> Also, most of the addons developed today are from seasoned 3rd party > coders. Every once in a while you will see questions asked in here or in > the hlcoders list (depending on the question). I also think that there > are more quality utilities today than in the past. There may not be > utilities in "masses", but the ones that are actively worked on do a lot > more than the scattered ones in the past. > > Besides, a few of the seasoned, original 3rd party coders now work for > either Gearbox or Valve. I'm sure they ask their questions direct now. ;)
But, as more and more players loose interest in the games and move on to other new games (BF1942, UT2003, NOLF2, etc.) there will be fewer and fewer people developing addons for the older games. You will continue to find the dedicated Half-Life gamers and quite often find Half-Life newbies that have just recently picked up the game in a bargain bin somewhere, but many of the people that played Half-Life deathmatch, TFC, or Counter-Strike a year or two ago have become bored with the game and moved on to something else. Half-Life is still THE most popular online FPS game around (over 20 times more popular than any other FPS game according to the www.gamespy.com stats) so there's still a market for developing addons, MODs, utilities, etc. However, I think the decline in the number of MODs and addons being released is due to the fact that the game is no longer new. A year or two ago you could look at the news on www.planethalflife.com and see a new MOD coming out every week. Very few of these MODs ever got completed because so many people underestimated how much work it takes to put something like this together. Creating addons or other tools generally takes much less effort and is a good way to contribute something to the community. Also, there's a LOT more information available on the Internet now about writing applications for Half-Life than there was 2 or 3 years ago, so you've got a lot more assistance in getting started. Jeffrey "botman" Broome _______________________________________________ hlds_apps mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_apps
