I thought this might be a bit big but i'll give it a shot:
IF this happens and IF we get enough interest to start it, here's some concept I had in mind ever since this was mentioned somewhere in the forums:
You don't have to take everything out of this of course; this is just my idea of what it should be like:
Technicalities:We should decide what we will do regarding the engine (spirit / original hl /op4 / other? / our own?), where the thing will be hosted*, what kind of communication the mod team will have (forums or mailing lists etc), what are we aiming at? - Quality, size, and time wise. And basically all of the practical things involved (aside from mapping)
*If the TWHL servers cannot handle forums and large files - I'm volunteering the space I have on my servers - you can do absolutely anything on them
Core development Team:This is important, I learned a lot form issues - Without this, the mod will never survive, people will loose interest and drift away, change their mind half way through etc. what's required here is a small to medium sized group of mappers who will stick by this no matter what - so even if most of the contributors pull out (which is unlikely but possible) we will have something to work with and maybe get some new contributors in - which should
not happen.
Story / Plot:PQL was fine, and now Issues is taking the basic concept, I though that we should brake away from original hl and the standard disaster at black mesa plot - lets face it - an hl mod will not get as much hype as one created from scratch. But, lets not brake away entirely, rather, offer some kind of prequel or continuation or a parallel, or explanation of the events etc, a bit like op4 - very original and yet ties in with the game perfectly. This I think will appeal to many of the members as they are already mapping Half-Life/BM environments. Here's a rough storyline with random words and some suggestions
- Set somewhere far away from black mesa...
- Still the same black messa-ish-ness; maybe the company who '' went to some lengths to get it'' - the subject of the experiment in original hl
- We can (legally) use everything and or anything from all of the retail hl mods - HL, OP4, Blue Shift, which should be enough leeway for creative storylines
- The mod might follow the life of an average worker from the company and who gets tied up in the secrecy of the matter, some mishaps with the ''sample'' etc.
Now, how does this all tie in with the original concept? And how does this allow for total freedom in mapping?
Well basically - the ''specimen is so unstable, that during transport or drilling, it goes off, destroying most of itself and ripping the fabric of time/dimensions/ whatever you want... so you can see how this can be made into an incoherently coherent mod
At this point though, another possible story can be adopted: The search and recovery party member sent in to salvage what they can from the '' drilling/ transport/etc incident'' and the rest writes itself - big disaster that already ruptured space/time or something of the sort.
Mapping!
Yes, the mapping - the point of all this: Here's what I think should
not happen: Members banging out a map or two in a month or so and then that's it - fun for about 5 mins... And it will be even less fun to play a thing that's been made like that...
We should strive for quality rather than quantity - We should set a standard of mapping and stick to it - if anyone fails to meat this standard, they will be dragged around the place behind a jeep and made to learn all of the things that they lack, and we will do our damnest to make sure that everyone is giving it 500% I disagree with some of the views on the forums that we should use the original hl code - I?d be inclined to go for spirit - but: do what issues did, make it optional, since spirit can run levels made for original hl without problems.
I suppose there are numerous limitations to take into account such as textures - well, not so much textures as they can be wadincluded, its more along the lines of number of maps per submission etc. those can be agreed on by the members, but personally i think we should restrict the texture and wpoly limits - to make the maps playable in software, also if we allow the use of custom models etc, we run the danger of some mappers going overboard with it - including hi-def models because the look nice etc..
Then there are issues with assembly distribution, publicity press releases that I don't think we need to worry about
Phew! I need to rest my poor fingertips after all that!
Well anyway, if you didn't fall asleep while reading all that, I?d like to hear what you have to say on all of this.
)
