Editorial: Did HL1 Ruin HL2?

Hl2 has serious workflow problems, so yes Im not going to mod for it then. Just as I didnt decide to go mod for a whole range of other games. It must be easy to make custom content, must be efficient etc, and HL2 just like some other games does not offer this. Why mod for it then ? As an outsider thats a question you ask, the only group that doesnt ask that question is the HL1 group..That shrinks your potential mod user base

But next to that most problems you source people are facing we faced too in the unreal community, since UT2003 was released...youll get trough. I got the feeling the community is seriously fragmentated in to lots of little groups and forums, we had the same thing and that doesnt exactly help.

Same for things like all those prefabs, people are building cubes and are slamming in prefabs chairs and furniture now and call it a map. In unreal they slam in prefab pillars and wall panels until the whole damn room is prefab and the same old style. That is a serious problem and you should hit back hard on it. Review sites should do the same, as should valve for example but what happens instead ? They organize a contest that promotes using prefabs and reviews sites often rate it 8/10 "because it looks so much like HL2". Thats killing level design on the long term. In a few years itll be even more advanced thus even more people will use prefabs and before you know it community level design will be nothing more than placing prefabs and no one will make anything custom anymore or understand what its really about. That will kill half what level design is about. No more architecture skills, no more texturing skills, etc..And the result is that the people who do know, the pro's and the skilled people will also leave the community completely because "they are noobs who do nothing more than placing things, I dont belong there"

Prefabs = no

Quote

I hope UE3 is going to be a step in the right direction.

UE already offers better workflow right now, as it did 3 years ago already too

Quote

I'd say that UT2k3 and 2k4 killed the HL mapping and modding community, and more specifically the "Make Something Unreal Contest."

It didnt, if anything did than it was because valve waited too long with releasing HL2, HL1 kept dragging on and so yeah, if some other game with newer tech gets released then, unimportant what game, then sure some people will switch over

Quote

there was very minimal modding community in UT before the lauch of UT2k3,

There was a strong, reasonable sized and active mod community roughly comparable to HL1's mod community. Both map wise as mods in general. In fact the map community was more active back then then it is now as was the mutator community etc. And it was more friendly, more for fun while now its more "omg i wanna be super pro modder"

Quote

that is to say that most of the modders were HL veterans.

I dont know a -single- person in the unreal mod community who started in the HL community, well actually I knew 1 mapper but he quit a long time ago now.

Most HL mappers would complain too much if they had to work with UED, why would they switch

Quote

the community was still going on, and still is today

Its going quite slow at the moment, in fact, the UT mod community right before UT2003 was more active than the UT2004 one right now. Most mod teams have died, they seemed to have done it all for the money instead of for fun and supporting their product. From the moment on the contests stopped they all disappeared(minus some exceptions ofcourse). Also a reason why the original UT community did better, they did it for fun so they kept on going.

-

BF2 isnt really indoor like, a good mapper should also be able to make good indoors. The old style.

And all those people who quit mapping just because they got hired somewhere clearly werent really devoted to their stuff then...you dont quit if you really like what you do.

Most of the points here sum up pretty much why I'm sticking with HL1 for the time being. As far as I see it at the moment it's very early days were source is concerned, people are still learning all the new tricks which limits what they can bring out, also as mentioned previously there are next to no tutorials about on anything to do with HL2 stuff because people are still trying to figure out how to actually do these things before they can start writing the info.

Steam is also a culprit, it's a good idea and many people have praised it for delivering them updates, mods and other things, but it's so unstable. On my machine it wont let me play anything without being connected to the net despite me checking the 'remember password' option, everything HL runs through Steam now, installing HL2 even fucked up my HL installation for some reason and kept trying to run the thing through Steam.. NO! I don't want to fucking run HL1 through Steam, it is completely seperate! Yeah so I know you need to do that for online play but I'm not interested in that, you should have the choice.

As someone else mentioned the folder system is bloody stupid, at times it seems like you have to navigate through 20 folders just to drop a file into the game, with HL1 you knew exactly were to put stuff everytime.

