Two bit Modder's

[NuTTeR]

No disrespect meant to any mod teams, but...why is it that they only seem to be able to churn out pretty weapon/vehicle renders.

I know that the HL2 engine and SDK haven't been released as yet and all we have is the XSI software but surely these teams can start their level/model designs based on HL1 tech and then convert across to HL2, afterall Valve have said that a conversion pipeline exists, just look at CS:Source and all the other ports they're doing.

Come on mod teams, why aren't you showing off your map renders (with original textures) that support your mod.

A lot of mods seem to consit of someone coming up with a (sometimes good) set of ideas, designing a website around the idea, and then writing news stories on their site to say check out our new AMP64 mega zapper gun render. And that's about as far as they're ever going to get because their excuse is that 'Halflife 2/SDK hasn't released yet', bullcrap, that's no excuse.

If I see one more weapon/vehicle render (no matter how cool or realistic) I'm going to go NUTS, wwoooaaahaaaaa, gibber, gibber wrwererwmekjsdklgkg...

Maybe I haven't looked around enough...anyone that knows of any mods where they have started mapping/texturing please post links.

 

[babywax]

Why make maps when you will likely have to remake them when HL2 comes out?

 

[Onions]

I'm sorry to say you are speaking out of your arse
As babywax said, you will have to remake your maps when the new Hammer is released. Ok, you could convert, but why waste your time just to please a crowd? I agree many mods will get nowhere after unskinned model renders, but it's unfair ot tar all of us with the same brush. You are correct in the sense that modelling is not all you can do without the sdk though; textures, shell art, gui art, sounds and shaders to name a few.

As to your question - "Maybe I haven't looked around enough...anyone that knows of any mods where they have started mapping/texturing please post links." - it really doesn't mean much. Why do you care if a mod has started mapping? If your answer is because it shows the mod team can get work done, then i'm sorry to tell you there are so many mappers out there at the moment that any mod with an average design can pick a few up and get things done; the point being that mapping progress is a poor way of judging mod progress/completion probability.

 

[Shinobi]

op-coin actually just posted a map related building render in the models forum,, it was made in hammer and rendered in max (I'm guessing about the render, but I see shades of a skylight )

the thing is though,, even if you do make some geometry in hammer, you can't texture it because HL2 uses a shader system and many of the texture resolutions would be too high, you cant compile it unless you map within the HL constraints which defeats the purpose of mapping for HL2, the current version of hammer's static mesh support is abyssmal, and also you don't have access to the cool geometry related tools that come with the new hammer.

 

[chapel]

With that, one major reason why I havent had my team do anything cause alot of it can and will have to be redone. Mostly for quality reasons, but overall we dont have the tools to make sure what we make will work at the desired FPS and Quality.

If you have seen my site recently, we started developement for our minimod which we named Uprise. It is going to be used to practice with on the source engine, so to that end what we make now can be used in early developement phases to prototype.

Really at this point, any mod can fail or suceed it all depends on time and how things turn out, not how many models, or maps or team members you have.