Warning Signs. What would it take for you to know?

Half Life is jsut as dead as Q3 and UT. They're at least one generation ago (about to be two generations). Yeah, some development still goes on, but it's the long tail of the bell curve and will continue to diminish over time. HL has been dead the second HL2 came out. It's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It's just the natural progression of game technology. It's still a good starting off point for people to learn to design and code on a more simplistic level before jumping into the modern tech, but there hasn't been any serious development of mods for over a year and a half, and there is no reason to believe that will change. For HL loyalists, there is always the positive way to look at it in the sense that people still develop for Doom and Quake. So people will still probably continue to trickle out stuff for HL for some time. Whether people are around to play it is a different question.

Put it another way: If a level is released in the woods and there is no community around to notice, does it make a sound?

A few days ago I was quite bored and I saw HL in my steam list so I decided to play it a little because it's been a long long time since I played it the last time.

Well I ended up finishing the whole game, finishing Opposing Force, finishing Blue Shift and I even downloaded the Uplink demo.

I don't wanna start a fanboyish glorification of HL1, but this game rocks. And yes, it's in many ways better than HL2 and better than most of these so called next-gen shooter.

As for HL1 editing, I guess except for some die-hard fans it's pretty dead by now. Most of the old mappers have a) switched to source b) gone pro and work for the industry c) given up their nerdy hobby.

Quote from sensee

a) switched to source b) gone pro and work for the industry

Yeah, cause if you switch to source, you cant work in the industry. Ever.

All it takes me to realize that halflife is dying, is starting up the game.

I still work with the game as it's much easier to pull things off over Source except for the obvious technological nacks and physics engine. As for it being 'dead', people are still churning out content for the game in small doses, Hell Quake/Quake 2 are still going, of course you hardly ever see anything come out but that could all change as I know several people polishing up some projects. Fuck, Kingpin still has a healthy fanbase as well, lots of new DM maps released on a regular basis. I don't believe you can ever call an engine dead, unpopular perhaps but not dead...

Kingpin was never alive, so it cant be dead

It isn't *dead*...

Quote from Fletch

Half Life is jsut as dead as Q3 and UT.

UT is far from dead yet. There are lots of singleplayer projects going on, and the mapping community is still huge.

Quote from SnipaMasta

UT is far from dead yet. There are lots of singleplayer projects going on, and the mapping community is still huge.

Not compared to what is being put out for 2K3/2K4, which was my whole point. Game communities "die" when their heydey is over, but there will always be the long and steady stream of releases by the diehards.

It's seriously time to cut your losses and move on to another engine D3. It's been almost two years since Half-Life 2 came out now.

Do you plan to work on stuff for completely obsolete engines for the rest of your life, always staying behind the pack? It seems really daft to me to waste time on an engine that is pretty much incapable of impressing anyone nowadays. Even Nightwatch's visuals paled in comparison to pretty much anything on Source, even if they were incredible by HL1's standards.

I mean I don't know if you're planning to work in the industry or anything D3, but spending all your time on an almost completely irrelevant engine doesn't seem like the best way to go about it.

I still fool around with Quake 2, while working on building up skill in Source. I plan to start something with Quake 1 soon. I don't see why you can't try to get into the industry and map for the classics. It doesn't matter as long as you enjoyed it all in the end.

Quote from Fletch

Not compared to what is being put out for 2K3/2K4, which was my whole point. Game communities "die" when their heydey is over, but there will always be the long and steady stream of releases by the diehards.

I guess it comes down to wether you consider yourself a diehard or not.

Well, you won't be very likely to get picked up if ALL you map for is the classics - I think that was thrik's point. Sure, you can play around with them, release maps for them, whatever, but if you are only putting out maps for abandoned engines, you aren't likely to be proving your ability in making levels fit for today's engines.

But hey, if you aren't looking to score a job, then there's nothing wrong with it.

Quote from Fletch

Put it another way: If a level is released in the woods and there is no community around to notice, does it make a sound?

That would sum it up the best.

"why did the half-life mapping community die out?"

because you touch yourself at night.

Quote from kleinluka

"why did the half-life mapping community die out?"because you touch yourself at night.

OH NOES!!!!

Quote from Thrik

It's seriously time to cut your losses and move on to another engine D3. It's been almost two years since Half-Life 2 came out now.Do you plan to work on stuff for completely obsolete engines for the rest of your life, always staying behind the pack? It seems really daft to me to waste time on an engine that is pretty much incapable of impressing anyone nowadays. Even Nightwatch's visuals paled in comparison to pretty much anything on Source, even if they were incredible by HL1's standards.

I mean I don't know if you're planning to work in the industry or anything D3, but spending all your time on an almost completely irrelevant engine doesn't seem like the best way to go about it.

I do want to get into the industry one day but not yet, I want to make something really good for HL1 whilst trying to dabble with source on the side, and then move on eventually. In all the 8 years I've been into editing HL I've not got a lot to show for it apart from three MP maps and a load of unreleased Sp content (stuff that I should post about sometime).

The problem with source for me is that if you can't model you're restricted with the content you can produce, with HL most stuff is easily made out of brushes but if you do that in Source it looks terrible due to the higher standards, plus there's so much more work to do even the Doom 3 engine is easier to work with... First thing I need to do is reinstall HL2 and get Steam working stable and then we'll see about editing after that.

Really I'm still just having fun at the moment.

I'm not dissing you or anything, it's just I recall you once going on about how you'd really like to work in the industry. But if all of your skills are completely irrelevant due to them being based around an obsolete engine, you may as well not have done the work at all. It's like going for an IT job and walking in with eight years experience with Office 1995 but little with Office XP. They'll go with the guy who's stayed on the cutting edge of technology and is truly motivated to keep up with developments.

If you're planning to work in the industry then what you need to do is tackle the problem of not being able to produce sufficient quality models. By continuing to cling onto HL1 you're just falling further and further into a hole that's going to continuously get deeper as engines progress and more modelling is required. Because let's face it, modelling is an unavoidable component of modern 3D design, and you're going to have to embrace it sooner or later. Needless to say, later is not good.

Quote from Thrik

Because let's face it, modelling is an unavoidable component of modern 3D design, and you're going to have to embrace it sooner or later. Needless to say, later is not good.

It really just depends on where you work. At Gearbox, level designers don't model or texture at all. We have dedicated artists that do that and as a result, a much cleaner and more efficient pipeline. This also allows the level designer to do what they do best, actually design the game.

Shoot, for what it's worth, I've worked about 8 months at Epic and close to 2 1/2 years at Gearbox and I have absolutely no modeling or texturing skills whatsoever.

I have dabbled in learning 3dmax, but I always get distracted by learning something else and by the time I get back to 3dmax, I've forgotten it all. And other than photography manipulation and tweaking, I have next to no skills in Photoshop.

Yet I have been in the industry for just over 3 years. Why? Because I do game/level design, not content creation.

Quote from TomWithTheWeather

We have dedicated artists that do that and as a result, a much cleaner and more efficient pipeline. This also allows the level designer to do what they do best, actually design the game.

I'm always curious about what exactly people are doing on games, because from what I can gather it changes from company to company. I imagine a level designer at Valve is not quite the same thing at Ubisoft or Epic. You can get a general idea of what the job implies but there are at least a few differences.

It appears positions or responsibilities are being fragmented as time goes on and people are focusing on more specific tasks. It seems pretty obvious with the employee numbers increasing and the tech going the way it is, but being out of the loop, it's difficult to be completely sure as to how things really work.