Taking on a mod project only to fail these days.

[joe_rogers_11155]

The Source engine needed heavyweights like Raindrop and Ivan's Secrets to prove its relevance in a world of DX11 graphics and etc etc etc. I know Source is outdated but it makes Source look that much better when a great project is completed (look at Dear Esther, Off Limits, etc). Raindrop (circa pre-"Vagrant Postman") and Ivan's Secrets (circa "ASW engine") could have been truly epic comebacks for the Source engine.

I understand that other engines have a better workflow than Source by after such hard work and successful endeavors in the programming and level design of the Source engine, why the sudden switch of engines is beyond my understanding.

[Mr. Happy]

Do people want to make mod's or do they want to make commercial games? It is hard to run a company. Are you SURE you can do this? Don't rush your life and take on more than you can realistically do just to ride the indie wave.

Do you want to make a mod that is free and a small scale project or not? Do you want to make something for the community or not? Are you making a mod or competing in the games market? That's the question.

Ask yourself that and it's an easy answer to what to do.

Alot of modders have problems with scope. A small distributed team cannot compete with massive studios in certain areas. If many are failing it's because they are trying for to much success, too big of a scope, too big of a project, and focused on the wrong things. People have to ask themselves "what really matters" in the project and make the decision from there.

1 person can model a beautiful statue but do you have time to model an entire art museum just because you have the skill for each piece?
Many programmers could write movement code but the point of an engine is that you have the best most complete base to work from.

Realistically scope out what you can do with your resources in the not-best-case-scenario, figure out what you want to do, and don't overdo it.

Indie bubble bursts, graphics tools improve, people will realize that it doesn't have to be photorealistic to be pretty and next game generation: modding returns?

EDIT:
A common saying is "it's always easier to cut." It's not ALWAYS true, but it's true, and it reminds you that if you are continually adding and expanding the scope way beyond the original idea, you are probably on the wrong path and biting off more than you can chew.

[Phott]

I think Mr. Happy puts it very well, and it's an issue within the modding community even without the aspect of going commercial/indie. You have small mod projects expand far beyond what was the original intention, the work load increases even with steady progress and it smashes head first into a wall.

[Stormy]

It's extremely hard to find a mod team or indie that doesn't have wild ambitions for their project. Everyone allows themselves to be taken away with all the crap they want to shove in their game. I have been really trying to start small but haven't been able to find a team that shares the view of just how small I want to start. Big ambitions is the main catalyst for mod failure.

[Phott]

It's extremely hard to find a mod team or indie that doesn't have wild ambitions for their project. Everyone allows themselves to be taken away with all the crap they want to shove in their game. I have been really trying to start small but haven't been able to find a team that shares the view of just how small I want to start. Big ambitions is the main catalyst for mod failure.

That's where organizing is important and having a very clear design document with a team leader who knows how to keep everything in check.

[DonPunch]

That's just a part of it, there is so much more to project management than a good design doc. That is a great 1st step, but management is a fulltime gig in itself. Most start up's have to juggle management with another skill or 2, but it takes a lot to bring a team together to achieve a common goal.

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Yeah I totally agree with happy. A big aspect of where game design is heading right now is primarily in where society is heading too.

We've built up this large understanding of what gamers want, and that generally leans towards: better, and/or prettier. And that's somewhat saying it at the simplest base. But that is exactly what I kind of mean in terms of where that perspective is getting confused. Like I had mentioned in my last post on this thread, Indie is really about solving issues for you and your team more than it is: doing it to ride the wave like Happy said, or compete against the wrong things without noticing it. It's not also about how many shaders you can suddenly fit into your game and stuff either.

I mean if you look back at games like Mario 64 and stuff, some of the greatest games ever. They really didn't have super dedicated art teams, or majorly big teams to push a game. At it's core it was about what games really do just to push the idea of fun, or the experience they wish to create, which of course in turn could cause other aspects of the design to be heavily influenced. But regardless of that, those games pushed gameplay more than tech, and in a market where FPS is becoming super stale, and the norm I can totally see those type of games making a big comeback. And really shining their light among the previously mentioned staleness.

What I am saying really is that; Modders need to kind of slow their roll a bit. They need to kind of get back to basics. Some of the great games of the past were made by super small teams, and even now today that's still a possible thing. Making games is still about the actual game, regardless of how visually interesting it may or may not be. I am guess I am kind of putting this out there too to remind modders interested in going indie and stuff that it isn't all about being prettier and stuff. And you don't want to go out there and try to compete. A lot of great indie games coming out are more or less doing what they want, in their own space, and are being extremely successful at it too.

[dissonance]

imo the problem is that Valve just doesn't seem to give a fuck about the modding community anymore. All the tools are clunky, outdated, unstable, and very, very infrequently updated - and when they are, the updates break more features than they fix.
while this, hypothetically, won't deter a team who knows the engine well and has the desire to work, it's nonetheless incredibly deflating to wake up one morning and realize that the big studio that had once had their backs all the way now doesn't respond to questions or requests at all.

