Putting aside the fact that the actual game itself will feature new enemies, weapons, locations and hopefully, please! plenty of story details, are you as interested as I am about the potential maps and mods from from the game’s content?
In many ways, the actual maps and mods created by the community is a better body of work than some of the games themselves. I even considered asking the question of if I had to have one or the other (the game or the community content), which would you prefer, but of course you can’t have the community content without the game!
I am assuming that most readers here will want both but some among you might only be interested in the games themselves.
Thoughts?
I have had a report that some of the previous polls have not been visible for users. I am trying a plugin this time. If you can’t see the poll below, please contact me – thanks.
Are you, like Phillip, just as excited about the potential maps and mods made from HL3 content as you are about the game itself?
- No, I am not. (17%, 11 Votes)
- Yes, I am. (83%, 53 Votes)
Total Voters: 64
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I am even more excited about the games made with Source 2. I’m sure there will be a lot more Source 2 games.
If I ever make a game, I will use Source 2.
Good point.
Absolutely. I’m especially excited for the chances of making mods with fewer limitations than Source – open world mods would be very interesting (albeit a massive time sink to develop), since level streaming in Source 2 is a thing.
Cant wait to see what HL3 will bring…not to mention the mods and servers aplenty…
So is there any new info on HL3 or is still just some idle speculation? You make it sound as if it even exists ;)!
we know rougly what Source 2 will offer, so we kinda have an idea how it would influence modding, but it is all speculation at the end.
It would boost my interest in mapping ten fold, I love working with hammer but its no big surprise that its getting old and slow to work with. Source 2 with improvised hammer would solve this most likely!
Yep. No doubt about it. Even though there are still good mods being released for Half-Life, modders are tired of the same mapping techniques used in both HL1 and 2.
I’m actually more interested in that potential than whatever the game itself offers. The narrative-based FPS genre has a lot of great games. But the reason why Half-Life stands out above the rest is because it had modding capability. If it didn’t, it would sit alongside games like BioShock or Wolfenstein: TNO. Games that are fun to play, but which you’ll only revisit once in a blue moon because once you beat them, that’s it.
If Half-Life didn’t have a community, I wouldn’t care about it.
But I also acknowledge that HL3 is not a panacea. The tool set may become easier to use, but the visual expectations will be that much higher. And to what end? Will the exponential increase in work lead to an objectively better game than the previous two? Probably not, if we’re honest. That, and I’m not that thrilled about the way HL3 has been handled so far, with the “leaks,” the teasing and the silence. It has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Games like Bioshock and Wolfenstein: TNO are not just “fun to play”. They are fucking awesome.
THAT is the reason Half-Life 2 stands out. I didn’t care about Half-Life modding for a very long time, except Source Forts and Counter-Strike maybe (if you count that), and I still was very passionate about Half-Life, and also Bioshock, Metro 2033 and Wolfenstein: TNO.
Doom comes out tomorrow! I hope it will belong to that list.
I’m definitely exited for the community aspect of HL3. Some of the stuff that modders are doing with goldsource still blows my mind.
I just hope the tools are stable and user friendly. Maybe we’ll see a remake of HL2 with the new engine? City 17: Source 2
yeah the remake will come out 8 years after they announce it, but without the Citadel part
I’m skeptical of remakes like that because they usually break existing mod support. Doom 3: BFG has no support for Doom 3 mods, for example. It also makes the original mod-friendly version harder to get.
Even though I’m extremely excited about the game, I’m even more excited about the mods. I arrived a little late to the scene for HL2 around 2009, and while modding was still very active (around today’s level I think), it was past the early stages where massive mods were getting released practically on a monthly basis for several years. And that was with a smaller gaming community and Steam still in its infancy! If Half Life 3 is able to present a powerful, easily moddable new engine and a successful game, then the modding scene for Half Life 3 should be even more wildly successful than Half Life 2’s. I can’t wait to play the game, but mostly I want to be around to see that modding explosion!
Assuming the game isn’t botched and that the engine is workable, the immense number of people that’ll play it, the well-known supporting infrastructure of Steam, and simply having more mod and map-makers (both old ones from HL1 & HL2 as well as new ones arriving first to HL3) should create a modding community of a scale and quality we’ve never seen! (Or so I hope)
Can’t wait to make my own maps in HL3, hopefully in the new hammer you can preview lighting.
God… Maybe even the maps will load in as you play so you don’t have to live with that loading screen?
The possibilities are endless!
No, not at all.
While I see why mappers are really curious, I can’t make myself look forward to mods based on the new engine. Hell, I’m not even looking forward to the game that much. I’ll tell you why.
