Friday, February 4 2005
Over the next month or so there will be a couple of interesting releases via Steam, in addition to the upcoming Counter-Strike map de_compound.
First, we´ll be releasing an update to Half-Life 2: Deathmatch that will include the Slam, Stunstick, and the Crowbar. We´re not ready to release the contest winning maps just yet, but we will be releasing a new map we´ve built at Valve to tide people over while we sort out the contest winners. There will also be a release to Counter-Strike: Source around the same time that will address a few minor issues.
One feature that we´ll be adding to the Source engine in the coming months is high dynamic range lighting. To showcase this we´ve taken a part of the Highway 17 chapter of Half-Life 2 and worked it into a single level that incorporates HDR along with some new gameplay. We´re calling this short level " The Lost Coast," and it will be made available free of charge to Half-Life 2 customers that meet a specific set of high end hardware requirements. We´ll be publishing those requirements soon.
Below are a few early concept sketches of the level early in its development.
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