Half Life 2 – RPG Conversion – A Homeric Epic

[mathaos42]

We are looking for character modelers, modelers, mappers and coders.

We currently have a pair of modelers, some assistant researchers, and two programmers. Myself, the programmers and one of the modelers work together at a Biopharmaceutical site designing and implementing multi-year projects for enterprise applications. We have experience with the software development life cycle, Design documentation and Project Management. I am a System Manager for an application that sits on Oracle. I have PL/SQL experience, but unfortunately not much else. Currently I am putting together a timeline (have a thin draft) and gathering requirements (again, a thin draft). As I gather requirements, modeling is going on as there are certain items that we know will be required. I'm doing this because its my dream, and sometimes you don't get paid to live your dreams. I do have some limited mapping experience with the orignal Deus Ex and QOOL. The modelers have not participated in the creation of a mod either. The half life 2 engine was chosen due to the tremendous community that exists to support all the current half life mods. Because of our lack of mod experience, it would be very beneficial to have assistance from those who have experience with the various portions of mod generation.

Description:
Half Life 2 – RPG Conversion – A Homeric Epic

Concept

The game will allow players to experience a heroic life in a Homeric Greece.
While the plot will not contain excerpts from either the Iliad, or the Odyssey,
it will convey the themes that Homer emphasized. A large amount of research is being conducted to ensure that the weapons, livestock, architecture, and the ideas of the people who populate the world are as accurate as possible. Homer's epics contain massive battles, meddling gods, individual triumph, moral failure, cowardice, longing, and revenge. The epics also taught the Greek polis about what it meant to be Greek. The primary tools to educate the young of Ancient Greece had been The Iliad and the Odyssey. Instruction was given on the texts, not solely for their literary component, but also as moral tales to base your life on.

Gameplay

People who you interact with will have family members, belong to organizations and support their city-state. Inevitably, to be a hero, you will have to take sides. The decision you make will not only influence the disposition of those around you, but also those who know the individuals that you hurt or help.

Homeric Greece is a time and place where gods are involved in the everyday
matters of mortals. A god could be your friend, your parent, or your enemy. Gods can have an unexpected impact on your life; they tend to be petty, childish and impulsive. But then you, as the child of a god probably are too.

A true hero won't just be a great warrior, but will be a leader of men. Bards throughout the world will sing your heroic accomplishments, but more tangibly, these deeds they will inspire your troops. Perhaps without your presence they would turn and run, with you they charge forward, inspired and unafraid.

You are a hero and a leader. The game exists to tell your story.

If you would like to be involved with the project, please let me know.

Thank you for your time,
Matt Pappathan
[email protected]

 

[synth]

sounds really interesting... the ancient Greek hero theme hasn't really been done before. I might be working on an RPG mod too (although set in the middle ages). This sounds promising, I'd love to see more about it

 

[The Dark Elf]

Ok then, where to begin

Well, you claim experience, alas it seems to be mostly in area's that dont count. You say you've knowledge of the development cycle, well, we'll see about that if you get the mod done or not.

The discription is basically "I have an idea, lets do this and that, lots of this, tons of that, massive battles and some other stuff"

How do you propose to do any of that? You seem to have some knowledge of ancient greece, but that alone wont make a jot of difference really.

The rest is pretty much the same as above, its just an idea, a dream that currently doesn't have a chance unless you begin to seriously consider the technical problems. Source is good, but it ain't that good, there's a great deal it can't do (there's a great deal it can do though)

You should offer up more if you want to attract people to this. You mention some work is being done on it already, can you post these examples. Or past things you've done. Some kind of promise of security if someone wants to join your mod. At the moment its no different from many others out there, just a different idea

Congrats on not making a CS clone, WWII sim or neocrappiness mod though

 

[mathaos42]

Response to Replies

First, thank you for the quick replies,comments, and suggestions.

I'll reply to Synth First (FIFO):

"sounds really interesting... the ancient Greek hero theme hasn't really been done before. I might be working on an RPG mod too (although set in the middle ages). This sounds promising, I'd love to see more about it "

-- Synth, I didn't reply to you first just because you were the most positive . Honest!

