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Games Entertainment

The Minerva Half-Life 2 Mod 31

Posted by Zonk from the fans-get-their-game-on dept.
Via GameSetWatch, an interview with Adam Foster. The creator of the Minerva Half-Life 2 mod talks about the reasons he's putting time and energy into a fan-made labour of love. From the article: "Single-player mapping ...does have quite a tradition, and sadly it often seems to be looked down upon by many gamers. It's somehow regarded as 'easy,' with multiplayer maps being the only true form of expression. I suppose the countless fullbright cubes packed with zombies must put off a lot of people, as do the endless bare BSPs which need to be run from the game console..."
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The Minerva Half-Life 2 Mod More

The Minerva Half-Life 2 Mod

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  • ... that had "Hot Coffee + Minerva" pop into my head? C'mon admit it ;)

  • If you enjoyed Half-Life 2 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kazzahdrane ( 882423 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @05:50PM (#14205970)
    You should play this mod. It's one of a handful of good single-player mods out there which is something I am much more interested than yet another multiplayer mod featuring zombies. It's played over a single map, and it's not very long. Ehh ok some good points, it's a good difficulty, the map is very well designed and feels very professional, and it's been written into the same world as Half-Life 2 is set, a good excuse to use combine grunts and their familiar technology. It's a sort-of followup to "Someplace Else", a mod for Half-Life 1 by the same creator, but having now played the previous mod I can safely say it doesn't really shed any light on this new episode. I personally can't wait for the second episode to be released. Grab Metastasis and some interesting backstory here: http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/phosphenes.shtm l [hylobatidae.org]

  • Another thing lost... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Havenwar ( 867124 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @06:10PM (#14206081)
    Another thing I seem to be missing in modern games is co-op modes. Why is everyone concentrating totally on either being alone and bashing the outside forces/aliens/terrorists or bashign each other? I wanna join up with my friend (or friends) to take on the AI.
    • This is one of my MAJOR peeves with a lot of new games, such as Battlefield 2. I asked a friend at Valve why so few games have co-op modes anymore and his reply is that it takes a lot of AI coding to make co-op bots. But, really, this makes no sense to me. In single-player mode, the enemy creatures/people have you flagged as an enemy; therefore, the AI reacts towards you with hostility. So, why is it so much extra work to have both you *and* a gaming partner flagged as an enemy so that the bots react ag
      • It's a harder problem to make NPCs react intelligently to groups of players than to single players, especially when you mix in the trend toward NPC squad intelligence. But this isn't the only reason co-op is more difficult.

        Designwise, levels are difficulty-balanced for single player. Co-op requires re-balancing, or the development of some algorithmic way of balancing, neither of which are trivial.

        If co-op is effectively adding more players to the single player campaign, somewhere you have to find the
        • And that's fine, but I still don't understand the why the development mindset has changed so abruptly that co-op modes are now suddenly so difficult that they're no longer included. Yes, the Internet and broadband make it easier to have network connectivity, but it's arrogant to just assume that people only want deathmatch against other humans. There is still a significant chunk of people out there who get together to be a team against an enemy and don't want to have to deal with immature kiddies that fre
        • But isn't that what next-gen games should be capable of dealing with? I'd rather NPCs and AI that can handle co-op play than fluff like being able watching a basketball player sweat towards the end of a game.

          A lot of next-gen ideals really seem to be a poorly hidden excuse to shift more units of periphery stock, rather than advancing gameplay in any real shape or form. I know that economics plays a huge role in this but I still don't see the balance between selling games and making games fun.

          Co-op pla
    • For what it's worth, the folks behind the excellent Sven Co-op mod for Half-Life 1 are working on a version for Half-Life 2. It's been in the works for quite a while now and IIRC they are getting some help from Valve (though it's possibly just some explanation of game code etc). Progress seems slow right now but you can keep an eye on http://www.svencoop.com/ [svencoop.com] for more updates.
      • I'm rather fond of co-operative gaming myself (flashbacks of playing through Dooms and Quake with a friend over a null-modem cable) but the base Half-Life 2 doesn't really allow such a thing. The game's still of a Quake-style client-server design, so the necessary code really isn't that complex - and from a mapping point of view, I've been making my map sources available for everything I've released so far, so people are more than welcome to convert MINERVA to co-operative gameplay.

