HL2 Singleplayer MOD need more Team-members

[Onc3*]

Intro

Hello I am Menno Klarenbeek :cheese i am Dutch ) proud Mod leader of the Gatekeeper.
I am looking for more team members to make this mod more succesfull !

The Gatekeeper shall be a HL2 Sigleplayer MOD with fully own content.
Its about the 80year during spanish war in Europe. ( 16th Century )
MoD shall be Medieval Style.


What we search for:

- Concept artists:
People that have experience with paintings of soldiers, canons, weapons, people and citys are very hard needed to begin the MOD. You are the one that gives examples to our people, but also the world outside, a good vision about what we will get ingame.

- C++ Coders:
If youre experienced with scripting weapons, making new AI events, and special effects with entitys youre the person we are looking for!

- 3D Modellers:
Now we need specially Character and Weapon Modellers.
Intrested ?

- Animators:
Its nice to have cool models, but some models just need that extra thing, animations!
If youre an animator that has experience with animating human models, then contact us!
We want to get the best out of the source engine and we want the people to behave like real people, and that needs animations!
anish accent preferred)

- Music artist:
No game is complete without kickass music, music is a part of creating the atmosphere or build up tension in a game, if you're interested contact us!

- Level-designers:
We need also more level-designers which have experience with displacements, entitys and detailed outdoor mapping, to get a 16th century look for the MOD.


We need your help!
Interested or got any questions? Contact us!

Contact:
Email: [email protected]
Msn: [email protected]

More Information and Media you can find on : www.gatekeepermod.com

Greetings,
Menno

 

[MorganFreeman911]

What do you do in the team?

 

[Onc3*]

I am also Level-Designer

Greetings,
Menno

 

[Dodo]

except for the paperwork, what else do you do ? Can you map or model something ?
If you succesfully want to lead a mod, you have to know how everything works.

-dodo

edit: YOU PUT A PHOTOSHOP LENSFLARE IN ONE OF THE "INGAME" SCREENSHOTS ?! :O SHAME ON YOU !!

 

[Xendance]

I am also Level-Designer

Greetings,
Menno

I thought 'Greetings' was often used at the beginning off something, not at the end :S

 

[Rapstah]

You have done ye olde mistake of registering a dot com website to a mod that won't come through.

 

[Yorick]

I thought 'Greetings' was often used at the beginning off something, not at the end :S

It can go either way. A more common replacement is "Regards", though.

except for the paperwork, what else do you do ? Can you map or model something ?

In the Olde Days(tm), a level designer was someone who planned out the level and mapped it. It's possible our guy goes by that definition. If all he's doing is planning the levels, well, yikes.

edit: YOU PUT A PHOTOSHOP LENSFLARE IN ONE OF THE "INGAME" SCREENSHOTS ?! :O SHAME ON YOU !!

 

[Onc3*]

woowie what a helpfull reactions, sorry but i know how modelling works i know how coding works, but not to good that i can do it by myself.

So... i am leveldesigner and can also be a mod leader.

I search for help and not for stupid reactions not usefull !

Thank You !

Greatings, or Kind Regards

 

[Rapstah]

and can also be a mod leader.

:hmph:

 

[Crispy]

:hmph:

I dunno why people have such a problem with someone being a mod leader (although I think Project Manager is a more appropriate title). Without direction, mods fail. At the end of the day someone has to organise playtests, bug track, take care of recruitment, set and manage the milestones, organise a website/forums/game server/content managemet system/bug-tracking system and consolidate the design decisions so you don't just end up with a hotch-potch of "really cool" ideas pulling the mod in opposite directions and with no common theme running through them.

If your team are all capable of staying self-motivated 100% of the time and keeping on track with the work needed so your mod doesn't die after 6 months while dealing with all the shitty not-so-fun admin work at the same time, you're very lucky people. Most modders know how to do one thing well and fail at all else, which is why most mods fail without someone to pull them and keep them together.

I agree the mod leader does need to have an understanding of all the things required (or at least the initiative and drive to make themself aware of everything they need to know). This usually comes from having previous (preferably released) mod experience, but it doesn't have to or we'd have barely any mods in development at all.

