Is HL2 a whole new platform?

[Rupertvdb]

With this new inspired level of modability and such a robust engine do you think that we now have a case of a game that can be used as a whole platform?

It seems to be an awful lot of existing games, from Racing to FPS to RPG could all be recreated by the MOD community, not to say whole new games that we will all play for years.

So what do you think, Screw buying BF1942 just create a better MOD, Who needs UT2k4 HL2 has it covered? or each has it's place?

 

[Wesisapie]

you gotta be kidding me...
source is NOT the be all and end all. there are lots of things i'm sure it cant do very well at all.
there will be some mods, but never any of the quality of UT2k4 or whatever the other ones you said were.
dont get too built up or you'll just get ripped right down.

 

[Rupertvdb]

hey i'm not shitting myself oer this it's just the next gen of games can hold huge areas with very modable engines which cover thousands of different effects, i see no reason why you couldn't tweak them to that degree

 

[Mr-Fusion]

There is the potential for flight sims, racing games, RPGs, BF1942'esque games....but it's very rare for a bunch of extremely talented, visionary, amatuer mod makers to find eachother, agree on a goal and work their asses off for months (no pay) to release something that people will instantly love.

/deep breath.

To reach that creative critical mass is rare......but damn amazing when it happens. It's even the same for normal game companies. The last time the PC gaming industry witnessed this was with Half-Life 1.

 

[Pseudonym_]

There is only one problem, 99% of the MOD community is painfully un-original, un-imaginative, and most impolrtantly NOT TALENTED enough. You can't seriously expect a bunch of pot smoking, tutorial reading, pr0n downloading, uber masturbating group of 13-20 year old un-trained kids to top games produced by degree having, job having, virginity not having, TRAINED and CREATIVE ADULTS who are payed big bucks to do this FOR A LIVING.


Every now and again you get a gem like counter strike, but they are the elusive 1% I allowed for.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

ROFLMY****INGASSOFF!! :bounce:

 

[iamaelephant]

Pseudonym that was the funniest thing I've read on this forum ever

 

[Chode]

Not really. Source remains focused on the fps genre. (Can do third person, but so can most 3d engines....not much difference between the two really).

 

[Dougy]

Source is suited for FPS games.

flight sims, racing sims, strategy games, RPG's need specalised engines that do things better.

BF1942's engine for example does massive combat with Vehicles and infantry better than any mod for any other game becuase its engine is built to do that.

Unreal 04's engine does its thing better than any mod for any game becuase its built for that.

Cod's

The total war series

all the same, their engines are built to do 1 specific task.

Source is a great engine, its a Jack of all trades but master of none (except for FPS cos thats what its made for).

 

[Epsi]

Well, just look at the crazy things people have done with the HL engine.

NS has the RTS-style commander mode, and HL Rally turns it into a full-on rally game.

Source is supposed to be even more moddable. I think the sky is pretty much the limit here.

 

[Reven]

There is only one problem, 99% of the MOD community is painfully un-original, un-imaginative, and most impolrtantly NOT TALENTED enough. You can't seriously expect a bunch of pot smoking, tutorial reading, pr0n downloading, uber masturbating group of 13-20 year old un-trained kids to top games produced by degree having, job having, virginity not having, TRAINED and CREATIVE ADULTS who are payed big bucks to do this FOR A LIVING.


Every now and again you get a gem like counter strike, but they are the elusive 1% I allowed for.

LMAO!!!! i got to save that..

 

[frances_farmer]

There is only one problem, 99% of the MOD community is painfully un-original, un-imaginative, and most impolrtantly NOT TALENTED enough. You can't seriously expect a bunch of pot smoking, tutorial reading, pr0n downloading, uber masturbating group of 13-20 year old un-trained kids to top games produced by degree having, job having, virginity not having, TRAINED and CREATIVE ADULTS who are payed big bucks to do this FOR A LIVING.


Every now and again you get a gem like counter strike, but they are the elusive 1% I allowed for.

gem? errr .... i think you mistyped Natural Selection

 

[Dougy]

Well, just look at the crazy things people have done with the HL engine.

NS has the RTS-style commander mode, and HL Rally turns it into a full-on rally game.

Source is supposed to be even more moddable. I think the sky is pretty much the limit here.

There are better strategy games that Natural selection and there are better rally games that HL rally.

you need a specific engine designed for a strategy/fps/sim for it to overtake the competitors.

 

[Epsi]

Not necessarily. Look at a really crazy example for HL... Polyfighter.

That was a game that involved flying over huge stretches of terrain. Sure, he pretty much wrote a new engine on top of the HL one to do it, but it was possible.

This would be much easier on the Source engine. All you'd need to do is change unit scaling. Normally, 1 game unit is an inch, but if you change that, you can make huge maps at the cost of physics precision, which is only down to 1/32 of a unit. But precise physics isn't really what you need for a flight sim.

Again with strategy, keep the poly-counts of the individual units way down, change the unit scaling to allow sufficiently large maps.

And sure, NS and HL Rally, they're not the tops of their genres, but these people are not professionals, you can't expect total miracles. The HL Rally guys had to write vehicle code from the ground up, and the main focus of NS isn't the commander mode, it's the fighting from the FPS viewpoint of the footsoldiers and aliens.

 

[Dougy]

Im just saying that Games companies will continue with their own engines becuase source is not the be all and end all perfect engine.

 

[Epsi]

Well, I'm not saying that they're gonna do that either. For commercial companies it may well be cheaper to write their own engine that license Source, or they'll want to really leave their mark on their own game, or they'll have extremely specific requirements which necessitate their own engine.

But for MODs, Source will probably be the perfect platform for being able to do more or less anything.

 

[umop]

Actually most people with degrees are morons. Most of the truly talented people are the ones who live and breath it at home, where work would only interfere with their need to breath it all day. Every college I've ever walked in and been to, the IT students are almost ALWAYS a bunch of moron newbies with their noses in the air and head up their ass, it's really sad. Of course almost every game that's ever come out on the shelves was made by developers with jobs (that's why they're there), but IMO if you want to find any real talent you've gotta peek in the windows of houses you could have sworn were empty.

 

[Varsity]

That's a generlisation, but one that I agree with nonetheless.

 

[Ahnteis]

actually, Carmack presented pretty much the same idea. We'll see fewer and fewer new engines and more and more re-use of existing engines, even in commercial games. (Look at the past--how many times have the unreal and quake3 engines been used?)

 

[Epsi]

Hehe, I meant with the "professionals" bit, is that they work full-time on their game, it's what they're paid to do.

Mod makers either survive on PayPal donations, or they have to do something else to make ends meet and put their spare time into the project. This means things take longer, which means really innovative things take a very long time.

 

[Wesisapie]

Actually most people with degrees are morons. Most of the truly talented people are the ones who live and breath it at home, where work would only interfere with their need to breath it all day. Every college I've ever walked in and been to, the IT students are almost ALWAYS a bunch of moron newbies with their noses in the air and head up their ass, it's really sad. Of course almost every game that's ever come out on the shelves was made by developers with jobs (that's why they're there), but IMO if you want to find any real talent you've gotta peek in the windows of houses you could have sworn were empty.

So what have you made or done? Most people who are in the game industry have done some kind of university (college) or game creation course. I agree with the other poster about them all being crack smokers sitting at home. There have been countless unfinished mods, that never lived up to what they promised. People out of the industry just have no idea about software planning, analysis and design. While those guys at college may be "moron newbies" as far as creating a leet dude photoshop piece of pwning at cs, they know a hell of a lot more than you about the best way to go about programming and designing a game.