        (The licence for the map
    • I wholeheartedly agree, developers should emphasize cooperative play. Why the hell do they think cooperative team-based games have the most fanatical following? I find plain old deathmatch rather boring, the day I discovered team based games such as Team Fortress is the day I found my gaming bliss. They should focus on making up innovative ways for us to work together, deathmatch got pretty damn old a while ago.
    • You have no idea how true that is. Last weekend I grabbed Shadow the Hedgehog, and with some gripes and some good points I was overall satisfied. Then I checked the 2 player mode...

      Deathmatch arena. In a fucking Sonic game. I couldn't belive my eyes. No time attack vs. mode (if you want versus), no coop (there're two characters available through the game if you choose the "hero" missions, one's computer controlled), nothing. I was very underwhelmed.
    • I'd much rather play through a "single-player" type game *with* a couple of friends, rather than shoot at them. Unless your friends are all nearly identical in skill level, playing twitch games online against them always ends up being really lopsided. Somebody's gonna clean up, and somebody's never going to get a kill.

      More network co-op, game companies!! Pretty please!

    • This is something I've missed since Doom days myself. You could wonder all over the map in co-op and team up to fight a monster or go gather the keys while the other guy went looking for his favorite boom-stick. I haven't had that feeling of non-forced co-op since then in a game. Doom3 has co-op, but I keep wishing for it to combine the DeathMatch with the Co-op. Throw some monsters in there and let it be humans against demons. Or, even in regular co-op, I'd love to start a co-op game and head off on my own
  • This is as offtopic as they come, but does anyone else think that the games section posts too many stories? The main page now says "23 more" under the games section and most stories here have noticeably fewer comments that the other sections.

    I sure hope this section isn't using up some kind of quota on the whole site.

    My 0.02

    • Re:Too Many Stories? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by mellon ( 7048 ) *
      I don't play a lot of games, but I certainly don't mind, and I'm pretty sure there's no quota issue.
    • It is a welcome change to those of us who read it all the time. Some days only have 2 or 3 stories published in this section.

    • Re:Too Many Stories? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      This is as offtopic as they come, but does anyone else think that the games section posts too many stories?

      My objection is more the number of topics for which story after identical story is posted:

      • Older games were better, creativity is dead
      • The Industry needs more female/minority developers
      • Jack Thompson said something
      • Video games are/are not bad for children

      This particular story is novel and interesting, though -- I'm surprised you picked to complain on.

  • The slashdot member "Ford Prefect" is Adam Foster I think, anyway, give him your love, because it's a fantastic level he's made, and I can't wait for the next installment, bring it on Adam!

    • Re:Say Hi to "Ford Prefect" if he shows up here (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @06:56PM (#14206331) Homepage
      The slashdot member "Ford Prefect" is Adam Foster I think, anyway, give him your love, because it's a fantastic level he's made, and I can't wait for the next installment, bring it on Adam!

      Cheers! I'm not sure about the 'love' bit (aaargh! Nerds! Gerroff me!) but the sentiment is definitely appreciated.

      I'd be working on the second map right now, but I've been a bit distracted by the awesome, gloriously insane DayHard [smanu85.it] single-player mod. I'm not sure how best to describe it - it's a very buggy but even funnier take on the Half-Life 2 story, complete with film and game references, lavatory humour and the inexplicable, copyright-busting presence of Jack Carver from Far Cry (may contain quizzical expressions, idiocy, covert television watching and leering at the ladies).

      It's kind of like the anti-MINERVA if you like. You'll either love it or you'll hate it, but regardless, I highly recommend reading the walkthrough if you get even slightly stuck. It's a bit confusing to navigate at times - it's like some old point-and-click adventure game with some of the more cryptic puzzles.

