Stories on how you got into modding, your first map, etc

[Blink]

Well this thread certainly triggered some memories. I'll try to keep it short.

I remember finding the Worldcraft editor on the HL disc and struggling to get my head round it all. Made some truly awful maps and because I didn't really have an internet connection at the time I had little in the way of help.

Annoyingly a lot of tutorials back then seemed to encourage you to carve out boxes for rooms (even though no sane developer would do so) and so I made maps that way for quite some time. I remember a turning point coming when I played Dave J's amazing ETC and getting hold of his source files. God did I learn a lot from that.

I fluffed around with various maps here and there and found myself on the CS-MAPS site over at Jolt (check out those tutorials in the side bar, amazing).

I hung out on the forums a load (oh look, the original RandomThread) and eventually started writing tutorials for the site.

I do remember leading a mod called Isolation for some time. We made some cool stuff, but it was hard to manage and like all things it fizzled out.

I think in July 2004 I registered Interlopers and set up some shitty PHP CMS thing that had a few Half-Life 1 tutorials and some news. I wanted my own community as I was sick of rubbish ones thriving and cool ones dying (who remembers Vlatitude?).

It was largely met with criticism and I remember thinking that I would give it one more go when HL2 came out and if it still sucked, I would close it.

Luckily we met the demand for Source mapping at the time and fostered a really decent forum with little trolling. Also the site didn't look like shit like 90% of HL websites did (I made a point of never putting Gordon Freeman in the banner, ugh) and also I was younger with a tonne of free time and able to work on the site nearly every day.

I also mapped a lot more back then, and joined mods and tinkered around with CS re-makes but never did anything notable.

Running a website like this has taught more than I could have ever imagined.

Let's hope Source 2 comes out soon. Cheers to all who still stick around!

(Oh, and I'm still working on the new lopers site whenever I can)

Edit: Found a couple of screenshots from NMRiH!
http://cl.ly/Qw0c
http://cl.ly/Qw9S

[MaK]

Good read Blink. I had an idea of most of the backstory and fond memories of the 2006-era lopers. I found the snarkpit thread entertaining, I had never seen that before. It really puts things into perspective. Interlopers boosted in popularity and became well known because of it tutorials and lovely community. It's no secret that most of Interloper's older core users have moved on to other things, and that modding source in general has seen a slow decline and fatigue. If you can land the new site at least around the time of Source 2 and such, all while doing the right things I feel it can have a pretty substantial rebirth. The tutorial section of course I would see a main focus on. Even though I'm also guilty of barely doing anything in the modding world today, I'd love to find a new interest and help build on the future uncharted territory of Source 2 tutorials, before all the real experts tower above me. The map spotlight seems pretty useless now with the steam workshop, you could have some sort of site integration with that. The Interlopers Error page doesn't nearly get as much attention as I think it should, its a fantastic tool that can be easily missed by new users.

Anyway, sorry for going a bit off topic, I just get excited about the new interlopers redesign. I would post my story on how I got into modding but it's not very interesting. Maybe I'll leave that for another day.

[Xyos212]

Reading some of these really brought back memories from my childhood. I also used to love lego's. Me and my brother would construct lego "Tanks" and smash them into each other from across the kitchen to see which one would hold up. I remember thinking it was so fun haha.

I remember I also used to make maps with crappy in-game editors as well. Far Cry 1 on xbox I re-created maps from Halo, and in the shooter game Pariah. Completely forgot about those games and maps up until now.

As a kid I would make cardboard/duct-tape weapons and swords. Me and my other friends would "play Counter-Strike" outside, yelling "OK LETS GO" from across houses, shooting invisible bullets and yell "YOUR DEAD I SHOT YOU" from a distance. LOL it was so ridiculous but I did have a lot of fun as a kid. When my family moved from my house I left an arsenal of duct-tape weapons and swords in our shed. I can only imagine what the next home-owner thought when they came across them haha!

I used to do other super nerdy things like create my own board games and card games and have my friends play them

Interesting stories really sparked my memory from my early childhood