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It would be interesting if Valve could incorporate some kind of "pay for play" system into Steam like MP3.com does. Steam is the medium you use to distribute your mod/game/etc. The more you get played, the more they pay you - just like MP3.com's Payback for Playback system. Suddenly MOD creators and creators of more extensive single player creations such as Neil Manke could actually become the Bassic of the gaming industry.

Imagine a single player mod like the They Hunger series by Neil Manke via Steam.

First, download the full sdk. Next, get a C++ compiler. Last I knew they promised compatability only with MS Visual C++. Next learn C++. :-) Lastly, go into the code, probably the weapon code first and change a value. Like change the damage values or the spreads. Recompile, play the game. Repeat but change a different value. Once you're comfortable mucking with that stuff, try mucking with the models. There are a couple good sites out there, here's one to start with

psxndc

Half-Life is based on both the Quake I and II engines. They (Valve) started work with Quake I and added in bits of Quake II where necessary.

See PlanetHalfLife's FAQ for a bit more detail.

I still think that Team Fortress Classic is one of the best mods ever done for halflife. It was the reason I bought halflife... I enjoyed playing TFC so much. I never played the single-player version of halflife... but the mod motivated me to make the purchase.

Used to be that Galaxians, Pacman and Worm were getting a reworking on the Amiga in the form of Deluxe Galaga, Deluxe Pacman and Megaworm... now it's the Amiga shareware's turn for the remix. Hooray!

We've even seen Populous get a rebirth with Lionhead's Black & White, and Quake with Half-Life's Deathmatch Classic. I wouldn't be surprised in five years time to see a reworking of GTA or Baldur's Gate 2. (Takers, anyone?) :D

Several people have mentioned counterstrike and day of defeat, both of which are Half-Life mods. About 10 or 12 of us get together once a month for a LAN party and we have found the HL and its mods are best. Once you install HL, you do not need the CD to play multiplayer.

There are many great multiplayer mods available: Team Fortress Classic, Deathmatch Classic (which recreates Quake 1 deathmatch), FireArms, Day of Defeat, Global Warfare, Counterstrike, etc. The first two on the list come with the latest HL patch and the rest are freely available for download.

Planet Half-Life has an extensive list of mods.

It still rocks! No need to spend big bucks for the latest games. You should be able to pick up a bargain-priced copy of HL - if you're lucky with Opposing Force and maybe even Blue Shift. HL is still (IMO) the best single-player experience that ever happened.

Download the latest patch and you become part of the biggest online gaming community. Team Fortress Classic and Counter Strike are included in the patch, and are the most well known, but there are others. See Planet Half-Life for more mods/skins/levels/cheese.

Another FPS which had a good immersive story line was Who Wants To Live Forever. More tongue-in-cheek than violent. Shouldn't be too expensive now either.

Other classics would be the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert. Tiberian Sun wasn't bad, but RA2 was pure cheese.

Also worth a mention: Total Annihilation (along with expansion packs Core Contingency and Battle Tactics), and Age of Empires II. I liked those.

The game I play the most: TFC (online of course). I'm looking forward to TFC2.

-- Steve

I'm mostly involved in the Half-Life mod scene, though I can reccomend a few I've played for UT. Planet Half-Life is the best place to go for information on mods for Half-Life. A few mods I would suggest for Half-Life would be Front Line Force, Team Fortress Classic (which comes free with Half-Life), or the most popular online game in the world (its very highly rated, though I don't care for the gameplay style, basically team death match) Counter-Strike.

For Unreal Tornament, check out Infiltration or Strike Force. For a list of mods and general Unreal news check out Planet Unreal.

I have heard many good things about various Q3 mods, but I have yet to play any of them so someone else would probably be better answering this one.

Seriously, though, I too am in this situation. I will be graduating in May, and I find myself just wanting to be a writer. I hope things do get better.

Even better is the amazingly great single player mod "They Hunger" for half-life. It's a dark monster movie type mod set in the fifties, including the obligatory insane asylum, mad doctor, twisted sherif and hordes of zombies. There are many points in the game where something comes right out of nowhere after you, or a door slams closed, after you have been wandering around in the dark for a half hour. In the end you feel like you are running for your life. It's really the only game that has actually scared me. Can't say enough good about it.

Take a look

Games do not need a GeForce 3 of any race in my experience. I have a GeForce 2 MX (the cheapo one) and an Athlon 850 and have had no slow-downs at all.

First, almost all on-line 3D gaming is Half-Life mods such as Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike (and the under-rated GlobalWarFare) as most of you probably know. I get a solid 60 frames per second, no matter how many explosions or close-up models. (I use OpenGL. There seems to be a quirk with close-up models and DirectX.)

I cannot speak for on-line RPG gamers, but I assume they are sitting pretty as well.

The most detail rich, awe-inspring, gorgeous game I have played in over a year was Serious Sam (which only costs $20 and don't let the cheap price fool you. It is great!) This game has pool reflections on the walls around the pool and in the pool, glowing monsters, lens flares, dusty light rays and a portal showing another world with waving flags all at once! I have had in excess of 50 monsters on screen chasing me down. (Yahooooo!) My set-up plays it flawlessly. (Also, I tried it on a P3 600 Mhz with a GeForce (1) and it stuttered.)

If I haven't made my counter-point, it's that these new cards are fine, but not the next level that may be needed once a new generation of games come out (if ever). Having worked in 3D graphics, my feeling is that most of the tricks from research have finally been used up and it will take a new generation of crack programmers to get much farther, like the good ol' days. So, until then, have fun with a GeForce 2 (or equivalent) and an Athlon 850 (or equivalent)!

