I'm considering making a open, nature-themed HL2DM map at the moment. My basic gameplay idea is to ditch most of the physics clutter in favour of a focus on major weapons (perhaps even with a Quake-inspired 2 RLs or pulse rifles), and have little armour-like stockpiles of HEV energy. That should make play a little different from the stock maps, which is desirable IMO.

I think there are plenty of things to be done to minimise the effectiveness of spam and cheap play - adjusting the average size and weight of physics items is an obvious example - careful attention to layout is another. No fucking camping ledges next to the RL. No narrow, critical stairways that can be jammed with rubbish to break the map balance. I like the DM, I see that it has problems, and I think some of those can be helped with suitable application of mappage. 

So far I have played about an hour of HL2DM and I found the gameplay to become very boring vert quickly. I have no further interest in playing it until the make the gravity gun a collectable item (instead of making the player spawn with one) and reducing the amount of throwable objects in the maps by a lot. 

HL2DM is a joke IMO. It's not fun, the levels are horizontal and not very good. I've always had choppy gameplay, even when my ping is ~50 or so. Throwing stuff is not very fun. It's a bad version of pong.

As far as Steam multiplayer goes, so far it's complete shit. HL2DM and CSSource are all we have. I will be much more eager to play DoDSource or HoBSource, who I know the team is working on porting over to Steam from Call of Duty.

I would've entered the HL2DM contest simply for the money, but I realized I don't want my name associated with that POS.

The game's crap. 

I found once the fun of killing someone with a radiator/wash basin and getting the little toilet sign up in the top has worn off then there isn't alot left to it. Tfc2 should be on the way soon. 

Not convinced so far. Weapons are okay. Gravity Gun is kinda cool, I get killed by it more than I kill. Some tactical options are very interesting. The maps blow pretty much. Lag is kinda bad. The sprint thing is fucking annoying.

It could be good in the right circumstances i.e. small numbers of players, very well balanced weapons, easy to navigate maps with good layouts, LPB connections....etc. 

I take it there is little to no interest in getting some kind of game together then? 

pissed me off in the extreme. It should be a server-side option (infinite sprint juice) - then again hitting anyone with anything might be a bit annoying.

Personally I enjoyed the game. It feels so much different to most other games, and a lot more lively, thanks to the gravity gun and physics. I tend not to take multiplayer games particularly seriously (EXCEPT H&D2 AND VIETCONG!) so this was very enjoyable.

Agreed about the very unbalanced weapons and general ease of killing and being killed, although I kind of got used to it and managed to own the prison map by holding an area in a big FFA game (I AM THE KING!)

As I mentioned before somewhere, I like the fact players don't start off defenseless. 

<Shambler> hmmm
<Shambler> there's no hl2dm map review site
<Shambler> i should start one
<Shambler> that would be a hideous ball-ache i could really live without =)

Okay, in the absence of any HL2DM review sites, and given there seems to be quite a few custom maps played on servers - almost all of which will suck shite straight from my sweaty sphincter -, does anyone know any good HL2DM maps apart from CZG's??

Or any useful resources for finding them,..? 

Try these. I haven't played any, but they seem to be the least crap.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=60666

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=66389&page=1

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=66461&page=1 

2nd one is the only one that looks worth playing. We might have to try that one out :D 

HL2DM is fun for a couple games, and it will be impossible to adjust it to get the game to a half-competitive state.

Rocket Launcher is totally overpowered, the other weapon whose secondary attack is some plasma ball bouncing around is also pretty fucked up. Physgun is fun for a while, but gets boring and slow. Also, the lack of some sort of trickjumping doesn't help to make it more fun.

I like it for a couple mindless ffa's, but no more than that, and the game will never be popular or competitive, so I think it'll be hard to see a growing mapping scene for it. I may get wrong, thought, given the large fandom base that HL2 has.