Not Making the Same Mistake the Second Time Around

[ArtifeX]

Originally posted by Lazarous

...If a lesson is to be learned, it should be that releasing patches which alienate a gigantic part of your playerbase...

Oh damn, don't you even get me started...

P.S. Any plans on making a promod academy, Art?

 

I'd really have to be a masochist to get that started again. I can't imagine how many hours I spent on that. If I find myself with a bunch of extra time and a computer on my desk, then maybe.

[ArtifeX]

Originally posted by Visac

...We don't get a lot file submissions and I personally don't know why. Having his map or mod on LucasFiles should be considered a good thing. If LucasFiles would have more files, traffic and attention LucasArts would support it more on the official LucasArts website.

I'd love to see some reliable statistics on how many game purchasers ever visit the lucasarts website. I'm still getting emails from people trying my old mod for the first time who weren't even aware that there were any official patches for the game!

 

My point: put the links to the site(s) in a highly visible place within the game--the main screen. Nothing else will channel so many hits as that will.

What would you prefer? A review or comment function within LucasFiles? A seperate website? On JK.net?

I like the idea of giving reward points to writers. How important is a comment / review function of a filesite to a file author? Would you rather send it to such a site than to one without this kind of functionality?

I am considering to integrate a comment/review system into LucasFiles. Maybe you guys can give me some suggestions.

Mod writers/Content creators write create their work for one reason: recognition. If there is a site out there that will host their work and allow them to receive that recognition more easily from the community, then more people will create content and submit it for posting there.

 

Grease the wheels between the author and the player. Remove any barriers that prevent the two from communicating. Having a separate central community forum (lucasforums) and filebase (lucasfiles, etc.) is a barrier. Integrate the two. Figure out what you can give player-reviewers as a reward for well-written reviews (I named a few) and put the mechanism in place that will give it to them. Figure out what makes authors' work super-visible and put that in place (community link in the game engine). Form a JK webring with other fansites, and make that visible! Anyone playing the game for the first time should be slammed in the face with, "Damn, this game's got a huge support community!", not, "I wonder if there's any sites for this game (types URL of search engine into browser)."

Good idea. I admit that we need to improve the right sidebar or rethink it. I will think about

 

Thank you for your suggestions!

 

Vis

 

No problem. I like to drop in every couple of months and stir the pot a bit.

[Emon]

Oh, and don't misunderstand what I wrote... I think a lot of ArtifeX's ideas are great, and surely will help, but I don't think lack of them is why JO wasn't very successful. I don't think I've ever seen a game that links you right to the files, except maybe Ghost Recon where a mod author can store a URL that gets displayed on a failed connection due to lack of the mod.

 

The original JK didn't have it, and it's editing was a tremenous success, especially for every tool, document, specification, being entirely user made. JK had no help from LEC (except file comments), and despite its small size, it was still in its prime in 2001, and is still edited today. So I don't think help from LEC or Raven is really necessary. All we need is a really good game that inspires people to mod it, and a good enough mod base to make things easy, and from what we've seen, JA looks to be just that.

[JaledDur]

Artifex:

 

I have the upmost respect for you and your work, but there will be no link. JA went gold sometime last week, and I doubt even if LA were receptive to us that they would bother to add it now. We should concentrate on how to get things done ourselves. That said...

 

Suppose we were able to get a site with large bandwidth to host a page that just has news on mods and maps for JA and JA alone. From there all we need to do is inform the new players. As I've said, LA isn't going to put a link in the game, so we should start thinking of ways to make people aware of where this site is (whatever site it might be).

 

Aside from a link on the main screen, the next best way I can possible think of to advertise to the general JA public (and is something we can actually manipulate ourselves without actuall modding the game) is to create a server that shows up at the top of the list alphabetically, is running a popular map, and has the web address in the title as well as brief info in the MOTD, and has more info on the location and content of the site in that thing that spams text on the screen at certain intervals. Maybe if a few such servers were created, we would be able to direct some more people toward this new community.

