Whatever happened to Insurgency Mod

It's dead (for now), don't expect to see the Croatian theater being released any time soon

What happened is that after Beta 2.0 me and a bunch of other devs (chris, stepp, skybex, just to name a few) got jobs in the industry and left the mod roughly at the same time. Jeremy, the project director on Beta 1.0 also left because of his studies. Some other people then took over the administration and that's when INS started to die. They had good intentions but the drive to make it happen and the talent just wasn't there anymore. We tried real hard to recruit new people but it was a pain the ass to make them stick around. Some would either leave after 2 or 3 months and other never did anything at all.

I guess that's more or less the same of what happened to other mods... the talented modders either got jobs in the industry or turned indies.

It's really sad that we will never finish the Croatian theater. INS_Juris (stepp's map) has one of the coolest atmospheres I have ever seen in a map.

Yeah I remember taking over juris when stepp left. I retextured the whole thing, while trying to do some optimization stuff, but it was very obvious that the map was planned for a release that would never happen.

The map looked and felt awesome, but the game play wasn't the best. (it was just too open).

It seems modding in general seems dead, or very hard to get players on it these days. Neotokyo has people saying "awesome mod, why no servers/players?". I released Off Limits last month, and already after a few weeks we had a few players on and off (never at the same time during the day and never enough to begin a decent match) saying hte same thing "this mod is awesome, needs more players!". I've been trying like hell to get it more active, I set up 8 servers upon release as well (a bit overboard so it seems). The only time I got a decent amount of players on is when I started using our Steam group and sent out a message at 7pm, then I got 10 people playing (out of 2000 downloads) It's also funny how people can give scores to a mod they haven't played. Our score went from 8.7 to 8.3 since we released and there hasn't been a decent match played since. They probably down vote it because it lacks players. I play to do one last update after this 2nd beta release and call it final. And perhaps release a trailer. I'll send that around a lot of mayor gaming websites and if it then dies out so be it. I think indie development and cheap deals on AAA games have giving the gamers these days an abundance of high quality games to pick from, why would they still go through the hassle of getting mods? So, I fear mods need to become available on steam and be giving exposure through Steam or else they are bound to die quickly...

That said, you can DL Off Limits here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/off-limits

there is a (group) of people working with the [open source] beta 1 content somewhere on moddb. you might check that out, but it doesn't look too promising.

i believe they're calling themselves insurgency:redeployment.

If you want your ass kicked in your own game so badly Wesley, we can probably get a MapCore playsession together.

How about this Thursdag 8PM CET (Central European Time)?

I hope shotguns are stronger now...

When it comes to Insurgency, I didn't feel that the mod was all that fun. The gameplay was a bit too "realistic" in an un-fun way. Very jerky flow of combat. But that's just how I feel, I know a lot of people enjoyed it.

Insurgency was played loads, like 3 years ago. You can't expect large amounts of people to keep playing any game for that long, let alone a mod.

and they are also stealing most of the content.

anyway, in my eyes the mod scene is still where it was 10 years ago: making multiplayer shooters, and frnakly all the good ideas have been snapped up and recycled by major studios, either because modders get hired or the studios see something popular and imitate it and improve on it the way a funded project can.

people are also more entitled than they ever were, they want a mod to be a AAA game and that was acceptable (to a degree) back when making a AAA game could be done by half a dozen guys. but that is no longer the case. to provide the kind of experience people want now is much harder, if not impossible.

i think the mod scene simply needs to evolve, and put out the kind of games that aren't being made. but if you have that kind of talent that is able to create something like that, you are very likely to start an indie company and try and get some money.

modding, and expecting to hit the big times like the old days of cs and dod is pretty much over, especially as there are retail games that do everything better than a team of amatuers could do.

there's still a scene there and there's still a lot of people making mods, but the end result is quite lacklustre. look at AAA games that have millions of dollars of marketing put into them and end up having nobody playing after 2 weeks. the problem isn't entirely limited to mods it seems.

I recall looking at a site which was something that Jeremy or Andrew put up, which was supposed to be an indie game of Insurgency. Although the current "team" hated it, probably because they didn't want to bring Jeremy or Andrew back on.. Anyone else seen this?

http://www.newworldinteractive.com/

Quote from Nysuatro

http://www.newworldinteractive.com/

Andrew (Argyll) is not involved with NWI and NWI is not involved with INS:redeployment.

We are in fact working on a new INS title on the CE3 but that has nothing to do with the old INS.

Jeremy founded a studio a while ago. Me and Minos have been working there since on a new fps project on CryEngine 3. Some other veterans from the old Insurgency core team are also about to join us.

Quote from Minotauro

Andrew (Argyll) is not involved with NWI and NWI is not involved with INS:redeployment.

We are in fact working on a new INS title on the CE3 but that has nothing to do with the old INS.

Yeah I know, but I thought Stolve meant this link.

Maybe I should make a new doorframe prop for you guys

twas a good door frame indeed

pictures of steppenwolfs ins_juris after skjalg retextured it

[Blocked Image: http://www.coderebels.com/instest/ins_juris0002.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.coderebels.com/instest/ins_juris0003.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.coderebels.com/instest/ins_juris0001.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.coderebels.com/instest/ins_juris0004.jpg]

Pre skjalg retexture:

[Blocked Image: http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/1513/insjuris0004tr7.jpg]

^ Nice.

Could almost be a section of STALKER running on HL2 engine ...STALKER is one of my favourite games, I just love it's setting and the atmosphere

Quote from Rick_D

modding, and expecting to hit the big times like the old days of cs and dod is pretty much over, especially as there are retail games that do everything better than a team of amatuers could do.

So true. One thing often forgotten is that back when things like TFC, CS, and DoD hit the big time there were no real alternatives — they were pioneers during a time when the industry itself didn't focus on multiplayer experiences so much beyond shitty deathmatch. It's no wonder people loved them because they were unique and getting the opportunity to play let alone work on such games was an incredibly exciting time. It was like taking those first steps into a new land, and those involved literally created a whole new country.

Since then the industry has learned absolutely everything from those early steps and has now turned churning out attractive multiplayer experiences into a tried-and-tested routine. There's hardly any point in trying to do a multiplayer mod nowadays because you're directly competing with massive studios doing exactly the same thing and who are very good at it.

Doing single-player mods would seem the logical answer as then you can craft something truly unique once again, however the sheer amount of work required for such a project is obscene and even then you're twatting yourself in the face by releasing as a mod because it means only a limited number of people will be exposed to it (ie: those who both have the game you're modding for and care about the mod scene, ie: not many people), whereas if you go full-blown indie you obviously have much better chances of getting exposure and sales. No fucker's going to waste time installing one game to play another nowadays.

Basically indie is the new modding. Modding is dead.

I think that the difference between indie and modding is in most cases just semantic. If for example you're creating a game in Unity, you're modifying an existing engine, so in it's essence it's still modding. You could argue that it's not modding because you're not starting from an existing game (just the engine) but if that was true you couldn't call total conversions mods.

If Insurgency was made in Unity instead of Source would that make it a indie game? Why?