Valve staffer: Modders setting bar too high

THe HL2 mods are really good. There are tons of multiplayer games based on the engine that I would pay for. Dystopia is my favorite right now...

Insurgency is a fantastic mod for the source engine. Every modded game has the best and brightest. CS, True Combat, Tactical Ops, and such. There is usually only 1 or 2 great mods per game. It doesn't feel like an issue!

The only Half Life Mod I was wanting was Kingdom Lost and apparently that one was trashed earlier this year.

i played a few hl2 mods but they sucked

im waitin for ns2

Last game I was involved with modding was q3. It was very easy to mod comparitively to alot of other games.

I tried my hand on a team or two with HL2, mostly maps and art assets.

I attempted to join the Jedi/D3 which turned into the Jedi/Q4 but the project has had some problems getting solid time put in.

I don't know much about the work of Doom3Jedi but the bar is set high for that I am sure, People love their Lucas and 2nd best isnt accepted in those circles.

I would love to see Derean involved in something new for any of the new engines but word in NYC is few and far between about his current projects.

I used to do a lot of weapon mod work in the Rainbow Six series, back in the days. Then I noticed that mod packs were getting huge and you had to make something like 50+ guns to include in a pack for people to download it in numbers that would justify servers getting enough players using it together. To me it wasn't the modders setting the bar so high - it was the community who demanded too much from each mod.

More or less, it went from fun to a big headache with no real reward. I haven't done any mods since.

Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear were he good ol days.

I can see what they mean about "setting the bar too high". I mean, how long has the Black Mesa project been in development? HL3 will be out before they're done with it.

Some of the best games of all time are mods, css dod etc. I spent most of my gaming time in college playing Quake Team Fortress, which was just amazing. HL mods are by far the best these days. Rock24 and The Awakening are two single player mods definitely worth checking out if you haven't already.

I've played the "Goldeneye Source" beta (awesome), "Eternal Silence" (great idea, but at the time I played the beta it was still pretty buggy), Minerva (weird, but fun and well-done), a co-op mod called "Tim's Co-op" (I think?) (very fun), and I'm soon to try out the "Synergy" co-op mod.

Not to mention I'm _anxiously_ awaiting "Black Mesa Source."

And it's true that good modders usually get hired. Quite often, that's the reason they are modding in the first place.

I didn't buy HL for HL back in the day. I played mostly the mods. Then mods like NS reinvented the engine. Then Source came out. I played HL2 for about an hour before playing CS:S and have been playing CS:S since, waiting for NS2 come out.

I think the bar is set high for a reason. A bar set high will yield quality products, granted everyone else that sees this bar and tries to comply will usually crash and burn. The bar is set high only because it is Valve's fault for recruiting and/or hiring successful mod makers. This gives the modders and the community a sort of goal and when you see the competition, you have no choice to set a high bar to get hype started and to pull in those willing to spend the time to complete a project of this caliber and because those modders that set the bar high want the job just as much as the other developers.

For the few that get through the time management, the visions of grandeur and the fulfillment at the end of the tunnel is reported and again empowers the mod developers into wanting that vision. Thus setting the bar even higher because Valve's recruiting sets in stone the unseen requirements to winning "that spot."

[ShamelessPlug]I lead TSLRP (http://www.team-gizka.org & http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/23/mod-community-strikes-back-fixes-kotor-ii/).[/ShamelessPlug]

A fun game may indeed be a fun game but a crap mod is still a crap mod. I would argue that there are far more crap mods out there than there are good ones. That's the reason you see mods setting (or attempting to set) the bar high. They want to separate themselves from 98% of mods that are just crap.

Scope however, is something completely different than "higher standards." They seem to equate the two. You will very rarely see large scope mods succeed simply because you're dealing with volunteers who don't have the time they think they do. Garry's Mod is so successful because the quality is high, aka has "high standards."

HL2 has been out for five years, and all the mods I was waiting for are still not finished. The scope is just too large for some of these things. I long for the days when mods were released in alpha form and evolved from there.

look, I just have one request: can we reinstitute VIP maps in CSS? And also can we port CS_747 to source? k thanks!

Zombie mog game type on CSS and the sweat maps are the most I download. I think the community is suffering from a lack of stand alone mods.

How many total conversions have had great starts but burn out because of time and resources? It's always a heart-breaker when a total conversion get's scrubbed. I really hope that this make it though, I've been anxiously awaiting this mod.

While I appreciate Valve's releasing tools for mod makers, they're really not all the easy for small teams to use. A lot of the work flow is designed for bigger teams who may be working on one asset doing different parts of it (rigging,texturing, modeling,etc.).So if you have one guy doing all the parts of a single model it becomes a major headache to do anything in a decent amount of time. Community people have tried to streamline this process, but third-party homebrew stuff never tends to get finished satisfactorily.