 

If someone were to create a bunch of servers that aren't actually accessible (so as to reduce bandwidth cost of having such a large amount of servers) you could serve enough to intersperse the site address throughout the server list. yes, yes, I can see Kurgan and a few others charging my way shouting about how that could be seen as a misuse of the list and may very well open up a can of worms somewhere along the line, but its the only way I can think of that comes close to the effect that Artifex wanted.

 

 

Emon:

 

There is one thing different about JK1 from JK2 that relates to what you are saying. The prequels were not released yet. In 1997 the Star Wars game buying population was different. I don't think I'll elaborate more on that, I'll let you all think that one through for yourselves.

 

 

All:

 

I realize that diversity is a good thing, etc, but another problem was that there were a lot of mods out there that duplicated features, or didn't really add much to the game. In certain situations, we had some real talent in the community split across different projects. Thats going to happen; thats the nature of things. But why don't we hold a sort of 'modder's summit'. Get together people that are interested in modding the game and working on some big project. Have someone moderate the whole thing. If all the modders were to sit down and discuss what it is they want to do/fix, we might very well find that we could combine the talent of such people to create better projects. Don't try to moderate it too much, don't try to grant approval over someone's idea, etc. Just let it happen, and see what comes of it. I think we may be pleasantly suprised to see a couple of organized large scale projects come out of it. I think it would be especially effective if a certain time limit was given on the meeting, say an hour, and have it recur every week or every other week on a certain day. This could even be incorperated into the site in the form of a chatroom (you know one of the scripts that will connect to one of the major IRC servers and join a predefined channel). This could also be easily done with a forum dedicated to the same task. I tend to think that a forum might be more practical.

[Kurgan]

I remember in the JK1 heyday, we had a great program called "Patch Commander" to run the gob/goo (the container files used by JK1/MotS) files easily.

 

The program also had a small built in FTP program to connect to "patch repositories".

 

The problem was the author only got sent a very small number of patch repositories submissions, so he quit the feature. But it was a great idea.

 

Too bad JA won't have that built in. I am always of the mind to download and install mods myself rather than download them off a server (slow... no support files, installs them in the wrong directory, etc).

 

A lot of people got confused by the emote mods too, because they'd join my regular server and ask why they couldn't amsit or whatever. ; p

[JDKnite188]

I was thinking about SP maps for a second and I realized something. Some people created maps that you would have to use console commands to open. Others created maps that would be activated by selecting it in the "Mods" setup directory in game. Map activation should be standardized somehow.

[The Count]

Jo was very successful from a market point of view, it was the best selling game in alot of countries.

[toms]

yeah but, and this is only the impression i got, it didn't seem to hang around very long at the top of the charts. That is the advantage to the publishers... if a game has a big community and loads of mods then it stays relevant a lot longer. People are still buying Half-life so they can play mods.

 

Im thinking of buying UT2003 just cos of that new SW mod.

 

The sims is still going strong because of all the expansions and the fact people can add their own characters.

 

Emon - part of the problem these days is that it is no longer as easy as it once was to make these mods. What used to be single user creations requiring a few free tools and a little bit of knowledge of a few areas now require a whole team, often with expensive modelling software and lots of skills in high polygon modelling, lots of texture maps and so on. By the time a lot of these large scale mods get close to completion people have already stopped playing the game... that is if they don't get bogged down before they are finished.

 

Edge (UK games mag) did an excellent article on the evolution of Modding in their August issue.

 

I played around with JKed and made a few levels back in the day, but i wouldn't have the time to attempt something decent for JO these days. However, the mods and levels for JK never really approached the quality of the Q2 ones that were around at the same time.

[Wudan]

Originally posted by ArtifeX

I'd really have to be a masochist to get that started again. I can't imagine how many hours I spent on that. If I find myself with a bunch of extra time and a computer on my desk, then maybe.

 

I really liked the saber play in ProMod, as someone who doesn't like saber play in general. I was a coder for AotCTC and I was upset that they never really grabbed hold of it.

 

I'd really like to see you stop by jk2coding on quakenet, or jkacoding (which is where we'll be going shortly) to talk to you about what you think is required for a mod for JA (especially if you don't plan on doing one). I think your ideas are very solid.

