Fletch Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 So I started mapping again this week. Yeah, don’t die in shock or anything. This is just a little test balloon kind of thing. I’ll hopefully have screens by this weekend. It isn’t the point of this post, it’s just the catalyst. Wanting to have a benchmark for my efforts, I decided to look around at the current HL2/CSS map community and see why the current standards were. Looks are, let’s face it, everything. I certainly didn’t want to put out a steaming pile of shit (not that it has stopped me in the past). But when I started to look around, I ran into a problem. There is no map community. If you want to make nice looking maps you go to… well… here. If you were to go over to the CS forums, they pretty much tell you to go here. It’s kind of surreal. But don’t take my word, go look for yourself. Look at Planethalflife. That place used to be top dog. I remember having to go on IRC and sweet talk them into posting some screens. Now they barely have a post a day about anything. CS Nation is just as dead unless you want to read up on CPL standings. The other Half Life community pages pretty much consist of the same layout and the same news. Snarkpit is just about the only HL2 map site, and even then it’s a slow trickle. If you were to look at PHL’s hosted sites, you’d notice every single mapping related one is at least 1 year dormant. Ok, so the map scene is pretty much dead, there has to be a mod scene, right? New level designers can surely show off their work in some up and coming mods… right? Oh, wait, there is no mod scene. Sure, there are things that might look like mods, but they’re not. Why? Because now they want to sell their mod as a content pack. So now, instead of dealing with a whiney 16 year old mod “leader” and his crack team of weapon modelers, you get to deal with them PLUS fight about splitting the money and intellectual property rights. That’s going to end well. So what the fuck happened? Didn’t we sit around for years salivating for this new engine? We were all going to release those projects that were always too grand to do with 800 wpolys. Sure, the DM mapping contest was great at pumping out community content, but that was the end. Since CS and DoD got picked up by Valve (hell, we’ll throw Gunman Chronicles in there, too, for shits and giggles), the new standard for mods is to release something to be picked up for distribution. Of course, release is the big word in that sentence. If you look at server stats, you can see you have three options if you want to release a map that will get played: CS:S, DoD:S, and HL2DM. Even assuming you get a good map that is polished and looks nice visually, there is no distribution hub. Sure, PHL and the rest will most likely post pictures, but I have to question whether people even go to those sites anymore. Now I’m not saying the HL1 days were better as far as getting your map played, but from like 1998-2002, there was probably one high quality map a month (sometimes one a week). There was still some underlying current of creativity that was creating these works. After seeing pretty much all of the top tier developers go into the industry now, it seems like the map/mod community has turned into some weird Escape From LA scenario, where the crazies have been left in charge you either go crazy, die, or try to get the hell out. Just a thought Quote
Minos Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 It's sad but true. Those kids who used to spend their entire day mapping grew up and now either got into the gaming industry or work on major mods. There are a few quality mappers popping out here and there but they are exception imho. Back in those days it was harder to make a cool looking map, no one knew how to make textures, models and stuff. Now you just sit on your comfortable chair, fire up hammer and bingo, you got plenty of quality resources in your fingertips. Quality textures, quality props etc... So these new mappers just make an empty and boring room and fill it up with props. The community used 'to be run' by the community in the past but now it's run by a corporation. Maybe that's why the major mods focus on getting their mods bought. While valve's presence in the community is good it's also bad in the other hand if you get what I mean. There are a two sites you didn't mention where you can pimp your map too btw. http://www.interlopers.net/ Quote