As to modders setting the bar too high, I don't think Valve really has a leg to stand on in this regard as they have missed release dates repeatedly, only to release,in my opinion, a less than inspired product, Half-life 2:Episode 1. I kind of wonder if it's the tools that are slowing both the modders and Valve down.

Insurgency. It shines from the polish!!

I made a mod once for Duke Nukem 3D, a loooong time ago; "Stargate SG-1 : In the Hands of the Serpent", it was a total conversion that I spent years working on pretty much alone, and was never quite finished. It wasn't anything special, but it was fun.

If I knew coding I would tailor eye patches for night vision. Then Freaking Ultimate Online Griefing cheat would be Depth Perception Mines. Then I'd play Doom.

Maybe the community is to blame for these lofty goals, maybe it's the fault of the tools; I don't know. All I know is that the best HL2 Mod(Alyx Nude Mod) probably didn't take more than a week and exhibits EXCEPTIONAL quality.

DigiPen students have made a few mods and levels for HL2, which are available in Digital Gallery section of the website. Most are just levels meant to run under Episode 1, some are mods to the game mechanics.

I highly recommend GrappleMod, since I helped make it, and because I think it's hella fun. We used it as a prototype for our fall game project.

Zombie Master and Hidden: Source are two of the best multiplayer HL2 mods out right now. Source Forts is pretty good too.

I made a mod for Jedi Knight. It replaced the force destruction power with about 24 force destructions going in every direction.....it killed anything near it though...

NATO_Duke said

"I used to do a lot of weapon mod work in the Rainbow Six series, back in the days."



I used to use a NATO gun pack on R6 rouge spear, if that was one of yours thank you very much, I used to play for hours online with my FN FNC or FN FAL, it was a quality mod

I've been playing mostly Hidden: Source for HL2, plus some Pirates, Vikings and Knights II too (that one is still in the early stages of development, but has an awesome premise :) ). Anyway, I don't think the problem is setting the bar high - it just means we're getting quality stuff, but I'd see it as a positive thing if more teams making highly anticipated mods released early alpha builds instead of trying to release only finished versions. It might even get more potential modders excited for participating in development. And like Phillip mentioned, hiring the best modders is just good motivation for them to be modding in the first place.

Counterstrike is really the culprit. I remember downloading the beta circa early 2000 (insert "back in MY day" where you like) and being amazed at the quality of weapons and models. the MP5 almost looked better than the one in HL. And the sounds were all perfect.

So i think after that, people raised their expectations of mods to unreasonable levels.

Damn you gooseman!

Counterstrike is really the culprit. I remember downloading the beta circa early 2000 (insert "back in MY day" where you like) and being amazed at the quality of weapons and models. the MP5 almost looked better than the one in HL. And the sounds were all perfect.

So i think after that, people raised their expectations of mods to unreasonable levels.

Damn you gooseman!

I've gotta say this is the truest story I've seen in a while, props for running it. Possibly the best example of this is Gmod (eventually getting snapped up and put on steam for a price) basically because adds small features and releases early and often. I always cringe at the mod developers wanted posts on message boards with grandiose plans but not actually having anyone on the team.

DotA (Defense of the Ancients) is a great mod that didn't have the creators whisked away to developers. The original first two creators just left and it trailed onto the current man who upkeeps and updates the map, Icefrog. www.dota-allstars.com for more info. It's the counter-strike of WC3 basically.

I'm a big Dawn Of War fan, and the number of fantastic mods and maps built by the community is astounding. The Survival mod, in particular, creates a whole new style of gameplay.

I've built a couple of maps, but nothing particularly special. It's quite satisfying, if only to play on a level you made yourself.

If you liked the Nova Prospekt level, the "Riot Act" SP mod is a must, very well done.
http://uoz.multiplayer.it/ra
(site seems to be under construction at the moment)

Minerva Metastasis too, wish the guy would hurry up with part 3!

This is why developers should not fear mods. Professional developers understand the concept of budgets.

This applies to the pros, too. If your games costs too much money to make, or it has too many bugs, that's your own damn fault, not the fault of the platform.

There are a few problems in the mod community, that completely cripple it:

a) Everyone wants to be the designer, and create their own vision. Very few people want to create someone elses vision, which leads to a whole lot of 'ideas people', who offer nothing but a poorly thought out, general concept.

b) Very few people have any skill to offer, and mostly skills are difficult to learn. Coders, animators, and sound techs are insanely difficult to come by, and usually have their own project to work on.

c) The amount of content required to make a quality total conversion is overwhelming for most games. FPS'es, for example, require a metric ton of high quality models, textures, animations, and sounds, as well as skilled coders to bring it all together.

d) Support from developers is minimal, and usually a token effort, and consequently, mod support becomes even less (snowball).

e) Only the most popular mods get any playerbase at all; why bother making something if noone will play it? Iron Grip: The Oppression, for example. I downloaded it, but because theres no player base, I can't play it.


All these things contribute. More support is nice, but the fact is, like any free development project, getting people to contribute is difficult when there are so many adverse factors.