Ever Been Part of a HL Modification?

I'm just curious to see how many members of the SnarkPit have ever been
part of a mod team. Mappers, coders, texture artists,
whatever. Feel free to reply with how many mod's you've been in
and any thoughts on the experience.

Were any successfully released? Was it worthwhile? Was it
fun? Did it take your skills to a new level? Was it just a
frustrating disorganized effort in futility?

Improving to the point where I could join a mod team is something I've
been thinking about more and more, but it seems like when it comes to
mapping supply far exceeds demand. I voted for Option 2.

I have never been part of one... per say.

I have been asked to join by, what I consider the best out there but sadly I declined each time.(I never saw anything I could contribute as my mapping is atrocious) I have however critiqued several maps contained within them. So how would I answer? None seem fitting. And yes, its true, I was asked by almost anyone you can think of at one time or another.

I think an "other" needs added. In fact, I think ALL polls need at least one other option.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Ah -- I hadn't foreseen that there would be people who didnt fall into
the original categories. I've added an "Other" option.

No, I haven't. I opted for not really wanting to either. So many of 'em fall through, and even if it does get popular if you screw up people get angry at you... meh.

I've been in a fair few of them, none really successful :sad:

My first was a SP/MP Resident Evil mod, and I was "headhunted" after I had just released my second map Elixir. I took on the position as I was a big fan of the games and eager to work on something, and to be fair the mod looked like one of the fairly solid/established ones at the time so I was quite happy to get on it. I was assigned a deathmatch level based in a hotel, and didn't get too far on it before the mod effectively died. The lead level designer I spoke to once in my time on the mod, with the mod leader never knowing where he was and me not knowing if what I was doing was up to scratch or what he had in mind. Somebody else then left the mod and took with them about 80% of the model content that existed :sad: I just sort of drifted off in the end, and half the rest of the team did the same.

Next up, or at least I think it was next up, was The Rig. This was a mod that Kornflakes was semi working on (I think I had to nag him all over the shop to get him to join proper!), and I got on really well with the mod leader. I also thought the mod sounded like a fairly cool concept (you started off in a prison cell, and it turned out you were in an oil rig) and had some cool weapon ideas. Unfortunately nobody really did much on it and it just fell through. Another sob story.

I was never really a team member, nobody bar the founder/programmer was to be honest, but I did some mapping for the Adrenaline Gamer mod. That could be considered a success I guess, given that most of the serious HLDM players, particularly in the European scene, played it exclusively. It was just DM mapping, but I had some maps included in it. I also made 3 CTF maps - one original and two ports - that were included with it when they added a CTF mode.

Paroxysm was a coop mod that a few of our fine members here (specifically Campaignjunkie, Blister, Crackerjack...any others?) worked on. It had potential, it even had an unpolished and buggy but somewhat functional alpha build, but I think there were management problems and it fell through. I wasn't really an official team member here - I didn't want the pressure and responsibilities of bothering to be honest - but I got an alpha build and worked on two maps that were never finished :biggrin: Real shame too...one of them f**king rocked :wink:

The other one, and my favourite one, was my own one. But I'm a crappy leader to be honest, and can't seem to make important decisions too well or inspire work ethic! Research Project: ELVA was a multiplayer mod in which players piloted quick and agile mechs that were highly customisable in the not too distant future. I still think it would rock, and still have all the documentation that was written up for it, so maybe someday I'll take it upon myself to make it.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I demand your skills Morphine ... in fact ... I've already done so ... and you accepted ... and we need to finish planning that. Yeah, I know, shh shh.

Not really. I've had many ideas, but pretty much everything I've thought up I tell friends about and get them interested, so they can help out ... whenever it is we get around to it.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

French Toast said:
No, I haven't. I opted for not really wanting to either. So many of 'em
fall through, and even if it does get popular if you screw up people
get angry at you... meh.

Yeah that's true, but part of me really wants to find out what it's
like on the inside of a mod. I think the experience would be fun
(as long as it wasn't too much like a job that doesn't pay me jack)
regardless of whether or not the mod gets released. I'm assuming
if the mod dies you can take your work with you so... not a tremendous
loss.

Great wrap-up ReNo. I find it really interesting to read the trajectory of a mapper/modder.

ReNo said:
The other one, and my favourite one, was my own one. But
I'm a crappy leader to be honest, and can't seem to make important
decisions too well or inspire work ethic!

