Posts by Campaignjunkie

Work small and work alone. That way, when (I've) made a 80% complete prototype before realizing it's not very fun nor interesting, (I've) only disappointed myself.

Quote from Sentura

Half-life: Source was bullshit, they're fixing it!

that's a feeble excuse.

No one needs an excuse to mod. You're not in it for the "glory" or the (non-existent) pay-check. You do it because you want to do it and you enjoy doing it. That's it. For the love of the game, art for art's sake, design for design's sake, etc.

That said, I think we should all follow the Adam Foster model: Periodic, self-contained, highly polished releases until Valve offers you a job.

It's great, but I think they totally underestimate the need for new maps. Sure, it's still fresh to play the same maps a few times, but it's already starting to get a little stale even if it's all randomized.

Sometimes it looks really cool and then sometimes it looks like a Photoshop filter mess. Still, cool beans.

Still plugging away at my abstract Wild West single player thing. This is the Pit level where you have to rescue your love from being hanged in an abandoned quarry. Trying desperately to finish it in time to enter it into the IGF Student Compo.

EDIT: err, attachments don't work anymore?... hold on, imageshacking it...

[Blocked Image: http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/7018/hn4pit0003oq5.jpg]

I don't know if I care for the new arena game mode very much, but I DO KNOW that I finally have a snowball's chance in hell to finish a TF2 map! Woohoo. I really love these textures / props. (Um yeah, there are several dozen things wrong in the shot - env lighting angle, etc.)

Use logic_case.

For the message, I'd use env_message instead of game_text. That way, you can change the message via text file (or localise to other languages) instead of re-compiling your map with -onlyents.

Well of course that's where my own interests are!... but I actually wasn't planning on participating - I just want to see cooler and better work coming out of the community so I can steal other peoples' ideas and claim them as my own be inspired and love my fellow man.

... Or conversely, how about we have a contest to see who can make the awesomest, most derivative, dilapidated military-cargo crate factory. Bonus points for only using brown / blue / gray. (strangely that's starting to sound appealing...)

Speaking honestly... I would probably only play a handful of the entries and judge the rest by screenshots. So let's just embrace what we are and do some sort of visual oriented competition.

My own little idea: make something that doesn't look like it came from the engine it uses. On GoW, don't make some muddied blue-grey-brown mansion. On Source, don't make a wrecked city lit in fluorescent yellow and teal. On FarCry, don't make a jungle island... etc. For that (optional) extra paradoxical kick (and to level the playing field) - stock assets only. Bonus points if it looks like an actual map and not just some diorama you threw together.

-rt-, I'm not sure what that's supposed to be, but it looks awesome.

Cool stuff -rt-, but increase the luxel density on the lit wall! You can definitely afford the (small) performance hit.

Here's something I'm working on - a kind of Western themed single player thing, but I'm too lazy to make textures, so I'm trying out a gradient-NPR approach. The goal is to rescue your loved one from the scaffold, the scaffold being impossibly tall and inspired by something I saw in this awesome art film called "The Fall."

If you have WON HL1, put it in \sierra\half-life\

If you have Steam HL1, the installer should find the proper path for you already, but you can manually specify \steamapps\your_e-mail\half-life\

Quote

"Reissues" is a community compilation of 30 single player Half-Life 1 levels authored by a mix of various designers. Each one has created their own unique, self-contained chapter: you'll spelunk into ancient Egyptian tombs, scale mile-high cliff sides, and fight your way through several clever re-imaginings of Black Mesa - among other exciting setpieces!Why did we bother squeezing this last bit of mileage out of a decade-old game engine? Because Half-Life 1 offers a unique feel and aesthetic that makes it a timeless classic; because great gun fights remain great fun fights, even without shiny next-gen graphics; because we love what we do, and we hope you'll love it too.

A year or two in the making (we actually finished months ago, but we were waiting on a possible code update to Spirit of Half-Life...) from your very favorite veteran designers in the ancient HL1 community. Yeah, we still exist, surprisingly!

There's some FANTASTIC design in here; Echo Transit, Scepter of Ra, and Starlabs especially stand out in my mind - Echo Transit for the bestest HL1 crane setpiece ever, Scepter of Ra for the sheer scope of the custom content and craftsmanship, and Starlabs for the cohesiveness of it all... In addition to all the other chapters that are great in their own right.

Website: http://reissues.home.att.net/

Download for WON HL1: http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/file ... Issues.exe

Download for Steam HL1: http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/file ... mSetup.exe

Damn, Reno. Those be some phat beats. Thanks for the link.

Cool stuff floating around in this thread.

Albatros: I agree about the normal maps being too strong. In general, I think you're trying to cram too much surface detail on everything; it's all busy, all noisy, all competing for my attention. I like where you're going with it though, it'll be a wonderfully distinct DoD map.

Anyway, here's a small personal singleplayer project I'm working on: You're in this guy's brain and you're exploring his memories; each Grecian urn is a part of a story / memory. It's kind of a Psychonauts-style abstraction in that respect. Not much to look at yet, as I'm trying to prototype the gameplay first (for a change!) but I felt like I should be lurking less and posting more often.

After finishing Ep2, I can't wait for the SDK. My mind is buzzing with possibilities. Plus, Portal maps will be a nice change of pace from the back-breaking epic map releases most people are attempting.

I kind of agree with Mazy about Alyx's dialog. A little too much positive gratitude now, especially after some fairly trivial puzzles - for example, when you break the wood planks to send the mine cart down the slope and break through the wood barricade to get to the first transmission station, Alyx says something like "Great job Gordon, I can really count on you, you can always find a way through!" and I'm thinking "Wow, it just took me a few seconds and 2 mouse clicks..." Overreact much?

I liked everything else though. Vortigaunt wearing a labcoat = awesome. Magnusson and his nearly complete indifference to your fame = awesome. Fighting hunters (which are really cute, by the way) = awesome.

Quote from KungFuSquirrel

I'm actually pretty convinced that the Black Mesa setting is the Macbeth of mods.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (Okay, so it's Hamlet, but I can't remember anything appropriate from Macbeth)

Okay, define "failure." So they didn't become gigantic successes - not many mods do. They still have passionate fan-bases. Join any SourceForts server and try to learn all the advanced building techniques that have evolved. Watching that HL2 CTF video where Valve planted their own cheats in the code was also pretty entertaining. People still play Adrenaline Gamer.

I think the problem is that people are doing "release often" but not following up with "iterate." Okay, so the gameplay isn't interesting - the solution isn't a balance change or a new player class, it's a different set of rules and game modes... But then you risk upsetting the community that has stayed on since the beginning. In any case, I agree that none of this is as simple as Garry makes it sound.

And a BMS rebuttal (not speaking for the team though): I agree in principle with "release often," but I don't think we'll get much benefit out of iteration. We're basically just doing a facelift on Half-Life 1; there's not much gameplay to iterate and test. Plus, it's single player. People are going to play it once at most, and I don't blame them.

Quote from FrieChamp

Exactly my thoughts.

So what? Its popularity still exceeds any other hl2 mod's out there.

Because modding is all about the popularity, right? Funny... I'm doing it because I like to build levels and think about player psychology. :wink:

Oh, and that Black Mesa stab he made; ouch.