A big part of the reason I wanted to do this was because I haven't seen it done and I think there's an opportunity to learn quite a bit from it. I want to try to use the objects that symbolized concepts in the Illiad and the Odyssey to symbolize the same concepts within the game. The Illiad and the Odyssey also will symbolize the metaplot with individuals (IE Paris represents all that is wrong with the Trojans and why, ultimately they will fail). I want to try to use more of the literary devices used in the books within the game.

Thank you for the encouragement!!!

My response to Fenric:

"Ok then, where to begin
Well, you claim experience, alas it seems to be mostly in area's that dont count. You say you've knowledge of the development cycle, well, we'll see about that if you get the mod done or not."

-- Yes, I know that I lack experience in the area of game development. I wanted to make that as clear as possible. Its good to be upfront about what you know, or especially don't know. Its better to know upfront my current limitations. As for the development life cycle, the FDA has very stringent guidelines on how you develop an application, and how you handle changes/versioning of your appication (understandably). Your right, if I can manage a project and have some knowledge about software design, it will be evident. I feel I do, and hope to make it evident

"The discription is basically "I have an idea, lets do this and that, lots of this, tons of that, massive battles and some other stuff"
How do you propose to do any of that? You seem to have some knowledge of ancient greece, but that alone wont make a jot of difference really."

-- This was just a brief description of the game. I wanted to see if there was interest in helping. While it is much more flushed out than the brief highlights I listed, I'm still developing and open to modifying a large amount of the ideas and feel its good to have help early in the process to get ideas from other people as well. People should feel as though its their game, not mine. It was intentionally vague, I was trying only to convey the concept. As for knowledge of Ancient Greece, I am reading various books (Homer on Life and Death, War and Society in The Greek World, plus 12 others) so that the social structure and the objects of signficance can be accurately portrayed. I'm basing the way the character interacts with the world on what was important to someone who lived during the time period.

"The rest is pretty much the same as above, its just an idea, a dream that currently doesn't have a chance unless you begin to seriously consider the technical problems. Source is good, but it ain't that good, there's a great deal it can't do (there's a great deal it can do though)"

-- Yes, this was just a high level summary. A mission statement maybe. I don't know the complete capabilities of the engine, and what modding can provide. This is another reason that it would be beneficial to have an experienced mod programmer's help. The response I'm used too from developers is "we can do it, its time and money", I realize that since we won't have complete access to the code, this isn't the case. Again, I think participation from an early perspective, even just to have a history of the project and why certain decisions were made is vital.

"You should offer up more if you want to attract people to this. You mention some work is being done on it already, can you post these examples. Or past things you've done. Some kind of promise of security if someone wants to join your mod. At the moment its no different from many others out there, just a different idea Congrats on not making a CS clone, WWII sim or neocrappiness mod though "

-- The website is under development, hopefully within the next few weeks it will be at a state that is useful and informative. When its up it will contain some of the models, and much more detail about the game. The site just has a few links at the moment, nothing is up. However, if you want to check the site in a few weeks, the domain is: http://www.hginstitute.com.

Thank you for your response Fenric, hopefully as I provide more detail you can suggest/comment on aspects of the game. I think what you are suggesting is that the game design has to be complete prior to seeking participation from others (and I should post it). I was hoping to gain feedback from team members before completion of the design. If I have written/expected the game to be able to support certain features and it is unable too, it would be better too know sooner, rather than later. If I find that I require the completed game design document to gain assistance, then I'll wait until its complete to post a request again.

In response to Pendragon:

"To add another dimension to Fenric's post:

I have a few problems and a few praises of the manner in which you posted. Firstly, it's never a good idea for your first post on a community board to be one asking for help--get to know the community, get to know the people, make some friends, make some connections, then ask for help. On the other hand, your post is a much more mature one than most others (let's hope that stays the case under the duress of our criticisms as was the case with Requiem's man, whose name I can't spell)."

-- Hmm. Your right, good point. I should have done that. I've been lurking/reading alot of the posts here, at planethalflife.com and a few other forums but haven't posted.

"All that said, you have an interesting, and (especially compared to the average Help Wanted post) very original idea. However, there are two glaring flaws:
Firstly, you make all sorts of wild claims and utterly fail to explain how you'll execute any of them in the game--there is where posting your design document before asking for help comes into play."