Sounds like you just need to find someone to fill the shoes of the "bad cop" to crack the whip and get things done. :razz:

Crono said:
I demand your skills Morphine ... in fact ... I've already done so ...
and you accepted ... and we need to finish planning that. [color=lightblue]Yeah, I know, shh shh.

:wink:

[/color]

Yes

Eternal-Silence 2 mod:

Its an RTS/FPS/and flight simulator mixed into one. We currenlty stand
at getting flight simulation done, while implamenting the paralax
shader into Half Life 2

http://www.eternal-silence.net/

I was/still am assigned the NTSS-Sheldon. The largest vessel in developement.

http://www.eternal-silence.net/4images/details.php?image_id=133

The project is comming along stong:

http://www.eternal-silence.net/4images/data/media/10/sheldon_peek.jpg

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Posting And You

I was in many but they all died or the leader suddenly wanted to continue alone- like in xen assult, that was recently published in this site by a guy who calls him self saco.

Now I decided to make my own mods! :razz:

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Elon Yariv

I was in a few, but only in a sort of part-time way I suppose. most of the ones reno mentioned basically.

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My Pit

ReNo said:
Paroxysm was a coop mod that a few of our fine members here (specifically Campaignjunkie, Blister, Crackerjack...any others?) worked on. It had potential, it even had an unpolished and buggy but somewhat functional alpha build, but I think there were management problems and it fell through. I wasn't really an official team member here - I didn't want the pressure and responsibilities of bothering to be honest - but I got an alpha build and worked on two maps that were never finished :biggrin: Real shame too...one of them f**king rocked :wink:

indeed it did :smile: (ps: Pvt. Scythe was also mapping for us)

French Toast said:
No, I haven't. I opted for not really wanting to either. So many of 'em fall through, and even if it does get popular if you screw up people get angry at you... meh.

true, but it's a great feeling to work as a group toward a goal.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

BlisTer said:
true, but it's a great feeling to work as a group toward a goal.

This only holds true if the entire group is of the same notion. It only takes one bad apple to ruin a failed attempt.

I mean, if the mod fails but everyone keeps in relatively good spirits about it, its a learning experience. Everyone comes out of it with some advancement. But let one person start accusing.......

Teamwork is great but its just as rewarding to do a single person adventure. I think all my maps are pure s**t but, I felt wonderful when each was released. Especially if it was better than its predecessor in some way.
My personal belief is, the odds of a successful conclusion increase with the less people involved. In other words, you are more apt to complete your goal if you do it by yourself. This is assuming you have the proper support... IE, Snarkpit.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I've been in a few, only one that finished (Issues). I had too much of a leader role in the other ones I was involved with, and that doesn't work if you're lazy and relatively uninspired.

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One day you'll know what you're talking about, I can hardly imagine

Maps! - Audio blog!

Orpheus said:
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting BlisTer</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>

true, but it's a great feeling to work as a group toward a goal.

This only holds true if the entire group is of the same notion. It only takes one bad apple to ruin a failed attempt.

</div></div>

That is, indeed, a necessary assumption. see also my view on this in the related thread

Orpheus said:
Teamwork is great but its just as rewarding to do a single person adventure.

i kinda disagree. a lot of motivational power comes from knowing that people will indeed play your map. There is a higher chance that people will play your map if it gets released with a (more or less popular) mod, than that you release it on a site and it gets attention for a week.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

Yes, worked on a number of maps for Frontline Force, but they never got played as none of the community were willing to move on past the first set of maps that were released for it.

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You Got To Get Through What You've Got To Go Through To Get What You Want But You Got To Know What You Want To Get Through What You Got To Go Through

BlisTer said:
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Orpheus</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>
Teamwork is great but its just as rewarding to do a single person adventure.

i kinda disagree. a lot of motivational power comes from knowing that people will indeed play your map. There is a higher chance that people will play your map if it gets released with a (more or less popular) mod, than that you release it on a site and it gets attention for a week.</div></div>

But see, this is where I have mixed emotions regarding success.

Sure, its a great ego boost seeing your map played someplace. I agree on this point but when you look closer at the list, you also notice... s**t maps getting as much or more play time. So where does that leave your ego?

Another thing to consider, how does one personally measure his or her own success? By what your peers say? By what your family says?

