Suggestion Sanctum

[MG1231]

EDIT: I was talking about asking a bunch of questions on this thread, most which seemed pointless and stupid, like the lua one.

[RaTcHeT302]

Sorry for sounding like a complete asshole on this thread

Eh?

[ninenullseven]

If Valve released a properly developed SDK then I wouldn't mind working on the mod a bit more often. At this point I am just waiting for Source 2 while I'm working on some personal projects.

Overhauling anything is a major pain in the ass. Source is for the most part sticked together with lot's of glue and tape. SFM is probably as badly done.

Is Source 2 even a thing? I mean Valve hasn't said anything official, and we both know how long it might take for Valve to release something (hell, might even couple of years). And what makes you think that Valve will release better SDK for Source 2? It's Valve after all, they are too creative for something finalized properly. Probably it'd be exactly the same mess as it's now. Or even worse.

[RaTcHeT302]

I'd rather create an engine myself instead of struggling with the SDK, but as I said I'm not going to wait for Valve, I'll probably just move on with my own things, the mod is stuck in a development limbo state more or less.

So far there's only talks but nothing huge will really happen if you ask me, but that's just my view on it, I don't know what everyone else is planning but realistically speaking I don't see the mod going anywhere for quite a long time.

[ninenullseven]

Okay, I got it.

I'd rather create an engine myself instead of struggling with the SDK, but as I said I'm not going to wait for Valve, I'll probably just move on with my own things, the mod is stuck in a development limbo state more or less.

So far there's only talks but nothing huge will really happen if you ask me, but that's just my view on it, I don't know what everyone else is planning but realistically speaking I don't see the mod going anywhere for quite a long time.

That's hesitant. Why are you still here? Why the mod isn't canceled yet if you guys don't even know what any of you are planning about it? Shouldn't there be some management or communication? Why there was greenlight campaign (successful one too)? Wasn't it too early for greenlight? It doesn't looks like anything is happening at all or actually will happen.
No offence, don't want to sound like a dick. Just asking. Sorry, I was looking forward to this mod (and I'm not the only one) and that's just sad. Probably got hyped to much, hah, my fault. I can understand, I'm not 14yo too.

[RaTcHeT302]

Don't take my word for granted, I truly do not know if there's anything else planned, for the most part I am kept in the dark and I can't say that I have done anything important, I only made a website so far.

For the most part I like to passively check the forums just in case and write my personal opinion on things as I kinda like to vent about all my thoughts once in a while, in a brainstorming way, but really I only did a bunch of minor things, you are better off asking the main guys which handle the mod for more infos. However as I said I'd rather be a bit more realistic and this is mostly my opinion on things, I'm not truly part of the development team, I just kinda "joined" it, again in a more passive manner, hence why I revisit the forums, in order to see if anything got done as otherwise the mod isn't the main focus for me but I'd gladly work on it, although all the technical difficulties and some other things have slowly put me off as I don't find spending my time on it as worthwhile.

Again, don't take my word for granted, this is just my opinion as I don't know how things are actualy progressing, ask Corgi or anyone else for more infos.

If you want to though, I can still try answering to, stuff.

The whole Greenlight thing was just rather odd, a bit messy too, as I was also going to make some promotional materials for it but instead there's a bunch of mediocre screenshots on it and some weird videos I had never seen which has been bugging me ever since it was made, mostly because I can't even change them and fix the descriptions and whatever else, it looks pretty subpar and I am amazed it even got Greenlit in that state, it really shows how easily Greenlight allows rather mediocre products to fit in so easily, not sure what Valve was thinking with that, but someone else would have to speak about that probably, but I'm not sure, I might as well do it myself although I'll have to think about it, I doubt at this point it would matter seeing as way too much time has passed.

[Glitchvid]

Is Source 2 even a thing? I mean Valve hasn't said anything official, and we both know how long it might take for Valve to release something (hell, might even couple of years). And what makes you think that Valve will release better SDK for Source 2?

This is actually a bit more hopeful, Source 2 is indeed a thing; it was somewhat "silently" released for DotA 2 in the form of their workshop tools (Alpha, as always).
I actually tried my hand at porting the raw brushwork and some of my textures to it time ago:

I think a possible plan of action is waiting for Source 2 to be fully fledged, and then launch a full-scale redo like BM; that's assuming the team is still in contact with each other once that happens.