-- Wild claims? I hope they weren't that wild. I would need some additional variables to track some information about the players and the NPCs ( I had a feeling this could be done as there have been some RPG mods of the original half life, and out of the box, half life does not track the kind of information you need for an RPG), and I would need to provide additional detail to people working on the mod. And I'm learning, additional detail to convince people to join.

For example, I wrote the following in my original post:
A true hero won't just be a great warrior, but will be a leader of men. Bards throughout the world will sing your heroic accomplishments, but more tangibly, these deeds they will inspire your troops. Perhaps without your presence they would turn and run, with you they charge forward, inspired and unafraid.

A less general description would be that you contain a fame rating gathered by the completion of missions, slaying of mythical creatures, and participation in significant events. One us of the fame rating would be its application to improve the fighting ability of those around you (damage they are capable of inflicting), as a great leader helps those surrounding him to be great. It would be better if this was a radius modifier, rather than a modifier to all on your side. I'm assuming there is a way to determine the relative distance of people/objects, and that this bonus can be applied to those within a certain range on your side. I understand this probably isn't too simple, as you need to track who is on what side, what value you have for fame and perform a calculation for the NPCs that are around you. This idea may not be able to be completed in this manner, depending on how our ability to modify the game is limited. Is this what you were looking for, for a more detailed explanation? And if this isn't possible, again, it would be good to have an experienced mod programmer (rather than the programmers I have who are used to creating applications from scratch) to say, "Sorry pal, ain't gonna happen, neat idea, but go in a different direction or find another way of doing it".

"Secondly, you and your team have no experience in mods (or close enough to none that it makes no difference), yet you've planned what may be the most ambitious design I think I've ever seen. How do you intend to pull that off?"

-- Your right I don't have any modding experience (to speak of) and my team doesn't, I wanted to make that clear so that anyone joining was aware. I wasn't trying to use my mapping experience as a selling point. I do have experience working on multi year software projects as well as writing design documents for them. I realize that it is a different environment, but I hope that my experience there translates over to the mod process. But one thing that has been my experience in the software projects I've worked on is that early participation, even if its just in the form of awareness is vital to success. The more knowledge your team has, the better off you are. Also, a member of my team attended the DigiPen Institute of Technology, which specializes in Game development. I didn't list him because right now he is in more of an advisory role and isn't sure what area he would like to focus on (he's capable of music, programming, and design).

Thank you for your comments as well.

Sorry this was so long, I wanted to address everyones comments.

If you suffered through this long post, thank you!
Matt

 

[chapel]

Well, when I saw this post, I remembered the same post on phl.com which isnt a bad thing just giving the reason Im responding. I saw his response on that forum about his post, and he was always courteous and polite with all his posts. Needless to say, he has continued that policy to here. I compliment you mathaos42 on your respect, and well the general respectful response to what some would consider mean for lack of a better word. I personally would like to see the mod made, as its a change of pace from alot of other mods, and it seems there is some good insight behind the design.

Good luck, and guys there are two excellent examples of how people should react to criticisms. An admin should write a little post about etiquete(sp) and include these posts as examples, in quote for that is. (Possibly linking the whole posts so people can see everything and not feel like they are being given half the truth like most news sources out there. -shameless soapbox plug)

 

[Javert]

Original concept. Good luck Mat!

 

[PinFX]

I like your concept as well, good luck!

 

[mathaos42]

Chapel,
Thank you for your kind words, and I'm glad your looking forward to the mod, I certainly don't plan to dissapoint .

Javert and PinFX, thank you as well for the encouragement.

Pendragon, thank you for the response.

I understand the value of experience with another MOD, but I really have my heart set on this one. I've been working on a document and a project plan and hope that everyone enjoys the mod once its complete, a long while from now. I'll be sure to post a note when the website is updated with some information. Also, while I continue to hope to gain some additional members, I will certainly not focus as much effort on recruiting, and focus more of my time on the design documents.

Thank you,
Matt

 

[Sprafa]

Didn't I posted twice in this thread?

this is so weird...

 

[Veavitdpoh]

Raisin' the roof...

It's the mad hookup, yo.