This is probably just a rant, but I've spent the last few days looking at all the Unreal Tournament 2003 mods have on offer, and I gotta say I am pretty darn disappointed.
Did everyone remember the hype that UT2K3 had? Especially among the mod community. Rag-doll physics, latest state of the art game engine, great tools for the community etc.. I had some realy high hopes of people doing some remarkable things with it, but give the people the tools to create, and innovate, and all they do is a hundred cookie cutter clones!! I've just waded through countless WW2 (or insert another war conflict here), and Counterstrike clones.. each with a website containing lots of facts, member profiles, and a few 3D Studio Max renders of weapons.. but no ingame shots to speak of.
I'd also say 2003 must be a disappointing year for Epic.. no Duke Nukem Forever yet, UT2K3 is lower than Quake 3 in terms of online players, and Unreal 2 was a disappointment..
I am expecting Half Life 2 with another thousand mod derivatives..
I gotta agree souri, so many WW2 mods and tactical realism mods, all so unoriginal and boring. They have these professional looking websites, for below average efforts and ideas. Shows you how much creativity there isn't. One Mod I'm looking forward to is http://outofhell.bp6.com/ The guy has done everything by himself, Its single player and it isnt based around WW2 or terrorism. Its already leagues ahead of the rest in my book.
The mod scene is pretty lapse for UT2K3, maybe because it has so much potential that people are scared to try new ground, that whole 'fear of failure, won't try thing'. Rehashing WW2 games and counterstrike ripoffs is safer; boring as hell but safer.
Too many damn gun models out there in my opinion, model some characters guys!!
Give us something new, something thought provoking, suspenseful, creative, shocking and confronting not just another mod with bigger, brighter eyecandy fluff tacked on.
well lets make a list of the mods they _would_ like to see made....
i dont mind the WWII & CS clone mods (if they're done well), but they can only go so far.
Peter Gillespie
www.3dluvr.com/eagor
Well, with UT2k3 capable of vehicles, it opens up a lot of possibilities for variations in gameplay.. I'd like to see a stylistic mario-kart racing kind of mod, but with some more crazier tracks.. also put it some element of getting out of the vehicle and running/collecting as part of the race. I'll leave you to think of what I could do with that.. [:)]
With a fair few people doing multiplayer hackings with GTA (I think there are 3 or 4 groups doing it now), I reckon a GTA kind of mod utilising UT2K3 would be cool.. an entire city level (of course, you'd have to design it so it wouldn't crawl on it's knees regarding frame rate) with scripted random events so that you can have 5 minutes of capture the vehicle, or deathmatch, racing, and whatever else you can come up with.. I'm not sure how if that is possible though?
If you've read the mod/collaboration section in this forum, you'll see that ideas are everywhere. Everyone has an idea. That multiplayer Contra sideway scrolling shooter/platformer was a cool idea.. There are plenty of ideas around.. For someone to say "You know what? I reckon we should do a WW2 mod as well" seems pretty crazy to me. I'm not going to be surprised though if a lot of people do it when Half-Life 2, or Doom 3 comes out..
I also think that these people who do those WW2 mods are really pushing a boulder up a hill. They're competing against some really good WW2/War titles out there (Battlefield 1942, R.Wolfenstein) etc.. so they're up against the quality work of a fulltime talented development team, with only a handfull of part time people. It's no wonder nothing much has come out since UT2K3 has been released (4-5 months now?)
So the emphasis, I think, should be taken away from trying to compete at that level (content heavy work - numerous types of models and weaponry with all their textures and animations), and focus more on something more small scaled..
if its gonna be vehicles, i reckon cross Driver with Halo and have chases throught the city like in GTA3 against rival gangs or cops, pack the cars with players and do drive-bys, jewel heists, pizza runs, street races, police chases, you name it.....
you could choose police or gangs or vigilante
and it would kick some a$$
Peter Gillespie
www.3dluvr.com/eagor
quote:Originally posted by Souri
This is probably just a rant, but I've spent the last few days looking at all the Unreal Tournament 2003 mods have on offer, and I gotta say I am pretty darn disappointed.
Did everyone remember the hype that UT2K3 had? Especially among the mod community. Rag-doll physics, latest state of the art game engine, great tools for the community etc.. I had some realy high hopes of people doing some remarkable things with it, but give the people the tools to create, and innovate, and all they do is a hundred cookie cutter clones!! I've just waded through countless WW2 (or insert another war conflict here), and Counterstrike clones.. each with a website containing lots of facts, member profiles, and a few 3D Studio Max renders of weapons.. but no ingame shots to speak of.I'd also say 2003 must be a disappointing year for Epic.. no Duke Nukem Forever yet, UT2K3 is lower than Quake 3 in terms of online players, and Unreal 2 was a disappointment..
I am expecting Half Life 2 with another thousand mod derivatives..
I wonder if the fact that so many generic mods are due to the PC market being dominated by the 3 main genres of FPS, RTS and RPG (both on and offline). These genres usually follow certain themes, so it's hardly surprising that the demographic that play these games are more likely to make games that reflect what they play.
If console games could be modded, I suppose all we'd see are kart racers, platformers and psuedo-Japanese RPGs. But truth be told, I think there's a wee bit more variation in the console market. It's a pity most console players aren't clued up enough as PC gamers to make mods. A gross generalisation, I know, but console gaming is filled with casual gamers in a sense that all they want to do is play other peoples games. I suppose the equivalent of casual console gamers on the PC scene would be the sort that play web games and solitaire that come with Windows.
I know the Half-Life engine is like sooo old now that technologically it is a dinosaur, but Day Of defeat in my opinion is one of the best world war II games out there, Medal of Honour was very well put together (that Omaha beach had me stumped for ages) and Battlefield1942 is in a class of it's own currentley (vehicles rock), but in day of defeat you can lay down and set up your bipid for your machine gun and just mow people down, the sprinting and stamina also makes it more tactical, things battlefield lack.
When i first saw UT2003 i only saw flashy new effects that just got in the way of your vision which is annoying. It seems to me when a breakthrough is made in technology it gets overused/exaggerated, subtlety is the key.
The thing i find about first person shooters is they all have something that sets them apart from the others but all these features put together would be better (guess you can't just straight out steal another games features).
Redoing a game in a new engine (like the next generation of counter-strike we are going to see on the doom3 engine for example) is inevitable but all the fps games to me seem to lack the extra features that could make them more appealing, NOLF2 for example breaks new gound in my opinion (ok there was Deus Ex) with stealth, searching and upgradable player characteristics that made the game more appealing than your average shoot everything and run alot fps's.
Am i the only one who wants to see FPS's with persistant characters like in a MMORPG, that allows players to develop their character overtime making the game more challenging as you meet players levels ahead requiring other tactics (like avoidance, stealth, barganning)instead of just whoever goto the rocket launcher first? Missions like GTA3 in MMORPG would be so cool but large persistant worlds i guess aren't so easy (if even possible without server-hopping) in most if not all first person engines today. The new Matrix game may have something along these lines to offer... we will see (or i should research it more throughly)
my 25c
Half Life 2 with another thousand counter-strike, day-of-defeat mods that is...