Survival of smaller mods and levels?

[Emon]

The size of the HL community is very large, and consequently, HL2's will be very large. For some modders like myself, this is a big problem. I've been doing work for the Jedi Knight series of games, which has always had a moderately sized community, where small, independant mods and levels thrive. However, with HL2, you've got huge projects like CS, DoD or whatever else gets ported from HL. How are smaller mods and levels going to survive?

I've got plans for a small singleplayer campaign for Jedi Academy (currently working with Jedi Outcast), and I'm rather tired of the Quake III engine. But there's a problem. I edit not only for myself, but for others. I get a lot of joy from seeing others take pleasure in my work. What's the point in bothering with HL2 if everything I make is only going to be overshadowed by large projects? I'm not on a huge mod team, the most I do is work with a few other people, and it's never an official group.

So what I'm wondering is, why should I edit HL2? The things I can create with it are things I've only dreamed of before, but why should I bother if it's going to sit on some file server and never be played? I don't care and probably don't want fifty thousand people to be going after my stuff... I don't care about fame or anything, I'm just afraid I'm going to work hard and nothing will happen.

Input would be much appreciated...

 

[ShinRa]

When HL2 comes out there won't be any bigger competition. Once TF2, CS2, DOD2, NS2, and Sven Coop 2 hit the file servers, many will play them. However people will be looking for new and interesting things too. I'm sure if your mod is of good quality, it will be played. Btw if your looking for a team see sig.

 

[Emon]

Thanks for the offer, but I tend to stay away from any mod group... Especially this early. I'd only join one when I'm totally sure it would succeed.

And yeah, I suppose it would get played... Especially since I do singleplayer, and mostly everything else is multiplayer. I know there are a lot of singleplayer fans out there, and a lot of multiplayer fans love single as well.

 

[OCybrManO]

HL always had opprotunities for smaller mods, but in comparison to later versions of CS it just doesn't seem like any other mods had much of a community.

There aren't just a couple of successful mods for HL... there have been lots of HL mods other than CS that have had pretty strong followings.
AHL, Bumper Cars, Buzzy Bots, DMC, DoD, Existence, Firearms, Frontline Force, Gang Wars (lots of people if you consider what a pile of crap it was), Global Warfare, HL Rally, Kanonball, MonkeyStrike, Natural Selection, The Opera, Ricochet, Science and Industry, TFC, The Specialists, Vampire Slayer... and that's not even mentioning some of the popular singleplayer mods like the They Hunger series, Sweet Half-Life, Poke 646... etc.
I know I could think of a lot more if I took some time.

Don't let the size of the community intimidate you...

 

[HiroProtaganist]

well i'm ure a lot of people would stay away from CS2 seeing as how the original is so tainted in many peoples eyes. and from what i heard DOD2 is going to be released as a seperate commercial entity so that won't be a problem. And Steam will make mods readily available so it's really ony a matter of getting publicity and that comes with word of mouth and a DAMN GOOD product.

 

[Emon]

Hmm, I suppose. Thanks for the comments.

 

[dawdler]

Yeah, single player is VERY different from multiplayer... If one make them and they are good, rest assured people will play them. There are always people that like that. And HL2 will probably have few small singleplayer mods... Or small multiplayer mods for example. So competition shouldnt be that hard. I for one jumped off the Dark Waters project (X-Com:TFTD based mod) and is making one of these small mods (damn life got in the way, there's to little time in the world...) Just taking all the models and weaponry already in HL2 and twisting it to my multiplayer needs (I always want sligthly slower pace and team combat, the only problem is that you have to shove it down the players throat to make them use it ). I dont really care if it gets played, its still coding experience, and will probably be fun to do. Walking the road can be fun, getting to end of it doesnt have to.
I only need to keep it under 5 megs, or it wont fit on my page

 

[mchammer75040]

yea i think if u were to make something unique than u would turn alot of heads. Originality will be key noting that theres about 150 mods under the hl2 section on the mod data base. But most wont survive hell probably 50 of them are cs rip offs. Theres very few mods that will actually try something else the one that comes off the top of my head is grey city. What i wanna see in a mod is a more comedy approach. These comedy mods seem so few and far inbetween which is odd when u realise comedy is something we all like-we all love to laugh but not all of us like killing terroists all the time. Maybe u should make a single player game with a comedy storyline thats a mod i would definetly check out.

 

[MadMechwarrior]

Where grey city ends with singleplayer I think eternal silence takes over. Check out the design doc: http://es2.freeservers.com

 

[mchammer75040]

ahh yes thats another original mod that i was thinking of it sounds amazing madmech i cant wait to see what u guys do with it

 

[mchammer75040]

gotta say mad mech that sounds incredibly ambitious but i got a question if 2 ships are battling it out in space how is a infantry soldier gonna get from one ship to the other?

 

[OCybrManO]

I think you should re-read the concept.

 

[MadMechwarrior]

not much more ambitious than gray city if you ask me... they are trying to go beyond GTA3 which took like 3 years to develop by a 20 person team... so HAH

 

[Mr. Redundant]

you cant really judge a community before its actually in full swing.
yes we will have the larger mods like dod cs etc
but your looking at it from the wrong perspective.
If what you create is "worth playing" people will play it.
if not.. no matter what engine your using, or the size of the community, its still going to be crap... you may have people play your mod/level etc but its more of "well theres nothing else worth while here" rather than "damn this is well done".

if your coming into this with the "well why should I bother if no one is gonna see it" kinda attitude, perhaps you should just play games rather than mod them. - dont take that the wrong way, it just seems as though perhaps your doing it for the wrong reasons if you need validation for your work.
personally Im going to play endlessly with the new engine, with all the enhancements and effects source is capable of, I cant see how any modder could even consider "not" trying it out.
well thats my thoughts anyway.

 

[dawdler]

Originally posted by MadMechwarrior
not much more ambitious than gray city if you ask me... they are trying to go beyond GTA3 which took like 3 years to develop by a 20 person team... so HAH

So how many are on the ES2 team?
Sounds really cool and is unique, though I think for that kind of space with capital ships you need to scale, and that's probably a really hard task with source (considering you have to scale physics too)...

At any rate, it was about the smaller mods:

Personally, I think a small SP mod has a snowballs chance in hell. Reason? For it to be above average, it need to be large, like 20-30mb. And for a small SP mod, would that be worth download? A larger one on 100-200mb will surely be better (and longer) and maybe even worth taking the time to download. It wouldnt be worth doing a small enough mod in SP. Cause you need lots of levels and new sounds and new textures (the smallest solution, keep HL2 models and work around them, with new models it become large).
BUT you can play them no matter if its only you downloading. That's the good part.

 

[Emon]

Originally posted by Mr. Redundant
if your coming into this with the "well why should I bother if no one is gonna see it" kinda attitude, perhaps you should just play games rather than mod them

Maybe you're missing the point... I just like to see people other than myself get fun out of my work. If I made a really cool map, what's so fun about playing it by myself?

And please, I've been editing games for over four years, I know I can't just live with playing them.

I've made my mind, let the thread die.