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Wirehead Studios > General Discussion > Entertainment > Black Mesa Interview
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Tabun
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« on: 2007-07-31, 03:27 »
I was just reading the Black Mesa (A HL2/Source nostalgia modification bringing back the first Half-Life, with a vengeance) interview with YouGamers (which can be found here). I've been following Black Mesa's progress for a while now. It sounds sgood and, without trying to sound pompous, they are like us in that they are a slow-going semi-perfectionist team making something that will be done "when it's done" and kick serious ass.

One bit that stood out was the inevitable closing question regarding the troops that were lining up to join the development team (okay, so that's another respect in which we differ from them Slipgate - Wink).

Quote
YouGamers: If someone wishes to begin a career in modding, what should he do first? What would be your top three tips for the n00bs?

Rose: 1 - Be self-reliant! Learn how to solve problems and do things in the editor by yourself, with the help of documentation, tutorials, Google, or whatever. Try to fix your problems or achieve your desired results on your own before asking for help on editing forums or from other people. If you do things this way, you'll learn a lot more, and it will make you much more competent as you go along.

2 - Have a good eye. For some things, this is really applicable, and not everyone has what it takes. Level design, texture creation, and other asset creation positions require attention to detail, an eye for color and light choices, and other visual talents. If you are not as artistically or visually inclined, then perhaps learning how to code, manage assets, or write game documentation is for you.

3 - Practice! Your first level will never be perfect, neither will your first texture, or first model. If you keep practicing, you'll learn new things. Always try to take something away from failed attempts, whether it's a scrapped level or a model that didn't turn out quite right. It's these experiences and failed attempts that make the successful ones look even better.

The three pointers are obvious and perhaps even clich?d a bit, but coming from a modder, it's good advice nonetheless. I remember trying to say more or less the above to more than a few beginning Quake 3 skinners some years ago, and it would have been neat if I'd been able to present them with three such nicely formulated tips. :]

Anyway, I hope they're nearing Media Release 11...
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Tabun ?Morituri Nolumus Mori?
Phoenix
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« Reply #1 on: 2007-07-31, 04:42 »
Sounds like our development path indeed.  I've given the same advice over and over to people starting out with modding:  Don't get discouraged, yes it's hard but it's doable, keep at it and don't give up until you make it do what you want.  I've always figured if I can figure out how to do it there's no reason someone else can't.  Einstein said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.  Well, birds do not perspire and I don't consider myself a genius, not sure there really even is such a thing, but the idea is "you have to work your tail off for your idea to come to fruition".  I find most people who come looking for coding and modeling advice who are newbies have a problem with the 99% perspiration part.  They give up before they've even started, or they post what they want on a message board and get mad when people don't jump in and write their code for them, or (as is often in our case) get mad when people don't give them models and textures to use because they're too lazy to make their own.  Yeah so your life is busy and it takes time to do that stuff.  What, you think we don't have lives too?  Give us some credit here.

Having an idea and making an idea into something are very different things.  Anyone can have an idea.  Making it real is the difficult part.  I think a big problem is people in this era have been trained to expect instant results.  They want it "now" because they get everything else "now".  You don't bake bread or weave fabric and sew clothes anymore, you don't till a field and harvest crops, you just buy it all at Wal-Mart and complain when there's more than two people in the check-out line ahead of you.  Now I do not consider myself a particularly great coder, nor a particularly great modeler.  What I am is relentless and stubborn and determined.  So what I lack in talent I make up for in tenacity.  If anyone wonders "how do you do it?" when I make something work in Gen's code it's usually because I've been attacking a very stupid problem the wrong way and eventually stumble onto the solution.  I often credit divine intervention as, honestly, it's a miracle half the stuff I've written works.  I can't count the number of times I've written something and then figured out how it worked afterwards.  The first coding achievement I had for Gen was getting a second barrel to draw in space for the gatling guns.  It took me over a day to figure out how to get the code to compile, and another day to figure out how to make a second barrel draw in space.  At the time I considered it a major achievement.  It doesn't seem like much, but IT WORKED.  It was a small step, but an important one.  That's how you do things - one step at a time, learn as you go, and as you go you remember and build on what you've done before.  What if I said "Oh it's too hard," or "this takes too long."  Would I get anywhere with that kind of attitude?

Granted, some things require a certain degree of talent, and not everyone's talents are the same.  I couldn't make the quality textures that Tab makes.  I don't know if he would be as nitpicky and fussy with the code function in the way I am.  Regardless, with anything you can get better if you keep applying yourself.  My first model attempt looked like crap compared to, say, the Strogg BFG10k.  What took me a day to code before I can do in 30 seconds now.  I'm sure Tab didn't produce perfect textures the first time he opened a paint program, but what he produces now, to me, looks at least as good if not better than what I've seen in professionally made games.  I just wish more people would learn the lesson behind all this that "Hey, if you really want to, you CAN do it you know, and quality is worth the time it takes to do it right."  Maybe fewer projects would fall by the wayside if people just learned to not give up so easily.
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Phoenix
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« Reply #2 on: 2007-07-31, 04:49 »
Almost forgot to comment on the Black Mesa project.  It looks fantastic.  I had not heard of it until now, but it's one I'll be looking forward to.  A lot of the media looks better than what shipped with Half-Life 2.  The zombies look incredibly good and a lot more menacing than the HL2 zombies.
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« Reply #3 on: 2007-07-31, 09:22 »
I've been paying attention to the development of this mod for some time now, and I can tell you this: these guys are making a great job.
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Tabun
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« Reply #4 on: 2007-07-31, 14:10 »
What the bird said.

Point 2, "have a good eye", is my first confrontation with the status of the view that "with a lot of work, anyone can do it". On the one hand I still believe that, since I started out without anything that goes for talent (I still can't do any good figure drawing and I'm rubbish with any traditional medium) -- just that 99% perspiration and zooming 800% to literally push those pixels around.
On the other hand, I think I do have "a good eye". Nothing great, just a sense of what looks more or less right. I didn't think at first that there would be anyone without this basic-ish intuition, but I've seen a lot of modders that couldn't for the life of them see that there is a qualitative difference between a good attempt that needs work and top notch industry work. After all these years I'm still not sure if this is something you can or cannot learn to see -- I sure as hell have been trying to get better at it, to no avail.. :]

As to actually making stuff, that's always been a matter of sticking with it and making long hours.

I'm nitpicky in code, but probably less determined when it comes to that. I have a way of wanting all the code to be neat and be proper way. One thing I hate about webdesign, for instance, is that sometimes you have to use hacks, workarounds and exploits to get the right results for various browsers -- I just want neat, standards-compliant code that works solidly, and that's not what web-design is about. With less determined I mean that I can probably spend more days puzzling over a visual tweak and trying to get it right than I could for a coding problem -- I fear I would find myself opting for the easy way out sooner there..
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Tabun ?Morituri Nolumus Mori?
Phoenix
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« Reply #5 on: 2007-07-31, 18:09 »
Gen's got more hacks in it than City17's tunnels.  I suppose I adhere to the Kalashnikov philosophy when it comes to coding.  Slipgate - Laugh
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Woodsman
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« Reply #6 on: 2007-08-06, 12:52 »
Quote from: Phoenix on 2007-07-31, 18:09
Gen's got more hacks in it than City17's tunnels.  I suppose I adhere to the Kalashnikov philosophy when it comes to coding.  Slipgate - Laugh

you mean make it cheap so you can export it without being paid for the purpose of creating poliitcal and economic instability?
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Tabun
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« Reply #7 on: 2007-08-06, 12:54 »
Look who's talking, mr. satanic-post-count! ;]
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Tabun ?Morituri Nolumus Mori?
Phoenix
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« Reply #8 on: 2007-08-06, 15:19 »
Blast it, he's figured it out!  Now I'll have to send Civil Protection to hunt your ass down, Woods.
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