Editorial: Did HL1 Ruin HL2?

[Gaz]

I'd agree on the learning curve increase, its insane. When HL2 was released I was too intimidated to use the source engine.

My biggest pain when editing is the now ludicrous folder scheme that Steam adopts.

Where to place content, how to make it and even setting up the tools is extremely daunting to a newcomer. HL1 was easy, simple file structure. Map and go!

You had a wad, thats where all your textures were. Now you have materials in numourous different folders in folders. I like materials, but they scared the shiznit outta me to start with. Now you even have materials for models, where as before your skin was compiled into the model.

When I started for HL1 in the beginings of 1999, there was the HL-ERC, that was where I learn't 90% of all HL1 stuff. It was great, I had 56k then, and it cost an arm and a leg to use. So I near enough printed out the entire site. It was useful and helpful, simple and my little 14 year old brain could make sense of it.

Now we have the Valve developer Wiki, its a good idea sure, but its CRAP. There is bugger all tutorials, bugger all entity info.

HL2worlds Wiki is smaller, but I would say better, it has more information and clearer tutorials, even if some are incomplete.

Valve, you left us in the cold, and I'd be damned if at 14 I would be able to pick up editing for HL2 now....

[RD]

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?

What are and what can be isnt the same. If you dont wanna build mazes, then you dont build mazes. Its not that complex. Also switching to BF2 wont make you a good mapper if mazes are all you can come up with.

Cs was without doubt the most mapped for game on the planet, with the best and most beautiful maps on that engine. Lotsa ppl here got their job from mapping for it.

And Css, well, its gobbummingly fun to play, even if its in a maze (which you cant say about HL2DM imho).

[jayrabbit]

Valve should burn in hell for their model compiling system. Also creating textures without 3th-party tools is a pain in the ass.

When I create maps I want to focus on design and gameplay and not spend a shitload of my precious free time on such issues. Of course Erik Johnson has a point when he talks about, how mod teams try to act like pros, but blaming the community for the lack of mods is just wrong. And of course "next-gen" stuff like normal mapping requires more knowledge, but I still see many ways how to improve the workflow. I hope UE3 is going to be a step in the right direction.

[Kosmo]

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?

What are and what can be isnt the same. If you dont wanna build mazes, then you dont build mazes. Its not that complex. Also switching to BF2 wont make you a good mapper if mazes are all you can come up with.

Cs was without doubt the most mapped for game on the planet, with the best and most beautiful maps on that engine. Lotsa ppl here got their job from mapping for it.

And Css, well, its gobbummingly fun to play, even if its in a maze (which you cant say about HL2DM imho).

I can see your point, but I used BF2 as an example because it has totally different approac to a map than CS:S has, you have to have bigger maps, you have to think about vehicles, base defence, the flow is bit different thanks to the non-DM gameplay (tho that can be said about lots of games.)

But the overall gameplay heavly differs from the CS:S gameplay. So basically you could say that any game that has different gameplay than CS:S could improve your skills, versatility is the key to everything, many of the best heavy metal drummers play jazz because it differs so much.

[JynxDaddy]

This thread has made me sad

[Hourences]

Hl2 has serious workflow problems, so yes Im not going to mod for it then. Just as I didnt decide to go mod for a whole range of other games. It must be easy to make custom content, must be efficient etc, and HL2 just like some other games does not offer this. Why mod for it then ? As an outsider thats a question you ask, the only group that doesnt ask that question is the HL1 group..That shrinks your potential mod user base

But next to that most problems you source people are facing we faced too in the unreal community, since UT2003 was released...youll get trough. I got the feeling the community is seriously fragmentated in to lots of little groups and forums, we had the same thing and that doesnt exactly help.

Same for things like all those prefabs, people are building cubes and are slamming in prefabs chairs and furniture now and call it a map. In unreal they slam in prefab pillars and wall panels until the whole damn room is prefab and the same old style. That is a serious problem and you should hit back hard on it. Review sites should do the same, as should valve for example but what happens instead ? They organize a contest that promotes using prefabs and reviews sites often rate it 8/10 "because it looks so much like HL2". Thats killing level design on the long term. In a few years itll be even more advanced thus even more people will use prefabs and before you know it community level design will be nothing more than placing prefabs and no one will make anything custom anymore or understand what its really about. That will kill half what level design is about. No more architecture skills, no more texturing skills, etc..And the result is that the people who do know, the pro's and the skilled people will also leave the community completely because "they are noobs who do nothing more than placing things, I dont belong there"

Prefabs = no

I hope UE3 is going to be a step in the right direction.

UE already offers better workflow right now, as it did 3 years ago already too

I'd say that UT2k3 and 2k4 killed the HL mapping and modding community, and more specifically the "Make Something Unreal Contest."

