| Posts | ||
|---|---|---|
| creating a source engine mod | Locked | |
| Thread Options | ||
|
|
Dec 21 2004 Anchor | |
|
Introduction This guide is intended for people that are relatively new to the modding scene, but I think everyone can learn something from the links and information provided. DISCLAIMER: If you don't have the patience to read all of this article and read all of the links backwards and forwards, or learn a skillset like I will mention below; then you DON'T have the patience to make a mod. Go away. With the advent of Valve's Half-Life 2™ and Counter-Strike: Source™, comes a new generation of people looking to develop their own modifications using the handy Source engine. These people come to the scene trying to learn how to express their creative ambitions in the increasingly popular video game medium, but most fall short of realizing their goals. The problem is that many of these people fail to understand the complexity of mod-making, and think that it's an easy task. I'm going to tell you right now, the only "easy" part of mod development is PR, (public relations.) In other words, sending mod sites great new media and telling people all about your fantastic new HL2 mod. This guide will be broken up into sections outlining the pre-production process, design process, and the development process. You may be asking, "Why isn't there a conclusory process, or finish line?" The reason for that is, in mod-development, oftentimes there isn't an end. You aren't restricted by greedy producers who don't care about added content, you can keep working on the game even after it's 'finished' initial development. Pre-production The pre-production phase of development is perhaps the most crucial part of creating a mod. In it you write a 5-10 page outline, and by doing so, you decide on a lot of things. Now is a good time to ask yourself something. Why are you doing this? I'm going to interject a little of my own personal philosophical values here. There are two valid reasons to develop a mod. 1.) For creative purposes. You feel like you need to express your inner creative self by developing a sweet-ass mod that lots of people will enjoy playing and draw satisfaction from. If you are just making a mod for fun and aren't planning on spending a lot of time on it, then please, please don't even think twice about making it. Sit down right now, take a deep breath, and really ask yourself, "Am I really ready to sacrifice God knows how much time on a mod that could take up to two years to develop?" Do us all a favor and close your internet browser if the answer is no. Okay, next. A good planner doesn't really come out of nowhere, so you have to train yourself to become one. These links will help you get an idea of what planning a mod can be like. This guy runs a freeware business basically on his own. You might be asking, "Well itachi_, why are you directing me to this guy's site?" I'm going to answer with this. Running a mod team isn't a hobby. If you're going to run a mod team, and you are going to do it right, then you need to run it like a game development house. Professionally. Passionately. Intelligently. After you've read near all of those articles and devoured them inch by inch, understanding clearly what has been written, setting goals for yourself that extend far into the future, and organized yourself, (i.e. gotten your shit together,) then you can start your game outline/proposal document. You're going to use this document so much it's not even funny, even after the design process. In order to get team members ideally, you will give them this document to read over and get interested in. That is the goal here with this document, to get your ideas clearly and thoughtfully organized, and in the future it will be used to get prospective team members excited about your mod, and thus work for you. The link I'm going to give you here has some stuff you don't need to worry about because you actually have an engine to work with, unlike most developers, so you can skip over those parts. Additionally, you have to sign up for gamasutra. Gamasutra is a great site with loads of awesome resources for the budding game developer, so, after reading this document thoroughly and utilizing it's guidelines in your own proposal, I suggest you peruse the site. Expose yourself to every facet of game development, even if you don't think it applies to you. As a mod leader you need to know how to communicate with everyone on your team. After your proposal document is taken care of, you need, I STRESS NEED, to write a milestone/goal sheet for the mod. I started another mod before I got asked to co-lead Spatial Fear 2 that I had to put on the backburner in my brain for a little while. After writing my proposal, I wrote up this milestone sheet with dates as to when things were going to be finished. These were, for the most part, REALISTIC dates I set; make sure you make realistic deadlines that you and your team can meet in order to stay on schedule. This was a constantly evolving document (as was my proposal) during the month-long period the mod was in development, so keep that in mind as