[Wudan]

Originally posted by ArtifeX

I'd really have to be a masochist to get that started again. I can't imagine how many hours I spent on that. If I find myself with a bunch of extra time and a computer on my desk, then maybe.

 

I really liked the saber play in ProMod, as someone who doesn't like saber play in general. I was a coder for AotCTC and I was upset that they never really grabbed hold of it.

 

I'd really like to see you stop by jk2coding on quakenet, or jkacoding (which is where we'll be going shortly) to talk to you about what you think is required for a mod for JA (especially if you don't plan on doing one). I think your ideas are very solid.

[FK | unnamed]

This will probably make a few people unhappy but oh well, I'm going to say it anyways.

 

One of the huge problems with JK2 was there were no "true" mods ever made (the gladiator mod kicked major ass but it came very late in the game and it was sp only). I know there was to be (unless they came out and I missed them) an AotC & DF TC's but I don't think either were finished.

 

Now when I say "true" think Counter-Strike for Half-Life or Urban Terror for Quake 3 or Tactical Ops for Unreal Tournament.

 

Granted we can sit here and argue over the difference between a total conversion and a mod all day, but I think my point is pretty clear.

 

Basically every mod made for JK2 fell into one of two categories:

 

 

"This is my version of how JK2 should be."

 

Or

 

"Now you can do cart wheels and have double bladed neon pink sabers and a 2 foot tall yoda."

 

 

And to make it worse it was not just one or two of those types of mods, it seemed as if every week a different mod came out that basically did nothing more than add one or two new emotes thus adding more confusion to the already similar looking batch of mods out there.

 

 

 

No disrespect to the people who made those mods, but let's not kid ourselves, no one is going to buy a copy of JK2 just to play those types of mods.

 

Forget about major TC’s like the AotC/DF projects and take a look at mods that tried to introduce new game modes.

 

Hydro ball was one (pretty fun too) and umm… can’t really think of any more…

 

Remember CTF started out as a mod as did Team Fortress, and both proved to keep people interested you don’t have to make a “new game” out of the existing one for a mod to succeed in breathing new life into a game.

 

 

Bottom line is while I agree all kinds of links and official support from LA would be good for the game, as far as mods go, if noting more than "this is how JA should be" or "JA with new and improved emotes" is ever made, once the initial "freshness" of the game wears off it will die just as rapid a death as JK2 did if there is noting radically different (from base game play) there to keep people interested.

[FK | unnamed]

This will probably make a few people unhappy but oh well, I'm going to say it anyways.

 

One of the huge problems with JK2 was there were no "true" mods ever made (the gladiator mod kicked major ass but it came very late in the game and it was sp only). I know there was to be (unless they came out and I missed them) an AotC & DF TC's but I don't think either were finished.

 

Now when I say "true" think Counter-Strike for Half-Life or Urban Terror for Quake 3 or Tactical Ops for Unreal Tournament.

 

Granted we can sit here and argue over the difference between a total conversion and a mod all day, but I think my point is pretty clear.

 

Basically every mod made for JK2 fell into one of two categories:

 

 

"This is my version of how JK2 should be."

 

Or

 

"Now you can do cart wheels and have double bladed neon pink sabers and a 2 foot tall yoda."

 

 

And to make it worse it was not just one or two of those types of mods, it seemed as if every week a different mod came out that basically did nothing more than add one or two new emotes thus adding more confusion to the already similar looking batch of mods out there.

 

 

 

No disrespect to the people who made those mods, but let's not kid ourselves, no one is going to buy a copy of JK2 just to play those types of mods.

 

Forget about major TC’s like the AotC/DF projects and take a look at mods that tried to introduce new game modes.

 

Hydro ball was one (pretty fun too) and umm… can’t really think of any more…

 

Remember CTF started out as a mod as did Team Fortress, and both proved to keep people interested you don’t have to make a “new game” out of the existing one for a mod to succeed in breathing new life into a game.