It didnt, if anything did than it was because valve waited too long with releasing HL2, HL1 kept dragging on and so yeah, if some other game with newer tech gets released then, unimportant what game, then sure some people will switch over

there was very minimal modding community in UT before the lauch of UT2k3,

There was a strong, reasonable sized and active mod community roughly comparable to HL1's mod community. Both map wise as mods in general. In fact the map community was more active back then then it is now as was the mutator community etc. And it was more friendly, more for fun while now its more "omg i wanna be super pro modder"

that is to say that most of the modders were HL veterans.

I dont know a -single- person in the unreal mod community who started in the HL community, well actually I knew 1 mapper but he quit a long time ago now.

Most HL mappers would complain too much if they had to work with UED, why would they switch

the community was still going on, and still is today

Its going quite slow at the moment, in fact, the UT mod community right before UT2003 was more active than the UT2004 one right now. Most mod teams have died, they seemed to have done it all for the money instead of for fun and supporting their product. From the moment on the contests stopped they all disappeared(minus some exceptions ofcourse). Also a reason why the original UT community did better, they did it for fun so they kept on going.

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BF2 isnt really indoor like, a good mapper should also be able to make good indoors. The old style.

And all those people who quit mapping just because they got hired somewhere clearly werent really devoted to their stuff then...you dont quit if you really like what you do.

[D3ads]

Most of the points here sum up pretty much why I'm sticking with HL1 for the time being. As far as I see it at the moment it's very early days were source is concerned, people are still learning all the new tricks which limits what they can bring out, also as mentioned previously there are next to no tutorials about on anything to do with HL2 stuff because people are still trying to figure out how to actually do these things before they can start writing the info.

Steam is also a culprit, it's a good idea and many people have praised it for delivering them updates, mods and other things, but it's so unstable. On my machine it wont let me play anything without being connected to the net despite me checking the 'remember password' option, everything HL runs through Steam now, installing HL2 even fucked up my HL installation for some reason and kept trying to run the thing through Steam.. NO! I don't want to fucking run HL1 through Steam, it is completely seperate! Yeah so I know you need to do that for online play but I'm not interested in that, you should have the choice.

As someone else mentioned the folder system is bloody stupid, at times it seems like you have to navigate through 20 folders just to drop a file into the game, with HL1 you knew exactly were to put stuff everytime.

With HL1 I know next to everything, how to map, how to use custom textures, how to change the hud, replace the console image, change models and sounds etc and what's more, is that it is EASY there's no messing about dropping texture files into folders and making sure their normal-mapped cousins are packed in with them or having to learn how to model to make basic props that were just brushes in the old engine. Sure, it looks better but it's a heck of a lot more work if you know jack shit about modelling packages.

I agree about how mods come across, you notice how every single one of them usually lists lots of over-the-top-never-going-to-actually-do-them-all

features and lots and lots of information on story and how professional the mod is going to be, and then they show you weapon renders.. you should at least be able to show off some environments, after all that is what makes the mod at the end of the day.. the maps.

One reason why Insurgency is going to make it is because they're organised, they know what they want to achieve and how to do it because it's realistic, they're not trying to be the 'next best thing' but rather just make a mod that people will enjoy playing. Their idea might not be an original one but they've shown they're dedicated to the project by releasing just the right amount of media to the public without revealing too many of the later surprises.

Damn... I wrote so much I've given myself a headache..

[-Stratesiz-]

How about the fact that it takes way more time to create high quality mods for HL2. The other factor is that there is too much information one can receive, more competition, more actors in the network, yet everything is more inefficient than before due to increased demands in mod making.

Hl2 feels more like a transition to the next level in the same information/design networks, rather than a new game with a new network infrastructure. The product is new but the activities are lagging behind since the old networks nowadays are stale, inflexible and lack that sensation of innovativeness and pioneership. They were previously charaterized as unstable, flexible, innovative and the activities were more centralized. Now they have become standardized and conservative.

[kleinluka]

Great post, Fletch. I agree with everything you said.

I think just by looking at today's mod websites and comparing them to the ones 'back in the days' makes you realize just how commercialized the way of thinking in the mod community has become. Many mods ask you to sign NDAs nowadays should you decide to join them and HELP them create content in your spare time for free. Yeah sure, you can all tell me now that this is for protection of the mod and that many people quit mods and then release all their work and screw said mods over big time...but personally I would stay far far far away from mods that make me sign some stupid contract instead of thanking me for devoting my precious spare time to their project. If a mod team approaches me with the initial fear and idea that I might screw them over in the long run then sadly I don't see a team attitude or an attitude of gratitude there but a scared-big-corporation attitude. I don't need or want to waste my time with that in my spare time.

