Posts by Puddy

While the game hasn't looked exceptional, I was counting on it being better then described here.

I'll wait for the normal demo and see.

So, Precursor has been out for two months now! I decided to compile some data about the mod. See below!

Really, I was also planning on doing a full dev commentary walkthrough too but... ehm, I felt that Precursor isn't interesting enough to warrant one. Nor is my throat to happy about doing it (I'm a bit ill).

Downloads: 13750

Based on following mirrors*: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

*+ 250 for the old torrent which has been taken down

Trailer Views: 24750

Based on the following sites: 1 2

With the below results:

Overall, did you enjoy Precursor?

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As a whole, how would you rate the mod?

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How difficult was the mod?

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What did you think of the gameplay?

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What did you think of the environments?

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Did you understand the mod's storyline?

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What changes would you like to see?

*free writing question*

OPTIONAL: What would you like to say to us about the game? Write freely!

*free writing question*

Questionnaire Commentary

As we can see, people who take the time to fill in the feedback form are very optimistic, to say the least.

There's one feedback submission form for every, roughly, 137th download.

Common suggestions/criticisms in the free writing forms were the following:

- Bland first third of the game

- Ending was an anti-climax

- More interesting lighting

- Needs flash light

- Difficulty-level was a bit too high

- Needs custom content

- Request for subtitles

- More friendly NPC's

- More story-moments

- Visual quality could be improved

- Not long enough

- Mixed Hunter-Battle reception (some loved it, some hated it, very polarising part of the game)

Common praises:

- Cool intro and chase

- Plausible and good side-story to Half Life

- No flash light

- Overall presentation

- Challenging difficulty level

- Trainride was fun

- Good voice-acting

- Excellent music

- Mixed Hunter-Battle reception (same as mentioned earlier)

Final Comment

It all started with painstakingly learning how to make NPC's spawn when needed and making them move as intended. And this is where the project ended up.

Creating something like this, i.e. producing the core bulk of content yourself and overseeing all other areas, while working hard daytime was a bitch and at one point I was ready to scrap the entire thing since the quality of a few maps was dreadfully low and there was some other problems going on as well. But I managed to motivate myself to completely overhaul the maps in question and, at the very least, make them acceptable quality-wise.

When it comes to content, I'm pretty satisfied. It's not very pretty-looking, original or epic by any means, but I think it's a pretty neatly tied together experience for anyone who's in the mood for more Half Life 2. While designing the mod, I learned that narrative in games is pretty difficult, especially if you want to tell a story using minimal resources. As one can see by the bottom graph, I managed to evade some players with the storyline, but overall I think that players understood and enjoyed the story. All things considered, I think the final product was pretty okay and I've learned a ton making it.

Since this isn't a full post mortem I'll round this up by super-thanking my buddy Andreas aka Dvorak for handling all the coding and for helping me with feedback throughout development. I also want to thank my long-time buddy Oliver Boson for making the music, which has been greatly appreciated by players. Furthermore, kudos goes to my voice actors for donating their time to do top-notch work. Thanks to all testers for helping me polishing the game!

Pudd out!

Yes, congrats to both of you!

It's no tech support though!

Like always, it looks really cool.

If they're opening a studio I can only wish them the best!

Quote from KungFuSquirrel

And the Door Challenge is in the books! Results are posted here: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=16260As always, if you have any feedback on this Challenge, speak up! Was the wider voting window better for everyone this round? Does everyone still like the "vote for your top 3" ballot?

I think it's good that you can vote for your top three, so you can reward more then one person's hard work (i.e. so Soleval doesn't steal all the votes ).

One idea I was considering is that, you actually write the entries you want to vote for in a post along with a brief summary on why you voted for the entries in question.

We're a pretty small community and I think this kind of voting would work, as opposed to more massing voting on ModDB or similar. It would be a good form of feedback, not only to the person people are voting for, but to other creators to see what players were looking for in a puzzle/"whatever the challenge is"-map. We're all designers here, not pure players, so it feels fitting.

It's just an idea though.

Hey guys! Always fun to see people interested

Quote from Surfa

Did you actually get anywhere with this? It sounds like something I would be interesting in helping out with once my schedule allows.

As mentioned in the first post, this is something I'm looking at as a possible future project. It hasn't gone into production.

Quote from Bunglo

I was thinking about doing a North Hollywood Shootout mod/map, this sounds like it would be fairly similar to the actual event. I'd be down to help out with models/textures if you get it to that point.

Cool, good to know if/when this kicks off!

I read the Swedish article earlier. It feels kind of relevant to speak to former employees and Square Enix about this as well, something the journalist left out.

We have a few ex-Grin:ers here, so I'm hoping they can provide some more insight.

I agree with Furyo's remarks; they seemed a bit headstrong. I think you'll always create a better and stronger company by growing more dynamically as you gain more and more momentum. That they opened a studio in Gothenburg is a huge WTF to me. You're drawing from, basically, the same talent pool as the Stockholm office but your internal coordination and communication will suffer as a result of having two offices. I can understand having a division either in a country where labour is cheaper for art production lines or a division in a country with a lot of game design talent you want to attract, but do like they did? Doesn't seem optimal.

Overall, I suspect a lot of it came down to their own management. If Square Enix were dicks, they should have picked up on it earlier, had a plan B etc. Their aggressive recruitment and expansion led to high operational costs with little to no margins for failure. And unfortunately, they failed.

Now, just so that we are crystal clear, I don't know squat about what really went on inside the company, I'm just speculating. So if an ex-Grin:er thinks I'm full of shit, let me know

Gloglebag: Wouldn't they inherit all the debts as well? Also, would mean a lot of painful reconstruction, etc. Don't think it was a super-attractive acquisition.

