Too many dead mods? Thread

As I have been surfing around on upcoming Half-Life 2 mods, I have been more and more frustrated. It seems like almost half of the mods listed were just 1-day mods that never got any development except a little bit (crappy) planning. I am not blaming moddb.com for the mods not being completed, but isn't it possible to delete/lock the mods that i.e is unreleased and last update was a year ago or something? It totally freaks me out when I see a cool mod idea, then notice the last update was 10 months ago and the mod is abandoned a millennia ago!

deleting might be difficult because:

- moddb is only a promotion page at first, not a mod-homepage hoster. the real important homepage is not here, just linked.
- database intergrity
- is it really dead? or just posponed until hl2 is out?

Tons are dead, but thats why they have a advanced seach to find released ones.

Basically most of the HL2 mods won't have anything because they have nothing to work with yet.

Yeah I mean I hear you can map and transfer files to HL2 but I am sure there will be new SDKs and everything released with it

Exactly. We can't really do a whole lot. If we try and model, we don't really know how many polys the engine can support. If we start making a map now, it'll be 16x smaller than what Half-Life 2 can support. Not to mention, the SDK being released is always a big morale booster on a team. I don't think you should delete them just because they're the ones that have been mistreated by VALVe

I'm sure you can get over it sooner or later

A ended mod is a ended mod. If you can't wait until the SDK is out before quitting your mod then obviously you weren't dedicated enough. And yes, there are plenty of dead mods. For many games other than HL2. All that it means is people weren't serious enough when taking on their project. Just happens to be people want to mod the newest and greatest and always jump head first into it without thinking what they actually need to accomplish their goals. Best advice is ignore the dead ones. Because by now they are probably sick and tired of that idea anyways. (No matter how similar a Cstrike clone or Custom DM can be to HL2 gameplay.)

Mods on Moddb will never be locked or deleted, anyway. I thought we went over this numerous times in the past

Obviously, instead they are put on "Layaway" and taken off of some search lists or something. Doesn't hurt to restate it. Even though most dead mods will never be frequented again.

put on some activity counter like on sourceforge. just that here you would need to label it a bit different and implement it a bit different as you can't watch *cough*CVS*cough* commits to judge the workload on it.

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. A scale to see if the mod is active or not, like a dial they use for MSN Groups

I notice percent complete is gone, that sorta blows for searces like this.

The other thing though is that not all mods update profiles, big ones as well as small ones. I just walked someone through on irc how to get to the manage pannel because its harder to find on v2.

It doesn't matter about percentage. It matters on their status (alpha, beta, released). The percentage was just there to make it look like someone was actually doing work, which, more than not, wasn't the case.

It's a hell of a lot easier on Moddb v2, as well, to manage your mod. I mean, come on; on 1.5, you had to go to 2-3 links to manage your mod. Now, it's right underneath your profile in the Control Panel. If you have a tough time doing that, you're computer illiterate.

There used to be a front page manage your mod link, it didn't make sense to that guy for the drop down to be where it is so he didn't bother looking there.

Let's wait until HL2 comes out and see if those mods don't suddenly wake up.

It'd be cool to have a bar where they have the most popular mods (aka most downloadable or most visited profile page). That'd be awesome to see where you stood among the rest

I don't think dead mods should be removed or archived, they should just have a visual sign that they are abandoned when browsing mods. An example would be to have dead mods listed in italics.

This is why when I search I always filter for some sort of released file.

maybe someone should contact them and just ask them if they are planning to continue development on the mod once HL2 is released within the next few years

releasing HL2 is not the problem... the SDK is.

which will be released with hl2

Can't you just check to see when they were last modified ?

yeah but still I mean many mods have crashed servers and lose info, plus they may have just stopped updating mod profile on ModDB until they can actually continue work with a certainty

There shoiuld be a on hold status .. ie there'll coming back to it .. or is there ?

"Inactive".