My attempt at mod making...

""Man, I'm on hold because it's hard for me to not be lazy""

Just play alot of games to get inspired. Every game you play think if you see anything that could be taken in to your mod. That allways helps me to go on.

Man, I'm on hold because it's hard for me to not be lazy

Man who makes these votes? They always seem to miss out the most common options:

- "On hold" - I am in the vague hope that I'll be able to get a team together to pick up where we were forced to leave off

- "Currently in-development" - Things are looking promising. Wish us luck!

I think ballet dancing is exciting... :D

almost... done...! :S

Gave up.

Where's the "Don't ask me" Option?

Released one (almost) total conversion and one mod... One more mod coming ;)

I don't personally mod.

I make mod tools for the modders. Where do I fit in all this? :P

When our site and forums got deleted from HLGaming with no explanation I came to the decision I had to put Citadel Utopia on hold to concentrate on my final year Uni work. Doing the PR, recruitment, story writing and the beginnings of art direction took up a huge amount of time and I hadn't fully prepared for it. Although we didn't actually even get any concepts done the story progressed an immense amount and I learnt valuable lessons about how (not) to start and manage a mod. The problem with CU was that I had so many ideas I wanted to incorporate but I didn't fully understand just how much work this entailed. Because of how ambitious the mod is, I now know that I'd want to have completed a smaller mod first before returning to it so I have the experience neccessary. I also know that before starting you really need to have a full first draft of the story and a full design document.

I have a few other ideas for what my first finished mod will be. One strong contender is a First-Person single-player detective 'thriller/horror' mod set in the nineteenth-century. I may decide to do a short Half-Life single-player episode/map pack before that, all that I do know is that I should start small and work my way up from there.

In the meantime I'm still adding small ideas to Citadel Utopia and refining the story and gameplay concept. And I'm always on the lookout for any tidbits of information about the areas I'm not experienced in, especially coding. I have a digital subscription to Game Developer magazine which comes monthly and usually has a post mortem on a selected game which gives wannabe/aspiring auteur-createurs (individuals who write and 'direct' their own projects, usually films) like me lots of information about how to structure the development process from industry professionals with first-hand knowledge and experience.

So how can I stay enthusiastic about a project which I might not even be able to return to for a few years? Having heard Quentin Tarantino's story (see: scriptwriter's commentary on the special features DVD of True Romance) I know that if you have gut determination nothing can stand in your way. To give you a brief summary, Tarantino taught himself how to make a film over two years earning minimum wage and filming on the weekends. His first film was awful, but in the meantime he'd written a number of scripts that he sold off to directors like Tony Scott (True Romance) and Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers), all the while keeping the script he really wanted to make for himself. This script became his first film made for general release: Reservoir Dogs. Now, I'm no Tarantino, but if he had the patience to go through two whole years of earning minimum wage to make his first film, which he admits was pretty crappy, only to go on to bigger things, then I think there's a lesson to be learnt there.

Determination really is key. And with no publishers to axe your project, the only thing keeping great mods from reaching completion is exactly that: determination.

Dero I think that puts you in the 'middleware' category, a growing area in the Games Industry.

What a pity, no option for that :(

lol ima playa till i learn how to mod!

Im a playa

wow modding is way too hard. I never ever ever finish, nor am I dedicated enough to get a team together.

Playa here. Might like to make one someday. Just not right now...

...What mod?

always "Nearly done..." ;P

Completed. All done, it rocks, play it!

Yea my Fallout 2 Wasteland merc 2 mod became more famous than i could ever expect it to be.
Its wierd when you menage to meat someone that says he played a fallout 2 mod or he heard about it and and you can answer "I made that".

Working on a sequel. Yay and all that.

wheres the "still in development" option?

There is certainly an important option missing. I wouldn't say my project is nearly finished but it certainly isn't dead etc. You need a still in dev option or I think a fair amount of people won't be able to answer.

I think the nearly done option actually caters for both the 'nearly dones' and the '...s', if you see what I mean.

Discarding the votes for 'playa' the statistics so far show that:

31% of mods the voters worked on were scrapped
54% of mods the voters are working on are still in development (included halted development)
15% of mods worked on by these 213 voters were finished

This compares to 31% of (1120/3644) registered mods shown in the ModDB search engine that have reached 'beta' or 'released' status. The longest period an unreleased mod listed in the ModDB listing has gone without an update is No Mans Land for RTCW, at 40 months (3 years and 4 months). The longest a Half-Life 2 mod has gone without updating is 28 months. The profile for this mod delivers a simple message: "soon", but, rather ironically, prjkt redemption are still using their ModDB webspace...

For a CS Clan!!! I despair. That's why I made this thread

I've had thoughts about making a mod game, especially a silent hill mod for half life 1 since there's no mods available to my knowledge, but I lack the C++ skill to do it. Even so, I would still need some help from others and the time, but it's mostly the C++ thing that set's me back.

There's currently a bit of a drought for coders on the modding scene, probably because it's the most 'teach-yourself' of all of the modding disciplines. I think more tutorials would be needed to change this; simple things like how to make a placeable turret that shoots enemies, for example (which I'd imagine is much more difficult than I'm giving credit for).

I'm early in development, but still moving fairly fast. There is no option for "currently in development", which many mods seem to be.

I play, and it gives me somethingto do, if it wasnt for game desingers and programers, I'd have commited suicide by now. I thank all the hard working people who are really opening up jobs and stuff like that for there near future, whatever. Im just luky ive found so many stress relife and bordom cures.... thankx to all you hard working, employed, and unemployed people.

Gave up.. not me, but the rest of the team did. <.<

My vote goes to "mod member" that isnt on the poll.

Don't put yourself down. Mod members are just as important in mod making as project leads. Most project leads cannot code, draw, plan, manage, edit imagery, model, UV map, skin, map and create sound compositions.

released 20+ projects and going.

I've only made some map/minor modifications (none released, ever), and i gave an attempt at modding big-scale, but i gave up on that...

there just aren't enough cripters out there...