One of the reasons I’m not looking forward to this all is that I dunno what to expect. There was literally nothing shown to us, maybe with the exception of one concept art. We can clearly deduce that it’s going to take place somewhere snowy (arctic?), but that’s it. They’re probably going to reuse some of the old ideas that were to appear in HL2. Who knows, maybe even the Kraken Base will make an appearance.
I still remember how I was looking forward to Half-Life 2 and while the game was okay, I felt kind of disappointed. Screens and trailers promised much more. I know that it was most likely because of the unfortunate leak, but still. To me Half-Life 2 feels often very dead. There are things happening in the background which is fine, but for example the chapter “Uprising” was bland. Sure, there was lots of action, but I never felt like there was war all around me. I felt like there was me and a group of annoying armed civilians who always got in my way and wouldn’t stop saying stupid stuff like “Reload.” or “Sorry.” If Valve actually added some firefights in the background, that would feel great. You know, seeing some fighting from a window, behind piles of rubble and so on. Even that (suppression field) strider battle was sad. In the trailer it looked so huge, but in reality, all that happened was two rebels with rocket launchers came in there and got mowed down immediately. Then it was again up to the player only.
This problem occurs in mods too. Overwhelming number of mods feels just simply uninteresting and very alike. Maybe it’s because there isn’t enough assets or something, so they mostly look like HL2’s ugly brother. Every now and then some mod with signs of effort appeared and some even turned out to be fun in the end. The ones I really liked were The Stanley Parable, Underhell, Black Mesa (when it was still free) and Black Snow (that sadly stopped working after that dumb SteamPipe update). Then there were some that felt quite enjoyable to play, like Nightmare House 2, Titan: XCIX, Missing Information and Estranged. And finally there were some other I tried because they looked interesting, but usually stopped because the gameplay was either horrible or boring. Notable examples are Grey, 1187, Silent Hill: Alchemilla, The Forgotten Ones, Get a Life, Flesh, They Hunger Again and Minerva (yes, I really mean it).
Now, there’s still more mods out there that look interesting, but I’ll mostly likely never play those. Downloading HL2 mods with my connection is painful and hardly ever worthy. As I said in the past, I prefer HL1 mods as there’s usually bigger variety and gameplay feels much more satisfying to me.
That’s my point of view. Keep in mind I’m only a player, not a modder. That means I can’t really judge possibilities of either Goldsource or Source engine, only the results.
I am more hyped for the new Source engine.
We will get closer to the quality of current-day competitors like Unreal while still managing an easy-to-learn interface system.
So the answer for maps is “Yes”.
But now let’s talk about HL2 EP3.
While I do not like to play conspiracy theorist with Valve, I am tempted to believe that EP3 is not being released because it would be a bad marketing move.
Most attention towards Valve is solely because the world is expecting EP3. The engine fueling everyone’s interest in Valve, Steam, the whole system hinges on the ending of the gaming’s most important trilogy !
If they released EP3, that would be it.
The Half Life series is done, there is no more reason to keep track with Valve for anything else than E-Sports.
There is nothing more to debate about because the millions of questions and theories that keep their reputation up have just been answered…
But hey, I may be wrong.
Can’t really be excited about Half-Life 3 that much.
The game must continue the story, which probably means that it will be set in Arctic, and I can’t force myself to believe that Valve can come up with something interesting in that setting. There weren’t that many games set in a snowy environment that really stuck in my memory, because, I believe, it’s just really boring. Yes, you can make some nice gameplay mechanics with it, like cold and storms (Lost Planet and Cryostasis are the only games I can really think of right now), but even then the whole scenery will still look quite blank, in my opinion.
In both games, Half-Life and Half-Life 2, one of the main characters of the game is the environment. In the first game it’s the mysterious corridors, laboratories of Black Mesa and the areas surrounding it, in the sequel it’s the old streets, abandoned flats and apartments, sewers and canals and other places of City-17. It might not actually be true, but for me, it feels like these places were specifically designed “borderless” – to be expanded and explored by players’ and especially modders’ imagination. If you look at the textures and models – it’s like they all are made for every occasion possible, so map-maker could use them in their map and don’t be in need of making decorations themselves.
Maybe Valve can still surprise us with Source 2 but I really doubt that, considering how not that good Valve Software is at actually making software. And I personally have no idea how are they going to fight against such established giants as Unity and Unreal.
The only thing I really can hope for right now is the release of the source code of Source (and maybe GoldSrc) engine but even then it’s something from a fantasy due to all the licensed middleware used in the engine.
After all I think that having no game at all is better than having a bad game.