 

 

Bottom line is while I agree all kinds of links and official support from LA would be good for the game, as far as mods go, if noting more than "this is how JA should be" or "JA with new and improved emotes" is ever made, once the initial "freshness" of the game wears off it will die just as rapid a death as JK2 did if there is noting radically different (from base game play) there to keep people interested.

[JaledDur]

Originally posted by FK | unnamed

No disrespect to the people who made those mods, but let's not kid ourselves, no one is going to buy a copy of JK2 just to play those types of mods.

 

Invalid, since there exists at least one (me) that bought the game with exactly that type of mod in mind (making the game the way it should be).

 

OSP for Q3 was not one of these ubermods you speak of, yet it was very popular. Same goes for Rocket Arena.

 

I respectfully disagree that a mod has to be basically a TC in order for it to 'work'. Dark Forces 2 went on forever because it had great gameplay to start off with. So if you can take flawed gameplay and make it great gameplay, then it stands to reason that you can increase the life of the game simply by *shocked* making it balanced and fun! You don't need to make the lightsabers into swords, change all the models, and leave the Star Wars universe with a one way ticket to ancient Rome to do that either.

 

I do agree that the major problem was that there were too many similar mods made. See the last section of my above post for my suggestions on that.

 

Psudo-quote from my previous post

I realize that diversity is a good thing, etc, but another problem was that there were a lot of mods out there that duplicated features, or didn't really add much to the game. In certain situations, we had some real talent in the community split across different projects. Thats going to happen; thats the nature of things. But why don't we hold a sort of 'modder's summit'. Get together people that are interested in modding the game and working on some big project. Make this happen on a forum. If all the modders were to sit down and discuss what it is they want to do/fix, we might very well find that we could combine the talent of such people to create better projects. Don't try to moderate it too much, don't try to grant approval over someone's idea, etc. Just let it happen, and see what comes of it. I think we may be pleasantly suprised to see a couple of organized large scale projects come out of it.

[JaledDur]

Originally posted by FK | unnamed

No disrespect to the people who made those mods, but let's not kid ourselves, no one is going to buy a copy of JK2 just to play those types of mods.

 

Invalid, since there exists at least one (me) that bought the game with exactly that type of mod in mind (making the game the way it should be).

 

OSP for Q3 was not one of these ubermods you speak of, yet it was very popular. Same goes for Rocket Arena.

 

I respectfully disagree that a mod has to be basically a TC in order for it to 'work'. Dark Forces 2 went on forever because it had great gameplay to start off with. So if you can take flawed gameplay and make it great gameplay, then it stands to reason that you can increase the life of the game simply by *shocked* making it balanced and fun! You don't need to make the lightsabers into swords, change all the models, and leave the Star Wars universe with a one way ticket to ancient Rome to do that either.

 

I do agree that the major problem was that there were too many similar mods made. See the last section of my above post for my suggestions on that.

 

Psudo-quote from my previous post

I realize that diversity is a good thing, etc, but another problem was that there were a lot of mods out there that duplicated features, or didn't really add much to the game. In certain situations, we had some real talent in the community split across different projects. Thats going to happen; thats the nature of things. But why don't we hold a sort of 'modder's summit'. Get together people that are interested in modding the game and working on some big project. Make this happen on a forum. If all the modders were to sit down and discuss what it is they want to do/fix, we might very well find that we could combine the talent of such people to create better projects. Don't try to moderate it too much, don't try to grant approval over someone's idea, etc. Just let it happen, and see what comes of it. I think we may be pleasantly suprised to see a couple of organized large scale projects come out of it.

[Thazac]

As far as I know they're still working on the DFTC though it's moving somewhat slow. Don't get me wrong, I think it's better they do it slowly and bugfree than fast and full of game-killing bugs.

 

As for the AotCTC I don't know... You know, I'll take a look at their site now...

They seem to be in for a release, be it only a beta one very soon so I'd not say they're cancelled.

 

And lastly I have to say Raven have supported JO brilliantly. Esecially compared DA/MS do/did to Freelancer... Only the modding community keeps that game alive... BTW I think MS are lousy at supporting their games at all

[Thazac]

As far as I know they're still working on the DFTC though it's moving somewhat slow. Don't get me wrong, I think it's better they do it slowly and bugfree than fast and full of game-killing bugs.

