Hi;
Its a long time that Ive posted here so her it goes. First of al my mapping/mod/model skills are bad (just setted al my started maps to ababandoned).

Now I was thinking: why there isn't a ET: source? But with my skills it will be poor so if anyone wants to help/commentary just reply.

What can he do, you will asking yourself, wel I can provide a webserver with "enough" space. I can create the basic maps.

What do we need:

• Coders
• Mappers
• Modelers + animators

(* Texture artists)

If anyone wants to help, thanks in advantage. If nobody wants to help it will be just anonther bad idea.

Greatings Damic

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Thx in advantage

Because there's already two Enemy Territory games, one of which is completely free and has many mods.

The whole idea of Enemy Territory is to make a massive battlefield with some sort of game.

It's just silly to try to rip this off, it'd much easier and more well received if you did something original.

Just to note, also, because of the way the source engine does visual clipping, It isn't well suited for large open environments. You might want to wait until there's an updated SDK with the EP2 additions before committing to the idea.

You might as well look at another engine. Unreal 3 is coming out and the SDK is very user friendly, so much so, you probably wouldn't need a programmer.

Get a better concept going (write it down) that is more thought out and getting people would be easy ... you also wouldn't fall into the "everyone loses interest" pit of mod development.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

From what I've seen so far the only way to kick-start a mod is to personally take care of the the basics (especially coding) and then lure new people into working for it over time. You either need to do the coding yourself or ask a very close and reliable friend who is just as excited about the idea as you are.

Not impossible, but very, very unrealistic to start a proper mod by just posting the idea in a forum.

I'm also sure there's at least one mod for HL2 already that tries to bring very similar gameplay to source.

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Why snark works.

@Reaper47: corect it will be builded mostly on DOD:s (airplane, tanks,... models/textures). I will try to code but my C-language isn't good, I know the basics, but that's it.

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Thx in advantage

Yea I agree, I will be making a beta version of my mod just to see what the folks think of it and its changed game play. And maybe get a little helpies.

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Aaron's Stuff

Okay my travels in the world of modding has me to explain this advice:

Generally all mods start as one thing: The Design Document. You need to write this and explain the features of the game, how it'll be implemented in the engine your going to use, and set time/goals for the mod team as a whole. Generally then you want to do like reaper said - you code the basic game and get it working. Then you draw interest from the community by plastering the design document online and in IRC chats to get more people interested in joining the project. Design documents generally go on forever and is constantly added to/revised. It helps a lot in explaining what your trying to do and it sets goals. If you find that you make one its 1 page long... well... You want to reassess how serious you are about this project.

Also from a general stand point mod teams are lead by the coder. Its just the coder's mind set. Generally they're good at delegating people for tasks and setting goals/milestones. They also can work within themselves to understand the limitation of the engine and constantly reassess if the design of your mod is doable or if its going to work.

Something you also want to consider is getting people's ips (intellectual property) at the beginning so that int he future you may sell or make a profit of of your mod, as well as all the financial fiscals of leasing an engine and getting a distributor.

This is generally how Eternal-Silence was formed. Our the design leader (and coder) made a design document for the game, and plastered it in IRC chats to gain interest and hype. At first he didn't know how to code or mod, but he picked up a book and taught himself how. Now ~5 years later we have a working beta out, and we're redesigning the game for a 2nd time!

If your truly serious about ET for source. Then I suggest you asses yourself: Are you willing to spend 5+ years on a project you may not even see come to life. Are you willing to break down and be the leader of a team of people. This isn't meant as a discouragement, but its reality. I don't know how serious you are about this. But if you are, I think you should start a design document, and map everything out.

This isnt me saying that id be willing to join your cause, its just an explanation of my expereince in the mod community.

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Posting And You

In this situation, something far more important (and pertinent) than a design document would be a game design document. They're not actually used by many non-professional developers, but it is something you should definitely look into. Especially considering it isn't that difficult to produce and it would be an undeniably useful asset when recruiting people.

A game design document, basically, describes what the game play will be like in absolutely determinate terms. (The overall gist being, you could hand this thing to someone whom doesn't know about it and they could create the game you speak of).

More information

A 'regular' design document (a.k.a. a technical design document) will not help you in the least until you know how you're going to alter the existing game on the technical side of things (this does NOT include level design).

By producing the game design document (first and in addition to the technical design document) you can mold the entire experience around the player's abilities and things like that.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

My advice is nearly identical to omegaslayer's, but with much less actual experience to back it up, and a recommendation to get a book on the subject!

You could likely research game design documents on the web and wing it, but a book is a single, relatively complete source of information to go to when you have questions. You should still supplement a book with other research on the subject and on game design in general, as you really can't know too much if you're serious about starting a mod team with any degree of success. (Gamasutra rocks, )

Game Design Workshop (Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games) by Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Swain and Steven Hoffman is what my Game Design I class used, and it contains just about everything you need to know in order to write a full-fledged technical design document.

Good find on that GS article, Crono.

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o

I might add one little bit of info (which might turn out to be irrelevant for a gigantomanic gameplay principle like ET). There are two ways of organizing a mod.

The first would be what seems to be very popular these days (and what looks nicest in website news and magazine articles). You start with a huge idea, get a team of 10, 20 people before even releasing a public beta and then, years later, end up with a product that is closest to a professional game as possible. Or, which is the only disadvantage, the mod fails because it's growing out of proportion (team members leaving, ideas not working out, real-life issues taking over).

The second approach would be to start with the absolute minimum.

That doesn't mean you can't have big ideas (or a game design document) but it reduces the risk of working on something for years only to see it going into the wrong direction. You would start with the most basic game idea, maybe only 10% of what the full mod should become. You do most of the work yourself, maybe get a helper or two and you release public betas early. A small community will form, which values the (hopefully) unique features of your mod and which will stay loyal over the course of its development. You attract more team members regularly, you can react to feedback from the entire gaming community and you can add features gradually over time.

Disadvantages include a lack of eye candy (less custom content in the early betas) and you might have to compete with shinier and more feature-rich mods. One could say that this approach is outdated, but the fact alone that both CS and TF started this way should qualify it as a serious possibility even if you want to go pro someday.

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Why snark works.

ow thanks chaps, now I know what todo :smile:

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Thx in advantage

Listen, no matter how much you plan, you will always change parts of the story, add levels, cut levels, its inevitable. Imo, planning just helps to avoid mistakes and countless wasted hours fixing up things that where caused by lack of planning. And don't be afraid of "wondering". If you are sitting in you chair and asking your self, "where is this going", "whats going to happen in the couple of levels ahead", "omg this thing is going to take 20 years to finish". All of that is normal, at least at the first half of the production of the mod.

Also for a mod, no matter how many people are working on it, its long work that takes up alot of hours.

And one other thing. If you are thinking to your self, all the time, notice I say all the time, "This is the greatest thing ever, this is going to own", than its not going to be the greatest thing ever.

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Aaron's Stuff