I forgot what my first mod was called, but it basically had you waking up in your suburban house hearing a big explosion next door, and then going into the house the noise came from and you see that somebody opened a portal to Xen... or something. I really didn't think it through at all, and it never did work, because the first map, set in the suburbs as I said, was so friggin' huge it wouldn't compile. I had only been mapping for about three months before I decided to make it, so I was very inexperienced and had no idea what the limits of the GoldSrc engine were. The way I'd planned it, each chapter was going to only have one map, and the maps were going to be huge. I'd written up plans for every chapter, and they were all in places like cities, neighborhoods, forests, deserts, etc. You get the idea.
Anyway, here's a more conventional list of my failed mods (I've never completed any) in chronological order.
Into the DarkThis one was a kind of puzzle-based mod with minimal combat planned. After some scientists had discovered and entered an Egyptian tomb, there was an earthquake, and they were all trapped inside. Radio communication from them was also mysteriously cut, so you're sent in to find out what happened to them. It was a pretty average story, with you going in and finding them all killed, then having to escape from a bunch of aliens.
I got pretty far into the development of it, but I was having problems getting textures for it, and at the same time I got sidetracked on another mod...
Mission A10-11This horribly named mod was born after playing a really shitty GoldenEye Source map, and declaring to everyone on the server that I was going to go make a Half-Life 1 map that would look way better. Well, I did that, but it turned into more than one map, and it somehow got a story.
You were to be some agent sent into a military research facility where the soldiers had turned evil and killed all the scientists working there. It seems like I had some elaborate story planned out for it, and I got pretty far into development (about five or six large maps) until I discovered a little thing called the grid. The grid allowed me to line everything up extremely well, and the textures would now fit everything perfectly. Unfortunately, I had built every one of the previous maps without using the grid, and I decided it would be far too hard to adapt to this new way of building things.
Half-Life: FUBAR (V1)FUBAR will always stand as one of my more successful attempts at creating a mod. Whether or not it's ever completed, I can always say that I got really far into this, and have created a really professional looking (if yet unfinished) mod.
At the time I came up with the idea for this, I was really intent on making a mod based in the Half-Life universe, inside Black Mesa. All the textures were there, so all I needed was a good idea and confidence in my brushwork and entity skills.
All I was having trouble with was the character. Thinking about all the different types of people working in Black Mesa, I eventually decided that the only people who you hadn't played in mods before were the maintenance people. So that was it, you would play as a maintenance worker who woke up late one day, and went down to some dark room in the bowels of Black Mesa to fix a broken water pump. Obviously, while you were down there, the resonance cascade happens, and you end up escaping in the same way every other mod has you do.
However, I got sidetracked again, and started making another mod alongside this...
Black HornetThis was supposed to be a very dark, gritty, and depressing Matrix-inspired mod, with worlds that were bathed in green lighting. It was also supposed to be short. Well, it might have been, but I never worked on it long enough to find out.
As another anonymous "agent" of some sort, your mission is to recover a briefcase that was stolen from an armored truck by the henchmen of a notorious crime lord. The briefcase contains a device used to open portals through to Xen. The briefcase has been tracked to an abandoned apartment building on the bad side of the city, and you're going in to get it. As is expected, the crime lord escapes with the device, and opens up the portals. Aliens start coming through the portals, you try and get to the crime lord to stop the disaster, etc. etc.
I really liked the idea of the mod, but I think I got a bit caught up with making textures for it. Anyway, it died fast.
Half-Life: FUBAR (V2)I eventually tired of the story for the original FUBAR, and decided to wipe the slate clean and start all over. By this time, my mapping skills had improved considerably, and I felt the old maps didn't represent my current mapping level too well.
I'm still not giving away the story about this, but in the middle of making it, I was recruited onto the Hostage Situation team. I've bought web spsce for this mod, and have a half developed website for it, so it's definitely not dead... just on hold for a bit while some other things are cleared up.
Half-Life: Hostage SituationI guess we all know the story behind this. I figured my position on the team would be pretty insignificant, but I ended up taking on more than I signed up for. Still working on it on and off.
Averted DoomI planned for this to be a tiny little mod of maybe four maps. Like Hostage Situation, it's set in a dilapidated facility, but unlike Hostage Situation, this is in the middle of the jungle. It's a rather simple story where you're dropped from a helicopter and you just clear out some grunts from the facility.
I never got much done other than the helicopter and some textures, but I may come back to it in the future, if I get the inspiration.
...
Well, that was a tad long winded.