 

As for the AotCTC I don't know... You know, I'll take a look at their site now...

They seem to be in for a release, be it only a beta one very soon so I'd not say they're cancelled.

 

And lastly I have to say Raven have supported JO brilliantly. Esecially compared DA/MS do/did to Freelancer... Only the modding community keeps that game alive... BTW I think MS are lousy at supporting their games at all

[Garath]

Very nice post Artifex.

 

You're 100% right. To extend the life of any mp game, it has to have a thriving community. Part of that community is from the competition side where leagues like TWL, OGL and CAL come in, but the majority is the people that just play the game on public servers. You have the duelers, the CTF players, and in JA, you'll have the siege players. In all the pubbing I did in Jedi Outcast, I didn't see alot of talk about the community. Mods, maps, competition etc. Word of mouth is probably the only way to reach people who don't hit forums, fan sites, etc. I've always viewed those 'community' links on the loadup screen the same way I view the 'help' links. They are just there to take up space

 

As members of the community, we need to spread the word. Play some different gametypes, talk up the fun that being a part of the community is. Competition, mods, custom maps - they all bring the game to life after you've exhausted the singleplayer and stock multiplayer.

 

Find a popular server and talk about it. Word of mouth is the number 1 way to bring new players into the community.

[Garath]

Very nice post Artifex.

 

You're 100% right. To extend the life of any mp game, it has to have a thriving community. Part of that community is from the competition side where leagues like TWL, OGL and CAL come in, but the majority is the people that just play the game on public servers. You have the duelers, the CTF players, and in JA, you'll have the siege players. In all the pubbing I did in Jedi Outcast, I didn't see alot of talk about the community. Mods, maps, competition etc. Word of mouth is probably the only way to reach people who don't hit forums, fan sites, etc. I've always viewed those 'community' links on the loadup screen the same way I view the 'help' links. They are just there to take up space

 

As members of the community, we need to spread the word. Play some different gametypes, talk up the fun that being a part of the community is. Competition, mods, custom maps - they all bring the game to life after you've exhausted the singleplayer and stock multiplayer.

 

Find a popular server and talk about it. Word of mouth is the number 1 way to bring new players into the community.

[JDKnite188]

Originally posted by Garath

Very nice post Artifex.

 

As members of the community, we need to spread the word. Play some different gametypes, talk up the fun that being a part of the community is. Competition, mods, custom maps - they all bring the game to life after you've exhausted the singleplayer and stock multiplayer.

 

Find a popular server and talk about it. Word of mouth is the number 1 way to bring new players into the community.

 

Word of mouth is the easiest way, but it isn't reliable. We need to almost advertise things.

 

I felt glum that a lot of custom MP maps weren't hosted. Yeah, there were favorites around like Bespin Towers, but for example when were the Cloud Cartography Pack maps ever hosted anywhere? Those were great maps!

 

There is so much around, but people have to take interest in it.

[ArtifeX]

Originally posted by toms

...

Emon - part of the problem these days is that it is no longer as easy as it once was to make these mods. What used to be single user creations requiring a few free tools and a little bit of knowledge of a few areas now require a whole team, often with expensive modelling software and lots of skills in high polygon modelling, lots of texture maps and so on. By the time a lot of these large scale mods get close to completion people have already stopped playing the game... that is if they don't get bogged down before they are finished.

...

 

Good point. That's why I always stuck to changes that altered gameplay rather than cosmetics. Better game now, pretty later.

[ArtifeX]

Originally posted by Wudan

I really liked the saber play in ProMod, as someone who doesn't like saber play in general. I was a coder for AotCTC and I was upset that they never really grabbed hold of it.

 

I'd really like to see you stop by jk2coding on quakenet, or jkacoding (which is where we'll be going shortly) to talk to you about what you think is required for a mod for JA (especially if you don't plan on doing one). I think your ideas are very solid.

 

Thanks man. I'd love to stop by, but I'm computerless at home right now (currently looking at building another), and my work firewall wont let me into irc.

