A mod-building strategy guide?

http://www.planethalflife.com/half-life2/merchandise/

At the bottom of the page.

Personally, I think it's sorta stupid.

I can see that book being utterly useless. Sort of like the retail CS was. Who is going to buy a book when the Snarkpit will be there? :biggrin:

Plus, I can see a book like that getting ammendmants (spelling?) Everytime there's a new tutorial or SDK update etc.

I can already tell you what the opening paragraph will be:

"Hey you, do you play Counter-Strike? Well, ever wonderd how they did it? Learn in the next 5,000 useless pages! Here is the formula for making a Counter-Strike spoof:

Add 5 mappers

Add 6 coders

Add 2 artists

Add 1 idea man

Mix with 2,000 uber veterns

Add and blend 12,000 un-skilled, grammar lacking noobs."

[Offtopic] Whats up with your sig Wild Card :biggrin:

Vash said:
[Offtopic] Whats up with your sig Wild Card :biggrin:

Go here to find out: http://www.snarkpit.com/forums.php?forum=1&topic=21&start=90

Read the 6th post down. Its mine.

I like that point. Also, on another note, Lep, everytime I want to send you a PM and your not online, I have to go into your profile. In Snarkpit Version 3, you had the PM link next to the member names in the member list. Can we have that back?

Oh, and having front page and profile news would be great too :razz: .

Wild Card said:
I can see that book being utterly useless. Sort of like the retail CS was. Who is going to buy a book when the Snarkpit will be there? :biggrin:

Plus, I can see a book like that getting ammendmants (spelling?) Everytime there's a new tutorial or SDK update etc.

My sentiments exactly.

Which reminds me of something interesting... when I bought the HL platinum pack, all those years ago, it came with HL, OpFor, CS Retail and TFC. Thats all well and good, however, the TFC cd was completely useless as by that time HL came with TF on that cd, and the TF on the HL cd was a later version than the TFC on its own cd. wtf?

I like the sound of some of the things theyve got up there. "lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff." <- thats for me!

I don't think it will be useless if it is well written. There are websites online that will be able to tell you how to do many many things, but that doesn't mean that the printed guides are a waste of money. In general, guides like that written by professionals give a far more in-depth and insightful explanation of matters than guides found on websites...with some exceptions of course.

I like that point. Also, on another note, Lep, everytime I want to send you a PM and your not online, I have to go into your profile. In Snarkpit Version 3, you had the PM link next to the member names in the member list. Can we have that back?

Oh, and having front page and profile news would be great too :razz: .

There's a link to it next to e-mail, homepage, ICQ, MSN etc. links..?

Hes right. Lol.

Damn, ok, Im dumb :biggrin:

It's the same thing as buying a book for a programming language. Sure, you could get online, sift through a whole lot of tutorial pages, and still come out of it with bad programming structure and gaps in your education. (Not that it's impossible to learn a language this way - it's just harder). Or, you could go out and buy a good book on the language and learn it that way.

If this book is as well-written as a decent C++ language book, it'll probably be extrememly useful to aspiring mod makers, as well as alleviate a lot of the repetitive questions on message boards and FAQs such as "how do I make a mod?". I think it's a good idea.

Or we could have another Grandpa Geezer situation with this book...

Everyone remembers, correct? :biggrin:

I think it kind of cuts down on some of the fun of having an editing community that was taught by the community.

I don't think this book is going to hold a monopoly on mod making
tutorage - sure some people will use this, but there will still be the
vast majority visiting websites like this to learn the skills. And of
course we will get the benefit of people who have read the book coming
on here and perhaps sharing its secrets with us for free :biggrin:

Also, this book will not always have the best things in it. Once the Half-Life2 community begins to arise, people will hack the engine and such, getting better results than though possible (although I dont know why'd you have to hack the HL2 engine; besdies the fact that it doesnt support as many polygons as we all hoped). So, thats where tutorials online come in :biggrin: . You can easily update a website; although its a different case with a book :smile: .

I'm sure that plenty of wannabe editing-website-webmasters will buy it, but of course there'll be changes and updates over time so you'll have to use websites anyway (I'm sure people still will, for the forums if nothing else, as most people are stupid!) :razz: