Beginner's mod

Pressure

Pressure

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I've decided I'm going to make my first mod ever using HL2 :). I'm a Computer Science major so I'm familiar with coding, specifically C and Java. I have a pretty good grasp of how stuff works in C++ since I've spent a fair amount of time coding in it. This is my second year in college but I'm not all advanced in coding yet since the first year was spent doing general education courses and this year I've done my basic core classes, such as C Programming, Computer Science I, Object Oriented Programming and Discrete Structures. I still have two more years of intermediate and advanced core classes and by then I should be pretty good but for now I want to work on some easy stuff.

The first thing I need is a good IDE to do my work in. For college we use jGrasp for our programs but I want something that's better for larger programs such as a mod. Does anyone know any free compilers out there that would be good to make a mod in since I can't afford to use Visual Studios.

Next I would like some simple mod ideas for something that's fairly simple to make and I can keep adding more and more complex stuff as I get more familiar with the code. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'm not going to be releasing this mod out to the public unless it's something special. This is more of a project for myself so I can get some experience using real code and making some of my own.

I've had a few years experience of coding before I started college so I'm not a complete noob at coding :).
 
Ok, so are you here to inform us about the mod or your coding abilities? :p
 
Well I'm here to ask for suggestions for a simple mod to make. Here's a quote:

Next I would like some simple mod ideas for something that's fairly simple to make
Click to expand...

I just want to know what are some simple modifications I can make to the source code. I'm not making a themed mod or anything of the sort I just want to change stuff. I guess I could just delete everything I wrote and just say, "GIVE ME IDEAS!" I'm pretty much looking for suggestions and asking what a good compiler would be to use.

I guess you skipped over all that so here's a nice summary for you:

Information
  • Compiler, need free one
  • Suggestions, need simple ones
  • Not a coding guru

Short sweet and hopefully easier to understand than that crap I wrote up above.
 
Do something that's simple yet fun to play, I dont mind whether its' MP or SP but just keep it simple, not with all those "Ah, look at all these cool features which you wouldn't be bothered to use anyway!!!" type of stuff. A horror mod would be nice :p
 
How would a kinda heaven vs hell mod suit you? Something like that or would a normal zombie or freaky ghost thing work?
 
Up to you, I suppose, but do tell me if you need any help with mapping. :thumbs: I currently has a horror mod of my own, too.
 
Well, this is more of an experiment than anything else. I guess if I get comfortable with the source code I could try to create my own. I just need a compiler better suited for something this large and some time to mess around with it. I wasn't really planning on making anything serious right now though I plan to later on.

What mod are you working on?
 
Here's an excerpt on my mod, quite small and unambitious, really. I aim for the quality and fun-to-play elements. :D

http://forum.interlopers.net/viewtopic.php?t=1383

As for the ideas, maybe you could do a spooky mod, with no guns, but just, like; scary atmospheres and spooky stuff, that would be a nice break from all the action and focuses more on the suspense. Plus, you get to show off how good you are at scaring people :p
 
How about you walking down a hallway and you can hear like the air condition running and just normal noises. It's all dark and scarey and the moon is shining in through the windows. So you're walking slowly and you hear the sound of a can hitting the floor behind you and you turn around. Then you see nothing so you keep walking and walking and walking then you see something! You go closer to investigate and it turns out it was just a chair with a sheet draped over it. Then you hear whispers and you're all like oh no and a door cracks open making a noise. Right as you walk through a white screen comes up and says BOO! and a screaming noise is played and bam I'm the master of terror.
 
Yay! Cheers for that if you can make it! :cheers:....but you just gave it all away :p
 
The silent hill games were good for that.

My fav. bit was when you were in a school corridor with lockers lining the walls, and very low lighting.

There was one locker where the door was moving around, and banging noises were coming from inside.

Shotgun at the ready i opened the door to find it was empty - you had to play it yourself, but it was really atmospheric.


Free IDE: http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Mod idea: Start simple, just add another weapon or change the functionality or something.

How about a grappling hook that used a physics rope?
 
SLH said:
The silent hill games were good for that.

My fav. bit was when you were in a school corridor with lockers lining the walls, and very low lighting.