the development of your mod continues to progress. Goal Sheet (Milestones) Version 1.0 (11/4/04) Milestone 1 (Alpha 0.1) 1/4/05 Software Goals: -Research Byzantine era and Etruscan architecture, find reference photos to aid in mapping. Milestone 2 (Alpha 0.2) 2/4/05 Software Goals: -Warrior character is complete. (Concept art, modeling, texturing, animation, implementation.) Milestone 3 (Alpha 0.3) 2/25 Milestone 4 (Alpha 0.4) 3/20 Milestone 5 (Alpha 0.4) 5/15 Milestone 8 (Alpha 0.7) 7/4 BETA RELEASE! Notice a couple of things. After each milestone, I put the er...sur-sentence "is complete." This is because you want to see these completed, and seeing a sentence like, "omg i have to do all this shit in a month!?! WTF MATE!" tends to overwhelm and confuse. You CAN do this. You CAN if you spend enough time, and are dedicated enough, spending the wee hours of the morning fiddling away with your code or art assets. Make sure this philosophy shines through to your team members as well. Your job is to motivate. Another thing. After each goal is a list of the phases that these things go through in order to be fully complete, functional, and in game. Print your milestone sheet out and tape it to your wall so that you can cross these out as soon as they are COMPLETELY done. You will be oh so satisfied when you are able to do this, trust me. And finally, the last thing. And probably the most important, GET GOOD AT YOUR SKILLSET. Spend a couple of months learning the software for fuck's sake, don't spend a week. It is crucial, for the quality of the mod, to MASTER the tools at your disposal. Keep in mind that there will always be someone better than you; always. Thus, going to sites like cgchat.com to get helpful critiscism is a GOOD thing, and a NECESSARY thing. You, in a word, suck, when you start out learning anything. Developing a good understanding and mastery over XSI or Max takes many, many hours of hard work and problem-solving. It is ultimately the most fulfilling and rewarding experience in the end however, and well worth the time, especially if you plan on using the skillsets you develop in your real-life job opportunities. Okay, time to quit for the night, I've got a final tomorrow, :-P Next: Getting a Team Together |
||
|
|
Dec 21 2004 Anchor | |
|
good tutorial and the highlighted points are good, the milestone method is a great idea aswell -- ModDB Fucking Oldtimer and (ex) Crow |
||
|
|
Dec 22 2004 Anchor | |
|
Modeling For the Source engine, you are going to want to use Softimage|XSI. Valve gives you it for free. It's a program that costs half a thousand dollars. That's what I call one hell of a deal. Don't pirate copies of 3dsmax or Maya, in the end it's going to hurt you more than it helps you. If you don't own Maya and you apply for a job and have all these great pieces of work on your demoreel but no license for Maya, your potential employer isn't going to hire you. If you are in college you can get Maya/Lightwave/XSI/Max for 150-300 dollars because you are a student. If you aren't making money already, or don't have a job, get one. This is your future, start investing in it now by making a wise purchase. I'm not going to press any potential 3d program on you, but I will say this about XSI. A lot of programs, (i.e. max and blender,) suffer from a severe case of sloppy design, and confusing keywords. They may have great potential, but it's harder for a noob like you to learn without some form of coherentness in the program you are learning. XSI is intuitive, it's clean, it's easy. Video Tutorial Sites 3dbuzz.com Hl2modcentral.com Good 3dsmax video tutorials that serve the same purpose as the gun tutorial I listed above. Go here to get a reality check. These people do this for a living, and boy are they good at what they do. These are the guys you will be competing with to get jobs, so don't slack off. Go here to get critiscism and helpful praise in the 3D Realtime Videogame Artistry section. These guys are more on your level. Design Once you've got yourself in order, your game proposal done, and a skillset to boast about, This link will show you how to create your design document. You'll use it to give to the coders so that they can code everything exactly how you want it. I cannot stress the importance of including everything. If you put down one thing, does that create another matter you have to address? For example, I want a longsword, but now I have to think about how much damage it does, how fast it's swung in relation to the other weaponry I've created, what it looks like, etc. Tables are useful for this, and that being said, use Microsoft Word to create this document. If you use notepad, you're a dipshit. CLEAN and ORGANIZED are the keywords here, follow the outline provided for you in this article to the TEE. This should be a LONG document.. don't slack off. Take a week or two on writing this. It's important also to not add TOO much design to your mod. You don't have a large team, so scale it down. There are way too many mods that are too ambitious, and fail horribly because of that. As for the design of the game itself, I stress the importance of a