Posts by Steppenwolf

It's not a survival trip when you got a tent. That's called camping.

That knife looks rather useless to me except you want to make a butter bread. Try to cut young trees or branches with that thing (which you will have to to build your shelter. remember a tent is not allowed)... You are looking for something with a saw on the blade.

I would also look into a spade, preferably a small army spade. So usefull when you set up your camp. But then again you are on a survival trip. So use a rock or your hands.

Talking about hands. Protect them. You need leather gloves, except your on a real survival trip.

Quote from Taylor

* I'll go with it, but “Mindful” means to keep something in mind. Not something that requires the mind!

ah, the traps of english language. at least you get what i mean

Times have changed. This is why there will never be another CS success story. Modding has become far too complex and will get even more complex in the future. There is a shitload of competition now with other online games and mods, gamers are far more demanding in terms of quality, then you have the console market competing with the PC market etc. etc. etc.

I don't even see TC's being released at all in a not so far future. At least none that can only remotly compete with the quality of the games they are made for. So maybe this whole discussion about team sizes will be obsolete soon anyway.

I disagree. There were a number of mods for Half Life 2 that released early and they completely failed in terms of popularity. Players today want polished mods otherwise they will bash you to death. Hiring new staff for a unpopular mod is also very hard if not impossible.

Your comparison to CS also seems a bit out of place imo. No mod will ever again reach this level of success. Critizizing Jeremy for a lack of success? We must live in two different worlds. Both his mods won a "Mod of the Year" award. One of the mods won "make something unreal" and spawned a games company. It doesn't get much better in this day and age for a mod maker. A proper design document would have made the only difference. Then we could have released Insurgency 1.0 a lot earlier. Thats the only way i see how this mod could have been more succesfull. And for this was not Jeremy to blame.

What i was saying is that rpg's used to be mindful fun, not mindless fun. And this fits perfectly in this topic.

Quote from Skjalg

I didn't really see how rpg's are not mindless fun tho.

Single player RPG's used to be packed with puzzles, riddles and secrets to explore. The combat often was turn based. This all has been watered down so much since "action rpg's" like Diablo became popular, that players nowaday don't even remember what a proper rpg is. They think turn based combats is a thing of jrpg's and srpg's. To put this in perspective, when Diablo 1 was released it wasn't even considered a rpg by most of the gamers. There was a huge discussion going on because it was "falsely" marketed as such. But nowadays most western rpg's only use real time/action type of combat and riddles or puzzles are hard to find.

nah the sound quality of the videos is just so bad

I think it's cool that many people who watch the videos think these are some sort of boss fights. I hope they will be blown away by the real boss fights

I think the reason our opinions are different is because each of us has only the experience with a specific size of mod teams. We are both right in our field of expertise.

When you reach a certain team size you get to the point where you can't just communicate your ideas to each and every team member verbally all the time. You need it black on white for them. Thats the main lesson that we have learned with Insurgency. You cant run a team of that size as a group of friends. It needs to be semi-professional just for the sake of not falling apart alone. Doesn't mean you can't have fun or friends within the team. Look i bet you have fun at your work, which is completely professional. I do for my part.

If you ever write a book or article about it talk to Jeremy. He was the leader of Red Orchestra and Insurgency. If anyone on this planet knows about the challenges and difficulties of leading a big mod to success then its him.

There is another thing you can take in consideration. Big mods like Insurgency or some of the BF2 mods are not just for fun for the developers. Many members see them as steps in their career and in fact they have proofed to be. Thats a big difference to smaller "fun" mods. A little professionalism really doesn't hurt or bother anyone on such a mod. In fact it prepares them and teaches them some valuable stuff for their later professional carreer.

Hourences i respect your opinion but what works for one team doesn't work for another team and your way of doing things is not the universal truth for perfect modding. I had the luck of working on two released and succesfull mods for a long time. My experiences are just different ones.

For example the lack of proper design documents was nearly the downfall of both these projects.

If i would ever start to work on a mod again i would make sure that it gets a proper design document and a well organized plan for the coding. You waste so much ressources when people don't know _exactly_ to the detail what they are supposed to do. The coders will prioritize on the wrong things or will code stuff that is unnecessary, the level designers will create map layouts that don't work etc.