The same thing goes for the targets mods set for themselves these days. We've had this problem in the past but it has become more obvious now. Everybody wants to be picked up by Valve and make it big, but instead of working towards releasing a good game they cover themselves in a bullshit pseudo-professional image they claim is proven by a bunch of nice renders of M16s and AK47s with nice shiny metal. Surpriseeeee, that shit isn't special anymore. Mods like CS and DOD didn't get where they are after one release. The first CS sucked ass. Even DOD sucked but it was still really fun because you could tell where they were going with their ideas and you knew that there would be more to come and things would only get better. I didn't expect awesome graphics, but they still got better with every release. Nowadays you see mods working so hard on making the most awesome looking project ever with team sizes reaching 50 and more...it seems to be the main thing that mods advertise their works with is visuals. And they all do it wrong. I don't even look at mods anymore that think I would somehow get impressed by how many awesome weapon renders they have, because that tells me that mod got it totally wrong and most probably won't even get anywhere close to a release. There are exceptions, yes. But they are rare.

Come back next week for Part II of my rant...maybe. I'm tired now.

[Kosmo]

Untextured weapon models are the worst thing you can do to a mod, I will completely lose respect towards the mod and the mod team when they pimp untextured weapon models on their site.

Besides, I liked to talk with my cousin back in the early days of DoD about how much it changed over the months and release by release, and after like two years with the mod we still remembered the bad times, just like with Natural-Selection (which sucked major ass balance wise) and we remembered the good times and how the mod had changed, and that was made us be with them so long, we felt that we were part of the mod team even if we just played the game for fun. It felt like a real community, like a MMORPG community or something like that.

That was what made the mods so specia. Games are made by faceless corporate lackeys with making money as their target, mods are being made by guys who made it out of love and not for personal gain, being hired by a developer was a bonus, not necessarily a target. Mods were made by guys just like me and you, for guy like me and you.

[Schmung]

Interesting thread.

One of the reasons I bought this monstrous PC I currently sit at was the thought of being able to map for source. I was so fed up by all the limits the HL engine imposed on me and longed for something that let my imagination run wild. I've tried a few times, but as has been mentioned many a time already, the workflow for getting anything in-game in source is fucking absurd. Even getting some extra textures in there is serious, serious hassle and it's just totally put me off TBH.

There were always a ton of completely ass mods in HL, equally, there were the interesting ones that got somewhere and were fun and different. With Source, about the only thing I really look forward too is Insurgency, because, as mentioned it's run by people with their heads screwed on properly. Dystopia appeals to me vaguely, but I've heard nowt about it since the initial release.

[Minos]

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.

Yeah man, that's so true. I personally hate when people bash other people's work just by the looks.

[Gaz]

There a few good mods out there.

PVKII is going the right way, Im on the team so its easier for me to know than the public. It is a mod that you play for fun. Choose between Pirates Vikings or Knights, and bash the hell out of the other teams, whilst trying to steal their treasure.

Its good quality, but not serious.

But yeah, increased time spent on mods for source will mean theres a long long waiting period for them

[Bic-B@ll]

i dont enjoy mapping anymore :\

[Captain P]

I don't think Source is that hard to work with. Yeah, there's tons of folders and the new way they're organized, plus Steam, feels forced upon you and the tools given with the SDK might not be too easy to work with, but some shortcuts and some good custom community-made tools go a long way. I just think it's not as good as it could've been and it's not the best at first sight, but once you're familiar with it, it does work well. At least it does for me. Hurray for community-made tools bytheway.

Custom models and materials are easy to create and to put into your map. Now I may have had luck that I learned to model during the HL days so I'm used to creating models for details, and I believe there's a sort of trap for HL people who rely too much on brushwork and see custom content as not belonging to the mapping realm, but hey. I like the materials system, I even like the external model materials because it lets me share them between models, and change them without ever touching a modelling tool so a look in a model viewer or a playtest is enough to see the change.

For me, Source feels good to work with. Maybe not the best, but I kinda like it. I think it has a steep learning-curve or at least a steep getting-used-to-curve and that may put so many off in my opinion. I know I felt lost at first, not knowing what to do with all this new stuff... it took me a year before I finally got mapping with Source, and now that I do, I really like it.

And yeah, there's this bad habit going on amongst mod teams and generally people. Maybe that's because the novelty of modding and mapping has worn off in general and people only look at the outside. They see others got hired and made big names while they overlook the reasons these guys did what they did, and what finally got them that far.

I used to map on myself without showing off too much to others and then finally post a finished map, while really it should've gone through at least a few playtests. For my current map I take a different approach, building a playable ugly thing first, testing it, tweaking stuff, detailing, testing again, and so on. The people that try to make the next big thing in one release should know that this approach is so much more fun. It's more effective too but it's also a lot more fun. Those playtests got me playing HL2DM again while I'm really not a multiplayer fan.

I guess we're all ranting today...