I personally measure it compared to my previous examples of success. In this case, the maps I have released have progressively advanced in technique and theme/style. (Since my maps have no real theme, style is a better choice)
In the end, you just need to please yourself. If the rest of the world as a whole think your map is still just a box, well... f**k them. At least I built a box.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Paroxysm... A fine bird that was shot down by a broken HD, if I recall
correctly Polymorph(the lead coder and leader) lost the source code and
it became the end of it. It had very good concept, which still managed
to be simple enough to work.

It's a bit surprising that ReNo didn't remember me, since he kept
constantly telling me to use light_spot entities to create more
contrast. But then I again I guess ReNo has been saying that same thing
for a lot of nooblings.

Besides Paroxysm I haven't been working on any other mods. Someone
e-mailed me and asked me to join some HL2 Mod just after HL2 was
released, but I had to decline due to army service and the fact that I
didn't have the SDK at that time. I was on a dial-up so I couldn't
dowload the some 100MB of stuff through Steam. vALVE vas also kind
enough to only distribute the SDK through Steam so I couldn't get a
friend to download it either.

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

Technically speaking, I was in a mod. team, because I released Gmdm2 as a mod.

It was, however, a mod team of one person.

mikey, i wish you would port that boulder mod to hl2, beacause i'd love to pick that friggin rolling sob up and smash yer ass with it...///runs :dodgy:

Doc B... :dodgy:

Hehe of course Scythe, dunno how I could forget actually :biggrin: I think yours was one of the few maps that was actually playable wasn't it? I never really had any joy with it anyways, as any time I shot an alien the build I had crashed :sad:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Orpheus said:
It only takes one bad apple to ruin a failed attempt.

So... you'ld succeed? :smile:

Reno said:
Hehe of course Scythe, dunno how I could forget actually :biggrin: I think yours was one of the few maps that was actually playable wasn't it? I never really had any joy with it anyways, as any time I shot an alien the build I had crashed

the updated code by Lagrange was actually quite playable m8 :smile: And we had 5 playable maps: Scythe's was one, then there were 2 of mine, one of gromppp and one from CrackerJack. ah the days :wink:

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

I've been (and somehow still are, somehow) part of a few mod teams.

It started with Weirdo Worlds, 2.5 years ago or such. Some people on the VERC boards decided to throw together a mappack with a random, weird theme. I happily jumped in. The teams size crumbled down to 3 fairly quick...
At that time, I was the most experienced guy on the team so that made me sort of the leader. I modelled, created textures, and we actually made some progress, but it lacked overall planning and experience. After some time we decided to stop, happy it was finally over - it got really stressing in the end, the feeling you had to work on it while not being motivated anymore.
Nevertheless, it was a learnsome experience. :smile:

After that, I've been part of a Dutch map'pack' - together with some guys on my own little forum we made a small map. It never saw daylight, but I think it was a fair attempt.
I think it suffered from a bit unbalanced experience level and perhaps too little trust in each others talents (or so I feel about it now), or perhaps we just had too different styles? Either way, the main thing is probably just motivation. Map parts always took longer to do than planned, and frankly, there wasn't much planning besides a set deadline...
We attempted a HL2 map too, but that one stopped even sooner. Oh well.

I've later been asked to join a friends mod as a modeller. I'm still on the team, though it's been in sleep mode for some while now, there are efforts to get going again. I really hope this mod (Starlabs) is gonna get done, obviously. :smile:

Then there's the few mods I've been asked for, a Warhammer 40K mod (after one of the members saw my Rust competition entry). Didn't accept that one.
I've been asked to work on Opposing Source, a HL2 mod, which I didn't accept due to time and priority issues. It looked like a fair mod team but two weeks later, the mod was gone.

Recently, I've been asked as a concept artist for an indie game team. I accepted, drew some stuff, and a few weeks later the game was officially dead. The lead programmer stopped before that, so a more aspiring guy took over (he was the one keeping contact with the team and I believe he'd be a good leader). Later, that guy was asked to join an existing and more promising game team. I wouldn't blame him for doing so. :biggrin:

Well, that's it so far. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Paroxysm: Had potential, but beyond "shooting aliens" the team didn't have a clear concept for the gameplay, which kind of made it difficult to develop maps for. But it was still fun, eh Reno? :smile:

Dark Truths: Singleplayer mod. Great team, but nonsensical plot design and weak leadership.