With HL1 I know next to everything, how to map, how to use custom textures, how to change the hud, replace the console image, change models and sounds etc and what's more, is that it is EASY there's no messing about dropping texture files into folders and making sure their normal-mapped cousins are packed in with them or having to learn how to model to make basic props that were just brushes in the old engine. Sure, it looks better but it's a heck of a lot more work if you know jack shit about modelling packages.

I agree about how mods come across, you notice how every single one of them usually lists lots of over-the-top-never-going-to-actually-do-them-all

features and lots and lots of information on story and how professional the mod is going to be, and then they show you weapon renders.. you should at least be able to show off some environments, after all that is what makes the mod at the end of the day.. the maps.

One reason why Insurgency is going to make it is because they're organised, they know what they want to achieve and how to do it because it's realistic, they're not trying to be the 'next best thing' but rather just make a mod that people will enjoy playing. Their idea might not be an original one but they've shown they're dedicated to the project by releasing just the right amount of media to the public without revealing too many of the later surprises.

Damn... I wrote so much I've given myself a headache..

How about the fact that it takes way more time to create high quality mods for HL2. The other factor is that there is too much information one can receive, more competition, more actors in the network, yet everything is more inefficient than before due to increased demands in mod making.

Hl2 feels more like a transition to the next level in the same information/design networks, rather than a new game with a new network infrastructure. The product is new but the activities are lagging behind since the old networks nowadays are stale, inflexible and lack that sensation of innovativeness and pioneership. They were previously charaterized as unstable, flexible, innovative and the activities were more centralized. Now they have become standardized and conservative.

Great post, Fletch. I agree with everything you said.

I think just by looking at today's mod websites and comparing them to the ones 'back in the days' makes you realize just how commercialized the way of thinking in the mod community has become. Many mods ask you to sign NDAs nowadays should you decide to join them and HELP them create content in your spare time for free. Yeah sure, you can all tell me now that this is for protection of the mod and that many people quit mods and then release all their work and screw said mods over big time...but personally I would stay far far far away from mods that make me sign some stupid contract instead of thanking me for devoting my precious spare time to their project. If a mod team approaches me with the initial fear and idea that I might screw them over in the long run then sadly I don't see a team attitude or an attitude of gratitude there but a scared-big-corporation attitude. I don't need or want to waste my time with that in my spare time.

The same thing goes for the targets mods set for themselves these days. We've had this problem in the past but it has become more obvious now. Everybody wants to be picked up by Valve and make it big, but instead of working towards releasing a good game they cover themselves in a bullshit pseudo-professional image they claim is proven by a bunch of nice renders of M16s and AK47s with nice shiny metal. Surpriseeeee, that shit isn't special anymore. Mods like CS and DOD didn't get where they are after one release. The first CS sucked ass. Even DOD sucked but it was still really fun because you could tell where they were going with their ideas and you knew that there would be more to come and things would only get better. I didn't expect awesome graphics, but they still got better with every release. Nowadays you see mods working so hard on making the most awesome looking project ever with team sizes reaching 50 and more...it seems to be the main thing that mods advertise their works with is visuals. And they all do it wrong. I don't even look at mods anymore that think I would somehow get impressed by how many awesome weapon renders they have, because that tells me that mod got it totally wrong and most probably won't even get anywhere close to a release. There are exceptions, yes. But they are rare.

Come back next week for Part II of my rant...maybe. I'm tired now.

Untextured weapon models are the worst thing you can do to a mod, I will completely lose respect towards the mod and the mod team when they pimp untextured weapon models on their site.

Besides, I liked to talk with my cousin back in the early days of DoD about how much it changed over the months and release by release, and after like two years with the mod we still remembered the bad times, just like with Natural-Selection (which sucked major ass balance wise) and we remembered the good times and how the mod had changed, and that was made us be with them so long, we felt that we were part of the mod team even if we just played the game for fun. It felt like a real community, like a MMORPG community or something like that.

That was what made the mods so specia. Games are made by faceless corporate lackeys with making money as their target, mods are being made by guys who made it out of love and not for personal gain, being hired by a developer was a bonus, not necessarily a target. Mods were made by guys just like me and you, for guy like me and you.

Interesting thread.

