-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] I tell you another problem that at least at that time and appears by the conversations that I have read even here still persist.
With Xen rebels when I received the email from Karl Jones, welcoming me to Xen Rebels, One of the very first questions that I asked as you might guess was "OK what do you want me to make", a town, a building, what, tell me what you need me start with. And the answer that I had gotten was "just use your imagination make what ever you want." Well this is great for creativity release the mind go wild, only problem with that, there is no direction, see I can be very creative tell me I need building's set in a given time period, or era reflective of a given type of culture or setting. But to say just make what ever you want and if we like it we will use it. Well in my opinion that is a problem that persist even today Follow what I actually mean, of course the mappers can be creative and there knowledge of creating maps are so extensive that your lucky to even have them, they may be Picasso's in mapping HL, but the obvious missing component here is that the mapper and level designer should in fact be 2 different positions. I don't mean step on peoples toes but that the level designer although may be mapping as well should be giving direct direction to the mapping team individually There is constructive criticism and then there is Dictatorship, the level designer should fall just in between. Dead lines, constructive criticism, Direct direction this should be the role of the level designer who in facts is working for the writer. Case in point, If you look for example how feature movies are made like Star Wars George Lucas Is the writer the Ultimate imagine-er of the project and he delegates to his producer what he wants, the producer interprets this and delegates that to the team, the producer how ever intern presents to George a varied of examples of what the team has created so that George can decide which one he likes and or decide what needs to be changed. Its that kind of direct input and direction, that from what I have been reading is what is directly lacking in these mod teams. It should be known from the onset what the story is, how it will be developed and that although stepping on peoples toes is not the intention, but that authority will be delegated and a progress of all responsibilities will be monitored. Injected here should be most of all is enthusiasm and leave the suggestion and idea window for the project wide open!! This leads people to not only to be very creative, but it also gives them drive, incentive to succeed Philip Withnall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. -- Yeah. The sad thing is that even if your mod isn't a realism mod, and has one of the most fun concepts ever, it is still so easy to fail. Take (for example) the mod I'm working on as a coder: Elite Force: Total Conversion. It is a continuation of the Star Trek Elite Force series on the Source engine, trying to bring the original Elite Force's MP and Elite Force II's SP into one. The original EF's MP was one of the most fun MP games I have ever played, and there remains a community for the game even now, many years after the game was released. Our mod started out with the full support of the entire community, and then some, but we started out too early (before HL2 was released), and by the time HL2 was released, and the SDK was ready, some of the members had left. However, we still had plenty of people with which to make a mod, and started out. Problems, however, have arisen because there weren't enough deadlines (well, I feel this is the case). People weren't told to "finish that model by this time"; they were just doing things at their leisure. Slowly, other people drifted away because they weren't seeing results, and now we've got three coders (who have all stuck with the mod), a PR guy (who's frantically trying to re-ignite the community), some die-hard supporters (who refuse to believe that the mod is, essentially, dead), and that's it. The leader of the mod hardly ever appears, and when he does nothing really happens. It's all rather sad really, as I would've loved to see EF on Source, and been able to play the game again. It was great fun to play EF, but the die-hard servers are starting to, well...die, and the whole community is slowly disbanding. When making a mod, you really should ensure this doesn't happen; it's very disheartening. :-( Andrew (Bromfitsen) wrote: > -- > [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] > That's a good point, all these new realism mods are hell bent of have a > conformed look to them that makes them try and replicate commercial > successes such as Counter Strike. There are 2 sides to that coin. > > 1) The modding community has reached a level where they have so many > possible applicants and potential content creators to be able to deny many > people a position because they can't produce that specific genre to the > extent that the mod teams want it. > > 2) However the flip side of the coin is that these Realism Mods are all > flopping, and becoming abandoned. I know I wrote a majority of the code for > a Realism type mod but because the team wanted such specific models and > textures in the mod that they ended up using the CS models, and everyone has > seen them before. So their instant reaction was Oh it's just CS I'm not > going to play it. The Realism mods are all slowly burning themselves out, > granted there are a lot of people who play games like CS but they aren't > going to download another game to have similar settings. POA had quite a > big welcoming but it appears to have slowed down quite a lot. The new mods > that are appear to be making it big are the likes of Garry's mod and HL2 CTF > simple concept but much more open to new and unique ideas. Mods like > Neo-Tokyo, Dystopia and Hostile-Planet also have large focuses because they > are bending away from the pure realism style and adding in a lot of artistic > creativity. > > Personally I think you are going to see Realism mods that aren't ground > breaking or lack that something original to hold players attention will > start to fade away and all the unique and fun mods start taking their > places. It's almost like it's going full circle. > > Well, I suppose my attempt at giving some advice would be, if your mod > doesn't fit the the current trend that's fantastic, because gamers will be > more likely to try something completely different than they are to try > something in direct competition with what they already play. > -- > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please > visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders > > > > > -- [ philip.vcf of type text/x-vcard deleted ] -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders --------------------------------- Yahoo! Shopping Find Great Deals on Holiday Gifts at Yahoo! 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