Modern SourceModding Dev-ing Problems #2 blog - SellFace

So, uh, let's start from the point when I did that whiney article, where I described my feels about development of FF:R, the need of help and uncertainty of it's future. I did ask people to message me if they can help me with the project.

I got a message from Twotime, who had experience working on several projects before and is also considered as HDTFremen veteran as he's pretty much the only person who managed to play the very first demo from 2019(?). Since that article I never really worked on the city map, so I gave all permissions to him and he started doing a small section from it and even though his progress is not as fast as mine, due to several reasons, he's been doing his job really well and now that section is almost done.

You know, I used to brag about being a "ONE-DEV-ARMY" guy and it took a bit of a restraint to let anyone touch my work. But now I realise that despite the slow progress I enjoyed seeing a different approach to mapping in my project and I learned some new stuff, it gave me a few ideas too. My creativity is not perfect, honestly I usually just do rooms and shit them all over with the same decals and same props I already placed on the map. But having other people do some parts of your map is actually a pretty damn cool thing if you ask me.

So a month ago I saw Lambdagen doing a competition and I thought it won't be a bad idea to try doing it, as I never got into other competitions before for some reasons.

At first I wanted to do a map in FF:R universe about some training course in REBATCO where the player would need to pass Run, Think, Shoot, Live sections with stealth and all my usual stuff. But because of the rules which forbid the usage of copyrighted assets(music specifically) and my poopoo brain not figuring out how to setup map-specific weapon scripts, I scrapped that idea and had to come up with something different.

Then I remembered that I always wanted to do some sideproject heavily inspired by Hotline Miami and Slave of Gmod, having most of the mechanics replicated through map-logic. So then I started prototyping stuff for it, like the level-resetting system which resets everything when player dies, instead of loading a save which is boring/bad/stoopidgamedesignthemappersucks and all other stuff like doors, weapon dropping etc. It was quite tricky in parts, but I still managed to do it. Also the cutscenes using that cl_leveloverview command.

But the greatest thing I discovered and learned to use was the combination of mapbase's vgui text entity and script_intro, which could blend 2 camera views.
So I've made a black box outside the map with some colored texts and a camera, then I made a script_intro with 9th blendmode, did some I/O(short for Inputs/Outputs, map-logic basically) and so I invented actual custom I/O hud elements and texts.

You know I used to spend HOURS throughout past years thinking about various ways of displaying text or any other thing on player's screen. I researched all ways of doing that, but none of them were perfect at such job and had many limitations. While THIS thing actually gives like frickin' TONS of possibilities and that will really open a big space for ideas and prototyping when I'll get back to developing FF:R again.

And yeah, I took 3rd place, very cool.

Around few weeks ago I was desperately thinking about what I should do with the project. How to continue my work? How not to get burned out in a week? How to stop caring about feedback? What should I do?

And I got an idea...

To cancel it

Because, as I mentioned in my previous modpage post, I couldn't see myself working on it for next years, I wanted to end it right there, because I was almost sick of it, sick of modding. I suddenly lost all my interest, I even stopped checking my modpage as often as I used to before. And even though I still like the whole rebel aesthetics, it still started giving me bad feels about everything too. Overall, I was so sick of it to the point I was thinking that there's no way I can continue working on it, no matter taking any breaks and stuff like that. I even had thoughts of making an article on modpage, where I would clarify the cancellation and describe the entire plot of Fremen's Foes and upload my current devbuild.

But fortunately, such negative attitude on it was only temporary. Hence I decided that I shouldn't take any decisions for now, especially when they're based on emotional thinking.

Another factor was my newly made friends from the community. You know, I used to not understand the concept of "friendship" on the internet and never could let myself call anyone a friend before. Mr. Jancias and TheGuardian both gave me a good opportunity to get my mind cleaned from modding hustle and just enjoy discussing various topics and sometimes playing games. And during that I never had a single thought that I should've spent that time modding instead, because I sincerely enjoyed all the chilling around. I realised the breaks that I took before weren't good enough for me to restore my energy and passion.

So now I'm being really mindful and peaceful, I'm no longer thinking about the amount of time it will take to finish FF:R, no longer checking my social media and moddb page counting views and downloads, no longer thinking about university being quite a bad factor on my modding capabilities.

Through steering my mind from modding to other horizons, meeting other people, spending time with them and just living the life I've overcame the hopelessness and despair of my dev-ing situation. Not only that, I also learned ALOT and feel like I'm going to make huge improvements to my mod when I'll get back to it, It's like getting a clean fresh mind full of new ideas. But I ain't givin ya any promises, haha.

In conclusion, I'm taking a REAL break from modding now and will come back to FF:R better than ever. When exactly? I ain't givin ya any promises. So people, take your time, take your friends, loved ones, things you're interested in or wanted to try out for the long time but didn't do so yet. Free your mind from modding for once and just live, wait for the passion with patience and it will come in no time.