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Total Conversion HL2 Mod
bbzzdd writes "A comprehensive total conversion of the Half-Life 2 game has been released. Crafted by students from SMU's Guildhall, Eclipse is a beautiful change of pace from the average FPS. From the site: 'You play as a young Sorceress named Violet whose father went missing five years back. After learning the secrets of Telekinesis, you are teleported into Auld-Haven, a lush and fertile land where Violet grew up. Your objective is to return to Violet's home where she last saw her father years ago and dig up any clues to his whereabouts. In the broken down tower of her home you discover a journal left by her father. The journal unlocks a handful of secrets that ultimately leads you on a quest to find the ancient teleportation device - the Standing Stones.'"
No, the first was Plan of Attack, released over two months ago.
A total conversion doesn't have change genres, like HL1, CS, TFC, and Natural Selection were also total conversions, and all are FPSs.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
We have something called a 'market economy.' When it costs more to do something than you get back for doing it, say, paying all those programmers to port a game to another operation system as opposed to the number of units you will sell on those platforms, we don't do it.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
In order to find the Standing Stones, you have to develop a series of Java applications.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
The screenshots look pretty good--and they're not even /.ed yet!
Managed to get onto the site, 5 minutes later, no longer possible :-
:-
t ar t=1
:-
obligatory google cache link
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cach...+&hl=en&s
Download links
http://eclipse.gmwalek.com/viewtopic.php?t=21
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/;43287
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Yeah, just to let you know you are going to Stonehenge.
http://www.filerush.com/torrents/Eclipse-Setup.exe .torrent
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:nbEeDXhjeqYJ: students.guildhall.smu.edu/eclipse/+&hl=en&start=1
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I'm a big fan of the new paths opening in game development. Sure to some extent you could always modify games as an end user, but when they started to get beyond simple text based MUDs the programming knowledge required began to increase exponentially. Now that the games are starting to standardize on some standard engines at the core, modifying the game becomes simpler through the use of defined APIs and SDKs. This gives us the hacks (aimbots and ilk) that tend to crop up in Multiplayer games, but it also gives us stuff like this program (Eclipse) which was created in 5 months(!), and it gives us the burgeoning Machima world where people are building animated stories using these game engines.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Actually, it seems like people in Europe and Australasia have an advantage, for a change, thanks to filefronts Europe and Australasia only mirrors.
a d
Here for anyone in those areas.
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/;43287#Downlo
where's the "remove clothes and run nude" button??
As Violet, you must save your father from a collapsing web server before it's too late.
Whoops.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I haven't kept up with this, but wasn't Valve going to let modders release their stuff on steam? Or does there have to be money involved for that to happen. :(
They're not selling it, so the point is moot.
You're nothing; like me.
Steam's weekly update talked about this and another Source Engine mod done by the students at Guildhall, Samurai Legends (same url, but /samurailegends/, link also dead), a couple of days ago. The samurai game was multiplayer and from the screenshots looked very pretty. I couldn't find the link to the Valve page, but I found the relevant text on a bulletin board:
"Next Saturday, Valve's CEO and founder, Gabe Newell, will be giving the commencement speech at Southern Methodist University's Guildhall, a university program offering course work in game design. Two groups of students enrolled in the program will be releasing the Source MODs they produced during their term."
No. One of the Valve guys said they didn't place mirrors in HL1 because they wanted the player to imagine Gordon looks like him. It was probably an engine limitation but it was probably a reason not to include mirrors in HL2 (unless the engine can't do it either). They shouldn't have put him on the loading screen and HL2 box then.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Coral Cache
http://students.guildhall.smu.edu.nyud.net:8090/ec lipse/index.html
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=7218
http://www.iddl.vt.edu/~jackie/eclipsesetup.exe.to rrent/
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Interesting. That must be why more games get ported to Linux than the Mac, because Linux has a bigger desktop share... Oh, wait...