There was one locker where the door was moving around, and banging noises were coming from inside.

Shotgun at the ready i opened the door to find it was empty - you had to play it yourself, but it was really atmospheric.
Click to expand...

What about the cat in the locker room? :p (yeah, what about that cat) :p SH series is sure helluva fun to play, and a nice example of ways to scare people and "get it into their head"
 
I'll try adding a new weapon but I would just be better off changing an old one since I don't have any models for anything lol.
 
You might have a fair bit of trouble with free compilers, the SDK isn't set up to compile using free ones, it wass set up for Visual C++ 2003 (Standard works well too but lacks a few optimizations)

Visual Studio 2005 express beta has been known to work with a lot of tweaking to the project files, but since its a beta you can't release anything compiled with it publically, but that doesn't seem a problem if you're doing this a personal project.

Take a look at the coding section at VERC, lots of tutorials on setting up third party compilers can be found there.

VERC Forums: http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=boardlisting&b=4991&v=flatold
 
I decided I wanna start off simple and add a double barrel sawed-off shotgun. Since I don't have a model I'll just use the normal shotgun model and animations lol.
 
There are alternative ways to aquiring such tools...

/*You didn't hear it from me*/
 
Pesmerga said:
There are alternative ways to aquiring such tools...

/*You didn't hear it from me*/
Click to expand...

I use that "alternative ways" on my C++ :p
 
Don't whatever you do make it involve demons. [shudders] doom 3
 
Pressure said:
How much is Visual C++ 2003 exactly?
Click to expand...
I got VC++6 for free. I just had to buy like a $30 book, and VC++6 introductory came with it for free. I was quite happy. :E
 
Here's an idea for a multiplayer mod... I call it Phantom. One player is the phantom, and he's nearly invisible. He runs around, sneaking up on people and attacking them with his (instagib) crowbar. All the other players will end up crouched in corners looking for the phantom, then BAM! the phantom strikes, and runs away to his next hiding spot. The player who kills the phantom becomes the phantom.

This is a new game play type I added in a mod I made for half-life 1 (called 'Red', it also added king of the hill and a couple others). I went the game play route because I know C++ well and I don't have much experience modeling and mapping.

Anyway, basically what I did is derive a class from CHalfLifeMultiplay, and reprogrammed who can pick up what items (phantom can't pick up anything) and who gets points (only phantom gets points). I think I got it up and running with minor bugs in a week or so. The procedure should be somewhat similar for Half-Life 2: just derive a new class from the mutliplayer game rules class. Of course, client side stuff (GUI) is another story, and I have no idea how VGUI2 works yet.

It's great fun at lans, btw, especially when someone takes out the snarks and says "release the hounds!"
 
Those modes both suprisingly sound like something out of Halo 2.
 
King of the hill is just classic; I actually got the idea from Perfect Dark. There's a game play type called Phantom in the original Halo too, which is where I got the name and perhaps a seed of an idea for the game play (I don't remember consciously duplicating the one in Halo). But Halo's Phantom plays differently, in that the phantom is invisible or cloaked all the time and has all weapons.

In my version of phantom, you could use your crowbar to get a boost off walls and floors like a short-range tau cannon. You can scale walls and catch people camped on towers completely by surprise.

I'm just glad Microsoft hasn't patented King of the Hill, Oddball, Phantom, etc. yet.
 
Pressure said:
Those modes both suprisingly sound like something out of Halo 2.
Click to expand...


LOL, those mode's have been around in every FPS since the beginning of time :smoking:
 
Cunbelin said:
Well to be fair the first KotH game was in Marathon, the "phantom" gametype is more like Halo's ball game though there may have been mods prior to that.

Student pricing for Microsoft tools is quite reasonable:

http://www.journeyed.com/itemDetail.asp?T1=34661723
for the full visual studio .NET (I highly recommend this as it will give you access to many more languages than just C++) $100

http://www.journeyed.com/itemDetail.asp?T1=73851723
for just C++ it's $60
Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for the links.
 
i think you should make a horror game yeah with zombies or wateva but you should convert all the textures you use to tga then in photoshop change the hue to make them all black and white and use dynamic lighting and it would be awesome.
 
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