Awesome page, as it was the last time.

Stocking up on desktop wallpaper!

But why are old entries no longer being displaed?!?

Quote from vfig

Puddy: Blown away. Doing a conversation tree like that is brave (or foolish); it did get a little tedious because the text was small, and it wasn't always obvious when one of the options had changed. I also found it odd that I didn't get the choice to thank any of the people who helped me. I enjoyed tracing the wire through the basement the most, even though it was hopelessly contrived.

Glad to hear

Yeah, the dialogue system is not the greatest. Also, yes, I thought about it after the deadline that you really should have a "thank you"-dialogue, at least for Wilson.

Quote from bluedude86

puddy, dialog really dragged for me and if the level's pace was a bit faster I think I would have really enjoyed the experience.

Sorry about this. I really could've dropped some shitty and boring dialogue to keep the pace higher.

Stressed writing is not the best

When I hear the term "free to play", I reach for my revolver.

Quote from Mr. Happy

puddy - pretty cool level you got going on there, but there are some major logical flaws in how the story and puzzle design intersect. For example, the two buildings share the same security grid. This would NOT happen if they were a defense contractor and also, if they share the same grid, why doesn't your friend know the security company name? Also, in one of the emails they specifically say "my friend at the CIA told me this secret information..." well I think their email would be monitored so I can't imagine he would specifically state that he has an informant at the CIA, because his friend would be executed for disseminating state secretes. Also, the basement puzzle isn't a puzzle. It's not really about following a wire since you aren't told which wire to follow and there aren't any negative consequences for following the wrong one. I liked how I had to leave the game and lookup the code on the internet. Also I like your dialogue system.

Even though I will explain how I thought, I have still failed as it doesn't matter how I thought, but how players perceive things. Still:

About the security grid:

I think it's plausible that they are connected to the same. They don't have to be a high-level defence contractor. In fact, it can be one of the reasons why the agency assumed control of their project; it was above their "league" (and in effect, their security level). About your friend not knowing; it possible that your companies could be connected to the same grid, but use different systems. Or he forgot, for example.

About the "CIA friend":

Yes, it wasn't a smooth way of telling it. They would probably me a bit more sneaky and talk about it in person (their desks are like 3 feet from eachother). But there are constraints like the fact that the game is too short to weave more mystery around it and that, you know, they weren't hanging around. Also, their "CIA friend" could be code for a leak they have; not anyone he knows personally and officially.

About the wire and code:

There's actually a right one. It's the one connected to the ALTOR box. It changes colour on the way though, but you can track it step by step.

Also... why don't you know when WW1 started??!?

Quote

":1jexi2mi]Guess I'm the only one here that barely touched Hammer editor! Also, remenber guys that modding wasnt gldsource exclusive back in the days! There was quake, max payne, unreal, etc.

those were like... the pepsi of the gaming world

Ah yes... the good old times. When everything was so cheap to make and every possible mod idea was in production.

I was around 12-13 at the time Had a shitlong mapping hiatus after that, until I started working on my failed TF2 map and Precursor.

btw... does anyone have bright.wad? You see, I actually found one of my old maps re-mirrored here after googling it http://www.gamefront.com/files/1896336/CS_UrbanSiege

But apparently you need bright.wad to open it. Any ideas? Want my nostalgia-trip!

I mean the trailer itself is kind of cool. I like how they went all-in with the world war theme.

But the story will probably be whimsical at best, the bread and butter SP gameplay will most likely be as dull as the last few entries and the MP will probably be same-old same-old (which includes non-existent balancing).

Loved CoD4, but every single entry after that has been... well, meh.

Just like campaignjunkie shows, feedback is always good, even if we can't modify our entries.

Keep it coming! I can't really speak for everyone but I sure appreciate it.

Quote from Campaignjunkie

Puddy: very large, expansive and impressive... I can't help but think you chose the wrong game engine for dialogue trees though. the "conversations" don't feel very satisfying, but tracing the wire in the basement / inputing a keycode felt much more natural / better in comparison. I think it was good for a scripting experiment, just to see if you could pull it off.

It's definitely not the right engine. It was a fun experiment. When the challenge was put up I was immediately compelled to think in terms of wires, boxes, buttons, levers and typical HL2-puzzle mechanics.

I did not want to. So... I decided to create a narrative-driven puzzle where you're dropped into a world with only question marks, and you have to keep your eyes and ears open to get your bearings.

And you are absolutely right with the dialogue. I wish I could've had time to rework it more. A lot of the dialogue is pretty bland (especially speaking to the clerk, lol).

I think the end-result was okay if you are interested in the story. You want to hear all the details and fill in more pieces of the puzzle. But I could've done a much better job.

Here's my "noir mystery adventure puzzle" entry for ep2. In addition to the main puzzle, it features a story which you'll have to figure out too.

[hype]The narrative is kind of like... you have to unlock the door... to your mind [/hype] Playtime is actually around 15 minutes.

Features the revolutionary Puddialogue™ system!

Download

Walkthrough (I strongly recommend that you play it instead if you can)

CREDITS

Ghosts 5 (song) by Nine Inch Nails

Dev Texture Pack by Chris528

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Some cool entries so far! I'm gonna wrap up my entry today... it's going to have a slightly different approach.

And sarge mat, it's much better now!

EDIT: Squashing some bugs! Is anyone else finalising their entry?

But...

is porn art?

hahahaha the germany-list is sooooo lame.

I'm ASSUMING it's because their ratings/cencorship-board is a punch of pussies.

past over-aggresiveness leads to modern over-protectiveness...

Quote from generalvivi

... but I'll be available for testing all this week so let me know!

At this rate I'll agree with kungfusquirrels remark