One of the reasons I bought this monstrous PC I currently sit at was the thought of being able to map for source. I was so fed up by all the limits the HL engine imposed on me and longed for something that let my imagination run wild. I've tried a few times, but as has been mentioned many a time already, the workflow for getting anything in-game in source is fucking absurd. Even getting some extra textures in there is serious, serious hassle and it's just totally put me off TBH.

There were always a ton of completely ass mods in HL, equally, there were the interesting ones that got somewhere and were fun and different. With Source, about the only thing I really look forward too is Insurgency, because, as mentioned it's run by people with their heads screwed on properly. Dystopia appeals to me vaguely, but I've heard nowt about it since the initial release.

Quote from Zacker

A reason why the modding community is rather small might be that you get flamed if a mod release is not the next big thing? Because of a few top quality mods many people expect all mods to be on commercial level or above.

Yeah man, that's so true. I personally hate when people bash other people's work just by the looks.

There a few good mods out there.

PVKII is going the right way, Im on the team so its easier for me to know than the public. It is a mod that you play for fun. Choose between Pirates Vikings or Knights, and bash the hell out of the other teams, whilst trying to steal their treasure.

Its good quality, but not serious.

But yeah, increased time spent on mods for source will mean theres a long long waiting period for them

i dont enjoy mapping anymore :\

I don't think Source is that hard to work with. Yeah, there's tons of folders and the new way they're organized, plus Steam, feels forced upon you and the tools given with the SDK might not be too easy to work with, but some shortcuts and some good custom community-made tools go a long way. I just think it's not as good as it could've been and it's not the best at first sight, but once you're familiar with it, it does work well. At least it does for me. Hurray for community-made tools bytheway.

Custom models and materials are easy to create and to put into your map. Now I may have had luck that I learned to model during the HL days so I'm used to creating models for details, and I believe there's a sort of trap for HL people who rely too much on brushwork and see custom content as not belonging to the mapping realm, but hey. I like the materials system, I even like the external model materials because it lets me share them between models, and change them without ever touching a modelling tool so a look in a model viewer or a playtest is enough to see the change.

For me, Source feels good to work with. Maybe not the best, but I kinda like it. I think it has a steep learning-curve or at least a steep getting-used-to-curve and that may put so many off in my opinion. I know I felt lost at first, not knowing what to do with all this new stuff... it took me a year before I finally got mapping with Source, and now that I do, I really like it.

And yeah, there's this bad habit going on amongst mod teams and generally people. Maybe that's because the novelty of modding and mapping has worn off in general and people only look at the outside. They see others got hired and made big names while they overlook the reasons these guys did what they did, and what finally got them that far.

I used to map on myself without showing off too much to others and then finally post a finished map, while really it should've gone through at least a few playtests. For my current map I take a different approach, building a playable ugly thing first, testing it, tweaking stuff, detailing, testing again, and so on. The people that try to make the next big thing in one release should know that this approach is so much more fun. It's more effective too but it's also a lot more fun. Those playtests got me playing HL2DM again while I'm really not a multiplayer fan.

I guess we're all ranting today...

Today I went into my computer hall to do some work and I heard some seniors talking about their senior studio projects. They wanted to make a mod. But instead of wanting to work with unreal, where they have a whole list of faculty who are able to trouble shoot, work with them, ect they said "I want to work with halflife 2 (note they didn't even bother to use the engine name) because it has dynamic lights and bump mapping.' For me this sums up why people fail, especially in my school. They forget about the resources they have wanting to always have the latest best technical achievement in hopes of finding a good game. I think we can all agree that looks =/= gameplay.

So this also ties into why in my opinion halflife 2 fails. People see the assetts you can use and can create some pretty cool stuff. But the reason in my opinion hl1 was so successful was that it was realitively easy to get new materials ingame. Almost anyone could use wally to import textures into hl1. Now its a complicated task. Incomplete, undocumented (or not complete ones), and frustrating tools will not encourage people to set up communities. But even with tools you have to have the internal DRIVE to create something. To create art. To spend your time away from the social life and sit down to MAKE something. With new engines to do that, it takes more and more time. Its not an easy task to make something that stands out. So you got three types of people.

