Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

As you may have noticed, things have moved around a bit at Interlopers.

After a discussion in this thread about an Unreal section (although not the first time this has been brought up) I decided to move some of the site sections into a more general editing direction whilst keeping certain forums for specific engine discussion.

Nothing has been deleted, but a few things have been merged. The general idea is to abstract some forums into their own area so that they can be used by any game engine and not just Source.

I've also improved some of the other boards as well (improved descriptions, unsticked old threads etc)

Please allow yourself a bit of time to get used to the new layout and feel free to post feedback in this thread.

Cheers all!

In short - hate it.

• Looking at the main forum page, things look ok at the top of the page where they are all grouped together, but as you go down the page, things look more and more fragmented until you only get one or two forum topics per section which doesn't look right.
  
• The Under Construction section was huge, so having it demoted to a subforum seems a bit silly.
  
• The section where people can get help with their models is in the Source Engine section, yet most problems people will have with modelling will be with the programs they are using rather than getting models into Source, so there should be a model help section in the general editing section.
  
• If someone wants to know about editing for Unreal, they would go to an Unreal editing forum, not a source editing forum. It's like someone wanting a hamburger for lunch so they go to a chinese restaurant. The banner at the top of the page does say "Half-Life 2 News and Tutorials", so it's clear the site revolves around HL2 and Source, not Unreal and UDK.
  
  From what I gather from the thread you linked to, it seems that some people think that because this site was usful at teaching Source to them, the same would be true for Unreal. This logic is just completly wrong to me. It's useful for teaching Source because that is what this site was created for and that is what the site is filled with. There is nothing here to do with Unreal so it would be of no use whatsoever to learn Unreal here. I know some people will say that tutorials and other stuff about Unreal editing can be posted here so make this site useful, but where will that stuff come from? It will come from Unreal websites and forums that are already set up and well established, so just copying that information onto a site that has Unreal as a minor part of it seems redundant and a lot of effort for very little reward. If the Interlopers who are doing Unreal editing used those well established sites instead, it may make them as good as this site. If people want to know about Unreal editing, why not either just point someone in the direction of a suitable site or someone could create a site dedicated to Unreal editing.

Megadude wrote: The banner at the top of the page does say "Half-Life 2 News and Tutorials", so it's clear the site revolves around HL2 and Source, not Unreal and UDK.

Then it should be "Half-Life 2 News &Tutorials and more..."

cz_squishy wrote:

Megadude wrote: The banner at the top of the page does say "Half-Life 2 News and Tutorials", so it's clear the site revolves around HL2 and Source, not Unreal and UDK.

Then it should be "Half-Life 2 News &Tutorials and more..."

I guess some people just don't like change

there is nothing wrong with adding a few new sub forums like the UDK one, we all love level design don't we?

The idea is to grow the site in other directions. Yes this is a Source site and was built as such but let's face it, the SDK has been all but abandoned and a lot of games use some form of the UDK.

It would be silly to let the site stagnate on one engine. I'm not saying all of a sudden we all drop Source but let's not ignore the community's desire to try other engines. When I started interlopers everyone told me there were plenty of other forums for HL and that I was wasting my time. Look at us now...

I'll consider moving the Under Construction forum. As you say, it is popular.

EDIT: Also, I had considered removing the HL2 specific site title at some point. But I want to test the water with the UDK stuff gradually. Moving the forums about was heavy-handed enough as it is.

While I am in favor of adding the UDK forum, I am not sure about all of the other forum rearrangements you did, but I'll give it a little more time and see if it grows on me.

Blink wrote:I'll consider moving the Under Construction forum. As you say, it is popular.

I am in favor of this idea.

Blink wrote:When I started interlopers everyone told me there were plenty of other forums for HL and that I was wasting my time. Look at us now...

Oh god they were right. Joking

I reckon the portfolios forum could have stayed above general editing, its way at the bottom of the page now and likely to be ignored. The forums with very few posts in are new megadude.

Blink wrote:The idea is to grow the site in other directions. Yes this is a Source site and was built as such but let's face it, the SDK has been all but abandoned and a lot of games use some form of the UDK.

Thank you, thank you, 1000x thank you! Not only that, but the way the site is now seems to promote people using all sorts of SDKs, including things like Unity.

The layout is great. I'm not sure how I feel about the under-construction forum. On one hand, I agree, it's used a lot and may need to be it's own main topic. On the other hand, because of the popularity of WIP threads, completed maps tend to be ignored / undiscussed. Honestly, I have no preference either way, but ideally the WIP threads being in a sub-page in the showcase would be a good idea.

There's one confusion I have about the site right now though. There's currently a showcase thread and an art discussion thread, both of which say that you can post finished models there. This could probably be solved if you figured out what should be done with the art portion of the site.

It may be more interesting if you allow "sketchpad" threads in the art discussion, intended to allow people to post any work, whether it be 2d or 3d, in their own thread. Similarly to the way Polycount does their art threads.

I don't know, just a thought I had. I can make some UDK tutorials now that I am more experienced with it, and that there's a place to actually put them if I make them. Though, does interlopers tutorials support embedding youtube videos? I haven't seen that done very often.

Megadude wrote:

• If someone wants to know about editing for Unreal, they would go to an Unreal editing forum, not a source editing forum. It's like someone wanting a hamburger for lunch so they go to a chinese restaurant. The banner at the top of the page does say "Half-Life 2 News and Tutorials", so it's clear the site revolves around HL2 and Source, not Unreal and UDK.

Clearly you haven't tried looking for a good UDK community. The best choices you have are either the official UDK site or Polycount, interlopers has always been a community a bit more about the community though, especially compared to those other sites. In the end of the day, the way blink wants to direct the site is his choice not yours. Sure it says HL2 news and tutorials now, but really blinks the one with the control over that.

Megadude wrote:
[*]The section where people can get help with their models is in the Source Engine section, yet most problems people will have with modelling will be with the programs they are using rather than getting models into Source, so there should be a model help section in the general editing section.

I actually think the exporting to Source engine causes more problems than it should, so it's probably good it has it's own thread to specifically address that issue. At least, from my experience, the exportation process is really what causes the most problems.