstructing the vista.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

HL2 Trivia: D3 c17 13 - the Striders maps - has 'lo' and 'hi' versions of the final street's geometry, that get switched as you jump down from the central building.

The 'lo' version of the street geometry. The corners are straight and there're far fewer brushes composing the street intersection.

The 'hi' version of the street geometry. The corners are round, the 'hi' version is composed of nearly five times as many brushes.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Using decals/overlays for blending between displacement terrain and brushwork is really great. I suggest every mapper to try it, and to learn various info_overlay tricks in Hammer - dragging corners, setting U/V tiling manually, using render order, and scaling.

Example of using info_overlays for blending terrain and brushwork in Hammer. Left images are without overlays, showing sharp edges of displacements, right images are with the same overlay texture using to blend the edges.

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Reposted by Scornkeeper

a-shift.bsky.social @a-shift.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

I contributed multiple in-universe movie posters for this, and I recommend playing.

Poster for a movie "Terror of the Hyperons" with an orbital view of Earth as background. There is a blonde woman with a displeased expression, wearing shimmering violet clothes and pointing a sci-fi

blaster at something off-screen. Next to her is a man with a grey beard, wearing a blue hat and an orange survival suit, poiting a tiny welding torch in the same direction. The two figures are framed by icebergs, and above them are looming three figures of alien warriors.

Movie poster in cherry-red, white and black colors. It depics an angry moustached man with a hat, a suit and a red rose boutonniere. He is shooting a tommygun, while torn newspapers fly off in all directions behind him. The title font proudly states the name of the movie is "CITIZEN KANE II", and the tagline is "Time to make NEWS". Director and screenplay are as Alan Smithee and Robin Bland respectively.

Poster for a movie titled "Glory of Progress" in painterly colors of soft orange, blue and pale yellow hues. A row of same-faced workers in rubber overalls and gasmasks is marching, looking to the left.
Behind them are abstract building shapes bristling with spikes and antennas.

Movie poster with closeup portrait of an aged scarred 50s gangster and a burning 1930s car. Title is "The Last Job" in bold red letters.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

In Idyllic for Map Labs, I gave the thermometer 4 bodygroups so that I could set its temperature for 1) daytime, outside; 2) daytime, in the greenhouse; 3) night-time, outside; 4) night-time, greenhouse. I doubt most people noticed but I don't consider this a waste of time, never.

The four thermometer variations in Idyllic (Map Labs - Eye Candy 2). They show the temperature outside during the day (~-15°C), outside during the nihgt (~-21°C), inside greenhouse during the day (~-3°C) and night (~-17°C).

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

HL2 EP1 Hackfraudery: This background map in Ep1 depicts the Kleinercast with several bullet marks on the glass surface. Yet, once you approach it yourself, no damage is visible. I shall patiently await the fix for this inconsistency in time for the upcoming Ep1's 20th anniversary next year!

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Trying Valve's Commentary Editor was underwhelming. Having in-game tools is pretty cool but it's cumbersome. You can't drag a placed node around, only replace it/set its coords by hand. Audio records at 11KHz, which sounds bad. Unless the map is loaded manually before the comm. file, it will crash.

Screenshot of Valve's Commentary Editor with Dark Interval's level ch05_under loaded, displaying one of the commentary nodes, and the editor's interface.

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Reposted by Scornkeeper

a-shift.bsky.social @a-shift.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

New DI article with new media (that doesn't preview in embed for whatever reason😑) www.moddb.com/mods/dark-in...

moddb.com

2025 Status Update news - Dark Interval mod for Half-Life 2

An update on the status of things, work in progress, and the future.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Did you know November is the most Half-Life filled month of the year? Besides HL 1&2, November in different years saw the releases of: HL SDK (25.11.98) Opposing Force (19.11.99) Decay (14.11.01) Source SDK (5.11.04) HL:Source (16.11.04) HL2:Deathmatch (30.11.04) As well as Garry's Mod (29.11.06).

A composite of the covers of all the games/software listed in the post.

