The YOUR Mods That Failed Thread!

[Jeeves]

I was level designer and later modeller on the now defunct Crayville Asylum mod; It has seemingly been erased from moddb . At some point during 2011 we were ranked number 2 on Moddb..... so, yeh , real hot shit . I left shortly after the project lead got booted out in a byzantine power struggle. I knew fuck all at the time and lacked the humility to accept criticism of my work, especially from people who actually knew what the fuck they were talking about -- as these are often the harshest critics, but sadly are in a minority!.

I don't know why nothing more came of it, there were at least two coders and several art guys. Such is life I suppose, just seemed to fall apart, idiosyncratically; I think I'll fire off some emails to some old friends now...hmmm.

[marks]

My main disappointment was Pipe Dream. I posted a thread in the Under Construction section of the forums with a small scene I did in hammer. I had a hard on for Mirrors Edge's art style (and still do) and tried to mimic it in Source. As you can see, I didn't succeed:

http://forum.interlopers.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29945

But some lopers liked the concept and we decided to try and scrape up a team. At first I was the proverbial "project lead." But, again, I had no experience with mods whatsoever; just joining a team then leaving shortly after due to lack of motivation and creativity. We held some meetings, and the guys realized I had no design document set up and no direction. I didn't even understand how to properly prepare to even START a mod until this point.

I wanted a mod that blended puzzle and action, and had crazy ass ideas that the other guys laughed at, but we did have some synergy with our concepts, which made me really happy. The rest of the team wanted a strictly puzzle-oriented mod, and I ended up accepting that. That's where things started going downhill for me.

Again, I realized I was not up to the task. I realized I had no damn clue what I was getting in to. I realized Zip was more prepared than I was despite the fact that I brought a bare bones, baseline concept to the table and it caught the attention of a few lopers. In the end, I eventually talked with Zipfinator about giving him the project and he agreed. He got some headway and things were looking up for the mod. I wanted him to succeed so badly, but I guess things didn't go the way he wanted. I have no idea what he's up to these days or if he ever plans on restarting the mod. Hopefully someday I can get motivated, learn how to do some prop modeling, and get with the guys in the original team with a solid design document and the will to work my ass off and start fresh. This was the only mapping I ever did (excluding the original concept):

There's a more updated build, but I never recorded video of it. I don't know where I posted screens of it either. Might be able to find some later.

I remember working with Zipf on this way back when (summer 2010), didn't really end up going anywhere but a bunch of progress was made. Bit of a shame as it really had potential. It's a game-concept that I'd be interested in working on again at some point if people want to give it another go.

[PhoeniX1992]

What an immensely interesting read this thread is . I spent quite some time reading everyone's stories, and I must say Stormy, you're story was a damn good read.

For me, I always tinkered with games, config files and the sorts, but never made anything productive or even marginally interesting. I remember the actual mapping modding started at LANs with friends. Pooping out aim style maps for CS:S to play, which after the LAN would always disappear into oblivion.

After that I delved into mapping and found interlopers through a google search for tutorials. Not long after that I joined the community, and man, what a source (hehe, see what I did there?) of knowledge it was (and is).

I remember when I was about 15/16 I was completely obsessed and 'wanted to do stuff with games'. I went from mod team to mod team. There was a jurrasic park styled mod, some generic horror mods, and even MB's FieldZone. Anyway, most of the mods either died, or I left the teams because school got busy or stuff like partying, booze and girls got more interesting than mapping. After school I joined the air force for a short while (two years) and life got real busy at that stage. I didn't touch hammer or any other mod tool at all in that time, I even rarely had time to visit interlopers.

I still open up Hammer from time to time, fiddling around, making some scenes. But I rarely ever finish anything. Right now I'm so busy with work, my own place and living together with my girlfriend that I wouldn't even know how to free up time to do that stuff anymore.

Anyway, I love the community, the people and everything else here and I've found the general discussion board to be a great place to lurk & live. Keep it up guys!