The Hl Mod Scene
<div class="IPBDescription">The way I see it at the moment</div> Ok So we have Half-Life one of the most modded game engines the world has ever seen. However the way I see it suddenly even though we have more people designing mods than ever before it seems that in an attempt to be the next best thing (read Counter-Strike) it seems the mod scene has sucked up the last of it's collective creative juices. Mod teams seem to be doing the same thing over and over again. Some better than other I must say but am I the only one that thinks the HL mod scene is flogging (For the most part) a dead horse?
The thing I am missing the most is the creativity of the old Half-Life mod scene. It seems that a lot of the mods now involve some form of conflict in recent times. What happed to the original ideas like Wizard Wars or Swarm? The same with single player mods. We never seem to see any of those anymore. The most recent being Heart Of Evil as a MOTW on PHL. Am I one of the only people that thinks the decline of the single player mod scene is a sad thing? There are only a certain amount of things you can do with a multiplayer mod but with a single player mod you can do (In My Opinion) so much more. Half-Life started out as a single player whey can't it be a good single player mod engine? It has all you need, a good (Semi-Realistic) AI system, scripting and so on. But people seem to shy away from. Single Player mods are always much more complex to do as you have to think about how it will look to the player. You have to direct what you want the player to see. (Much like a film director.) I am looking forward to Nightwatch because it will provide me with an amazing single player! I mean why was Half-Life so memorable? Because it had a good story, sucked you in from the word go and created a believeable atmosphere.
In my opinion the mod teams need to focus away from all the shiny graphics and stuff. If I was to create a mod using the Opposing Force models and textures and perhaps code a little. (I can hardly do anything mod related except write some good fiction for it. I'm sure I could learn and I may eventully.) It wouldn't matter how much fun it was it probably wouldn't get played. People just wouldn't be interested. It seems there are many good ideas out there but people can't get the def_one's, KungFuSquirrel's, and Flayra's on their mod teams and we end up with a mod that could do so much better and provide something to the community but they never get there in the first place. Which is sad.
This semi-rant comes after playing They Hunger all the way through. It may not have looked like much. But there was a story and an atmosphere in it. Which made it seem much more involving.
I'm not sure where the mod scene is heading. I may in the end make a mod myself, learn how to do everything myself and see what I can come up with. (With a perfect story that I'm sure no one else has come up with. And yes it would be Single Player!)
Am I speaking the truth or am I just some dillusional person whos gone off in the wrong direction because he's not looking in the right place??
The thing I am missing the most is the creativity of the old Half-Life mod scene. It seems that a lot of the mods now involve some form of conflict in recent times. What happed to the original ideas like Wizard Wars or Swarm? The same with single player mods. We never seem to see any of those anymore. The most recent being Heart Of Evil as a MOTW on PHL. Am I one of the only people that thinks the decline of the single player mod scene is a sad thing? There are only a certain amount of things you can do with a multiplayer mod but with a single player mod you can do (In My Opinion) so much more. Half-Life started out as a single player whey can't it be a good single player mod engine? It has all you need, a good (Semi-Realistic) AI system, scripting and so on. But people seem to shy away from. Single Player mods are always much more complex to do as you have to think about how it will look to the player. You have to direct what you want the player to see. (Much like a film director.) I am looking forward to Nightwatch because it will provide me with an amazing single player! I mean why was Half-Life so memorable? Because it had a good story, sucked you in from the word go and created a believeable atmosphere.
In my opinion the mod teams need to focus away from all the shiny graphics and stuff. If I was to create a mod using the Opposing Force models and textures and perhaps code a little. (I can hardly do anything mod related except write some good fiction for it. I'm sure I could learn and I may eventully.) It wouldn't matter how much fun it was it probably wouldn't get played. People just wouldn't be interested. It seems there are many good ideas out there but people can't get the def_one's, KungFuSquirrel's, and Flayra's on their mod teams and we end up with a mod that could do so much better and provide something to the community but they never get there in the first place. Which is sad.
This semi-rant comes after playing They Hunger all the way through. It may not have looked like much. But there was a story and an atmosphere in it. Which made it seem much more involving.
I'm not sure where the mod scene is heading. I may in the end make a mod myself, learn how to do everything myself and see what I can come up with. (With a perfect story that I'm sure no one else has come up with. And yes it would be Single Player!)
Am I speaking the truth or am I just some dillusional person whos gone off in the wrong direction because he's not looking in the right place??
Comments
HL is the be all (and quite frankly) end all of mod capable video games.
Expect to see that in discussion in the near future.
(It's on the current state of DoD, but it includes all mods in general)
Here's a short list of upcoming mods that I think are original:
- Destiny
- HLRally
- RolePlayHL
- Natural Selection (not upcoming, but damn original, even for a commercial game)
- Monkey Strike
As for the single player "dying out", I see two very promising single player campaigns on the way, and there's probably more. The mods in question are Poke646: Vendetta and, or course, Nightwatch.
So you see, I think the HL modding scene still has a little originality and life left in it.
- HLRally
- RolePlayHL
- Natural Selection (not upcoming, but damn original, even for a commercial game)
- Monkey Strike<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->don't forget <a href='http://www.planethalflife.com/quest/' target='_blank'>Quest</a>, a MMORPG for HL, altough a MMORPG isn't original it's for the HL engine and i think it's going to be 100% free. - and it looks good
Battle grounds is also very fun and original. you are only armed with old rifles/pistols which hits like **** - so headshots are rare
Runaway train is original and fun, however the website is no more, and i can't find a download link - but there a remake in the scene now(i however think it's really bad, but it still gives you the idea) - Train hunters
I heard of it before, i know nothing of it though
One thing to remember is that Half-Life is not the first engine you could mod for. Mods have been around since Wolf3D, maybe even before that. They didn't really get popular until Quake though, but of course they exploded with Half-Life due to Valve's unprecidented support for the mod community.