1.) People who use the tools and the assetts available and make something

2.) People who will use the tools available and also newer assetts that might have been released.

3.) People who make their OWN assetts and make THEIR stuff stand out.

Which is the more prominent and which is the most rare? People who succesful make a pack of new content are reluctant to release things because their material WILL be raped and they might get half the credit for it. Its a sad story in my opinion. But with that, I think its everyone's fault. For the people who are creating horrid user tools, people who are only going to use other people's art assetts, and people who dont release their art assetts because they're reluctant to help the community.

There are extremes yes, but they're rare.

HL2 is bound to fail unless tools get a significant rehaul and the importation process becomes easier for people to get used to. Remember the people who mod are usualy the ones who are NOT proffesional and do NOT have a whole day dedicated to learning how to import a single texture or model or animation. Creating tools thinking that people have a lot of time to research and trial and error is folley. Unreal makes it easy for you to import things and that is why I think unreal will win in the long run. I think its the people who jump to the latest and greatest graphics engine to realize the tools are hard to learn and it takes effort will fail..

btw, hourence I started with hl1 and have learned unreal

The Captain is a one-armed dwarf / He's throwing dice, along the wharf!

I totally agree that Source is a pain in the arse to work with.

[*]
[*:3kv26vr0] The SDK is horribly convoluted.
[*:3kv26vr0] There is a huge lack of documentation, and much of what we have is community-created, not even piggy-backing on official morsels from valve.
[*:3kv26vr0] Steam encapsulation has created more problems than it has solved. The organisational problems in particular make me want to scream. I remember wanting to punch a baby in the face the first time I had to compile my own prop. Yeah, having about 3 huge directory structures is very convenient, as is the fact that models require everything to be in the corresponding directory, then the models don't even generate a single packed file, they generate multiple files.
[*:3kv26vr0] Steam updates break my Hammer every second update (always fun going through the 'solution' of resetting your game configurations and remaking them)
[*:3kv26vr0] Hammer is a six year old editor masquerading as a 'modern' level design tool. The familiarity and continuity is great, but anyone that is honest with themselves knows that it's antiquated and hampers work flow.
[*:3kv26vr0] The devil is in the detail. Unfortunately, detailing in Hammer is horrendously painful. There's no lighting preview, and Hammer crashes when run in tandem with HL2 for a lot of people (moreso during the last few months, when it has started happening to me). The model viewer built into hammer is a JOKE. You find what you're looking for by eventually memorising all the useful props, not by actually using any kind of intuitive interface. Valve's naming conventions are also confusing. Lights folders with no lights in them. Pipes folders with gutters in them. Pipes in other folders. Duplicate textures.. tool textures that don't have any functionality. No wonder the game took five years to make.[/list]I could go on. I feel like strongbad at times, it's like trying to make a game while wearing boxing gloves.

My primary reservation is the fact that valve's idea of 'community support' for mod teams was to document a fraction of HL2's features, then create a wiki and offload the responsibility. How do they expect the mod community to flourish with such half-assed support?

I agree with much of what eric said regarding people becoming too precious about mods, rather than treating them as rough & ready then iteratively releasing, but people have become more conscious and, dare I say it, precious about their work. Part of this reason is due to people's expectations shifting. Look at dystopia. How many of us played it and then dismissed it because it had a lot of really rough parts that we couldn't see past? I know I did. I filed it in the "has potential" folder and then never played it again. If someone plays your mod and finds it lacks a hook or is average, the chances are they'll never play it again unless everyone else starts playing it.

Also: The main problem with mapping nowadays is a lack of high profile review sites. Radium, anyone? The guy could be an asshole at times, but his site pulled everything together, particularly for HLDM and TFC in their infancy. I remember when I used to eagerly log on to his site to check out the latest maps.. the days of scary_1 and the_cheese pumping out maps prolifically, and it inspired me to get started. Now what do we have? Pretty much nothing in terms of high profile review sites. There's no well-known one-stop-shop for mapping goodness.

Bit of a rambling post, but IMO the Source engine itself is the main reason that there's a serious lack of quality stuff out there. You can't increase the complexity of technology and raise expectations, then back it up with a horribly designed SDK with little documentation.