      But anyway. I've started up Hammer again, and opened metastasis_2.vmf. Back to populating this map with gameplay!
    • yeah, first thing i thought when reading that headline was "thanks ford", great level!

      that's one of those sad moments when you realize you spend too much time on /., i mean isn't this supposed to be some huge anonymous place where you would never ever remember a single name besides maybe cmdr taco and the cowboyneal option? seems like there are still people left who are able to get something done despite being on /. ;-)

      what is the music used in the mod? if it is original content, then pass on a big thumbs u

  • Feasibility of Single Player Mods (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dual_View ( 933041 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @09:27PM (#14207146) Journal
    As the chief coder for a singleplayer mod for the first-generation Unreal engine, I have a few things to say about this.

    Singleplayer and coop support are a lot more feasible for developers than people would expect, compared to multiplayer. For one thing, MP is usually implemented on top of the SP infrastructure anyway, meaning that coop is not really a big stretch after basic multiplayer is added. In many cases, it would actually be more efficient to implement coop MP first, and then build competitive and team-based MP on top of that. The decision to do otherwise is a marketing strategy, rather than a technological one. SP usually sells the game, and competitive MP keeps it alive and builds a community around it. Coop has less success with this.

    As far as design is concerned, it splits into two major fields: netcode and AI. First, your netcode must be as efficient as possible, which means being VERY selective about what type of data your game server spends bandwidth on, which means using a lot of simulated stuff. For example, I personally believe that trying to get map data a piece at a time while the player is playing the map is a serious no-no. The client should be forced to download the map and supporting files such as sounds and textures (preferably from a dedicated mirror), have them verified, and then run this local copy before he is allowed to log into the server as a player.

    Netcode must also be built into each object created in the game, which is probably the hardest part. For example, the client doesn't usually need to know a monster's health unless the player has the ability to ask. It's the server's job to keep that information. If a monster's behavior changes because of an increase or decrease in health, then the player is sent THAT information rather than the health. Also, as far as explosions and gratuitous special effects are concerned, the server should usually just say the equivalent of "A rocket just exploded at these coordinates. Render it yourself." to the client. And one player doesn't need to know that another has a shotgun hidden in his inventory, unless he pulls it up as his active weapon.

    Then there's the matter of relevancy culling, to decide what is not a priority for transmitting. The monster you're fighting right now is relevant. The flags in a CTF team game are always relevant no matter where they are. The appearance of your teammate's HUD is not relevant. The guy who just got himself fragged on the other side of the map is probably not relevant, unless you saw it through the scope of your sniper rifle at the time. The straight-flying rockets you just fired are not relevant except as they first spawn, because their physics is simulated on the client, and the server will tell you if/when they hit something.

    The second part of this design is the map itself, mostly relating to AI. The policy of "stupid code + smart data" has never been so important here. If your bots don't know how to use a weapon, then it's usually the WEAPON that's badly coded, not the bots. The same is true for maps. Only the most bare minimum AI code should exist in the code for bots and monsters (though this is still usually quite a bit). Anything "special" that they need to do should usually be a feature that is scripted by the mapper using custom or preexisting actors, rather than hardcoded into the game's AI by the coder. As an example, the Unreal engine has always relied on AI navigation of its maps through a network of "PathNodes" that mappers place throughout all the reachable areas in the map. This is what enables a bot to concievably navigate a maze-of-the-minotaur style map better than a typical Human player could. (I do not know enough about other gaming engines to comment on them.)

    As a result, reasonably selective netcode combined with gametype- and map-centric AI is the most effective way to design a game engine. The kicker is that most of this is not really even a programming endeavor, but is better considered to be an extension of the d
  • I enjoyed the first released portion of the Minerva mod, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed by the AI that would tell me what to do in key parts of the map. It seemed like the AI was trying too hard to be a wise-ass and/or esoteric and it didn't really blend in with the overall mood of the rest of the mod. I did like the music picking up towards the end when the enemies really started running at me, though.

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