This is a pititful excuse by game developers who don't want to change their attitudes or outlooks. All that make your game easily portable requires is dumping all the DirectBlah BS and using an API that doesn't make you Microsoft's whipping boy.
Heck, if the API is inadequate, you could even add a bit to it for whatever it is you needed and release the changes back. It might make it easier to make games, which would make a bigger market, which would probably make things better for everybody.
As it is, I tend to buy games from small independents (Garage Games, Guild Software, Introversion Software, the list goes on) instead of the big publishers because the game developers who work for them have minds of their own and tend to make Linux versions of stuff. As opposed to people like you who stick their fingers in their ears and chant 'Marketshare' over and over again.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
This is what it boils down to: There are next to zero sane individuals who will do something without something in return. However, that something can be broadly defined. But for most people, it's something tangible.
Like money.
On a note: The Last Game I Bought was NWN or WarCraft 3, whichever came out last. I've started making my own games now. Working on a MUD.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I love it when people shout out "COMMUNISM DOESN'T WORK!!!" and point at the former Soviet Union, because then I can shout out "CAPITALISM DOESN'T WORK!!!" and point at every single failing capitalist economy and poor-as-fuck country. Let's take a look at one of the countries that has benefited the MOST from capitalism: Haiti. Yeah, capitalism sure works for Haitians.
What people like you don't seem to realize is that capitalism works GREAT if your country is already rich , but when you're broke as fuck it's the equivalent of being a broke as fuck private citizen in a capitalist economy. Sure, you can become super wealthy, but is it more likely that someone already rich will become richer or someone poor will become richer?
Gimme a break, you narrow minded tool. Quit your whining about your one-right-way-to-live.
Very cool concept, and incredibly lush outdoor environments (my 6600GT choked on it at a couple of spots). However, it's only got about an hour of gameplay. Hopefully more will come out of it, the little bit that's there is fun to play.
This is probably nostalgia speaking, but I miss games like menzoberanzan -- it had more of a complete story than most of these FPS games have now adays.
I'll admit, though, that the HLs have had good stories. And the new FFs probably have good stories, though the last one I've played is FFIII on SNES.
i guess the same has happened in most industries though -- the need to keep up with technology/compete has reduced the depth and quality of the stories.
and to make this social -- the same has happened in our society. we feel our priority is to be able to compete, so our schools have responded by becoming increasingly vocational.
it's sad though when survival requires you live a shallower life. it's really making me question whether or not humanity's really progressing...
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Thank you! It's nice to actually see an informed opinion on this mod as opposed to the bullsh*t AC statements about it being "lame" and "gay" from the tards who didn't bother to download it and have nothing better to do apparently.
I'm looking forward to trying it out myself and at least getting feedback to the team who made it. If they get enough positive responses and suggestions, hopefully they'll do more. Those who do really good and creative mods won't know that their work is appreciated unless we tell them so and as such will probably not make any more under a false impression that no one like what they've done. That would be a shame not only from their standpoint but also from ours since we would no longer get any quality mods from the group.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
You can run it on Linux with Cedega. There's a bit of a nasty performance hit though.
Telekinesis
I probably did miss the sarcasm. I'm only compliant with CSS3.0 standard sarcasm tags.
I'm sorry.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
No, no it didn't.
Quake was open-sourced three years after it came out and a full two years after Quake II's engine made the Q1 engine financially obsolete for licensing purposes. Releasing the Q1 code did little "work" for id except earn them a tremendous amount of goodwill from the open-source community. Their only financial benefit came from the licensing fees that came in when the dozens of commercial games developed by the OS community and based on Q1's code were released.
Don't confuse your rabid hatred of closed-source software with a sense of how to run a profitable business.
More impressive is the fact that if you stop walking mid-step in Halo 2, your character will actually move slightly as he readjusts into a standing pose. It's a small thing compared to all the bugs Halo 2 shipped with, but we need more things like this in games. Certainly nothing is an funny as the way kneeling characters slide around when they move while crouched in GoldenEye, though :-)
English is easier said than done.