curman Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 The topic doesn't really seem to follow at all what you're preaching here. You're saying theres no mapping community - fair enough. When Counter-Map died off the popularity of Mapcore did rise and began to take on new members. The thing about it is, Mapcore itself isn't built on designing techniques. Sites like Snarkpit and the classic Interlopers, which was stupid to leave out, are built on that. They're also communities with members as well as HL2World. Are they as proffesional as Mapcorians? Likely not. No mod scene? Mod Database? Http://www.moddb.com Did this site just die, or did you not know about it? I find it pretty entertaining to read for updates on mods, not all Half-life 2 mods though, but theres NUMEROUS sites giving mod updates and news posts. Besides that, I agree. We seemed to have more upbringings and ground-breaking level design work when Half-life 1 was released. Careers formed and such, we desired and lingered for Half-life 2 so much that it seemed almost that production halted. If I had a graph, which I am lazy to make in MS Paint - I'll say this, the number of mods roughly before Half-life 2 in production were roughly around 1250 mods (Information from estimations and moddb.com). If updated to the present I'd say only a handful of mods, roughly perhaps 200-300 are remaining. And about 10-50 seem promising for a release. Quote
curman Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 I swear to god someone just posted something about critting works.. what happeaned Quote
JynxDaddy Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 I think the problem is the growing difficulty and effort needed to make a map or mod. It's not something you can learn over the weekend anymore. Quote
Minos Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 No mod scene? Mod Database? Http://www.moddb.com Did this site just die, or did you not know about it? I find it pretty entertaining to read for updates on mods, not all Half-life 2 mods though, but theres NUMEROUS sites giving mod updates and news posts. He meant that there aren't many mods out atm. If you were to map for HL¹ you could choose between many mods (CS, TS, NS, DoD, TFC, etc... each one covering a different theme). It takes longer to make a (good) mod nowadays though. Quote
Kosmo Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 I'd say that UT2k3 and 2k4 killed the HL mapping and modding community, and more specifically the "Make Something Unreal Contest." The long run and prices made many mod teams then making their small mod on HL1 without proper tools provided by the developer as opposite to UT, they just couldn't resist, there was very minimal modding community in UT before the lauch of UT2k3, so it grew in to a huge community, but with a very small amount of new faces, that is to say that most of the modders were HL veterans. At the first two tiers of MSUC I worked in couple of mods, modelling props and such, and both of the teams came from HL1 modding community, their mods were in the design stage and ready to start when UT2k3 came so they checked it out, loved it but when they tried to expand their teams they noticed that all their friends, team mates and the whole community had changed to UT modding community and so did they. It was easier to get memebers to your mod team, easier to get some taste on pro maps and the content was fresh. So "HL2 came, why didn't the modders return?" Well only thing I can say to this is that when UT2k3 first came, the HL1 community had been running for a very long while, many mods didn't get up from the ground and mappers were tired of making the same thing, so it was starting to slope, so the natural decision was to go to a new hunting ground. By the time HL2 came, UT community had no slope, the community was still going on, and still is today, even if some teams went back to HL. This is what I think. Quote
Campaignjunkie Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 I think Erik Johnson talked about this (kind of) in this interview: I think the real mistakes are happening on the individual MOD teams themselves. They are becoming far too hesitant and conservative in their approach to how they design, develop, and release their games. If you go back and look at the first versions of Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, or Day of Defeat, you'll see rough games that focus around a single game play idea. The first version of Team Fortress for Quake only had 5 classes, and wasn't even a Team game. In the first version of Counter-Strike, it was virtually impossible to tell the CTs and the Ts apart. The goal of all MOD teams should be to go out and learn from the community as to whether or not your game idea is a good one or not, and plan on releasing as often as possible. Right now it appears that too many MOD teams believe they have to build the next huge hit with their first release, which is a plan that is pretty likely to fail. [...] Sometimes it feels like the MOD community is becoming more and more like the "professional" game community, where products are being approached as something that should take a long time, ship once, and then everyone moves on to the next big project. MOD teams that are approaching building games from this perspective are throwing all of the advantages they have out the window, and are just competing with every other game developer in the world. ... Which pretty just sums up my opinion. Mod teams have a certain delusion of grandeur that convinces them "Hey, let's copy Halo and release in about a year" or"I want my own version of Resident Evil." Call it lack of technical skill, lack of resources, whatever - in the end it's lack of creativity, IMO. EDIT: Oh, and there's always a 4th, very good mod you can map for, other than CS:S, DOD:S, or HL2DM... HL2 singleplayer. It's good stuff. Quote