I swear it never used to be like this before Source. Seems everyone's tetchy because most Source mods we've seen so far have had slightly disappointing releases or haven't even made it that far. But that's no reason to discourage people from making a mod, even if it does die halfway through it means next time round the people making it will have more experience with the Source engine. Multiply that statistic by the hundreds of mods that could start, crash and burn, but at the same time provide a valuable learning experience for those involved and within a couple of years you have a lot of people who know what they're doing with Source and more chance of one of the really good ideas actually getting made.

[/ramble]

P.S. And Yorick, if the INS team had had one mapper who knew how to design a level that person would have identified the lack of clear HUD directions and made sure the objectives were easy to identify without the need for a HUD. The closest any of the maps come to having acceptable design (no I'm not talking about the pretties) is Almaden, and even that has horrendous spawn camping spots. Point being if they'd had someone that couldn't map but knew something about level design they'd have a much better set of release maps.

 

[Yorick]

I dunno why people have such a problem with someone being a mod leader (although I think Project Manager is a more appropriate title). Without direction, mods fail. At the end of the day someone has to organise playtests, bug track, take care of recruitment, set and manage the milestones, organise a website/forums/game server/content managemet system/bug-tracking system and consolidate the design decisions so you don't just end up with a hotch-potch of "really cool" ideas pulling the mod in opposite directions and with no common theme running through them.

I don't disagree. However Project Manager and Project Leader are different roles, for the most part. I love being a Project Manager for projects, but I absolutely hate being a Project Leader. The difference is that the Project Manager does the behind the scenes stuff, and has to know what he's doing. The things you mentioned, bug tracking, organizing, website, etc, are all things the project manager does.

The Leader is supposed to have an idea of how Game Design works, and write the design docs, recruit the team, motivate people, and so on. The project manager only exists to lighten their load - the two are not interchangable.

The problem comes up where a lot of the people who come up with ideas for mods haven't studied game design and don't know the amount of work that goes into a mod. The projects are too ambitious from the start and end up going nowhere because the project leader has no idea what they're really doing. 90% of the time you should only be a project leader if you have previous experience working in a project - which implies that you have some actual skill.

Not to mention when you do have a project leader who does the project management stuff and doesn't contribute to the content, it hurts morale because (as mentioned) a lot of that stuff is behind the scenes. I'm not saying it's impossible to do both, I've done it before. But you get really damn burned out and unless you're a goddamn robot probably wouldn't have time to contribute (or look closely at the content, which is very important in itself.)

I agree the mod leader does need to have an understanding of all the things required (or at least the initiative and drive to make themself aware of everything they need to know). This usually comes from having previous (preferably released) mod experience, but it doesn't have to or we'd have barely any mods in development at all.

Yeah, you definitely said what I was thinking, cool. It's not just a matter of knowing what people are supposed to do, but it's also knowing the sheer amount of work that goes into a project.

I swear it never used to be like this before Source. Seems everyone's tetchy because most Source mods we've seen so far have had slightly disappointing releases or haven't even made it that far. But that's no reason to discourage people from making a mod, even if it does die halfway through it means next time round the people making it will have more experience with the Source engine.

It happens to every engine, if that makes you feel better.

P.S. And Yorick, if the INS team had had one mapper who knew how to design a level that person would have identified the lack of clear HUD directions and made sure the objectives were easy to identify without the need for a HUD. The closest any of the maps come to having acceptable design (no I'm not talking about the pretties) is Almaden, and even that has horrendous spawn camping spots. Point being if they'd had someone that couldn't map but knew something about level design they'd have a much better set of release maps.

Yeah it seems to be a bigger problem on Source than I remember it being on Unreal. Maybe it's just the less amount of documentation and very varying styles of level (HL2 had some diverse levels, but nothing like space ships - temples - jungle) that gave so many examples.

Bottom line is I'm irritated with the fact that modding is getting easy enough these days that any idiot thinks they can do it. This used to be the kind of thing that you had to study at and actually be talented with to make it anywhere. You had to mull over actual architectural drawings and try to think how the players would feel about certain things.