Half-life didn't use the Quake2 engine like the article says. According to the Half-Life FAQ:

What Is Half-Life's Game Engine

Valve originally licensed the source for Quake engine from id Software and they began working on that code around October of 1996. Between October of 1996 till the time they finished Half-Life in October of 1998, they modified, removed, and created about 70% of their Half-Life coding. Not only did they got license for the Quake engine, but also got Quake II engine too.

Thank you. If you like that one you might get a kick out of a couple other ones some other people found.

Interestingly, Marc Laidlaw would later become a writer for another project with a nuclear theme--a little first-person shooter by the name of Half-Life. (As a little in-joke, some of his books can be seen in one of the lockers in the locker room in the early part of the game.)
--

I wont count Gamespy as they are ready to close down shop as well

I might also add that many very popular mods are also freely available.

Ask Slashdot is not legal advice. It is not a substitute for time with a lawyer. It's still a resource. Ditto USENET and any other distributed discussion forum. I sometimes read the forums at vwvortex.com for ideas and help with my car. I still take it to the mechanic.

My advice for the original poster is to be very careful about investing time on a project that is based on a TV show, movie, etc. The game industry refers to this as a license, as in "The Matrix is a hot license"--the right to use Warner Brothers' Matrix trademarks, copyrights, and possibly patents is valuable. Incidentally, some folks are working on a Matrix mod for Half-Life. They are setting a trap for themselves. Warner Brothers can shut them down (or threaten to do so, which is almost as good). Another poster on this topic mentioned that this happened to the Aliens TC for Doom.

Some game companies will develop a game in the hope of securing a license. This is kind of like typecasting a role for a play or a movie. For example, M. Night Shyamalan wrote The Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis in mind. It worked out as he hoped. That was lucky. As an independent working more for love than money, don't count on such luck.

There are some articles at Gamasutra that discuss this topic in more detail. For instance, "Artistic License: Acquiring, Managing and Dealing with Licenses (and Making Them Profitable)" in the Business & Legal features and "Adapting Licensed Products to the Computer Medium." Most of the rules that apply to a game company apply to a mod maker. It doesn't matter that you're not trying to make money. It doesn't matter that you love The Matrix, DragonBallZ, Aliens, etc. The owner of the licensed property will defend his trademark, copyright, and patent rights.

I've got one of those Intellimouse Explorers (the huge silver ones with the superfluous tail light and like three extra buttons; well, what the hell, here's a http://www.microsoft.com/Mouse/explorer.htm link) and sites that won't let you back out are an incredible annoyance. See, two of the buttons on there serve as Forward/Back (respectively) while browsing the web, and after about 20 minutes of using them, I was hooked. You wouldn't believe how simple (and remarkably intuitive) to navigate with your thumb. Now if I could just find a good use for those buttons in Half-Life... I mean, sure, it's easy enough to hold down the back button and select the page before the offending site, but that would require moving my cursor over six or so linear inches of desktop space. Isn't that just a little bit unreasonable? No? Ah well.

The Sherman Project is yet another Half-Life mod under development, but unlike many, this one looks pretty good. It looks like it's trying to be ultra-realistic, with a damage model that makes Counter-Strike look forgiving, as well as a 'fatigue meter'.

Sounds pretty good, if you like realism. :-)

Ford Prefect

Lots of people are saying the same things: why buy it? You need an outlet and a monitor (not to mention a keyboard and a mouse and a usb network card), so its not exactly a portable. It has no room for expansion, so its not exactly a desktop. It's too expensive for a thin client, so why would anyone want to buy it?

When I first saw the espresso, I thought one thing: "LAN Party". This would be (almost) the ultimate LAN Party box. Imagine walking into a LAN party with a 15" LCD, a happy hacker keyboard, and a 4"x6" machine. Quite the envy, methinks. The biggest downside: no hardware 3d. But for the Quaker or the Half-Lifer, thats not much of an issue.

I wouldnt mind the extra inch of depth for a PCI/AGP slot. I wouldnt even mind an extra $50 or $100 on the price tag. And I'm sure there are plenty of gamers out there who would agree.

Yea, its as tough as hell, requires a major amount of work, and basically you can forget about your social life. Creating a game by yourself is one of the hardest things a person could do, especially if they want to make it rival the current big time hits. But, all that said, the greatest game designer/programmer/artist does it because they love to make games. Look at Carmack. He has enough money that he doenst have to work another day in his life, yet he is still heading up id. Why? Because if he wasnt making games with id, hed be making games at home. He loves what he does. The only kind of person who is going to stand out from the crowd is one who works their butts off, and doesnt give up just becuase its too much hassle. Oh, and dont just jump straight in and expect to create the next best 3D Engine. Try and get your feet wet with doing a mod of an existing engine to get a feel for how the professional companies structure their code etc. I know that Ive learned heaps on my mod for Half-Life, The Assignment. Ill end on a quote from the guy himself: "talent will be noticed." Cheers, remnant Lead Game Designer - The Assignment

I have just finished playing BZ II, and it is breathtaking. The first Battlezone was just as good a few years ago. I mean, a lunar surface, a hovertank and some enemies... What more does one need?

As for multiplayer games that need porting... Half-Life (Opposing Force), but what about Starsiege Tribes? I'm not that good at fragging but a good cooperative teamplayer, and Tribes is the only game I've seen so far where this really makes a difference. No need to be an ace sniper or have Trinity-like reflexes if you can place devious traps or build awesome defenses! Seriously. Got to love it!