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Reposted by Scornkeeper

The Tax Collector Man @coolgoblinzone.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

It would mean a lot to us if you posted it around, told your friends, etc. We've got another game coming down the tubes and it'd be neat to have some walking-around money for it! Help us make more stuff like this... Early investors will be rewarded... store.steampowered.com/app/2467100/...

store.steampowered.com

Chiaroscuro Imago on Steam

A short piece of horror fiction about honey and lies; entomology and etymology; murky secrets and stark realities. Find out what happened to the moths.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

As mentioned, Lost Coast's 20th anniversary is soon (tomorrow). But I'll give everyone a head start and post now: My Lost Coast Anniversary Update! It fixes bugs and oversights and adds more detail. Readme: pastebin.com/S2ubYcxU Moddb: www.moddb.com/mods/half-li... GB: gamebanana.com/mods/629540

moddb.com

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast: 20th Anniversary Update mod

This fanmade update fixes numerous mapping flaws in the original Lost Coast and gentrly improves detail and lighting quality while staying true to the original. Can be installed on either modern Anni...

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Lost Coast's 20th anniversary is near. For years it made it a little sad that it's filled with these small but noticeable flaws that'd take very little work to fix. The 2025 Anniversary Update mostly didn't touch LC. The flaws remain. But, and I have it on good authority, this is about to change.

A sheet showing a number of flaws in Lost Coast's mapping.

Top row: 1) missing faces on an arch outside the church entrance; 2) missing faces above a column inside the church; 3) visible areaportal cut-off when looking outside the church windows.

Mid row: 1) missing brush inside the arched ceiling of the staircase tunnel; 2) missing face inside the church; 3) missing deck faces on the shipwreck model.

Bottom row: 1) missing faces on the ruins outside the courtyard; 2) clipping canister models inside the church; 3) missing top of the bridge leading to the village.

All these are taken without going out of bounds or using console commands.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

DI query: How many people 1) notice in the first place, 2) appreciate or hate, that DI doesn't stop fall damage in liquids? Unlike HL1-2, you can land in a meter of water and still die from impact in DI. This is one of the times 'realism' was attempted as its own goal. How well did it work?

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Presenting Source Level Editor - my personal fork of Hammer. I've been working on this for a few years, tuning it to my mapping style, with bugfixes, some automation, expanded functions, even a couple new tools. Now it's available for everyone interested on my GitHub. github.com/Cvoxalury/so...

github.com

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

September 2005. New school year begins and I learn from classmates about a new-ish game "Half-Life 2" (had no Internet, didn't read gaming magazines, didn't know). I've been playing HL2 for 20 years now. While I have many favourite games, this one's the dearest, and must've influenced me the most.

A photo of my warez copy of Half-Life 2 from 2005, published by an (in)famous distributor "Fargus".

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

HL2 Lost Coast Trivia Those who pay extreme attention may notice that each time you start Lost Coast, a board falls from the sky and splashes near the Fisherman. This is because on spawn, one of the boards on Helicopter arena clips into scaffolding collisions and gets forced out by the physics.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

HL2 Lost Coast Trivia. A rock near the ship wreck was intended to have seagull poop splattered over it. Except, it was moved during development. The decals ended up being too far from it, & they use the wrong class (work only on brushes). Not to worry: just shy of 20 years later, I fixed it all.

Bird poop decals intended by the developers of Lost Coast, viewed in editor. The entities are too far from the rock to apply to it.

The fixed bird poop viewed in the game. The entities were moved to the right spot and given proper class and inputs to work.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

HL2 EP2 nonsense: Sifting through the code, came across command "striderbuster_allow_all_damage 0". It prevents anyone but player from detonating Magnusson Devices. "Sweet", I thought, "I'll just switch it on and let rebels blow up Striders w/ bombs." Well it works. But it also blows up the game.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

HL2 EP2 Trivia: The Pumpkin Trail Ep2 adds pumpkins. The first 3 can be found at the farm before the Advisor. There're dead rebels; stands to reason they visited/used the farm. Station 21 isn't very far. Next 4 are after White Forest Inn, on the road to WF Base. The inn also was used by rebels.

3 pumpkins at the entrance to the barn on the abandoned farm in Episode Two.

More pumpkins next to a crashed truck on the road connecting the White Forest Inn to White Forest base. There are 4 pumpkins total, only 3 are visible in the picture.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

HL2 EP2 Trivia: It's been known since 2007 that Ep2 Lamarr has an unused animation "lamarr_space" where she's floating. Only now I found out the pre-release version of Ep2's last level, from March 2007, calls for a Lamarr camera entity before rolling credits. The entity, however, is missing.