The whole Greenlight thing was just rather odd, a bit messy too, as I was also going to make some promotional materials for it but instead there's a bunch of mediocre screenshots on it and some weird videos I had never seen which has been bugging me ever since it was made, mostly because I can't even change them and fix the descriptions and whatever else, it looks pretty subpar and I am amazed it even got Greenlit in that state, it really shows how easily Greenlight allows rather mediocre products to fit in so easily, not sure what Valve was thinking with that, but someone else would have to speak about that probably, but I'm not sure, I might as well do it myself although I'll have to think about it, I doubt at this point it would matter seeing as way too much time has passed.

The greenlight was done by BinaryRifle and Kenchan; so most of the art department didn't really get a warning beforehand either.  It just sort of showed up, and most of us just rolled with it (What else where we to do?).

[RaTcHeT302]

The bad thing though is that I did prepare what was needed, the stuff was just never uploaded. But yes until better tools are more fleshed out then development is going to be a bit slow or next to none. The mod isn't going to be abbandoned, as I said it's just in limbo.

[Glitchvid]

The bad thing though is that I did prepare what was needed, the stuff was just never uploaded. But yes until better tools are more fleshed out then development is going to be a bit slow or next to none. The mod isn't going to be abbandoned, as I said it's just in limbo.

Yeah, I don't think any of us intend to just say "fuckit" and leave, but don't know what direction we want to take.
If you can get me the prepared promotional assets I can try to get Ken to replace what's there with them.

[RaTcHeT302]

I would rather just be able to edit the Greenlight page myself, as it would be way easier for me, I had asked to do that before.

[zelpa]

Source 2 is confirmed free for developers, when it comes out will you think about moving the mod over to it?

[Glitchvid]

Source 2 is confirmed free for developers, when it comes out will you think about moving the mod over to it?

That's likely what will happen, Source has become extremely unusable in its later years, and working with 2048+² textures on the engine makes it sometimes extremely unstable.  The team is currently in hiatus, waiting for more information before we decide what our plan of action will be.

[zelpa]

That's likely what will happen, Source has become extremely unusable in its later years, and working with 2048+² textures on the engine makes it sometimes extremely unstable.  The team is currently in hiatus, waiting for more information before we decide what our plan of action will be.

Surely you could spend this time creating textures and models? Even if you're not currently working on the engine there's a lot that could be done.

[Glitchvid]

Surely you could spend this time creating textures and models? Even if you're not currently working on the engine there's a lot that could be done.

Not much of the rendering and lighting engine is intact in the Dota 2 version of the engine, so we don't know really anything about how textures need to be authored, maptypes, etc.
If the VR presentation was anything to go by, there's a bit of proprietary methods that are going to require authoring assets specially, something we can't do since no documentation has been release, and because it's not in the engine yet.  Aside from textures and materials, we don't know polycount targets, or best-practices from valve; it would be going in blind.

[zelpa]

Not much of the rendering and lighting engine is intact in the Dota 2 version of the engine, so we don't know really anything about how textures need to be authored, maptypes, etc.
If the VR presentation was anything to go by, there's a bit of proprietary methods that are going to require authoring assets specially, something we can't do since no documentation has been release, and because it's not in the engine yet.  Aside from textures and materials, we don't know polycount targets, or best-practices from valve; it would be going in blind.

Does that mean you'll be revamping the current models for Source 2 to be even more detailed? If so, would you think about releasing the models you've currently done for Source 1?

[RaTcHeT302]

There's not exactly too many finished models anyway and it depends on who made the models in the first place. Most of the models which I did manage to see weren't that great otherwise.

I'm hoping the workflow in Source 2 is going to be improved, being able to just drag and drop a material or model into the engine makes things so much easier to prototype with and it really speeds things up, it also makes the development way more enjoyable to me at least, although the amount of control available over the engine and its tools is pretty much unknown, with the Unreal Engine 4 at least you can pretty much customize whatever you feel like (as long as you know what you are doing).

I'm hoping the new SDK and whatever other tools won't be as shite as the current ones, even setting up a basic source mod feels like such a huge pain in the ass to me.

