why mod source into an existing game?

[Ashfall_2008]

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1775033

I felt a little cruel.. for a moment...

[Saxon]

Aren't they supposed have a system like that?

Yeah, but it's pretty dead and I see they have that crap 1187 mod. So forget quality control.

Call me an elitist, but I would like to see a mod site which just lists good mods. Community ratings are pointless (call on your own legion of fanboys to boost shit up), better scores will be delivered by the consensus of professional reviewers.

[BubbleQ]

Well, I'm starting to get pretty pissed of all the talk about NOT recreating a game in source. Think like this: You are a noob and want to create a big ass shooter with aliens, new guns, vheicles, updated ai, sweet dx11 features etc.
You post your idea on some forums and wait, after few days of exiting waiting you will see 5 comments that try to help you understand making mods are not easy. You are beeing told you need to learn more stuff and it will take years to develop a good uniqe mod. Now you are feeling very down for few weeks but eventually you see the light, why not just try to rebuild a game I played when I was young? That one had simple grapics and gameplay is very basic, yeah, this is something I wanna do!

Why not let that guy belive in this and actually try to help him get going? Make him experience the problems by himslef! He has a goal, he knows what to focus on and is very exited.

I know this can´t really be aplied to more experienced modders and such but over the years I have seen lots of those situations, the noobs get bringed down. They get told they need new and uniqe gameplay ideas and refreshing maplayouts, modding for source is allready hard as it is!

I write this also beacuse I am planning to recreate/develop a game I used to play alot when I was a small kid. I feel this game has not got what it deserves yet and I wanna develop my skills in game building. And yes I also want it to be played by as many as possible and become worldfamous^^ But that is my life and that is how I wanna spend my time!

Now not all of this do reply to the post before me so se it as a more generall post of the subject.

[Ashfall_2008]

As we were discussing earlier, some games from many years ago that will probably never get remade deserve a mod. As I said. I would chew off my left nut to get my hands on a decent Syndicate Wars mod.
Old games that will never get remade deserve a decent well made mod in my opinion.

Youre right, the modding community can be very snobbish and it can be very disheartening to noobs but there is a big difference between a guy who wants to make games and a guy who wants a game made for him.

It's not the complete lack of understanding of the workload required thats the issue here, its the very very strange need to recreate another game thats pretty darn good and has only been out for a few years that puzzles us.

A good example was when Alien Swarm came out someone started a project to make a Warhammer 40k mod!

Why! Dawn of war 2 had just come out? Its bizarre!

[RawMeat3000]

I think the only answer this thread needs is that it's good practice. Humans learn by mimicking other humans. It's how we learn to talk, to walk, to eat and it can be, but isn't necessarily, how we learn to make games. Or it at least provides some sort of incentive to learn, maybe misguided but it's better than nothing, maybe they want to test their skills against the masters. I say let them. When I first got into modding I attempted to make a few levels heavily based on Silent Hill 3. I failed miserably like most mods do, but learned a lot from the experience.

Though I can understand where the naysayers are coming from and it sometimes is annoying. Just look the other way and focus on your own projects.

[Armageddon]

Yeah it's really pointless to remake a game on Source, I do however enjoy playing homages. Like taking the basic idea of another game and sort of molding it into your own small mod. Of course it's unoriginal but they are still enjoyable to play. But yeah, if you want to know what people think about remakes in Source just checkout this thread.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34535

Also the reason people want to remake newer games on Source is because.

A. They are Half-Life 2 fanboys and Source is one of the only modifiable engine.

B. They are fanboys of the game they want to recreate <insert name here>.

That's really all it is, Half of those people don't even get far enough to see how much work it takes.

[poisonic]

We dont tolerate serials keygens and illigal content.... why should we be hyphocrite here... for me Remaking a game is not done its still copying content from another game in to another... maybe noobs think its cool to play the copycat...while the others who really know how much time it will cost say NO!.... We must learn the new newbies copying games is not cool... and why put so much effort to help a noob out when his game idea is copyrighted you better could learn him the truth right away....

And if you have a mod idea and you want help you got to know what your asking,and try to learn each day.....

[Kremator]

Ok I'm just going to throw in my opinion here on game remakes : I usually don't give a damn.

If it succeeds, sweet; if it fails, no surprises. It is true that we're getting some sort of abominable fancy out of telling people off their shit will not succeed, there's a difference between real help and just plain bashing. Usually I see these threads coming up and there will be like 4 guys basically saying the same thing and bashing the guy repeatedly about issues that the first post have already raised just to get it in there.

That said it is kinda retarded to try and make a mod of games that came out within the past 2-3 years, it's kind of pointless and there are better ways to pay homage to games than rack up a mod team.

[Jordash]

A warhammer mod for alien swarm wouldn't be so bad, a top down shooter and RTS are very different, despite the shared camera angle. There is a certain appeal to using existing canon to form a story, rather than putting in the countless hours required to develop an entirely new idea, then making sure every aspect is covered and makes sense. Hell the story could even the same as dawn of war and I wouldn't consider it a remake, more a companion to the original game.

Plus the mod would already have an audience, anyone who has tried to gain support for their mod can tell you how difficult it is, especially outside of the standard modding communities. That extra encouragement could be the difference between a mod succeeding or failing

Besides, I've never really seen a mod which doesn't add anything to the original idea, the theme is usually "I really liked game, but with these features would make it amazing", by the time the mod is well on track (if it gets that far), chances are the developers realise they can tweak the story around, even turn it into a original work. Say someone made a splinter cell mod, how easy would it be to turn it into something new once the levels and features are in? But would those features and levels have ever been made without the inspiration of splinter cell?

And that dawn of the dead mall for left 4 dead won mod of the year last year, no matter what we all think about it, turns out a lot of people loved it.

