A few things

[nemesis567]

I decided to say a few things that I believe that would greatly improve the community. As you can see I've for some time now done a few things to turn this into a better place, and so I come with some more advices, if I may.

First of all, if you don't have anything to say, don't say it. Saying something like: "I would help, but I won't because I have my mod [MOD DESCRIPTION] to do...". That's just unnecessary, lame and you won't look better for it.

Now that I said that, I'll move onto the main subject of this thread. Modding.

Well, the first thing about modding is that it is modding, and as such you can't expect to create a new game, although you can achieve great things. And I never said there were limits. HPL2 is an old engine already and it's missing quite a few important features, so, please, never forget that there are 1 thousand options out there for you to evolve, or just wait for the next upgrade if you want to make something you feel like you can't.

Why?

Something I don't quite understand is why you people have a certain rush to post your threads and release your content. What's the point in having 100 custom stories that have no story? And at this point you can tell me that the liking the story is a subjective thing, but well... It isn't. Every game must have a story, because the purpose of a game is to immerse yourself into it's world, and without a story, there is just nothing to immerse yourself on.

The truth is that there are very very few good horror games(same with movies), and the main reason is because the story is too lame. Horror is not about making you feel terrified, that's a feeling that comes and goes, you get a scare, but you forget about it. But if you have a story... A real story, I doubt that you'll sleep well at night. It can act like a drug and make you feel what the game actor is feeling.

With this I hope you don't just make custom stories for the sake of making custom stories. Either release quality content, and every one of you can do it if you care enough about it or just don't bother. I noticed that people around here have some trouble telling that a custom story or other is not worth it, but you mustn't need someone to show you the path every time. If you want this to be something else than just wasted time in your life, you have to do something for it. Do you think FG did what they did by sitting out and developing crappy stories every week?


Penumbra

You seem to love Penumbra's models but you forget how outdated they are. I suppose you use them for pure laziness, but it's time to recognize that they aren't good enough for a game of 2012. And yes, there are a thousand places where to get good free models. Do you need models, hlep with modelling, advice from professionals or do you want to request a model, visit a related website and you'll definitely get better results(For example http://www.blenderartists.org/). Just look, search, visit and revisit. A person I knew used to say that genius are made of 1% intelligence and 99% work.

Asking for help:

Do you feel lost or in need of assistance? Well, you should read this: http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thr....html(this should be a sticky topic btw)

You can't expect other people to solve your problems when most times you don't even try hard enough.


Custom stories:

One thing that I've been wondeering about for some time now is how do you make the percentages of completion for your mod. Is it just random? Could it be that unprofessional, that immature? And worse than that is how can story in some cases be less advanced than the rest when the story is what moves the course of the other things.
I've always been told, a 5 minutes game can be a lot better than a 2 hours long one.


The truth about programming:

This is just plain and simple. You won't be a good programmer by doing tutorials, watching videos and so on and so on. If you want to learn by yourself you have one chance. Buy a book, read it, solve the exercises and start a few projects of yourself to make sure you learnt what you had to learn. Don't expect things to fall from the sky. They won't.

Resources:

Textures:

http://www.cgtextures.com/
http://texturebits.blogspot.pt/
http://www.freetextures.org

Educacional:

http://cgcookie.com/


Free Models:

http://turbosquid.com
...

(I'll add more later)

[jssjr90]

You know, the general community here and frictional games form are not going to pay for models, especially the ones in the link you provided. It said free, clicked the link, nope! Now I can understand to make quality models, but don't bash out on people for using old penumbra models, because it is not going to change, nor will people pay for models or anything else.

With that saying, yes it is possible to create relay good totally custom environmental levels in HPL2 engine but it is not the idle engine to create such billion polygon environmental levels (exaggerated).

[Rapture]

Buy a book, read it, solve the exercises and start a few projects of yourself to make sure you learnt what you had to learn.

I love reading, I can read a non-fiction, fantasy story over 800 pages long with small font in 4 hours. But I can't stand reading anything technical unless its under 5 pages.

[nemesis567]

You know, the general community here and frictional games form are not going to pay for models, especially the ones in the link you provided. It said free, clicked the link, nope! Now I can understand to make quality models, but don't bash out on people for using old penumbra models, because it is not going to change, nor will people pay for models or anything else.

With that saying, yes it is possible to create relay good totally custom environmental levels in HPL2 engine but it is not the idle engine to create such billion polygon environmental levels (exaggerated).

Which of the links is paid? Unless it changed very much recently it shouldn't be.

[jssjr90]

This one.
http://www.turbosquid.com/

[LateForTea]

This one.
http://www.turbosquid.com/

It contains both paid and free models. To find the free models, simple search for "free".

Also, valid statements from the OP, I fully agree with you.

[Adrianis]

You won't be a good programmer by doing tutorials, watching videos and so on and so on ... Buy a book, read it, solve the exercises and start a few projects

Depends how good the tutorials are, and video tutorials can be of very high quality. You may need to do some looking, but in my experience there has always been a quality tutorial out there on any subject and for any topic. You can absolutely become a good programmer, a good artist etc by doing tutorials. You just need some serious self-motivation

What's the point in having 100 custom stories that have no story?

The point is that people enjoy making them. There are many good programmers and artists that want to show off their skill, but they have to work on their own, they can't do story so to hell with it, make it anyway. There's still much to be gained for them personally

[nemesis567]

You won't be a good programmer by doing tutorials, watching videos and so on and so on ... Buy a book, read it, solve the exercises and start a few projects

Depends how good the tutorials are, and video tutorials can be of very high quality. You may need to do some looking, but in my experience there has always been a quality tutorial out there on any subject and for any topic. You can absolutely become a good programmer, a good artist etc by doing tutorials. You just need some serious self-motivation

I don't think I ever met an awesome programmer that learnt via tutorials.

What's the point in having 100 custom stories that have no story?

The point is that people enjoy making them. There are many good programmers and artists that want to show off their skill, but they have to work on their own, they can't do story so to hell with it, make it anyway. There's still much to be gained for them personally

Show off their skill? I don't know what are you exactly talking about. Releasing crappy or unfinished content won't get you a job. If you are expecting recognition from other people, then there might be a point.

But you missed the point. I don't care if you make 100, 200, 300 custom stories a week, as long as you can call each of these a custom story. I find it pointless to keep releasing useless content when instead you could have developed a serious project, that can benefit you in the future and believe me, if you are looking for self realization and your tolerance for it is on such level, you'll probably OD, if you know what I mean.

[Adrianis]

I don't think I ever met an awesome programmer that learnt via tutorials.

That's ok. I haven't either, or not exactly what I'd call 'awesome' at least. But the resources are all there, someone probably has and if not, someone certainly will.

Show off their skill?

Yes, an increadible artist could make a very, very shitty game, but the artwork would be spectacular and since quality artwork is what they want to show, then it's not so important that the rest of it sucks. In any case, its worth it for people to develop their skills. I don't think they should necessarily release the content if its not worth it for everyone else, I don't personally like it, but then again there's plenty of space here on the interweb so why the hell not? It's not getting in your way, just avoid it.

But you missed the point. I don't care if you make 100, 200, 300 custom
stories a week, as long as you can call each of these a custom story. I
find it pointless to keep releasing useless content when instead you
could have developed a serious project, that can benefit you in the
future and believe me, if you are looking for self realization and your
tolerance for it is on such level, you'll probably OD, if you know what I
mean.

I get what your saying, frankly I agree, I just dislike your tone, you make it sound like you don't want other people to do it. I look at some things some people spend time and effort making, and I also think 'why the hell do they bother?'. Clearly however, people like it. Since people want to do that, and there is no limit as of yet on how many of these mods can be made, our opinions on the topic are irrelevant and in some cases, harmful.

Since you don't know how old these people are, and what there personal situation is, there is no need to make the assumption that we are all after the same thing - to show off a full product worthy of respect and to work towards a future in game development. Some people don't necessarily want that. Some people just want to make 10min joke maps, I don't know why, but they want to. There's no need to insult them by saying its 'crappy' and 'useless'. It doesn't matter what you deem high quality enough to rank as a 'custom story', the use of that term is a technicality from the game. That's how they are listed, in the main menu and the file structure. Therefore, 'crappy' 10 min joke maps are called custom stories, in spite of your opinion.

[palistov]

HPL2 isn't old, it's primitive. WoW's engine is old. Source is old. And when I say primitive, I don't mean it's shitty. It accomplishes what it needs to for the game it was made for, nothing more. And I'm going to level with you, but this thread seems like it belongs in a blog post, not the dev articles forums. It barely passes for constructive criticism. I can almost taste the condescension...