Nightwatch (HL1): Too ambitious. If we cut back the list of things we wanted to do, it could have been finished 1-2 years ago. Instead we just kept piling things on and reassigning work. High staff turnover rate as well, which made it hard to find animators (our bottleneck). I also think, as a team, we were too elitist - there was some great talent there that we neglected. Good luck to the Source team.

Issues: We actually released, which makes me rather happy and already puts it near the top of my proudest achievements. Make sure to keep a lookout for the sequel, Reissues, coming in Summer 2006!

So in general, I think the main problem with most mods is in the design: It isn't solid, or it tries to do too much. The problem is compounded even worse by the current state of most HL2 mods, with teams concentrating on parallax mapping or concept art instead of things that are actually important.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention my current mod, which is my honours project. Currently NPCs are spawned, walk around, carry out locational activities (eg. sit on a bench, stare at this poster), then leave the level. Pure awesome. Hopefully once I've made a bit more progress it should be something to be proud of though - I'm developing a system for background characters to behave in believable ways in social environments, with a focus on making the solution flexible, efficient and data driven in order to empower level designers with the ability to quickly and easily model varied social settings. Not a very exciting game, granted, but it's a fairly interesting project nonetheless :smile:

It's my first time programming for an existing game, and I'm enjoying it. I'm considering taking on a solo project after I've completed this one - that way I don't let anybody else down when I get too lazy or distracted to actually work on it :razz:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I have never been apart of one. I guess If a promising mod, already started, needed some mappers, I might give it a go.

Hey Reno, I'd be interested in checking out that mod of your's. :smile:

I started the doomed-from-the-start Omega Project, which was supposed to be a singleplayer mod of warhammer 40k, but it never got off the ground due to a severe lack of modellers and texture artists (not to mention time) and eventually keeled over.

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My site

Sure thing CJ, but when the time is right :wink: If you looked at it now you'd be all like "so...what have you done?" :biggrin:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Interesting thing. About 6 hours after this thread was made, a fellow "sci-fi" mod bashed
us (Eternal-Silence) on
their
forums.
I was told (and agree) not to post on their forums (for bad PR
reasons). But I find it halarious that while they say our mod looks
like every generic sci-fi movie out there, so does theirs. Jealousy is
a truly ugly thing :S.

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Posting And You

Campaignjunkie said:
Paroxysm: Had potential, but beyond "shooting aliens" the team didn't have a clear concept for the gameplay, which kind of made it difficult to develop maps for.

To me, that was the beauty of it. They implemented an objective system, so that the mappers were free to choose the gameplay. we came up with different concepts that augmented teamplay. The teamleader-concept gave an extra dimension too imo.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

Captain P said:
After that, I've been part of a Dutch map'pack' - together with some guys on my own little forum we made a small map. It never saw daylight, but I think it was a fair attempt.
I think it suffered from a bit unbalanced experience level and perhaps too little trust in each others talents (or so I feel about it now), or perhaps we just had too different styles? Either way, the main thing is probably just motivation. Map parts always took longer to do than planned, and frankly, there wasn't much planning besides a set deadline...
We attempted a HL2 map too, but that one stopped even sooner. Oh well.

I'm pretty sure that we can finish of something playeble on that. I mean, we were all so close to finish of(except for Bunneh ). Haz like it to as i recall.

Whadaya think about it eh? :smile:

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RUST Gamedesign
pepper design

The strength of the turbulence is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.

Well, yeah, I've still got it around somewhere. I think we should then limit it to your, Atoms and my part. If I recall correctly, we all had our parts mostly done but there wasn't really an end to it, right?

Let's discuss on the forum. Might be good to get that thingie done finally. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Loads of mods, just wrote a huge essay about them all and my part and what happened to them, but accidently pressed the back button on my mouse because my hands are so cold! (Boiler pilot light isn't working, bah!)

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

Auch, that hurts myrk.

@cp, yeah. Lets fire up the thread again. Didnt seth also contribute a finishd part?

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RUST Gamedesign
pepper design

The strength of the turbulence is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.

Nope, Seth had work to do on Starlabs back then. Still has, nowadays. :wink:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

All the mods that I've joined... died... must be a curse or something :razz: I got offered a job on Insurgency (http://www.insmod.net/) a while back... :smile: But I didn't get in, they said I needed more practice :redface: