The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Discuss modifications and also recruit team members.

The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Jangalomph on Sun May 19, 2013 4:56 pm

Per major banter, post your mods that failed with a link if possible. And post a few pictures or videos of it. :smt023

First off, Sabotage:



http://www.moddb.com/mods/sabotage

Then, Biocore which was my very first mod:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/biocore

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I also previously worked on mind world, which was cancelled.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/mindworld-shattered-dreams

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Post on!
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Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby TechieUK on Sun May 19, 2013 5:09 pm

Damn, I wish I'd taken pictures of my old mods.
Let's see, I had about 3 takes on the same mod, which never started, a HL2 themed mod where you start as a young child during the 7 hour war and a few others that I can't remember. There was also a Portal 2 mod I had, it was really just one map with nothing interesting in it.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Major Banter on Sun May 19, 2013 5:32 pm

Sit yourselves down kids, this is a long tale. Some serious digging was involved.

So, I fiddled with UnrealEd 1.0 for a long while until a friend introduced me to Source. I clicked immediately with the brush-based engine and like any ideas guy, I was eager to use my imagination to create a crap mod that would die rapidly. Say hello to:

The Fall of City Thirteen

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The only screen I could find. Not much help.

Way back in the old Rotinaj days. Cliché, crap and with no guidance whatsoever, ironically we had more to show for this than most ideas guys ever do. It was torn apart by lopers, and rightly so. No story, not much to tell, and no screens - they're on long dead HDDs and I removed the pictures from Photobucket years ago. However, I picked myself up and learned from the experience, and quietly came back to lopers.



I moved on, learned and came up with a number of crazy ideas. Like any ideas guy, I would attempt to recruit a team, fail and then plug away at it myself for several months. There was a succession of okish things, that never garnered any real interest, such as:

The Bunker

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I thought I was onto a winner with this one - 3 maps, nice and short, nice and scary. No guns, just horror n shit. Killa really went for the jugular on the mapping on this one, and he had a point - a pretty screenshot does not a mod make. Died after a few months of crappy test scenes.


Untitled

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Abandoned wasteland style mod. Never got anywhere with it.


The Village

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Honestly? Not sure where I was ever going with this. Got my hands on Episode 2 and made something ok at best. Never got further than this.


The Hub

No real clue with this one. Tried to make a hub-style mod, never got past testing. No screens.


Untitled Hospital Mod

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A hotpotch of tutorial maps, bad practice and ripped textures and models. A rare example of decent mapping in my old stuff, but I consider it a turning point. It had a vague plan, and a very decent start. I even still have the two maps for this one, and did a bunch of media. Never finished; I was too noobish for what I wanted to do.


So, I had built up a few friends at lopers by this point, and a when The Hollow Night joined - Arran, aka Hollow these days - he inspired me hugely. I'd already seen the beginnings of Raindrop and I wanted to do something along those lines, especially since I had played STALKER. Field Zone was born.


Field Zone (NB; this is my work only)

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I will tell you the story of FZ's fall sometime, but it's a very long one. Suffice to say I was a terrible team leader, particularly during exams as a 16/17 year old, I think. Hollow left, Delta/Arsene and Mao/Jessica stuck by me and we tried to reboot FZ as...

Rime

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We didn't get very far until the whole thing fell apart. That was the last time I ever ran a proper team. Eventually you realise that making mods is very, very difficult and passion is no substitute for anything without hard work.

The was one final internal mod tested before it translated into Stroll, but I'd rather keep that one quiet. Stroll still uses its map naming convention, amongst other things, but yeah. That wasn't an ideas guy 'hey guyz' thing.

So that's the story of how MajorBanter/Rotinaj turned from ideas guy to cynical, hard bitten solo developer on Stroll: Field Zone who currently does work for No More Room in Hell. I'll tell you FZ story sometime, but that's a postmortem I'm yet to write.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Stormy on Sun May 19, 2013 8:21 pm

I get the feeling that was very cathartic for you, Jack.

I don't have any of my mods that failed, since I have never tried to make maps really, only models. I have only ever been on teams with other people and never really attempted to lead. Can I list the ones I've worked on with other teams and where they went? This extends far beyond source btw, and is a massive tale of angst and depression as I battled with my lack of skills, motivation, communication and tenacity.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Major Banter on Sun May 19, 2013 9:00 pm

Black_Stormy wrote:Can I list the ones I've worked on with other teams and where they went? This extends far beyond source btw, and is a massive tale of angst and depression as I battled with my lack of skills, motivation, communication and tenacity.

I think this could be more about the individual, lessons learned and so on rather than the mods themselves. They're an interesting backdrop to anecdotes and tales that'll educate us all a little.

The FZ story isn't about the mod, it's about people at the end of the day. I'd like to hear about your struggles, Abraham - everyone has something to tell.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby reepblue on Sun May 19, 2013 9:46 pm

Oh, I have a lot on this topic!

Blue Portals 2


Why Cancel?: Portal 2 has a bad vpk system, the mod is 2 GBs and it's no where near done.
http://reepblue.blogspot.com/2011/11/blue-portals-2-canceled.html

Infestation




Why Cancel?: Bland Gameplay, bad coding because I did not know what I was doing, and buggy as hell. Really love the map tho.

I have a lot more, but they are just builds of PUNT, my current project.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Jangalomph on Sun May 19, 2013 9:53 pm

@ Black Stormy, Mind world wasn't my mod, I just did particles. But it still counts a project you worked on that failed. Proceed!
http://www.nomoreroominhell.com
I don’t know whether I was right or wrong, I guess I’ll never know… But I made it. And I guess I should be thankful for that. - Strelok
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby joe_rogers_11155 on Sun May 19, 2013 10:39 pm

i guess i could list "in development" here and also perhaps "room escape" but i continue to hold out hope that i will return to those mods.

the "balto" mod is, of course, still going strong. we just choose not to post for now. gotta manage those expectations.
"Day breaks, but decay soon follows." - Ava Winona
Currently developing in radio silence... 99 Bolts
Here's another project of mine... Assault on Overwatch
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Armageddon on Sun May 19, 2013 10:53 pm

Maybe I shouldn't post mine...
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby joe_rogers_11155 on Sun May 19, 2013 10:58 pm

moar cookie mod
"Day breaks, but decay soon follows." - Ava Winona
Currently developing in radio silence... 99 Bolts
Here's another project of mine... Assault on Overwatch
Are you new to Source SDK? VDC
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Stormy on Sun May 19, 2013 11:13 pm

Alright I'm in.

My first ever mod was on CS:S (I never had access to a PC until I was about 16) I was on my girlfriends brothers computer and I thought it would be hilarious to change out all the audio files for me saying the onomatopoeia ("pew pew pew", "BOOM!" "bang! bang! shoot!" and my favourite for pulling out the knife - "knife"). He didn't see the funny side of it, especially since I overwrote the old files. At this stage I had also tinkered in the Morrowind map editor, the Far Cry 1 map editor (what a great editor) and a few others, and had a penchant for fiddling with the guts of games, but I didn't really know that modding was a 'thing'.

As a young lad I was a free mmorpg whore. My first ever mmorpg experience was watching a friend play Runescape. I never got into it myself but the whole concept enthralled me. I immediately started scouring the net for fun free mmorpgs.

I pretty quickly found eternal lands, an indie made by a husband/wife team way back in the days of blender 1.9. I played it for a little while and pretty soon I delved into the files to see what made it tick. It was extremely accessible I guess due to it still being in beta at that stage. I started changing filenames to see what would happen and quickly fucked my install, but not before getting a few fun effects like changing all the trees to character models, and the characters to bears. Later I found their map editor and this is where the story really starts.

Maps were handled entirely client side, so you could do what you wanted with a map and play it on a live server, but no one else would see what you saw. I started fucking with the heightmaps and would giggle maniacally as I floated over players on servers and stole loot and generally behaved like a l337 h4x0r ass. I also started to make maps that were far more detailed than the ones in the game (they didn't look much better, they just had more shit in them) and started to feel I was lacking art assets. I sent an email to the developers asking them to make a few models for me (I know right) and got an ever so polite email back pointing me at blender.

So I opened that up. Up till this point I had assumed that 3d modelling programs were all super sophisticated quantum computer applications that only ran on render farms tended by scientists, but here was a (relatively) fully featured modelling program running (relatively) smoothly on my dusty ol geforce 4. I ran through the blender noob to pro, posted like nuts on elysiun.com (now blenderartists.org but remember your roots, dammit) and got every semi decent intermediary build from graphic.all to fiddle with the new features.

About here I found Wurm Online, back when notch was working on it (aww yeah, we used to chill and shit. Well, we chilled once... briefly). There were hardly any art assets in the game, almost all of the icons were question marks and the models were question mark bags. Good lord did I put some time into this game, I loved the grind. I eventually heard that Mojang were using blender to make models for the game and in a noobish fervor I offered to make ALL THE MODELS. The developers quickly discovered I was bottom line shit at modelling and had to politely refuse the multitude of crappy models I sent them. The good thing is this got me practicing, and I did get a hell of a lot better over the course of several tens of rejected model packs. I think they flat out stopped looking at them eventually, even though the last few sets were easily better than what they had in game.

There were a few people I played with in wurm that were interested in making games as well, and anyone who showed a speck of skill would have oceans of noobs such as myself swarming around offering to help, in the hopes their work would be played by people. Evidently (and stupidly) I was the best modeller in the community, purely because I spent far too long on every model I made, and I ended up helping a bloke called garrettwademan make a wurm-online-done-right-with-other-shit-thrown-in game (because what better premise to start a game with a bunch of noobs than to improve on what experienced game developers already produced?). That game was Isle of Polm (that website literally hasn't changed since 2007). Old mate Garrettwademan could code, I'll give him that. But he was about as productive as a drunk hobo with nowhere to go. He also had a massively over inflated sense of his own abilities and a level of cluelessness in design that bordered on deliberate ignorance. I mean look at the title. How do you even pronounce that? I clashed a lot as his decisions went from "uh... ok I guess" to "WHATTHEFUCKAREYOUDOINGYOUARERUININGPOTATODAY!!!1". For instance we tested torque for a little while, which had a great workflow, a great map editor and a pretty good scripting base, but not much network support, and I loved the shit out of it. I was set on using it to make our game, since we had started in 3d game maker studio, which is undoubtedly the worst engine ever made and was already several years past its ungraceful demise. In order to get a model into the game I had to pirate 3dsmax, export an obj from blender, import it into max and export it as something else, then run it through a converter that only worked 60% of the time. So I was pretty irate when GWM set in stone 3DGMS when Torque had out-of-the-box .obj support.

Long story short, I ended up ragequitting and took a break from serious modelling for a few years. I did stuff here and there and put a few disgustingly bad models on turbosquid but nothing to push my skills. In any case my models were entirely sub par at this stage anyway so nothing of value was lost.

I started focusing on modelling again in about 2007 once I got out of basic training in the army (yeah I was in the army), making still images and wondering why my shit was, well, shit. I started studying this and that and eventually got a handle on it enough to be proud of what I was creating. Then Left4Dead was released and I played its guts out. I started playing a lot of community maps and eventually started offering to model for people. My first model to make it in source was an ammo bag that someone else compiled for me and got a lot of praise from the circles I frequented. I'll see if I can dig up a screen. I started to help with a few maps, none of which got released. There was a prison map that was released in block form without my models in it because the mapper disappeared, an outdoor map that I made some trees for that never got out of the gates and an underground map that I can't remember much about. I also found out later that I Hate Mountains actually had my very own truck trailer model in there. I was so happy. It was the first time that I had a model in a released mod, and I didn't even know about it. And it was a fucking good mod to boot.

I can't remember the names of most of the mods I worked on at this point because they would literally last one to two moths tops before everyone just disappeared as I churned out models. There was about four of them and all of them were going to be the greatest mod of all time. I don't remember it but apparently I put a couple of models into Sabotage just before it went fwump. I downloaded it after the post mortem and was happily surprised to see my models going to waste. Maybe I was the bad variable. Every mod I joined lasted a few months and then died. The last (and biggest) mod I worked on was Aura, which is a facepunch mod. It had a few good modellers and programmers and they were essentially copying an already existing garrys mod game mode so they had kind of a blueprint to work from. The team was pretty productive for the most part, but there were extended periods of downtime which really ground my gears. I don't mind when life gets in the way of modding but people would just disappear for months on end and I was continually asking "Is x still on the team?". I eventually got sick of it and let the team down. They were waiting for a model that I just plain couldn't make (a mushroom - I still have trouble figuring out how to do the underside with all the lines) and I just bailed.

After this I kept talking to the lead, and he had a lot of ideas. I'll emphasise ideas. By this stage I was pretty confident in source and so he kept asking me to make models here and there, and I would help out where I could. There was an idea for a zombie escape game mode map which was pretty good and I made a few models for that but it eventually just stopped getting worked on so I stopped modelling for it. There was also an RTS style game mode that he was working on that he kept asking for models but I knew by this stage that old matey was incapable of getting to release so I was very reluctant. He recently just posted a screenshot of it on steam, a year later, so I guess he's still working on it.

Here's where I opened up ModelsForTheMasses.com. I actually got the idea off one of my steam friends (you know who you are), who had a page somewhere offering a similar service for maps. I was sick of waiting for other people to do work. For the past two years I felt like I was just spinning my wheels so I decided to do something for and by myself that I would have something to show for at the end of it. I also wanted to gauge how much people valued my models, since I was pretty sure I was pretty good, but not sure if that was my ego talking. I ended up pushing my skills far beyond where I thought they were, since if someone is paying for a model they want something damn good, and all the projects were either guns, characters or vehicles - the big three. I'm very happy that I made that decision because now I have a nice little portfolio and lots of contacts in lots of mods that are actually going places. Most of the people I modelled for asked me to commit to their team and I had to continually decline. I don't sign on to mods anymore because it seems I am the death knell for them. Besides, if I sign on you're going to stop paying me. Why would I do that?

Since opening M4M I have done precisely what I want to do for precisely as long as I want to do it. I don't sign on to mods anymore but I do help on them. I'll usually sweep in, design or build something that they need the most, and then jog on to the next project as soon as the mod team slows production - sometimes to the detriment of the team (sorry FragGyver). Some notables I have worked with now are Stroll (by our very own MB), Mist Of Stagnation (another local - Don), KZmod (Kreedz climbing), Source Media Arcade (Anarchy Arcade), I did a thing for PlanetPhillip and I am now doing some simple stuff for Double Action Boogaloo. I'm considering re-opening M4M but I'll do it when I feel like it, since I'm currently resting on my laurels.

So this turned out to be a more personal foray into what made me me than I had intended. I'll update with images later to counteract the wall of text.

EDIT: Now I think of it, not a single mod that I have officially become a team member of has ever released. You do NOT want me on your mod team.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Armageddon on Mon May 20, 2013 12:50 am

I did a mod called Bunker 500, my first mod in 2008 before I joined lopers. I knew nothing about gameplay and it was mostly just walk forward and press buttons to open doors. IT was set in the HL2 universe in an underground bunker that has started to cave in. It was like the vaults in Fallout rebels took shelter there and hid during the Seven Hour War.

I got one map in and started a second, realized it sucked and killed it.

Summer 2009 I joined Neptune.
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It was so much fun working with that team and I learned a lot. Sadly real life got in everyones way at the same time and we just couldn't work on it. We had scaled it back to a three map mini mod but even that was too big. I'd really like to revisit it someday.

After that I stayed in touch with a few of the Neptune team members and got them on board to do another mini mod called Ballista Nova, this time I sat down and designed everything and began working. I wasn't happy with the scope of the mod so I kept adding things until it died. It was a sci-fi epic, I doubt even a AAA studio could make it.

Then I worked on a few solo projects, they mostly only had an art direction and no gameplay so they died. Now I am working on Keys and I'm glad it's going so well, I can actually see it coming together, even if it is slowly.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby SotaPoika on Mon May 20, 2013 4:19 am

Only project I've been in and that has failed, is Gangwars: Source. I can't remember who the lead was, but it seems he didn't really know how to present the mod and recruit some proper people (programmer/s, level designers, etc.) in to the team. I was maybe the only "active" LD there and I just started this whole Hammering-thing back then (in 2005 maybe?). I was really noob and was wondering why would anyone ask me to do mapping. At some point after few months of fooling around, the project died. Then it was resurrected after a year or two again, but died even quicker. The ida of the map was same as in Gangwars for HL1, where it's basically TDM with drugs and some area control and buying guns like in CS.

No images or anything, besides what is seen here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/gangwarssource
* Portfolio: http://sp0n3.carbonmade.com/
* No More Room In Hell - Level Designer
* Zombie Panic! Source - Level Designer
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby Botolf on Mon May 20, 2013 10:54 am

Eighth Hour has flirted with that boundary, what with stuff on the home front causing my motivation and focus to ebb and flow unpredictably. Currently killing my darlings until I'm left with self-contained pieces that are suitable candidates for release. At worst, one chapter that stands on its own well. Whatever gets it done.
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Re: The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

Postby SM Sith Lord on Mon May 20, 2013 4:21 pm

Most of my failed projects were things I started on a whim as an experiment, and later abandoned. However, I have had a few epic fails where I invest countless hours trying to release something before I finally cut my losses quit.

Attack on Theed: Final Assault was a multiplayer total conversion for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II that would add objective/story based gameplay in small 4 or 5 player servers. The engine had recently been modded to allow for huge expansive levels, so AoT would be a single level consisting of the entire city of Theed (from Star Wars), plus some more sets like space ship interiors or political buildings on other planets.

A massive amount of game scripting as well as art would have to come together for the project to succeed. The engine used a very powerful scripting language called COG that allowed you to control the behavior of absolutely all aspects of the game.

The problem was that I was too n00by for such a task and only learning both how to program and how to produce art at the same time as trying to develop the TC. As far as coding, when ever I would learn how to do something cool I would realize all sorts of other cool stuff I could accomplish with it and change the design of the TC to adopt the new features. My design changes would always make the TC more complicated, as opposed to simplifying it. Completing the project is impossible when all you do is add more work for yourself every time you try to get something done.

The massive amount of work for creating the level was fail. With the way that the gameplay worked, it was like a Grand Theft Auto map with Team Fortress 2-style gameplay that moved along as objectives were completed. I justified all the hours I put into it as a "learning experience" and scrapped the project. :(

I have more failed attempts than that, but that's enough fail for today. :D

5 pages of screenshots http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?p ... creenshots
(from the last days of the project)
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