So far Source has been pretty sub-par from a development perspective compared to the UE4, although one issue with the Unreal Engine is that seeing as the API is constantly changing you always have to update your source, UE4 is still a fairly young engine but the development pace makes up for it in my mind although I'm not entirely sure on how a big project would have to handle this, the documentation is decent I guess, it's still way better than what the Source wiki had anyway but it could be a tiny bit better.

Seeing as Source 2 is an in-house engine I'm just going to presume that it'll be far more fleshed out than the Unreal Engine anyway considering how long it probably has been in development.

I really like all the examples games you get entirely for free with the Unreal Engine 4 though, it's such a ridiculously useful thing, even more than the documentation itself.

[Glitchvid]

Does that mean you'll be revamping the current models for Source 2 to be even more detailed? If so, would you think about releasing the models you've currently done for Source 1?

The models would probably not be released, I will however release some of my textures if we do decide to ditch Source, since they would likely need to be remade anyway.

[RaTcHeT302]

Sorry if I went on rambling again :v

[Mr. Someguy]

Yeah, my main reason for hiatus is Source is becoming unbearable to work with.  Using Blender, Unreal, Source 2 is a ton nicer.

I'm not sure whether I should be disappointed or excited. Come faster Source 2...

[RaTcHeT302]

I could work on the project, I just have no idea as to what I should do. Everyone gets overly nitpicky so I don't really bother doing anything at all. It doesn't help that whenever I wanted to do anything apparently someone else was already "working" on whatever I was currently doing so I just dropped whatever I had planned to do, I don't think anyone here has any idea on how to manage the team, no one was getting stuff done anyway, I kept seeing everyone complaining for the most part.

It doesn't help that some simply take what I say as suggestions, instead of actually doing what I said, no one ever seems to trust anyone in the team which bothers me a lot, it's not like we discussed any deep design choices or anything, it's very simple stuff, I hate arguing over pointless details, Corgi really badly tends to overthink everything (and not just him) to the point where he and other members get really stressfull to work with, the forums are so half assed right now but they are pretty much pointless anyway. I don't see myself posting too much if I'm actually working on something. Maybe just to tease but I don't know otherwise, most people on Facepunch have a tendency of overthinking everything or whining too much, I mean it's not like it isn't the same here anyway, but I just wish more people would understand that people always change their minds when developing anything, I was thinking the team would at least know that, as I don't expect the community to, but they (the team) are not really game developers, more like enthusiasts.

It would be nice to actually be doing something, but I just wish people would actually listen to me when I say certain things instead of relying on the forum posters. Also I hate to get overly detailed if I don't have to, if I think a texture needs to be remade I usually have some pretty decent reasons as to why.

I belive what has also been driving me insane about the mod, project whatever you want to call it are the way the textures are handled, I've never seen anyone arguing about such stupid things in such a way, I've made quite a few textures myself, making textures isn't the most particularly impressive skill to have, just get the stupid thing done and move on.

There's some other larger issues with this whole thing anyway.

[RaTcHeT302]

I didn't realize that post was from April, but anyway there's some very huge trust issues from what I've seen, which is why the mod is pretty much stuck where it is. Also some people simply do not to as they are told, which is really annoying but I already said that in the previous post.

[RaTcHeT302]

Sorry if I'm ranting again but I'm just bored waiting for things to happen :v

[Glitchvid]

I didn't realize that post was from April, but anyway there's some very huge trust issues from what I've seen, which is why the mod is pretty much stuck where it is. Also some people simply do not to as they are told, which is really annoying but I already said that in the previous post.

I think it was also an organization issue, we need to have people group up, such as having teams that can focus on specific areas (such as per-level) and implement assets. Assets don't even need to be finalized, as long as the level is openable in the game, and you can preview and do more work on it, it's fine; finalization should be done in waves.

With organization there also needs to be goals and loose deadlines, just so people get things done in a timely fashion.  There are benefits to a do as you please system, but I think we do need more team oriented goals.

[Mr. Someguy]

    Man, that's harsh. It's a shame to see such a good idea get stuck because nobody wants to do the work they're assigned and nobody wants to trust anyone else to do the same.

[Glitchvid]

    Man, that's harsh. It's a shame to see such a good idea get stuck because nobody wants to do the work they're assigned and nobody wants to trust anyone else to do the same.

It's something mods and even indie games suffer from commonly.  It's something I plan on getting more experience in, barring Source 2 coming out suddenly this or early next year.