[Ashfall_2008]

Sigh... I guess it's the Google effect...

I often hate Google because it just doesn't find me what I want. It finds me what the majority wanted and unfortunately the majority are unimaginative who don't know what they want until it's given to them...

.. on that subject can anyone tell me what a Justin Bieber is?

[Enraged]

It was less than 2 weeks ago that I went into the Interlopers Steam chat room for a discussion about the state of the modding community. Quite frankly I'm appalled at what it has become. Between early 2009 and late 2010 I have been distracted with other commitments so I've had to put my interest in modding to one side. When I left for the period, I saw that the community was indeed changing. There was less ambition except for on projects that had already been around for a while, most notably Black Mesa Source, but I'll come back to that in a second. Whiles it was clear a significant portion of the modifications being uploaded to ModDB were hopeless, derivative, short sighted rubbish from the start, there were still some interesting gems that shone through. Now when I visit that site, I don't see anything of interest.

Black Mesa Source is something I am greatly looking forward to and I don't think I'm alone in saying that. Half Life is a classic game and I can't wait for this graphical enhancement. However, that's really all this is. (I'd be complaining if they were saying they were remaking it and changing the formula around, but I digress.) What happened to the era when modders were responsible for taking the risks and developing the ideas that weren't being made in the commercial sector. I understand it is easier to copy an existing idea rather than create a whole new one and that most of the time a genuinely new and interesting gameplay mechanic can be used to create an independant title that financially rewards the developer who put the effort in. However, this doesn't excuse the countless copies of existing games being shown on ModDB. To say that the quality bar on the site has fallen would be an understatement.

Now this isn't just a complaint about ModDB, don't get me wrong. They're providing a free service to host these mods and that's absolutely great as far as I'm concerned. However, I do feel they should take some responsibility to reduce the amount of garbage currently being promoted as even worth a second of our time. Also I feel as a community we need to be HARSHER on those who come forward in this manner. Yes, it's elitist and yes, we're going to make some people hate us but it is all for the greater good. We're saving us the hassle of yet another unfinished project to have to scroll past, the fool who's proposing it won't waste any more time on it and if anything we can set him on the right path. If they ignore the advice and continue to work on it than it's their loss, but atleast we can say we tried.

For the argument that copying is the easiest way to learn I can agree with that in some respects, but not on the scale that some of the examples in this thread have shown including one where (Not mentioning names here,) people have talked about making the game based on an original, commercial design document of which there was no final product; I agree that removing the neccesity to use ones imagination to produce an idea that can then be used to teach the technical aspects of it's creation is evidently practical. However, most tutorials will show the creation of something simple that will do so instead. After this point, it will simply be up to the developer to use their imagination and their technical knowledge and hopefully by this point they will be past the foolish stage of simply copying something else. Lastly on this argument, the idea that taking an existing property that the developer who is just starting out has a passion for and attempting to recreate some aspect of it or simply adding to it makes it easier to have the ambition and drive to learn, well I won't argue with that, infact I'll completely agree with it. I learnt to read from Thomas The Tank Engine books when I was young and yes, they were at the time of significantly more interest and as a result promoted me to keep reading. However, where as the reward aside from the ability to read was to also have read more about Thomas' adventures, the reward from learning to program, map and animate is to have learnt those things and if you're learning just to create something based on an existing property you'll quickly realise what a waste of time it is if this is really your only interest, as it appears to be for so many of these failed mod teams. Also, I read to learn to read by taking it one book at a time not by aiming to read every book and I feel this is another hurdle; instead of concentrating on honing their abilities to create they are more concerned with creating something for the sake of it on a massive scale.

I'll just quickly sum up with 2 points. Firstly, the absolutely pathetic idea that has been posted here that if any of these failed remakes were to suceed they would somehow damage the profits of the developers who created the originals. Aside from the fact that if any of these had suceeded because the games were so simple they could be reproduced just like that, maybe they were not worth commercialising in the first place. When mods are underway to recreating an original it is not something that happens quickly but can take years, by which point the original game can have fallen into obscurity. Having the rerelease in a free form is actually likely to create interest in the commercial product. Just look at Black Mesa Source again for the perfect example. I know people who only got Half Life because they couldn't wait for Black Mesa. (Yes I realise and completely agree that they are all fools for not having already played it. This has been made clear to them.) Second point, the creation of a site dedicated to hosting only quality mods seems rather pointless. A simple thread listing modifications of interest maybe pointing to some critical analysis and higher quality reviews is all that is needed. Alternatively, we could try to open talks with existing hosts to try and persuade them to cut down on the rubbish out there, but I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.

With all that out of my system and nobody willing to read it I'm off for coffee.

[Ashfall_2008]

I read it!

Now I need a coffee too...

[Jordash]

I miss mods like train hunters and snark wars from the HL1 days, those sorts of mods were as original as they get, its too bad there is nothing like that for source, or at least that I've heard of. It is, as was said, the community want uncreative things and thats what the moddb staff feature, there is no incentive for something crazy

[Saxon]

I miss mods like train hunters and snark wars from the HL1 days, those sorts of mods were as original as they get, its too bad there is nothing like that for source, or at least that I've heard of. It is, as was said, the community want uncreative things and thats what the moddb staff feature, there is no incentive for something crazy

The reason these mods never appear is that Source is famously hard to code for. I'm not a coder so I can't speak from experience, but I presume this is why you rarely see anything more than FPS based gameplay.

[Armageddon]

I miss mods like train hunters and snark wars from the HL1 days, those sorts of mods were as original as they get, its too bad there is nothing like that for source, or at least that I've heard of. It is, as was said, the community want uncreative things and thats what the moddb staff feature, there is no incentive for something crazy

Well, it's hard to come up with original ideas. I wish I had some original ideas but I can't come up with anything.