On a second note, I don't think the solution to a non Microsoft game API is to take an API, "add a bit" and release it back... do that few times, with a few developers, and you're likely to end up with a mess.
I also don't know if OpenGL is a valid cross platform API... or maybe it won't be in the future. Microsoft did buy up some of the patents, and while it looks like you're still free of Microsoft control, it sure would make me nervous as a game developer. They could easily bury me in lawsuits, even if they were obviously on made up grounds.
Haven't tried it yet, but in the process of downloading it (alas, I'm not blessed with a T3).
Shamelessly ripped from NW Vault:
And the game description: The module can be found here:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Deta
Requires SoU, HotU and CEP.
It's not legal to sell them. Valve's license specifically prohibits people from selling anything that's developed with their tools, or interfaces with their software/engine.
But that said, if it becomes popular (aka CS), I'd imagine they'd work something out.
I'm still fairly surprised that Valve hasn't picked-up Natural Selection yet. It's far more fun than CS and actually requires real teamwork and strategy.
Hopefully when NS 3.1 (or NS-Source) comes out, they'll make it available on Steam.
If you want to try something that's a little more satisfying than the "run around and shoot stuff, round after round in CS", pop over to the Official Site and give it a try (It takes some time to learn how the game works, so reading the manual [the wikipedia entry is pretty good!] will help you look less like a newb).
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
It might very well suck, but at least I plan on giving it a chance to prove itself rather than pass judgements based only on its web site. That's like critiquing an entire book because you read the back cover.
And I only said that they should be thanked if it's good. So, tell me, genius, if it sucks and you don't tell them, how the hell are they supposed to know WHY you didn't like it and therefore correct what you don't like? Do you think the fact that you think it suck will somehow reverberate through the air thereby subconsciously communicating with them why you didn't like it? Duh! They need feedback either way! Ignoring them because you don't like their mod isn't going to do anyone any good!
Then again, I should know better than to expect logic from someone who has to post as AC.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
That explains why they were able to develop it in just five months. :-)
/. expect mods like this to be perfect and have everything ready from the start. Man, why doesn't this .04a version have a full storyline! That's freakin' lame! Waiter, reality check, please.
Excactly. This was probably just a first run, no different than what most game companies and even animation studios do - release something small, get feedback, apply the feedback to a larger project. It seems that too many people on
Now that they have some experience under their collective belt, they should be able to get future mods out with more efficiency. This of course pertains to any mod-maker, not just the Eclipse team.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Just once I'd like to play a game with female lead character that doesn't make my neighbors think I'm watching porn when I press the jump key.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
http://img61.echo.cx/img61/5208/eclipse5ra.jpg
At first I thought 1 FPS was a rounded-up value, as it was more like 0.2 FPS... but I was proved wrong. I figured I could just wait it out, but then I realized it isn't really worth it. I understand it's promotional, but if they'd spent even 15 more minutes developing a storyline (in addition to the 5 they did spend) then I might've actually played it through. Instead I spent 20 minutes in total ignorance of who I was, where I was going, and why I could make objects float in mid air... that is, if I wasn't spending my time waiting.
Compromising game quality for graphic quality is one thing, but if you're going to go the eye-candy route then do it right and use at least a little discretion, ensuring that the game will actually play on anything other than a particle accellerator. The glow-effect annoyed the hell out of me. I found myself rubbing my eyes and putting my face right against the screen because I thought I was going blind.
I dunno. I didn't find it very entertaining or challenging, unless you consider suffering through long choppy intro sequences full of faeries and flowers a challenge.
Especially poignant, considering it World Refugee Day today...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
The page itself is a case of bad design: Thumbnails should be direct links, so people can quickly quick them open in tabs - as opposed to this where there is a javascript on each link which only allows you to open one - and totally leave out browsers who do not have (or have enabled) javascript.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating