State of the modding community?

[desty]

Hey folks, not been around lately, working on my demo reel and such - so I come back here, to check how things are, whats new you know.. and the modding forums are dead! what happened? Have people moved on to another engine? Is there a new community somewhere else?

I'm quite surprised and sad because these forums used to be very active, and from the couple of posts I read it's all bitter and random now. Is source just old now? They've been updating it pretty good though from what I saw.. what's going on these days?

A

 

[Tyron]

I'm not sure really..
maybe people prefer some simple engine where almost everything is preconfigured.. some sort of checklist what you want in the game... *yawn*
but oh well I'll just hop on this forum 1s a day.

people getting lazy so only the best guys stay here I guess...
we'll just see what will happen

 

[Crispy]

Things are still being worked on, but I think HL2.net has changed to focus more on Steam Updates, Steam Games and Valve Games as well as just Half-Life 2, so there is less excitement for mods and less talking about them. Less talking about them tends to give modders the impression this isn't a place to post news or ask questions. Also the Mod List on Hl2.net has not been fully updated, seems to rely on user contributions more than staff contributions and contains some errors too (for example, Off-Limits has not been released).

Also, I think in general mods these days are hyping less and focusing on making content, so you hear less about them but the rate of release will be higher. I think there have been in the region of 20-30 good-to-great mods released for HL2, it's just a question of looking.

 

[Krynn72]

Yes, Source is getting old and people dont want to deal with the hassle that it requires in order to make mods for it, especially since newer engines and editors make things so much easier.

 

[tschumann]

I think that things are a bit quiet for now because complete, (generally) bug-free Orange Box .dll code has not been released.

 

[Majestic XII]

If I knew what I know now going in, I wouldnt mod for Source

 

[Shinobi]

If I knew what I know now going in, I wouldnt mod for Source

hahaha so true



and yeah I think at this point, the people with less work ethic have finally realized you can't just make a mod based on wishing and delegation. As for the rest of us, we're too buried in work to discuss modding often.

 

[Ennui]

A lot of it is that we've not gotten much new meat to the modding community, so there's just whoever is still actively modding for Source (which is a lot of us) but the number is dwindling daily. Source modding is far from dead, but around here we don't have a lot to discuss generally except for the occasional noob with their mod idea.

 

[Sheepo]

The fundimentals of the modding community are strong.

 

[Majestic XII]

It's going to be interesting what the next big modding engine will be. I wouldnt hold my breath for the EP3 engine very much... Source is outdated in so many ways.

Seems like Unreal is the only place to go after this (that is, if you wanna keep modding, which I don't)

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Source has all the players, though.

 

[Tyron]

I think hl3 (if it will come) will be an big debute again like hl1 with the distance sounds, hl2 with physics, and 3 hopefully some big improvements aswell
we'll see ^^

 

[Majestic XII]

We'll they have to do something after EP3. Here's hoping for a kick ass next-gen engine with good tools.

 

[Yorick]

Hey folks, not been around lately, working on my demo reel and such - so I come back here, to check how things are, whats new you know.. and the modding forums are dead! what happened? Have people moved on to another engine? Is there a new community somewhere else?

I'm quite surprised and sad because these forums used to be very active, and from the couple of posts I read it's all bitter and random now. Is source just old now? They've been updating it pretty good though from what I saw.. what's going on these days?

A

There are enough good projects left. Come back to HLSS.

 

[Crispy]

I'm looking forward to the Evolution engine and the LUA-based moddability of Natural Selection 2. Dynamic lighting, procedural generation of geometry all to run on low system specs. After Nuclear Dawn, I can't see myself hanging about on Source unless to do just Level Design for something like TF2 or L4D.

 

[desty]

Wow, all the ancient beasts are here! it's good to see people stuck around - I think it's really a pity that the development platform isn't any better, because source has a certain 'feel' to it, from a player's perspective, which is just right, and unlike any other engine around... U3 just feels clunky to me.

Personally I'm voting for id Tech 5 as the next big thing. Epic is gonna be focusing on consoles in the near future, which kinda rules them out for me.

Source does have the player base, because valve has the quality games and it's been like that for a while.. Here's hoping someone who puts more emphasis on the dev tools takes the flag..

Natural Selection was mentioned: isn't it funny how they acquired the source engine and then decided to scrap it and make their own? I mean, their game is quite different to what source was made for, but still something to think about, considering source is perceived as very powerful and modular.

Scripting is definitely one of the big things missing in source.. what were they thinking?

The recent steam changes which allows mod hosting on steam is really great though, I think valve are quite dedicated to providing good mod support, they just are forgetting the most essential stuff which are the tools - I mean, no wonder hl2 took the amount of time it took to make - next gen games need next gen tools, not to achieve the same quality, but to achieve it in a reasonable time..

 

[Ennui]

Scripting is definitely one of the big things missing in source.. what were they thinking?

Amen. UnrealScript is one of the sexiest things about UE3, aside from the fluid dev pipeline. For HL2:Wars we implemented Python to script a lot of the game and it's nice because then non-codemonkeys like myself can still do grunt code work

 

[Crispy]

Amen. UnrealScript is one of the sexiest things about UE3, aside from the fluid dev pipeline. For HL2:Wars we implemented Python to script a lot of the game and it's nice because then non-codemonkeys like myself can still do grunt code work

Do want.

And the NS2 engine's gonna be very cool. LUA scripting to mod the game, and a custom level editor (vids of which are on their site) with real-time in-editor texture editing, in-editor dynamic lighting, all on low system specs. If the code is accessible enough, I can see their engine spawning a modding community of its own.