In the long run this will demotivate the team more then some "professionalism".

And don't forget that many people are virtualy unable to come up with something if you don't give them exact directions. I met many artists like that. Not everybody is a designer or inventor. Many just want to improove on their skills and need someone who tells them what to do. In the modding community where you meet many inexperienced people this might even be more common then in professional games development.

One last comment about the team size:

In modding you usualy don't get the luxury to pick cherrys. Especialy small teams have problems to find staff at all. They don't even have to bother with the question if 30 people is too much or too less. You can develop your mod with 5 people, thats fine. But as i said for other mods it doesn't work. We couldn't have done Insurgency with a team of that size. There are other (released) mods especially for Battlefield 2 who will tell you the same.

And as i said you have to kick slackers. We always did this at Ins. Our core team at least always worked their asses off. Same can be said about the mod that i worked on before which had a size of around 25 people.

Its true that it often was the opposite for INS but it only worked because we had a exceptional experienced team for mod standarts. But even then we had to learn a couple of things the hard way. If we had known the things we learned before we could have released 2 years earlier or so.

I fully agree with most of the points however. Not so sure about the point about paper work. If we talk about NDA ok. But if this includes design documents, schedules and stuff like that i would have to disagree.

I also disagree with the point about team size. Imo you can't hire enough people for a mod because 80% of them will do no work anyway or quit after a couple of weeks. You will only find out who is valuable for your mod if you give a lot of people the chance to join your team. For INS we often had 50 or so members but the core team stayed always the same ~12-15 people.

And i would add one more point to the list:

As a leader don't be mister nice guy to everybody all the time. You are the one in charge. You have to make decissions and you cant make everybody agree with them so don't even try. It's a waste of time. Kick slackers and people who play manipulative mind games rigorously. They only cause harm to the mod and the team spirit no matter how talented they are.

Quote from Bic-B@ll

162$ for a root canal

sounds awesome :-|

I think Treyarch crossed the line with that mission if there is really no other choice. Can you rape woman and strangle babys in their next CoD? These things happend but what exactly is Treyarchs message and how does this add something of value to the gameplay? It seems like they just added a lot of gore and gruelty to stand out from CoD 4 because they know they can't match the same quality as Infinity Ward.

Imagine the outcry if you could do the same to american soldiers in a game...

argh, i have the same problem with my mouse at work. it fucking drives me nuts

Lack of professionalism on both sides. Activision owns the rights on the CoD franchise. It seems just logical to me that they advertise CoD 5 with the success of CoD 4. Sure they are milking the franchise to death but this is sadly how it often works in this industry.

Even if the guy is a Douche as described by 402. Don't bite the hand that feeds you... Could aswell cost him his job. I lost my last job for less. Lesson learned. What you write on your private blog isnt really private if you are a PR guy for a big company in your work life. Always be careful.

The biggest problem that i see for original mods is that its hard to find a development team and a player base. Thats even hard enough for a more mainstream themed mod.

Quote from 2d-chris

Is Applwoi some kind of fruit juice? Seriously, even if I had doubt I'd remember. It's hard enough getting home lol. I'm currently staying right in the middle of Frankfurt. Stone throw away from the big banks.

Äpplwoi = Cider. Its a pretty common alcoholic drink around Frankfurt. Not so much in the rest of germany, we still prefer beer.

Not far away from the banks you say? The frankfurt red light district must be close too then for you.

Quote from Ginger Lord

German geography is easier because you simply have one country, not a collection of countries under various names.

Actualy thats not true. Germany is a federation made of a shitload of former souvereign states and kingdoms. 1870/71 was the first time in german history that the german tribes got unified to one big country. Only Austria who lost the german war against prussia decided to stay away. Look at the mess it was before:

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These are the german states of today:

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Imagine each would have its own national team like the britains...

Bet you didnt expect to learn something about german history in a James Bond thread

My bad. Replace britain with english then and it makes more sense.

I'm sure you guys are experts in german geography too.

Whatever. No reason to go in angry fanboy mode...

I basicly base my opinion on the fact that i dont remember much from all of the movies. They were all quite forgettable experiences to me so i dont see why i should rate one above the other.

I know that the last two Bonds are a big thing for you brits because the main actor is british so dont mind me and just enjoy the movies.