I think that when the next generation of engines comes around, the mod community will start to really dry out. Creating new content such as maps, textures and models take alot of skill and determination already. When the industry once again raises the bar for graphics, the amount of amateur modders will decrease since it won't be something you can just "pick up and learn" anymore.

I'm not so sure, really. Modding will inevitably get harder as technology advances, but as long as the tools improve in step with the technology (see: Zbrush) then hopefully it won't be out of people's reach.

But even if there will be less of a modding community in the future, I don't think that all the 3d modellers, and texture artists who are doing things right now but not necessarily implementing their work in to a game are still there, and even if modding becomed harder and harder, the basic skills still apply, modellers do models and texture artists will do textures, we just kinda need the middle man who knows the game tools so he can work the pesky doodads in place, or something.

I don't like committing fully to a mod team, I see myself as one of those modellers who doed some doodads and if I see them fit for a project I might donate them the modesl for use, without the hustle of NDAs and such n' such.

But as it turns out, there are very few mod teams that want to tell anything to a freelancer who after the quick job goes to another assignment so it is pretty hard for me and the likes to work. I dont' have the time to commit fully to a mod team, and when I find the time to do something for them, they don't want my help because a) "we are already full"-crap b) they don't want to tell me anything or c) they just don't care.

So I'll say, burn in hell losers!

I usally love to work with Hammer editor (making HL1 maps, nothing released though) but the thing I hate most about Hammer 4 is that it feels too flat, and too complicated. This is what I mean:

Left: Hammer 3.5

Right: Hammer 4

[Blocked Image: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/deathquakis/Hammer4Prob.jpg]

In Hammer 3.5 I felt more inspired to work with my maps because I could actually see my structure building because of the different shades on the walls. In Hammer 4 its just too flat to see what you are doing, and very uninspiring to work with.

Another rant is that, in Half Life 1, we had a large viarity of textures to use. We could of made Black Mesa based maps, Space Ship, Xen...neary everything and due to it being so easy to import new content, you could of made nearly any theme in HL1 with a click of a button or two for importing. Its difficult in HL2 due to everything that has already been said in this thread.

Another one of my rants is that there is way too many Rebel vs Combine maps, which has nothing to offer except the same old fights and no decent storyline (I prefer a strong storyline and believe it's possible even for a short map) Some maps also have a square box with props thrown it. Great talent there, you will win the laziest mapper award. Unless there is a very bad reviewer out there who loves maps with 1000 props thrown in. So far, Minerva: Metastasis1 and Das Roboss are the best HL2 SP maps out at the moment. Shame

Someone mentioned HL2DM being boring due to the gravity gun. I agree, HLDM was a lot more fun, and HL2DM is just...Besides, I thought there was only 1 gravity gun.

Due to Hammer 4 being so horrible, I stick to HL1 to map for Svencoop3 until that dies, then probebly move onto Doom3/Quake4/(Prey?)/UT2007. I've used the Doom3 editor, and used UnrealEd for UT so I know how to use them, which is useful. Although I will still map for Duke3d since thats the easiest game to mod for (Even importing Highres with Jonof Port is so damn easy, same with models)

One thing I could count as the plus side of other editors (Doom3 editor and UnrealED) is that when you learn to use them , you can use your skills on several other games, Doom3 editor (now I'm taking a leap of faith and going to assume that they use the same editor for Q4, QW and Prey) works for 4 games.

UED works for god knows how many games (counted 20~ games for UE2/2.5) and if you have worked with UED from the first generation the transition from the first gen Unreal ED for this gen was as smooth as babys bottom (or so my cousin says, don't know much about that myself) AND as a bonus, there are around 10 games announced for UE3 and several companies have pledged allegiance for UE3 so I'm pretty sure that if you become a whiz in UED3 you'll don't have to worry about employment.

So can you say the same about Source and Hammer? It has even less support than Doom3 engine for crying out loud.

Sticky thread!!

Someone should email Valve with a link to this topic, maybe they'll pay some attention.... or maybe not.

I've made a link to this on RUST btw, I'm sure there are people there that will also share the popular viewpoint here.