Watchtower
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Hello Halflife2.net community, I decided to write a bit of an article about Mods. What inspired me to do this is the recent release of a few mods and reflecting back on some that came and went.
I'm not a big poster here and your probably not gonna recognize me, but I come here everyday and quietly read the latest news and occasionally throw my two cents in, usually in a longer more novel-like approach hoping to inspire conversation, versus to the various one-liners people throw out when something happens which seem to generate the most responses...obviously being that people have learned to play to the audience.
Moving on...
I've tested dozens of Mods in the Half-Life / Half-Life 2 communities, and I've even been on a few development teams, in and out of the Half-Life scene. One could say that I've put about for every 2 hours of commercial games I've played on PC, I've probably put in 1 for Mods.
Its been awhile since I personally have seen a truly Innovative Mod, and when I think of those two words I think back to Natural Selection back in the Half-Life 1 days. It was the first game I personally saw truly combining RTS and FPS elements together in a very unique and overall quality way, and most can agree it is either the best HL1 mod of all time or close behind, your personal favorite, excluding games picked up by Valve like Day of Defeat, Team Fortress & Counter-Strike.
What strikes me most about Mods is that player loyalty seems to be fanatical, with everyone seeming to have their own favorites yet the player counts have shown that only the strong shall survive.
Valve gave us unprecedented access and ease to make mods with the release of Half-Life 2, and since then, numerous Source Mods have come out, dozens in fact, large and small, with varying degrees of success, but I think its safe to say Zombie Panic: Source has emerged the number one Source Mod as far as consistent player counts and updates. Despite varying opinions on the quality or fun factor, the numbers do not lie.
They successfully merged from the Half-Life 2 / Ep. 1 engine to the Episode 2 / Orange Box engine in a relatively short period of time, a large number of community maps are in play and new content has been released periodically and provided players with many handfuls of comedic moments. Overall you could say ZP:S is probably what every Mod Team would desire as far as success in a Mod environment, the holy grail for example being that big phone call from Valve HQ that the Day of Defeat team enjoyed.
Insurgency has still yet to accomplish that, their updates being minimal with very little new content spilling, very few community maps seeing real play time, and and still as of yet have re-released on the Orange Box, which is still in their plans for the future. Despite setbacks, they have maintained 2nd place as far as player counts go according to the Steam statistics pages and probably will not be budging anytime soon.
Age of Chivalry is number 3, and does not seem to be budging on that spot, keeping 200-500 players or less a day, a still very decent number of players, but probably never going to dethrone a FPS.
With Natural Selection heading to its own proprietary engine and as a stand alone retail product, it's very unclear and most likely safe to say, our top 3 Half-Life 2 Mods will most likely not be dethroned.
Many other mods which started as promising and great looking proved to be either not enough or the teams just decided to move on, or some having fantastic starts only to grind to a screeching hold weeks or months later, Plan of Attack being a perfect example, and in many cases much to the disappointment of the many HL2 Mod communities.
We have been dazzled with many amazing media galleries only to be shocked and awed by the quality of the games themselves (in a very bad way most often), some of which seeming to rival the production quality of retail games we've seen in stores only to turn out as games trying to re-invent the already perfect wheel.
With others, we read the F.A.Q.'s and say to ourselves, "Yes, this sounds good." only to later download the newest mod on release day, emerging a few hours and a few crashes later saying to ourselves, "It sounds good, but now, it only sounded good on paper." Other times "Man, they are so close, just do this this and this!!"
Quite a few mods have been released under the Half-Life 2 belt, but a could a general consensus be made that any of them are truly innovating in the Mod environment? Were the Half-Life 1 days of modding better?
Its clear that a few have maintained their dominance player wise but how long will people keep playing and making mods, as gaming technology pushes forward and many exciting retail products emerge? Does anyone see a mod scene developing on another engine as far reaching as the Half-Life 2 community has, or will the Half-Life franchises remain the leading source of quality Mods?