Its actually kind of a wonder that HL is the multiplayer (and mod) king. When HL first came out, while it was obviously heralded as the best Single Player game ever, it really took a beating on the reviews of multiplayer. It was laggy, unstable, and had lots of other problems. People had actually predicted SiN (does anybody else remember this one? heh) to be the multiplayer successor of Quake 2. What changed everything is that within weeks of HL coming out, Valve issued a few patches (back when HL first came out they patched more frequently than they do now) and things started to look up for it. But the real turning point was when Valve announced that they were making Team Fortress Classic (to appease the fans who were **** that TF2 was no longer to be a free HL addon). From there, everything just took off on the mod scene.
But the Half-Life engine is definately showing its age. Its over four years old. The model rendering system is pretty slow, so high polygon stuff can't easily be done. The mapping system is quite limited compared to what modern game engines have. And the physics seem downright barbarian compared to the stuff that's in UT2003, Genereals, and etc. No shaders, no curved surfaces, no volumetric fog. Hell, the game doesn't even run in 32-bit color for Pete's sake! (those who disagree, and I know some will, I can explain if you want, but I am right on this)
So, from a technical standpoint, clearly the Half-Life engine should have been put to rest years ago. Modern engines are vastly superior and capable of stuff you could only dream of doing in Half-Life. So why is everyone still playing and making mods for Half-Life?
First and foremost, is the size of the community. Even if you take Counter-Strike completely out of the equation, more people play Half-Life online than Quake 3 and UT2003 combined. That is a lot of people. There are other factors too, probably the most significant being the stigma that the HL community currently has in regards to upgrades. Many people play HL on the same system they had when they first got it. There are a ton of people out there still playing in software mode. For some reason, most of the HL community seems to think that they are the exception to the rule when it comes to hardware upgrades, and that they shouldn't ever have to upgrade for anything ever again. They get upset that they're "top of the line" 400mhz system won't run today's games, therefore they just stick with what they can play, even if it does look visually unappealing.
So how does this factor into mod creativity?
When you make a mod, you want people to play it. Nobody wants to put their blood, sweat, and tears into something for months or even years just to have it go undownloaded. The number of players goes a long way towards swaying a developer.
Also, for the developer just getting started w/ modding, while I wouldn't say HL is any easier than newer engines, there is 4 years worth of help already available. It doesn't matter what you want to edit in HL, somebody else has already done it and posted on how you can do it too, thus helping you learn at a far greater pace. Also, Valve is really pretty good at supporting mods, both through publicity and technical help. Most other game companies (like id, Raven, Remedy) just say "here it is, go wild" and that's it, they don't bother to help you in any way. The only company which I'd say is doing a better job than Valve with mod support is Epic. They're doing some things to help mod makers that even Valve won't.
As far as whether there are any good new ideas for the mods themselves, part of me wants to say yes, and part of me wants to say no. Sure there are dozens of realism mods out and in development hoping to get a chunk of some of CS's success (and really Action Quake's, as they invented the genre CS made popular), but is this really any different than the slew of CTF and TF clones from the Quake 1 and 2 days? And who is to say what is original and what is not? After all, CS is just an evolution of Action Quake. HLRally isn't too original either, as its almost the same as QRally. Role playing style mods have been done before too. But does this mean these have no merit? Certainly not. Does this mean they aren't creative? Again no. They are just taking a proven formula and changing it into something with a fresh twist.
Me though, I think mods will stay creative. People said back in Quake 2 days that mods were getting boring and all starting to be the same, with little creativity. They said that about 2 years ago with Half-Life too. So they're saying it again. They'll be saying it in the future. And while yeah, most mods aren't some drastic change of though, I think there will continue to be mods to come that will be revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
While I understand what you're saying, I do think that it should be noted that you are playing on a multiplayer only modification to a game. I know that you're meaning the possibilities for creativity are greater in a single player. However, multiplayer offers more replayability (if that's a word). Game developers want people to play their game.
I can see that but most of the memorable things that have happened to me while playing computer games have been things in single player games. Purely because they grab your attention in a way that many multiplayer games can't. One of my all time favorite things is the Opposing Force Intro. You were put into a realistic looking and sounding environment and all hell broke loose. My first reaction was one of "That was cool!" In fact it took me another 5 viewings before I wanted to start playing Opposing Force proper!
Also if I recall Half-Life was a modding success because it was easy to edit the code for it. You could code in your own C++. (There was one mod Polyfighter I think that recoded the renderer only keeping HL's 2d graphics engine and sound functions.) With UT2003 you are stuck with Unrealscript and while thats nice and fast it isn't that good if you want to change the game engine (Again please correct me if I'm wrong I won't mind!)
I really prefer a good Single Player experience over a Multi Player one. There is always the good feeling you get once you've done a puzzle or just had your first Half-Life marine meeting. (The best moment in a game I've ever had!) There are times where you fly over Feedwater Hive plunging it full of bullets that give you a buzz but it isn't the same type of buzz.
Check out HalfQuake and the sequel HalfQuake: Amen
And yeah, you´ve been looking in all the wrong places...