Marc Laidlaw's recent interview really hits on the head a lot of the problems I have. The whole "Rocket launcher in the middle of the room" versus "Having a character give it to you and setting up a scene". It's amazing to me how many people take the shortcuts, and it isn't right. Any idiot can open up hammer and draw a ****ing box. If you can't be considered a designer, then you should be considered worthless.

And again, that's the kind of thing that can boil down to the project leader's list of responsibilities. You have to know your game inside and out and figure out exactly what's going on while you do it.

There's a mod I'm in preproduction of now, and I'm planning out a small town. Comparable to Ravenholm but more open. And the process consisted of figuring out the time period and basic location, getting the architecture style down, finding some shots that were even slightly similar to what I wanted in some way, and sitting down with a concept artist to plan out the entire town to make it seem as real and fluid as possible.

And ffs I'm only the writer, I may not even end up doing the mapping myself.

 

[Majestic XII]

Might as well use the "real" names of the positions you're talking about; Producer and Lead Designer.

 

[Yorick]

Might as well use the "real" names of the positions you're talking about; Producer and Lead Designer.

Will that really have some kind of affect on my point? I worry that it would over-complicate things for some of the people who already have trouble reading entire posts.

 

[Majestic XII]

Nah, but I just thought that it would be better to use the real words for it. Everyone got their own names for positions and what they do and that can get a bit confusing at times.

Please continue, I like to see some discussion about modding

 

[Yorick]

Nah, but I just thought that it would be better to use the real words for it. Everyone got their own names for positions and what they do and that can get a bit confusing at times.

I think one of the problems with it is that unless you've really looked into game design, you wouldn't know the role of a producer. Considering that's what this discussion is about, it seems to fit to use the more simplistic name.

Also I have a hard time taking any mod seriously that uses words like producer or calls themselves a company. It just seems like they're reaching in the wrong direction to be seen as professional.

Dreamscape does stuff like this and it makes them look like idiots. 70% of the team has absolutely no clue what's going on. Though that percentage may have risen since 6Three and I left the team.

ffs. "Technical Director"

 

[Majestic XII]

I think one of the problems with it is that unless you've really looked into game design, you wouldn't know the role of a producer. Considering that's what this discussion is about, it seems to fit to use the more simplistic name.

Also I have a hard time taking any mod seriously that uses words like producer or calls themselves a company. It just seems like they're reaching in the wrong direction to be seen as professional.

Dreamscape does stuff like this and it makes them look like idiots. 70% of the team has absolutely no clue what's going on. Though that percentage may have risen since 6Three and I left the team.

ffs. "Technical Director"

I'm not too keen about having "cool" titles for everyone in the team. On the projects I've worked on, we usually gave out titles the very same morning we were going to show off the game on, just because they wanted us to (easier for people to know what we did). But in production we usually just had programmer, artist, designer and lead designer. The lead designer was the person who designed the games high concept and was basically there to get the team in the right direction at the beginning of the project.

I don't see a problem in naming a couple of positions, mainly Lead Design and Producer, since they are rather different in terms of what they actually do. My view is that it's better to use the correct titles of those rather than using your own (which is different from mod to mod). It's not hard to learn what a producer does, and it is a good thing to know.

Naming people Technical Director, Public Relations Officer or Space Defence Commander is pushing it a bit me thinks.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

That's it, I'm totally going to be Space Defence Commander now.

 

[Crispy]

Do producers exist in modding? Isn't half of the producer's job to do with stakeholder relations and budget management?

 

[Majestic XII]

And the other half is planning and overseeing the whole project as well as doing beta tests and stuff like that. That takes away time from the rest of the team so I'd rather put that on somebody else. Besides, a well planned mod is more fun to work on.

 

[Crispy]

And the other half is planning and overseeing the whole project as well as doing beta tests and stuff like that. That takes away time from the rest of the team so I'd rather put that on somebody else. Besides, a well planned mod is more fun to work on.

No I don't disagree with part of the producer's job being relevant to modding, I just don't think the title is apt since half of the duties normally associated with producing are part of the realm of commerce which is outside of the domain of modding.

I certainly agree that having someone who deals with planning and scheduling and the admin involved is a pretty valuable asset to have for any team. I just wouldn't use 'producer' as their job title.