curman Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 No mod scene? Mod Database? Http://www.moddb.com Did this site just die, or did you not know about it? I find it pretty entertaining to read for updates on mods, not all Half-life 2 mods though, but theres NUMEROUS sites giving mod updates and news posts. He meant that there aren't many mods out atm. If you were to map for HL¹ you could choose between many mods (CS, TS, NS, DoD, TFC, etc... each one covering a different theme). It takes longer to make a (good) mod nowadays though. Okay true, but think of it this way. Half-life 1 was released in November 1998. The original (Mind you crappiest that was barely changed except for a few minor guns and levels) of counter-strike was released on June 18th, 1999. There was a gap, yes. A little over 8 months. And mind you it was crap but at the time where learning this was a new experience to all. Half-life 2 released on November 2004 (I think) and now it's almost been a whole year with barely any mod releases except a few minor alphas. The thing is, the Half-life 2 superiority compared to half-life 1 is overwhelming. To make full conversion mods takes.. time. Map props, weapons, codings, levels, all this is a longer process I say than something that can be accomplished on Half-life 1. Quote
ginsengavenger Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 If you were to go over to the CS forums, they pretty much tell you to go here. It’s kind of surreal. heh... i try not to link to or even mention mapcore over there, you think i want to be blamed if this place is inundated with nubs? i'll have a more erudite and topical reply when i'm less durnk *ed: essentially I think the barrier to entry is too high, the learning curve is too steep, the documentation is basically vapor, the custom content pipeline is fucking ridiculous and all in all there are better games to mod for. The mod scene carried HL1. It can't and won't carry HL2. Valve have shot themselves in the foot by doing so little to make it easy for us--just look how many of our veteran, prolific HL1 mappers have even released custom maps. It's just too much of a pain in the ass. Quote
Jezpuh Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 Yeah, but isn't it true that all the good mods for HL came out in 2001+? I mean, I don't remember much mods that released before 2001. Also, most communities were set up around 2000 if I'm not mistaken. I think you should give everything some time. Also, Snarkpit and Csbanana are still quite active. Quote
Tequila Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 or"I want my own version of Resident Evil." Call it lack of technical skill, lack of resources, whatever - in the end it's lack of creativity, IMO. Of course I'm going to disagree with this particular point, as I feel the creativity lies in what you do with a particular IP, rather than having to create a brand new universe, but as for everything else said in this thread, it's all sadly true. Quote
RD Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 I think the community is a bit split. For hl1 i remember we would play with 10+ mapcorians on a map i made for cstrike and on lotsa other occasions just playing dust or some other standard map, but nowadays ppl are busy playing bf2 or katamari damacy. Damn u mazy Besides that, hl2dm isnt competitive enough, cs source is boring according to all of u, except me and mrh2o (damn u all), and even tho DOD:S is superb none of u play it. So i think ppl are just too busy playing other games instead of mapping for the game they should be playing, cs source, which is superb beyond comprehension in a good map . Quote
Kosmo Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 In my opinion, if you want to be a good mapper, CS:S hardly cuts it these day. If I were a mapper and wanted some new challenges, I think I would go BF2. I mean, how far do you think you can hone your skills when all you do is straight forward maze maps that all CS:S maps are? Quote
Zacker Posted October 27, 2005 Report Posted October 27, 2005 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. *ed: essentially I think the barrier to entry is too high, the learning curve is too steep, the documentation is basically vapor, the custom content pipeline is fucking ridiculous and all in all there are better games to mod for. The mod scene carried HL1. It can't and won't carry HL2. Valve have shot themselves in the foot by doing so little to make it easy for us I agree on this, just think about when the last version of Hammer was released(2004)... Quote
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