Hello, everyone!
I managed to finish my degree, so I should have more time on my hands to work on the mod. I've also taken on a side project of sorts in a Counter Strike: Global Offensive map. The design of the level may tangentially benefit Five, as one of the areas of the game will potentially have a multiplayer map's structure, so I may back-port some of the ideas if they apply to the mod.
Not dead, never will be. Not until this mod is done. Will post more screenshots as I have more.
...Speaking of which...
These are captures from Docks of my most recent work on the mod. I've been nailing down the aesthetic of the raised layer and elements that will go into Superstructure, which will help accelerate the first map release of the mod if I can get that map going.
My tentative plans for the first release of the mod are releasing the mod in chunks- map packs, linked together, of perhaps 4-5 areas.
(Five areas. Heh. See what I did there?)With any luck, I'll have something playable by the end of the year, but this is of course subject to change based on playtesting and design progress.
Another big issue to tackle is moving the mod off Episode Two onto it's own code. This brings several benefits:
1.) It's less of a pain in the ass for people to try my mod, as all of the assets they need would be contained in the mod codebase instead of needing to install three separate games to have everything.
2.) It opens up the game to allow code changes and new content additions.
3.) It ultimately will be beneficial for development in the long run in terms of speed and stability to have everything unified in this way.
However, there's some hurdles to tackle with a unified codebase:
1.) A major mechanic of the game- the weapon vaporizer that prevents soldiers from dropping weapons - is a HL2 specific env_global state, and unless that specific state is able to load, the map balance will be adversely affected and the game will become too easy.
2.) Since the mod uses three games worth of assets in a mix, lots of content will have to be mounted.
3.) My personal knowledge of C++ is rather limited. I took some classes on it recently which will help, but I may need to bring in an outside person to do things like adding the SLAM mine from HL2 Deathmatch or making other such changes. Even just debugging SDK 2013 to work properly with the content I have already may be difficult.
Since much of this is up in the air at the moment, I'm considering my options while refining my levels. Hopefully I'll have a definitive plan on this sooner rather than later, but working on the mod completely solo may no longer be an option due to the features I want to include. But ultimately, I want whatever I produce to be at the highest possible quality I can muster, so resolving this situation will be a high priority going forward.
