After over a full year in planning, concepting and developing, I'm very happy to announce PUNT, a first person environmental puzzle mod for Half-Life 2. Although not complete, a lot of time and hard work has went into this project already. Keep in mind that only a few things are final, and some content that is being used is a placeholder for now.
PUNT uses various boxes to alter the cube and environmental. We currently have:
- The Flip Cube, a cube that once punted flips physics gravity.
- The Pause Cube, a cube once punted freezes in place.
- The Bomb Cube, explodes on punt.
Also with the Puntgun, you can use certain surfaces to launch yourself in the air with full control of air movement. Here is a video demonstration.
Stay tuned for more as we have more to show, and more to do!
a bit portalish but unique. tracking.
Concept and colour of the mod is very cool, track this mod !
PhysJumping :D nice ...
Tracking
NICE CONCEPT !
i can do Nice SoundEffects if u need ^^
specially for that strange "PhysCannon"
i mean for the Grab/Hold/Drop ... you are using the Physcannon's old ones, and them don't fit D:
Contact me if u need, i've made news ones, but i never used them ;)
Looks very nice indeed. Definitly tracking
Well you can clearly see where you got inspiration from but it looks interesting and something i would like to play. One small suggestion for the gun would be to add a few more loops on the round shapes close to the camera.
Look interesting, altough the art-style and layout are completely copied from Portal. I'd figure if you want to make your own mod, you want to develop your own art style or at least a twist, right? Could clarify this design choice?
^This.
The first thing I thought was:
"This looks like it's been inspired by Portal." A few seconds later I changed my mind. It's not inspired, but copied/ripped-off.
I do like the idea of the mod, but I think that an unique mod should have an unique style too. If not unique, at least not copied like this.
I agree a change in art style maybe, and also perhaps a interesting story like portal has?
I think they should change the style ASAP, because the more they do like this, the more they'll have to change later.
I have absolutely no problem when a mod/game is inspired by another one, but not to this degree. I mean, it looks so similar, I bet you can replace the texture files and it would look like Portal (and vice versa).
The decision to use standard test chambers was due to many reasons. We had ideas of spaceships, mental hospitals, and even outside environments. The idea concept of it being simple and direct was not really apparent in these settings, and required a lot of help which I was never sure we would get. Everyone seems to be busy these days.
I'll write an article about the art, I just need to extract last year's build of PUNT off my backup. :)
I do get your point, while I don't see the problem. I'm not talking about the layout here, since the puzzles define the layout of a map and not the other way round. Portal isn't the only game with a minimalistic style. Q.U.B.E is minimalistic, reminds me of Portal, while having it's own style. Mirror's Edge is minimalistic and looks nothing like Portal.
If somebody showed me those screenshots, I would have said it's a texture-pack for Portal (a good one though), but I would have never thought it's a Non-Portal-mod. It's just way too similar. It took me like 15 minutes to come up with possible alternatives for some of the elements (like the indicators) that are a) minimalistic and hence easy to map and b) would preserve most of the brushwork.
I fully understand your last point though. Many mods/games with much potential suffer from a lack of manpower. :(
But hey, the better the mod, the better the chances to get a really good team over time. And I see a bright future for this mod in that regard.
Is it in same "universe" as aperture and half life? If then you can do something similar to what it seems like you have done before for portal, another company then aperture or something like that. Maybe one with smaller budget so the facility's look less fancy?
Thanks for the reply! I understand you want to create a minimalistic type of puzzle game and Portal is an excellent example of that, but staying so close to their art-style seems like going for a C-, since you already know no-one is going to give you kudos for the visual appearance of your MOD. Half the people will dismiss your MOD as a rip-off without even playing it. I don't think the MOD deserves that.
I know it's hard to find developers but the good thing about this minimalistic style is that it's easy and fast to create. I would really advice you to invest in that area and rethink the design/theme of the maps now you're still in an early stage. MODs are there to try something new and unique, so take that chance!
Anyway, looking forward to the article! :)
Very cool, I like the little twist
I don't get why people are so negative about this mod. The art style might be Portal-like, but the concept of a new gun - brilliant!
This comment is currently awaiting admin approval, join now to view.
Actually, we have developed a new style that we are very happy with. It has better models, textures, and does not look like Portal. We will be showing it off once I extract a build of Punt off my backup drive from last November for an article about art.