I'm not gonna lie; this is a pretty big chip on my shoulder.
Worldcraft is what got me interested, not just in games, but in computer graphics in general in the first place. Half-Life was probably the best FPS i've ever played, and HL2 was nothing short of jizz-my-pants amazing. Even Portal was an incredibly good game, made even sweeter by the whole "whoa, where did these guys come from?" aspect.
Nowadays, though... Portal 2 treated me like I was a child with no idea how to use a keyboard and blocked my view when I wanted to take in the environment. Team Fortress 2 has been turned into a free-to-play hat simulator with nearly the same amount of grinding as WoW. EP3 and HL3 are nowhere to be seen, and I have this funny feeling that if either of them ever are released, they'll arrive at the same time as the most recent X-Files movie: right after even the die-hard fans have lost faith and patience.

i feel pretty bad saying this, but it feels to me like Valve has switched over to developing Steam and away from developing games, and they just didn't bother to tell any of us.

CS and DoD and all their ilk were originally mods that Valve bought and turned into games. after some time, they realized that digital distribution was indeed the way of the future, and that if they just sit back and take a small cut from each sale, they don't need to actually be the ones making good games any more to make profit off good games.

why would valve take the risk of putting time and effort into mod teams that may very well fail when they can just back a AAA FPS with guaranteed yearly installments?

i can't be the only one who feels this way: i'm sure that other people feel the same elephant in the room that i do.

...i've gotten off-track here, haven't i?

[Armageddon]

Can someone explain to me how Hammer is outdated? Sure it doesn't have realtime rendering, but besides that what is outdated.

Also, DOTA was a mod that VALVe bought.

[Ark11]

It's a sad thought but seems to be true.

One thing I've noticed is that Valves games are becoming gradually easier.

HL1 - 1998 JESUS CHRIST WTF? HARD!

CSS - 2004 Very hard.

HL2 (and Episodes), TF2 and Portal 1 - 2004, 2006, 2007 Hard.

TF2 as of F2P - Unfun Noob/Cheapskate Haven

Portal 2 2011 - 80% of it was a FUCKING tutorial! Only got mildly difficult after

we came out of the old Aperture labs into Wheatley controlled labs.

But why? I honestly have no theories. Any idea?

[Dives]

You get older and better at games, games seem easier. Half-Life wasn't very hard at all.
I do agree on Portal 2 though. It seems Valve was afraid of the mentally handicapped not being able to enjoy it.

[Phott]

Can someone explain to me how Hammer is outdated? Sure it doesn't have realtime rendering, but besides that what is outdated.

Also, DOTA was a mod that VALVe bought.

The workflow is awful. I love working in Hammer, but sometimes it can be pretty bad.

[Hollow]

Can someone explain to me how Hammer is outdated? Sure it doesn't have realtime rendering, but besides that what is outdated.

Also, DOTA was a mod that VALVe bought.

-Porting models to Hammer and getting them working in game is incredibly tedious and time-consuming (writing qc files, fucking about with smds), where as for UDK it's save as .fbx, load up UDK, import, done.

-The workflow is pretty awful. All the tools hammer should have had, have been created by a third party. (VTF Edit & PS plugin, HDRShop, Source shader editor etc etc.)

-The ridiculous lack of dynamic lighting is a killer here. Not even to have the option to have orthographic shadowing is silly. All we are reserved to is spotlights. Even though many mod teams have hard coded this into their bases, it's not available to do the same on newer engine versions due to Valve releasing them as authoring tools.

-To basically fake a dynamic sun with shadows maps projected onto the whole environment in CSS, you would have to bake shadow maps onto every single model and surface in something like 3DS max (using mental ray and the sky/sun options)

-Sure most of us can work past not being granted with real time editing and rendering, and source is very good to whip up ideas fast, seeing as the brush tools are so easy.

-The limitations to map sizes is disheartening and the very reason Ivan's Secrets switched.

-How many times have Valve broke the tools and hindered progress for mod teams?

I find it hilarious when somebody responds to this kind of thing as 'oh you are all whining, I can make stuff fine, get over yourselves). If you have your head screwed on, you will see that the community is beginning to crumble. All the 'big' mods are either: non-existant, switched engine or gone indie. There is hardly any backbone supporting the community to keep it stable for that much longer.

Dear Esther is pretty much the only big third party indie game of recent that remains on the engine, and Robert Briscoe made his concerns about the limitations many times.

And the list could go on......

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Yeah the last thing I remember Robert saying about Dear Esther was how shit overlay rendering is still in that engine branch. This somewhat more or less tells me that while optimization is a thing for valve, its's not a specific when it comes to addressing engine branch issues overall. Or just in general improving everything, i.e they more or less are still only pushing the aspects of the engine forward in terms of what they need right now instead of later or for modders.

Like a really big reason Source engine games don't fully support multi realtime light systems is actually because of overlay rendering, or that being one of the many factors actually. Have more than projected texture in a scene with multiple overlays? Get ready for fun times with overlays turning completely black.

[joe_rogers_11155]

hey look, another mod that just made the engine switch: http://www.moddb.com/games/unreal-starcraft