Discussion Podcast 002

1st May 2011

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

Here is the second discussion podcast.

Joining me for this podcast was Patrick AKA foxholeboy.

We were due to have another guest but that didn’t work out. Thanks for listening.

Listen to the podcast

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The following points and poll questions were discussed
  • Do you prefer smaller, polished mods or larger, less polished mods?
  • How well do you know the details behind the HL universe?
  • How do you feel about mods turning commercial?
  • A community-driven difficulty rating system for Portal 2 mods
  • Do we expect to die?
  • Looking backwards and forwards.
  • Some of the mods mentioned
  • Precursor
  • Research and Development
  • Outpost 16
  • The fake commercial breaks

    The first one is for LambdaGeneration.Com.

    I made the second ad in tribute to this video.

    If you want your website or mod made into a fake commercial please contact me.

    Attention iTunes Users: All my podcasts are now available via the iTunes Store.

    This podcast was recorded using Pamela Professional, an application that I recommend for managing and recording Skype calls. Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, if you purchase this application using the link above, I receive a small financial reward.

    15 Comments

    1. Was this other guy… Me, per chance? ):

        1. Oh, good. I was wondering about that email that was sent a while ago which didn’t seem to go anywhere.

          1. Hardly anybody replied. I changed the way I organize them now. I invite people directly. Going to work my way through everybody.

    2. Are there still places open to participate in these podcasts?

      1. Yes, via a Skype interview. I’ll add you to my list. Basically, we chat for a bit in a similar fashion to the podcast, so I can see how you are.

    3. voldomort42

      Haha, LOVED the commercial breaks!

    4. David Lundvall

      Wow, amazing one guys. Loved it, all the way through. Interesting topics and a constant good flow.

      Commercial breaks were superfun!

    5. Thank you for putting these up on iTunes!

      I’ve been meaning to catch up with all your previous inteviews for a long time but never got around to downloading them and popping them on the ipod. Now I don’t have to worry about that and I won’t have to worry about finding something to listen to in the car for a long time either!

      Keep up the good work.

    6. Herr_Alien

      @comparing mods with games being wrong:
      Don’t know about that, Phillip. One of the things that motivated mod teams to become indie game teams is just that: they kept comparing their mods with games, and they brought their product’s quality high enough to make it a game.

      @limitting scope in order to add more polish:
      I agree to that principle. It is very hard for beginners to follow it though, and if they do have a bad experience with modding, in a majority of cases that can be traced to having a too big scope for their mode.

      @not dying …
      I liked the point that foxholeboy made.

      Games are fun when you figure out the rules of the game, and play along them. Thing is, there has to be something to drive the player to learn the rules of the game. You can do that with positive reinforcements (you progress with the story, you kill the bad guy, you get a medkit) and you can do that with punishments.
      Good games mix both of them. Bad games use only one method.

      @mods turning commercial:
      see response for “@comparing mods with games being wrong”
      Regarding it being sanctioned by Valve, would that make it OK? Why Dear Esther is not that nice going commercial, but one sanctioned by Valve is? You still need to fork out the money for what it was initially known as a free product.

      @Alien Swarm vs. UDK:
      There are several issues with Alien Swarm as opposed to UDK:
      – no option to make a game and SELL it.
      – a lot of people complaining about the SDK versus the number of people complaining against UnrealEd

    7. Unq

      Hi Phillip,

      More of a technical note here: this episode is not showing up in iTunes for me, either on the page you linked or in iTunes in my subscription list. If it helps, iTunes is giving the warning:

      The URL “http://www.planetphillip.com/category/articles/podcasts/feed/” could not be found on the server. Hope that helps, it’d be nice to sort this out and get iTunes working – hope I’m not the only one that relies on it?

      1. Thanks for the notice. I have to admit that I never use iTunes and only installed it to use the Podcast facility for PP. The problem was due to a WordPress update that omitted something from all the URLs. In fact, I had trouble with all the site. Anyway, I have added a 301 redirect and jiggled my podcast plugin to use the new feed URL. I don’t know who long these things take to update but hopefully no more than 24 hours.

        Sorry for the inconvenience.

        1. Unq

          It’s already fixed for me. Thanks for getting to this so quickly.

          1. I checked today and it still only lists 12 episodes. Is anybody else seeing only 12?

    8. 1zorma

      Excuse me for my bad language. It is remarkable, it is a valuable piece

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