game devs you really hate!

[Zacker]

I agree that the Source tools and the modding support is very much lacking. It is one of the strongest reasons why I am trying to learn UE3 now and I can recommend others to do the same. The UE does not get any more modding support than Source, but it seems to work significantly better out of the box.

[robert.briscoe]

Then we remembered we get the tools for free...

Just because its 'free' doesnt make it ok.

[hessi]

would be even worse, if they wanted money for this crap.

i totally agree to briscoe. i seriously hope that valve will get into some disaster and have an epic failure so they would have to refocus.

btw i didnt buy or even play any of the orange box games. this whole region protection thing is also pissing me off. i dont want to screw my perfect "english" game account with any new localized games.

there are so many things that make me angry. Angry video game nerd 2.0!

[m8nkey]

As a mapper, Source is my chosen SDK for the moment and I'm fairly happy with it. The instability of the SDK can be very painful, as are innumerable aspects of Steam. Admittedly I'm simply an enthusiast and don't delve very deeply into anything more than generating my own content and putting it in a map. Source does allow me to do what I want, fairly easily, for the time being.

Another disappointment was when they announced Steamworks for ‘developers’ At first I thought this would finally the be the solution to supporting mods via Steam, but it seems its for commercial purposes only. After all these years they still have no interest ... sad!

I'm suprised by this too, it's fucked you can't download mods directly through Steam and have it maintain an up to date local version.

There's a handful of mods which I'd consider to be of a proffesional quality (Dystopia and Insurgency are well polished) with more on the way (can't wait for Nuclear Dawn and Off-Limits, FoF is coming along nicely too). Maybe it could be construed by some marketing retard that these are in direct competition with commercial games if they were distributed on the same system?

[e-freak]

mod distrib via steam is on it's way afaik. i really dislike the modtools atm as well but tbh I don't like the other sdk sets better. On the one hand you can complain about the way Valve refuses to give a GUI and proper exporters but on the other hand you have at least the pure tools at the hand instead of "Klicki-Bunti"-Buttons (sry for this "german" expression but the phonetic of the word should give it justice) and a set of "insert pretty props here"-editors.

[Minos]

I don't get this steamworks shit either. Valve would never be as successful without Counter-Strike and the mod community, who brought exposure to an already outdated engine at the time. And now they give minimum to no support at all to the community... maybe some marketing "genius" thought they don't need to rely on their community anymore, which is of course a big mistake.

Distributing 3rd party mods on steam would bring the community together and reward the hard work we have put into these mods. But that also gets into legal problems, as they would indirectly make money with games that should be free (it would significantly increase half-life's sale in my opinion).

[e-freak]

nah, I think the mod thing would be something like a svn-system with torrent/p2p system. so you'd still have your normal mod folders.

[Seldoon182]

Email Arkane Studio. They are a Source engine liscence owner and I know that some of their modelers use Maya... I can't mind that VALVe doesn't care about them !

actually they were faster than i would be be

Nice ! :wink:

By the way, even if some of the VALVe's team belong the Quake2 modding community, I don't mind that VALVe wants to give to Source engine modders the opportunity to make high quality games like them. They don't want to share with us their tools and their experience. I mean they're professional, they had to earn their life, to manage their studios... So yeah it's pretty lame to share toys there and there around fucking deep folders but what do you want to do ? If you feel that their support is bullshit, just switch. Moreover, both VALVe's engines are from Id Software's Id Tech 2 engines and they have worked so hard to develop their own tools, so they aren't oblige to share their knowledge for free. I think that the Source SDK is enough and if you want more, do it yourself. No pain, no gain.

I've emailed some developers who worked on HDR games (as Jess Cliff for DoD:s) about the splitskybox program and they had never replied me ! What can I do ?

- Nothing !

[⌐■_■]

Then we remembered we get the tools for free...

Just because its 'free' doesnt make it ok.

and they're aint free either..

[-HP-]

Then we remembered we get the tools for free...

Just because its 'free' doesnt make it ok.

and they're aint free either..

indeed, you paid for the game.

[JohnC]

I dislike Valve for one basic reason: they don't do very much.

In the meantime before their next Half-Life, they simply buy the next popular mod, maybe tweak it a bit, and release the next version with a price tag. They bought Team Fortress, they bought Counter-Strike, they bought Day of Defeat, they hired college kids to make Portal, and Left 4 Dead is little more than a cash-in on the recent Zombie mod trend.

[Chunks]

I always wonder what the workflow is like in the SDK versus what they really use at Valve. Surely it can't be as backasswards. It took me half a day to figure out how to compile a model, and that's only because we have 3rd party tools (thank god for wunderboy)

After ep3 is over they need to just build something completely new from the ground-up, because Source is going to be ancient by then.

[dux]

I don't think they'll build anything new from the ground up again considering the amount of time it took to produce Source. Maybe we should all map for the new IdTech5 when it comes out. Plus Idtech5 is still running on OpenGL 2.1 as IdTech4 so I can't wait to see what Carmack can do with OpenGL 3.0. If he doesn't retire after this Engine like he said he's going to.

[zaphod]

I dislike Valve for one basic reason: they don't do very much.

In the meantime before their next Half-Life, they simply buy the next popular mod, maybe tweak it a bit, and release the next version with a price tag. They bought Team Fortress, they bought Counter-Strike, they bought Day of Defeat, they hired college kids to make Portal, and Left 4 Dead is little more than a cash-in on the recent Zombie mod trend.

I started typing up a spirited reply but after reading your post a few more times I couldn't make myself believe that you were being serious.

[Hourences]

Email Arkane Studio. They are a Source engine liscence owner and I know that some of their modelers use Maya... I can't mind that VALVe doesn't care about them !

actually they were faster than i would be be

Nice ! :wink:

By the way, even if some of the VALVe's team belong the Quake2 modding community, I don't mind that VALVe wants to give to Source engine modders the opportunity to make high quality games like them. They don't want to share with us their tools and their experience. I mean they're professional, they had to earn their life, to manage their studios... So yeah it's pretty lame to share toys there and there around fucking deep folders but what do you want to do ? If you feel that their support is bullshit, just switch. Moreover, both VALVe's engines are from Id Software's Id Tech 2 engines and they have worked so hard to develop their own tools, so they aren't oblige to share their knowledge for free. I think that the Source SDK is enough and if you want more, do it yourself. No pain, no gain.

I've emailed some developers who worked on HDR games (as Jess Cliff for DoD:s) about the splitskybox program and they had never replied me ! What can I do ?

- Nothing !

Educating your community in your tools, and making sure that they can work fine, without bugs or other crap, is really going to help your business. Unfortunally most companies seem to have forgotten that.... That includes Epic.

A community that is up to date with the technology, creates a great pool to hire people from for those companies who work with the technology. It also spawns many community tutorials and all, again also useful for commercial purposes, and high quality mod releases are great publicity for your game, community, and tech.

Valve would win more from releasing their own tools and giving away their secrets, than sticking to them so hard.

It would be a shame if the problem is not resolved, or pc modding itself might just die. Quake modding doesnt mean much anymore. Unreal may be really succesful as a commercial thing, no one mods the thing, no one plays either... And then all there is left is Source which now also seems to be getting to the end of their line...