Interesting post on the HLmappers mailing list :-) Phil
2009/4/5 Nathan Voge <hl2fr...@msn.com> > > I just thought I would throw up this quote from a Gamasutra article on The > Cabal: Valve’s Design Process For Creating Half-Life found at > http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991210/birdwell_01.htm > > [ > No Good Deed Goes Unpunished > > Until the Cabal process got underway, technology was added to Half-Life > freely. It was assumed that "if we build it, they will come," meaning that > any new technology would just naturally find a creative use by the content > creation folks. A prime example of this fallacy was our "beam" effect, > basically a technique for doing highly tunable squiggly glowing lines > between two points; stuff like lightning, lasers, and mysterious glowing > beams of energy. It was added to the engine, the parameters were exposed, > and an e-mail was sent out explaining it. The result was … nothing. After > two months only one level designer had put it in a map. Engineering was > baffled. > > During the Cabal process, we realized that although the level designers > knew of the feature, they really had no clear idea of what it was for. The > parameters were all very cryptic, and the wrong combinations would cause the > beams to have very ugly-looking effects. There were no decent textures to > apply to them, and setting them up was a bit of a mystery. It became very > clear the technology itself was only a small part of the work and > integration, training, and follow-through were absolutely necessary to make > the technology useful to the game. Writing the code was typically less than > half the problem. > ] > > It still seems that this problem is still around Source modding, > mapping,... The technology is there to do almost anything we want, but we > still have to search and trial and error for hours to achieve it. I'm > speaking as someone who has left and returned to many of my maps over and > over again because I don't have the time for another full time job - and > that is what it currently takes to make sense of it all. I'm only posting > this because the L4D SDK is on the horizon and I'd love to get my ideas into > maps without having to reverse engineer maps (I talk here about the complex > example maps that are sometimes included in the SDKs and not decompiled > maps), or trial and error (guess) what entities work together, or have to > wait/search for community tutorials. Please improve this drastically with > the next SDK release. I know I and the rest of the community would thank you > Valve. > > ~Nate > > > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