The unused animation "lamarr_space" has her floating motionlessly.

The script that rolls the credits on the pre-release version of ep2_outland_12a also calles for a "viewcontrol.lamarr" 3 seconds before rolling the credits. The viewcontrol entity itself is not found on this map.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

DI Trivia (it's been a while): DI's Combine Soldiers, Metrocops, Citizens, and Stalkers have extra AI to shoot already dead enemies "for good measure". It may seem trivial, accidental and hard to notice, but it was intentionally copied from Alyx's Episodic AI (the only such instance in the games).

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

HL2 Trivia: I've examined the Bridge Point train's speed across the years. 2004: max speed is 800. "game of chicken" trigger starts the train w/ speed of 245. 2006: 800/245 2009, before Orange Box engine switch: 800/245 2013-2024: 800/245 2024, Anniversary update: 800/240 2025: ??? (info pending)

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

HL2 investigation: The broken pistol texture in Arkane's Ravenholm is the usual pistol texture from HL2; they must've changed the UV and not the texture. I painted the recognisable elements here. The dead giveaway to me is the little circle above the index fingertip, comes from the grip part.

Top left - screenshot of Ravenholm's pistol, taken at 12:40 of Noclip's main documentary video. Bottom left - HL2 pistol viewmodel texture. Top right - same screenshot from video, with elements of texture painted in different colours. Bottom right - HL2 pistol viewmodel texture with the same colours used to relate parts of the texture to where it is on the model.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

HL2, decided to freshen up this area for a side project.

An abandoned/shelled house from Half-Life 2's Highway 17 (d2 coast 03).

The same shot on the updated version of the location.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

In HL2, I've always loved this crude brush security camera in the first level of Entanglement. Now I just found out it has two counterparts in its last level, albeit tucked away in an out of bounds area. They serve to guide actual camera entities when Alyx uses the monitors.

The amusing brush camera in Entanglement's first level, d2_prison_06.

The other brush security camera in Entanglement's last level, d2_prison_08.

Yet another brush security camera in Entanglement's last level, d2_prison_08.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

If you see this, quote post with a robot that isn't from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who or Transformers. Robot Grunt from Half-Life

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

HL2: a test of replacing regular toxic slime (lightmappedgeneric that uses a cubemap) with flowmapped water shader (based on Alien Swarm) that combines realtime reflection and flowing sludge layer on top.

Flowmapped toxic sludge before entering Arlene's workshop.

Flowmapped toxic sludge before outside Arlene's workshop.

Flowmapped toxic sludge reflecting a building.

A canal filled with flowmapped toxic sludge.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

HL2 Trivia: In Point Insertion, this white window has a small wall behind it, secluded in its own tiny sky box. It was apparently meant to be visible, but the white light-emitting brush was not set up to be invisible like every other window in the level.

The solid white window on d1 trainstation 03 in Half-Life 2.

The same window edited to make the white brush invisible. The window frame, glass and the wall behind were present in the original map, but obscured by the white brush.

The wall setup in-editor, secluded inside of a separate sky box. Part of level was hidden for better preview.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

DI Trivia: The crane in Eli's Junkyard is mostly based on the ДЭК (DEK) 401 model. Some artistic liberties were taken here and there. The main point of it was to replace the brush-based crane from the leak. The stats, for those curious, is 3757 tris and 2048x1024 texture size.

The in-game model of Eli's Junkyard crane.

One of the refs used when building the crane model, a photo of ДЭК-401 (DEK-401) crane.

This yellow, rusty brush crane from the leak (here standing atop a dock at the entrance to Ravenholm in e3_techdemo_6) was the initial point of inspiration.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

DI Trivia: A discarded and not overly serious idea from Part 2: a makeshift flashlight using glowing Xen fungi. The fungi are attached to a pan, with foil duct taped in place to reflect the light forward.

A citizen holding the makeshift Xen fungi light.

The separate makeshift Xen fungi light model. The (intended to be) glowing fungi are duct-taped to a frying pan along with pieces of reflective aluminium foil, in an effort to reflect more light forward, a crude implementation of the principle behind the reflective cone found in most flashlights.

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Scornkeeper @scornkeeper.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

DI Trivia: We have hollow physics on traffic cones. And HL2 does not.

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