Thanks for reading and your thoughts are most certainly wanted.
I'm not a big poster here and your probably not gonna recognize me, but I come here everyday and quietly read the latest news and occasionally throw my two cents in, usually in a longer more novel-like approach hoping to inspire conversation, versus to the various one-liners people throw out when something happens which seem to generate the most responses...obviously being that people have learned to play to the audience.
Moving on...
I've tested dozens of Mods in the Half-Life / Half-Life 2 communities, and I've even been on a few development teams, in and out of the Half-Life scene. One could say that I've put about for every 2 hours of commercial games I've played on PC, I've probably put in 1 for Mods.
Its been awhile since I personally have seen a truly Innovative Mod, and when I think of those two words I think back to Natural Selection back in the Half-Life 1 days. It was the first game I personally saw truly combining RTS and FPS elements together in a very unique and overall quality way, and most can agree it is either the best HL1 mod of all time or close behind, your personal favorite, excluding games picked up by Valve like Day of Defeat, Team Fortress & Counter-Strike.
What strikes me most about Mods is that player loyalty seems to be fanatical, with everyone seeming to have their own favorites yet the player counts have shown that only the strong shall survive.
Valve gave us unprecedented access and ease to make mods with the release of Half-Life 2, and since then, numerous Source Mods have come out, dozens in fact, large and small, with varying degrees of success, but I think its safe to say Zombie Panic: Source has emerged the number one Source Mod as far as consistent player counts and updates. Despite varying opinions on the quality or fun factor, the numbers do not lie.
They successfully merged from the Half-Life 2 / Ep. 1 engine to the Episode 2 / Orange Box engine in a relatively short period of time, a large number of community maps are in play and new content has been released periodically and provided players with many handfuls of comedic moments. Overall you could say ZP:S is probably what every Mod Team would desire as far as success in a Mod environment, the holy grail for example being that big phone call from Valve HQ that the Day of Defeat team enjoyed.
Insurgency has still yet to accomplish that, their updates being minimal with very little new content spilling, very few community maps seeing real play time, and and still as of yet have re-released on the Orange Box, which is still in their plans for the future. Despite setbacks, they have maintained 2nd place as far as player counts go according to the Steam statistics pages and probably will not be budging anytime soon.
Age of Chivalry is number 3, and does not seem to be budging on that spot, keeping 200-500 players or less a day, a still very decent number of players, but probably never going to dethrone a FPS.
With Natural Selection heading to its own proprietary engine and as a stand alone retail product, it's very unclear and most likely safe to say, our top 3 Half-Life 2 Mods will most likely not be dethroned.
Many other mods which started as promising and great looking proved to be either not enough or the teams just decided to move on, or some having fantastic starts only to grind to a screeching hold weeks or months later, Plan of Attack being a perfect example, and in many cases much to the disappointment of the many HL2 Mod communities.
We have been dazzled with many amazing media galleries only to be shocked and awed by the quality of the games themselves (in a very bad way most often), some of which seeming to rival the production quality of retail games we've seen in stores only to turn out as games trying to re-invent the already perfect wheel.
With others, we read the F.A.Q.'s and say to ourselves, "Yes, this sounds good." only to later download the newest mod on release day, emerging a few hours and a few crashes later saying to ourselves, "It sounds good, but now, it only sounded good on paper." Other times "Man, they are so close, just do this this and this!!"
Quite a few mods have been released under the Half-Life 2 belt, but a could a general consensus be made that any of them are truly innovating in the Mod environment? Were the Half-Life 1 days of modding better?
Its clear that a few have maintained their dominance player wise but how long will people keep playing and making mods, as gaming technology pushes forward and many exciting retail products emerge? Does anyone see a mod scene developing on another engine as far reaching as the Half-Life 2 community has, or will the Half-Life franchises remain the leading source of quality Mods?
Thanks for reading and your thoughts are most certainly wanted.
