Mod HQ talks to Erik Johnson

[Blink]

Mod HQ had the chance to ask Erik Johnson some questions about various issues, one subject he touches on in great detail is the way the mod community are developing their mods and the attitudes around it, and he speaks a lot of sense:

"Sometimes it feels like the MOD community is becoming more and more like the "professional" game community, where products are being approached as something that should take a long time, ship once, and then everyone moves on to the next big project. MOD teams that are approaching building games from this perspective are throwing all of the advantages they have out the window, and are just competing with every other game developer in the world."

Make sure you read this interview.

[BaRRaKID]

really nice interview, plus i' glad to hear that nuke and militia are coming for source.

Now comes the speculation part "aftermath episode 1" does that mean there will be more episodes? :O

[ScarT]

I wonder if they intent to add a new kind of technology to the Source engine soon, my guess would be Parallax mapping next... I wonder why you can enable/disable Parallax mapping in ModelViewer ?!

[BaRRaKID]

i already saw in another interview to valve them saying that parallax map wont be included on source cause it has some conflict with the engine that cant be fixed.

I kind of disagree about his opinion on the mod community, the thing is the more seious mods want to get into the indutry, and has such they try to work in a professional, i for once like to have a sense of professionalism when working on something.

[dragonfliet]

He's not reffering to a sense of proffesionalism, he's reffering to the fact that many mods go for the all or nothing: They don't put out a game as soon as possible (still preserving the intent of mod of course) and then improve from there, they take on bigger, more ambitious ideas which take a LOT longer and have a chance of failing bigger: which I also see as something as a problem. I think that some ideas need to be developed very fully in order to work, but I htink that sometimes they take the idea a little bit to far and should put out a pretty good product THIS YEAR and make it great next year rather than put out a great one next year, but keep people from playing it now.

~Jason

[BaRRaKID]

the thing is, like you mentioned(i think), putting somethign out that is not yet finished is a big risk, since nowdays players are not as "dumb" as before, and they want to see something that catches their attention, and not play some wicked beta full of bugs(ie: first beta of hidden), so i guess it's a smart move to keep it closed to internal testings, than release it badlly done and loose all the interest on the mod.
Also this is something that is impossible for single player mods to do, off course you can always release a demo to show your features, etc, but it will never represent the final product, so in single player mods i completelly agree on not releasing anything, this said one of the resons that we at nightfall go to events to show the game is to play test the current state of the game and get some reactions. This as worked gret so far with testing our first levels, and in my opinion it's a better solution then releasing them on the net.