Dragon Age just released their toolset editor. I really would love to use to remake the Caves of Chaos, Against The Giants or some such. I just don't have time. I remember back in the day making RPGs with if/then commands on my C-64. Man, so much has changed. I would have gone into game design. I wish I could have seen the path.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/mt-42/mt-tb.cgi/17559
Did anybody here ever get into the community of modders (is that what they were called) who used to design levels for Quake and the like? I remember looking into GL Quake again a few years back and checking out the stuff that had been developed over the previous years. (Same with the subsequent Quake episodes, Unreal Tournament, and a few other games of that era.)
I used to mod a bit for Quake when I was a teenager, though it was very amateurish. I was working on a thing called Assassin Quake that was really heavy on stealth and sniping. I was coding it, and I had a mapper and graphic designer, none of whom I ever met in RL. We all just sort of drifted apart in the alpha stage and it never happened. Believe it or not, the mapper was approached (and paid!) by a movie studio to do a Quake map to promote the movie Anaconda. That's just what a surreal time the late 90s were.
Friends and I used to design levels for Quake, which we used to play tournaments over our college LAN. This was before broadband was really available outside of dorms, so there wasn't a huge online community outside little pockets like ours.
The toolset is so robust, you will probably see people remaking those things. If the modding community takes off for this game, I'm going to be playing it for years. In the meantime, two more treaties to complete!
One more thing to be jealous of kids coming up these days. Anyone remember the Bard's Tale Construction Set? And what games these days have their toolsets available? This might be a fun hobby. I thought I heard Fallout had a sandbox, or whatever they're called.
Modding tools aren't the end of it, the kids today can download Unreal Development Kit (http://www.udk.com/index.html)
Unity Indie (http://unity3d.com/) or any other free game toolkit and make their own entire game. I know programming environments were always available, but today it seems like the game between hobbiest and professional, as far as tools go, is getting very narrow.
Or in another direction, if you're just into text and reading, have any of you seen how Inform 7 (http://inform7.com/ http://vimeo.com/4221277) works? You write the logic of your text adventure in natural language, and the compiler changes it into a predicate logic system. Even text has come a long way from if/then in your BASIC interpreter ;)
They should pass some kind of law that 15 yo kids are only allowed to play games they make themselves ;)
It is what it is. It's like working for Google: lucrative and requiring enormous life commitment (move to the company, eat and drink and breathe your job 60+ hours a week). If you find what you're creating to be passionately rewarding, it will be a dream job. If it's just a job to you, however, the severe impositions on your life and loved ones will become astoundingly irksome in short order, and now you've moved across the nation to a city where you know no one and have no love for anything, especially your lucratively grueling job.
I've seen each of those paths. It's a crap shoot for high stakes in the Life Satisfaction Sweepstakes. Sometimes it pays off. Sometimes not. But it is hell on anything less than rock-solid relationships.
There are already people trying to redo Balder's Gate, a reduced blood mod, a 'Wheel of Time' mod, and who knows what else in over 300 posted projects. I bet we'll see some old school modules come out too.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Did anybody here ever get into the community of modders (is that what they were called) who used to design levels for Quake and the like? I remember looking into GL Quake again a few years back and checking out the stuff that had been developed over the previous years. (Same with the subsequent Quake episodes, Unreal Tournament, and a few other games of that era.)
I've got some WoW modders in my guild. But I didn't know anyone who was into modding for Quake.
I used to mod a bit for Quake when I was a teenager, though it was very amateurish. I was working on a thing called Assassin Quake that was really heavy on stealth and sniping. I was coding it, and I had a mapper and graphic designer, none of whom I ever met in RL. We all just sort of drifted apart in the alpha stage and it never happened. Believe it or not, the mapper was approached (and paid!) by a movie studio to do a Quake map to promote the movie Anaconda. That's just what a surreal time the late 90s were.
Friends and I used to design levels for Quake, which we used to play tournaments over our college LAN. This was before broadband was really available outside of dorms, so there wasn't a huge online community outside little pockets like ours.
Man, those were some good times.
The toolset is so robust, you will probably see people remaking those things. If the modding community takes off for this game, I'm going to be playing it for years. In the meantime, two more treaties to complete!
Gamers did a lot of those old modules for Neverwinter Nights, so the maps and such should be re-usable.
One more thing to be jealous of kids coming up these days. Anyone remember the Bard's Tale Construction Set? And what games these days have their toolsets available? This might be a fun hobby. I thought I heard Fallout had a sandbox, or whatever they're called.
Pen and paper RPGs still work just fine for me, thanks.
Modding tools aren't the end of it, the kids today can download Unreal Development Kit (http://www.udk.com/index.html)
Unity Indie (http://unity3d.com/) or any other free game toolkit and make their own entire game. I know programming environments were always available, but today it seems like the game between hobbiest and professional, as far as tools go, is getting very narrow.
Or in another direction, if you're just into text and reading, have any of you seen how Inform 7 (http://inform7.com/ http://vimeo.com/4221277) works? You write the logic of your text adventure in natural language, and the compiler changes it into a predicate logic system. Even text has come a long way from if/then in your BASIC interpreter ;)
They should pass some kind of law that 15 yo kids are only allowed to play games they make themselves ;)
You might be glad that you didn't see the path, though. From what I understand, working in a lot of game design studios isn't very pleasant.
It is what it is. It's like working for Google: lucrative and requiring enormous life commitment (move to the company, eat and drink and breathe your job 60+ hours a week). If you find what you're creating to be passionately rewarding, it will be a dream job. If it's just a job to you, however, the severe impositions on your life and loved ones will become astoundingly irksome in short order, and now you've moved across the nation to a city where you know no one and have no love for anything, especially your lucratively grueling job.
I've seen each of those paths. It's a crap shoot for high stakes in the Life Satisfaction Sweepstakes. Sometimes it pays off. Sometimes not. But it is hell on anything less than rock-solid relationships.
There are already people trying to redo Balder's Gate, a reduced blood mod, a 'Wheel of Time' mod, and who knows what else in over 300 posted projects. I bet we'll see some old school modules come out too.
Oh man. If/then commands and CRT screens. I remember the days..