vision. Without your vision, the mod doesn't exist. You need to be thinking about your mod every couple of minutes of every day of every week you are in development. You need to be solidifying features in your head, thinking of better ways to improve existing features, adding game elements, thinking up possible routes the players will take and the strategies that will be developed, etc. etc. etc. This needs to be your life. You need to be passionate about every aspect of your mod, because that's what will ultimately determine when and how it gets produced. Not only that, but you need to be dedicated, and you need to communicate your ideas in an intelligent manner. A document full of spelling errors or a document that shows how bad you are grammatically might turn some people off. You need to be aware of this, and spend just as much time making sure everything is neat, clean, and organized as you do making the document itself, if necessary. Blizzard is a perfect example of a company with the best design strategy there is. Simple to learn, difficult to master. Their games exist solely on this basis, so that noobs and elites can pwn or be pwned in a fair, competitive manner. Look at your favorite games, and draw game mechanics from them. Understand what's good about a game and what's bad; think about it, don't just comment and say "This game sucks." Why does it suck? Once your done thinking about why it sucks, think about how you could improve upon it, oftentimes the slightest change will make a world of difference. Blizzard is also the master of fixing things and making sure everything's balanced in their games. They don't create new units when things are going wrong for another one, they change a stat by a little bit, and all of a sudden that unit is on even ground again. Once you start analyzing these things in your life, you'll be able to design better. You'll be able to think critically about these things in an intelligent manner, and people will respect you for it. Edited by (in order): itachi_, itachi_, itachi_, itachi_, itachi_, itachi_ |
||
|
|
Dec 22 2004 Anchor | |
|
looks cool |
||
| Dec 22 2004 Anchor | ||
|
SHouldnt this be a tutorial? Though I guess more people will view it here... nice work --
|
||
|
|
Dec 22 2004 Anchor | |
|
Updated with modeling section. Ran out of friggin' space on the first post, lol. Edited by: itachi_ |
||
| Dec 22 2004 Anchor | ||
|
You know a lot about modding for someone who just found this site. Pretty awesome stuff there Reminds me that I have to update my sticky soon -- "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." |
||
|
|
Dec 22 2004 Anchor | |
|
|
||
|
|
Dec 22 2004 Anchor | |
|
Itachi, once you are done, add the whole thing as a tutorial. |
||
| Dec 22 2004 Anchor | ||
|
Oh, I forgot to ask, itachi, how long did it take you to do this? The guide I did took a couple days to do. It seemed it only took you a few hours. Lol. -- "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." |
||
|
|
Dec 22 2004 Anchor | |
|
will do llama, hopefully it can be stickied as well, keep in mind karuto i was planning on doing this for a couple of days and sort of had it all in my head; all i had to do was write it out. also, it's not done in the least bit, lol. i imagine by the time it's done it will have taken me a couple of days. Edited by: itachi_ |
||
|
|
Dec 23 2004 Anchor | |
|
|
||
| Dec 23 2004 Anchor | ||
|
You need to add this link to Video Tutorials: Just thought I'd help -- "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." |
||
|
|
Dec 23 2004 Anchor | |
|
bah it was in there, i added it as an afterthought to 3dbuzz.com since they are part of the same site, lol |
||
|
|
Dec 26 2004 Anchor | |
|
Yeah, it's good that you made this "mod-creating" article. ©heers -- This post is created by zone.Blackwolf. |
||
. I listed software goals to reach for those deadlines. It is crucial for you as the mod leader to have some value to your team aside from 'mod leader' status. You NEED to be able to draw, model, texture, animate, map, or code. You will have so much more of an easier time both finding team members and getting things done with your vision in mind if you have a skillset. Hell, learn two things. Being able to concept on paper, model, texture/skin, and animate your art assets is so much more valuable than just being able to model, or just being able to animate.
, you're ready to start the design process. This largely consists of creating a design document, the most important document you will ever create in the course of making your mod. Commercial game design documents range anywhere from 50-150 pages, and that just goes to show how much detail you have to put in your document. Luckily, gamasutra comes in to save the day yet again with another outline for your design document. The document is different from the proposal in that you cram every damn thing you can think of for your mod into this document; in an orderly and CLEAN manner. 
Only registered members can share their thoughts. So come on! Join the community today (totally free - or sign in with your social account on the right) and join in the conversation.