Well in the future me and my brother have plans to make a half life 2 multiplayer mod. We're serious about it, and have a lot of plans written down so as soon a the game is released we can get to work.
Valve has always been fantastic with the mod community in providing the tools and support for new games to be created and to become succesful... This time around they seem to be doing an even better job, not only to prolong the life of their new game but I believe they genuinely respect the community and want to help them out as much as possible.
The tools we have so far (or know about, at least) are the halflife 2 exclusive edition of XSI for modelling, hammer the level editor, faceposer for all that facey stuff, the source code and content, which just comes with the game anyway. Now while this is fantastic, over the last few years technology has increased so dramatically that now it is no longer as easy for a person to, lets say, model a humanoid character, or to create a map that matches half life 2's detail level - not without a considerably larger learning curve (and not to mention a boost in patience).
One step valve has made to combat this is by including material presets for maps, and hundreds of prefabricated objects from the game for people to insert into their maps... Great! So i guess mapping isn't so bad... Hammer is a particularly easy to use editor, and people will probably get the hang of moulding out their shapes, and using the prefabs will be a kick start... But what about modelling? Will there be special plugins to say... mould a face and reposition it's features, with ease? Without having to learn a professional modelling tool? Sure the concept is pretty easy, but the detail it now takes is massive... Will the modelling community catch up? Will models in mods look like crap forever? Will there be a modeller shortage in the community?
Maybe valve will include 'stock' models and skins for people to modify freely, like prefabs for maps, although in the form of skin shades, head sizes, nose shapes, etc etc It seems like something valve would do... although maybe not that far =) Fingers crossed though...
What do you guys think about this?
Valve has always been fantastic with the mod community in providing the tools and support for new games to be created and to become succesful... This time around they seem to be doing an even better job, not only to prolong the life of their new game but I believe they genuinely respect the community and want to help them out as much as possible.
The tools we have so far (or know about, at least) are the halflife 2 exclusive edition of XSI for modelling, hammer the level editor, faceposer for all that facey stuff, the source code and content, which just comes with the game anyway. Now while this is fantastic, over the last few years technology has increased so dramatically that now it is no longer as easy for a person to, lets say, model a humanoid character, or to create a map that matches half life 2's detail level - not without a considerably larger learning curve (and not to mention a boost in patience).
One step valve has made to combat this is by including material presets for maps, and hundreds of prefabricated objects from the game for people to insert into their maps... Great! So i guess mapping isn't so bad... Hammer is a particularly easy to use editor, and people will probably get the hang of moulding out their shapes, and using the prefabs will be a kick start... But what about modelling? Will there be special plugins to say... mould a face and reposition it's features, with ease? Without having to learn a professional modelling tool? Sure the concept is pretty easy, but the detail it now takes is massive... Will the modelling community catch up? Will models in mods look like crap forever? Will there be a modeller shortage in the community?
Maybe valve will include 'stock' models and skins for people to modify freely, like prefabs for maps, although in the form of skin shades, head sizes, nose shapes, etc etc It seems like something valve would do... although maybe not that far =) Fingers crossed though...
What do you guys think about this?