 

Would like to know what's going on with AOTCTC, since they're the only ones I ever gave my source code to.

[ArtifeX]

Originally posted by JaledDur

Artifex:

 

I have the upmost respect for you and your work, but there will be no link. JA went gold sometime last week, and I doubt even if LA were receptive to us that they would bother to add it now. ...

 

It's inevitable that there will be a patch. Adding a community link to the main page would be laughably easy. There are two possibilities why there's not one there already: they don't want to put one there, or they didn't think of putting one there. I'm simply trying to take care of the second case. Nothing to be done about the first one, especially when hard-nosed LA is involved.

[FK | unnamed]

Originally posted by JaledDur

Invalid, since there exists at least one (me) that bought the game with exactly that type of mod in mind (making the game the way it should be).

 

OSP for Q3 was not one of these ubermods you speak of, yet it was very popular. Same goes for Rocket Arena.

 

I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find a guy who bought jk2 because he saw a pic of a Lando bot in PC gamer and thought it would make a good father figure/role model for his children.

 

The initial statement was what many refer to as a broad generalization.

 

And while you may have bought the game for the mods you saw, I think it's safe to say the overwhelming majority of pc gamers who picked up jk2 after it had been out for a while did not do it solely because they wanted to play mods that let them /amsit in a 3d game.

 

Remember CTF started out as a mod as did Team Fortress, and both proved to keep people interested you don’t have to make a “new game” out of the existing one for a mod to succeed in breathing new life into a game.[/Quote]

 

I agree (like I stated above) that a game does not have to be an "uber mod" or total conversion to breath life into a game.

 

Problem was the 99% of the mods we got really didn't change much other than aesthetics (model sizes, emotes, new saber colors etc.)

 

The one exception to that would be pro mod.

 

And while I agree with the majority of changes made in that mod and really do admire the thought put into the refinement of the combat system I also understand why people pretty much ignored it

 

It made massive game play changes and effectively became a “separate version/patch” when compared to base jk2.

 

While this may have pleased some people, a lot of us didn’t really bother with it because we had no desire to learn two separate versions of what was essentially the same game.

[JaledDur]

Another thing, FK | unnamed... ProMod also made it harder for certain...types of players... to win. And there are a lot of that type. And a lot of them, I am sure, were of the mind that if there was a mod that made it harder for them to "own" people, then said mod was not for them. Probabky because 'fun' for them is feeling superior, not the same is what is fun for me, which is a close pitched battle where I had to use every scrap of what I know to win.

 

<sarcasm>

Also, Promod, in its authors supreme ignorance, left out features that would allow its users to live vicariously through the internet.</sarcasm> But, frankly, Promod's gameplay, as of 3.1 (was it 3.1?) was just about a hair's breadth from totally badass.

 

But I see what you mean -- if the mod doesn't offer something that is totally new, there is no incentive for people that otherwise dont CARE about the game's balance (or rather what may be *wrong* with it) to download and play that mod. There needs to be a hook. Several, in fact.

[ArtifeX]

Originally posted by JaledDur

Another thing, FK | unnamed... ProMod also made it harder for certain...types of players... to win. And there are a lot of that type. And a lot of them, I am sure, were of the mind that if there was a mod that made it harder for them to "own" people, then said mod was not for them. Probabky because 'fun' for them is feeling superior, not the same is what is fun for me, which is a close pitched battle where I had to use every scrap of what I know to win.

 

<sarcasm>

Also, Promod, in its authors supreme ignorance, left out features that would allow its users to live vicariously through the internet.</sarcasm> But, frankly, Promod's gameplay, as of 3.1 (was it 3.1?) was just about a hair's breadth from totally badass.

 

But I see what you mean -- if the mod doesn't offer something that is totally new, there is no incentive for people that otherwise dont CARE about the game's balance (or rather what may be *wrong* with it) to download and play that mod. There needs to be a hook. Several, in fact.

 

Whoa, wait a minute, you're not actually taking the same side of an argument as me are you?? Are you forgetting you're supposed to be the devil's advocate around here? :]