Earlier this year, a modder asked me not to livestream his release on the weekend of release. I wasn’t happy about it because once I had released it anybody could stream it and RTSL would have lost a small opportunity to gain some coverage. However, I agreed and that was that.

I did get me thinking about whether a modder has the right, either legally or morally to block people from posting videos and screenshots.

I know that Twitch carefully monitors the game people stream because some games prohibit broadcast of their games. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it seems only fair. Just like I can’t read a book aloud in a public place or show movies to the public.

But modding is more of a grey area.

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As I was preparing an image for the RTSL Tumblr account, I realized that for so many mods, just a screenshot is enough to see how good the mod is or was.

Now, this could be because I associate the screenshot from a particular mod I have played and I wondered whether just from looking at a screenshot if it was possible to judge the quality.

My thinking goes like this…If a modder spends time making the mod look great, then the chances are the gameplay is good too. Yes, I know that’s a stretch, but attention to detail is not always skill specific. There are definitely some mods that are fun to play but don’t look very good and vice versa, but not very often.

What do you think?

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Recently, Steve has been reviewing some older mods (and I thank him for that). Often times, he hasn’t liked them (It’s on the list of code tasks, to make it easy to find comments and reviews by users – for now, you will have to check the 100 Most Recent Comments).

When he hasn’t liked something, he has been apologetic because his review often goes against the general feeling. Please don’t think I am criticizing him for this, because I am not. Everybody has a right to their opinion.

What is interesting is that fact that like a lot of other reviewers before him, when you review something from a few years ago, it never seems to live up to the original reviews and by “original reviews” I mean the ones made when the mod was released.

Clearly, this isn’t the case for every mod as some are absolute classics, but the ones that received good reviews don’t seem to stand the test of time, which is where this week’s poll questions comes in.

Is a review a product of its time?

What do you think?

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It was pointed out to me this week that I missed some areas in Uncertainty Principle in my video playthrough, which is always a possibility when doing live playthroughs as you don’t want to bore the viewers too much.

Anyway, I am sure there have been plenty of mods released with hidden areas and secrets etc. The question is whether a mod author should eventually tell people about them. I feel they should but not necessarily in a readme.txt file or in the credits. I do feel that a player should be told exactly how many secrets there are though, as that encourages players to replay mods.

If my memory serves me correctly, The Citizen Returns had a system of 15 EEs to collect or maybe it was the first release. Anybody remember? I like that idea a lot, although it needs to be implemented really well to ensure it’s not frustrating. For example, letting a player know when the are about to leave an area that can not be returned to that has an EE they missed.

I’d love to hear mod authors’ point of view on this, as well as players of course.

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Those readers/viewers who have been following or watching my recent playthrough of Coastline to Atmosphere: Phillip Sings Badly (Yes, the series is called Phillip Plays Badly, but if you watch the video for long enough, you will understand why) may have noticed I cheated on a particular section. In fact, I “cheated” twice.

The first time was because of what I believe is a design error – I left the buggy and progressed forward, only to come back and find the buggy behind a gate that had risen.

Now you could argue that I left the buggy in the wrong place but I argue “How is the player supposed to know?!”. In this case I used impulse 82 to spawn a new buggy. There was no way I was going to replay that whole section again.

The second time, linked to above, seems an absolutely unbeatable section. Every single time, I was instantly killed by a strider, even though I had 100 health points. That seems totally unfair.

Now because I was live on Twitch, I kept playing for a while and eventually used BUDDHA mode and continued. If I had been playing alone, I might have kept trying.

However, yesterday, I reloaded the section from the beginning and replayed it. I finished it in a few moments and felt cheated.

I felt cheated because it was very easy to do but not from where I tried last time. Yes, I know that might not make sense, so just watch the video if you can bear it.

This weeks question was formed from that exact experience. Often you just need to approach a situation with a different tactic and stopping playing and coming back another day is all it needs.

If somebody asked me “Did you cheat when play CtA? I’m not sure what I should say. Technically, I did cheat, but I also beat the section without cheating too.

Thoughts?

Oh, if anybody wants my save file to see if they can pass that section from my exact situation, just le me know. In fact, I might make a mini-challenge from it.

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My association with The Citizen and The Citizen Returns is long. I know both main developers fairly well and even voice acted in them. However, when The Citizen Returns was released slightly over a year ago, I delayed playing it because I just didn’t have time. As time went on, I kept saying, “Oh! I’ll play it next week”. Of course, I never did.

Then Jim Patridge was “asked” to do it for his Critical Jim and he seemed to slip into full berserker mode and verbally trashed it.

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I haven’t checked, but I am sure we have talked about monetizing mods before, in polls and general discussions on the site. And it seems that Valve is still interested in paid mods and I have to say that I am in general support of the idea.

But there seems to be other possibilities for ensuring that modders get a chance to make money and one of those is donations.

Imagine, and I must stress, I am not actively pursuing the idea, if RTSL created a system for users to donate money to some modders would you support it? Of course currently , you could contact the modder directly and ask for his or her details and send money that way, but if there was a proper system, that might make it easier for everybody.

Once Half-Life 3 releases and people start making mods for that, I’m sure Valve will instigate paid mods, but this idea is more about non-HL3 mods.

So, let’s talk about it, and see what happens.

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Yesterday morning, I read a piece of news on the BBC website entitled Call of Duty unlocks final mission of Black Ops 3 and it made me realize that since HL2 all the chapters have been locked.

To be honest, I think it’s a good thing because I might not resist the temptation to jump to the end, especially with HL3. But then I thought about most other mediums and it seems that users have complete control. Books, magazine, movies (if watched at home) etc. That doesn’t mean just because they do, games should too, but at least I have the choice.

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My apologies for asking another HL3 related question, but it’s been on my mind for a while now.

Half-Life 2 WAS a revolutionary gameplay experience and it certainly expanded the story but you could easily argue that it created more questions than it answered.

I don’t think I want to go through that again. I want answers. Good ones too. Of course I want to play a fantastic game but I would prefer I game made with the current version of Source that draws the series to a well-crafted close rather than an amazing new game that doesn’t answer any questions.

Obviously, we want both, but if you had to choose between the two would you be able or is there something more important for you?

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This week’s poll question (a few days late – sorry) was inspired by Carolyn (a RTSL reader) talking about mods being hard.

One of the possibilities for mods is to ramp up the difficulty giving it a smaller “market” but I respect mods that aim for a particular type of player or focus their work in some way.

In general, I don’t think mods are harder than the respective games, although, and more experienced readers feel free to correct me, some early HL1 mods were pretty hardcore.

I’m working on a MapTap idea to allow users to have more control over the difficulty of mods, but I am torn between wanting to give players the choice and respecting what the modders have created.

If a mod is too hard early on, then it’s just too easy for players to cheat, don’t you think? Whereas, if a player has gone through most of the mod without cheating they are more likely to try to finish that way.

Anyway, back to the actual poll question.

All I am looking for in mods is new and interesting situations, not tougher fights.

What about you?

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