I just received details of a new service from the makers of FPS Creator and feel it deserves a little attention from PP readers. Although the site is now primarily focused on Half-Life maps and mods, I still feel that making maps and mods should be made as easy as possible. The Game Creators seem to share that view and are constantly looking at ways to do something about it.
Here is the information I received.
Independent game developers may be great at programming but their creations often grind to a halt when it comes to 3D modelling. Now the problem can be solved easily and cheaply with a quick visit to the Web
The link from the banner to here is broke.Missing the “the”
fixed, thanks
THis is a bit of a cheap way to learn how to model, it’s far too easy, and there’s no feeling of achievement with this program, not only that but it doesn’t export out into Source models either. It’s really bad tbh.
I respect the work you have done but I believe that it is attitudes like this that harm gaming. There are many people who just don’t have the initial patience to learn. I should also point out that this application has got nothing to do with teaches people to model, just trying to make life easier for certain types of people.
It’s easy for you to sit and type and claim that theses applications leave you with no feeling of achievement but that’s just your point of view.
Think of them as painting by numbers. Not everybody has the ability to paint and starting with the numbers might be exactly what some people need.
You also fail to have empathy for older players who just don’t have the opportunity to learn. Whilst I don’t really know your age I bet you are not over 50 and have probably have been using a computer for years.
AS you can probably guess I feel very strongly about this subject. I feel that I am in between the older generation and the newer one. Young people always fail to appreciate the fact that using a computer for a long time and being part of a generation that finds many computer concepts natural that older players or people less technically minded find applications like Hammer quite hard.
If you believe that they shouldn’t be learning these things because they are too easy then just think back to when you were young and trying to learning something completely new.
Instead of being so negative, try thinking of these things as introducing more people into our community.
I don’t mean to attack you personally I just feel that we need to view things from other people’s point of view.
Phew….your turn. 🙂
I do think that FPS Creator is too restrictive on what you can do with level design, and it is a bit oversimplified.
However, learning a full-fledged level designer such as Hammer takes a few weeks, and perhaps more than a year to be skilled. Most casual gamers do not have the inclination or motivation to learn a complex tool.
I wonder which “generation” I belong to. I am almost forty years old, but I still belong to mapping communities where the average age is around 17.
I can understand it being easy of course, whatever helps the person out, but yeah that is my opinion on it, I find it to easy to really say your a modeler when using it.
I don’t think anybody would claim they are a modeller after buying the models, neither would I claim to be a car maker after buying a car.
It just seems like a service where modellers can actually make stuff and sell it to people who use it in their FPS X10 maps.
I am not a modeler or a mapper, just a storywriter. But I (42 years old) had fun teaching my kids (12 and 14) how to build a game with this. It reminded me of when I was a kid getting all excited because I could program something in basic (I was a Commodore 64 babe).