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The Worthy - Have Your Say

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

About

There was a time, not too long ago, when I was thinking of creating a new feature here on PP called The Worthy. The idea was to package the best Single Player maps and mods released in a month into one easy-to-download and install package. I haven’t really done much with it (Apologies to Darth Marsden for so far wasting his time!) but it might be a better idea to do it for individual games at the end of the year. Not much use for regular readers but perhaps in a few years’ time being able to look back and find the best of last year’s mods might be really helpful.

It could be linked to the PlanetPhillip Review Team and/or an end of year award feature. What do you think about the basic idea?

architect 28th May 2007 at 07:08 1

i think its a must have idea, ive gone through all sorts of maps, wasting allot of time and bandwith downloading half *** maps and mods. there should be 2 seperate catagories under each game, 1 for all maps/mods per game, and 2 Highly recommended maps. this would make it more appealing to search for a map, and easier to find one you might like, and ofcourse save time.

Is there a map reviewer for pp? this would be even a better idea, could take allot of effort going through all the maps… maybe a rating system for each individual map. id have no problem rating a map after playing it

anyway catagorizing first maps/poor maps/glitchy maps would be like cleaning up the website making it better for everyone. i dont know , just my thoughts…
zeroth404 28th May 2007 at 08:18 2

The package would be quite a hefty download. If it consists of maps for lots of games, there will certainly be a lot of bloat in it that people will download and never play — for example, if they dont have the game its made for.

I think a simple even end-of-year list of & links to the best maps and mods is ideal.
Darth Marsden 28th May 2007 at 11:46 3

Forgotten you were doing this, to be honest Phillip

Zeroth - it would be an individual download for individual games. So one collection of mods for Half-Life 2, another for Far Cry, etc. At least that’s what Phillip was talking about back when he discussed it with me - I don’t know if he’s changed his mind regarding that, but I hope not, I thought it was a good idea.

You do have a point with your idea of a list, but even so, if you could get the best mods for, say, Half-Life 2 all on one CD at somewhere like a car boot sale or something, wouldn’t you grab it? It’s kinda handy to have stuff like that in one place.

I admit, this wouldn’t be for everyone, but it could well be handy if you just wanted to grab some good mods for a game without having to run all over the place and downloading them all individually.
Old Scratch 29th May 2007 at 00:45 4

I think this is an excellent idea. I know it would be a huge download, but it could be broken up for those of us with slower connections, or the individual packs placed in the same location as the overall grouping to make it easier to find the good stuff.
zeroth404 29th May 2007 at 18:37 5

well, Darth Marsden, in that case I must say it’s a good idea. If it were up to me, I’d do a monthly article listing the previous months best maps and mods. at the end of the year, I’d round them up the best of the best into downloads for each game.

reminds me a lot of PC Gamers Extended Play Collection CD, even if there was only 1 volume. Good times……
Stef 29th May 2007 at 22:34 6

I have play maps and mods for a long time now starting 2000 and even if I read and write review and thousand people tells me it’s not worth i really try to give it a try to say to the next guy 1000 + me tells you it’s not worth…because i have some database where i put the things I have played and the one i didn’t all asociated with comments. So In my opinion if you burn a cd or dvd put the best on it in a must play folder and a folder for all the rest…but still there!
Technoblue 31st May 2007 at 11:36 7

Ive been thinking about doing something like this for Half-life 1 for some time now, just need to get around to it. Would be handy to, as i would write installers for each mod so that they are all steam compliant. But that’s the problem, some people still play on WON :/
Darth Marsden 31st May 2007 at 23:57 8

Actually, it’s pretty easy to have mods that work for both WON and Steam versions of Half-Life. Every mod I’ve played that worked under WON worked under Steam with absolutely no problems at all.

The only niggle I’ve had is with splash screens, but it’s not too difficult to create your own. This page will tell you all you need to know.
Technoblue 1st June 2007 at 02:38 9

Thats not entirely correct. You also have to update the kb_act.lst file so that users can customize the keys that they want to use in steam. Only trivial, but important none the less.
planetphillip 1st June 2007 at 13:20 10

Please allow me to clarify. The file pack would only be for one game. Initially I considered creating it on a monthly basis but as is mentioned in the comments, that would mean many people downloading stuff they couldn’t use.

I don’t feel that there are enough releases per month to warrant a monthly release. That seems to leave a few options; every 3, 4, 6 or 12 months. AT this point I am favoring the 12 months option because it could be tied-in with some new features: A yearly review and an award ceremony.

The Yearly Review will almost certainly be tried but I am still thinking about the Awards. Nearly every site already does that and the one on PP would have to be different or else it would be ignored.

Perhaps the top 10 mods of the year (For one game) could be included in the pack and then released.

I’m trying to think longterm and if somebody had done this from the start of the Half-Life mods it would be really useful for quite a few people.

So, consider this idea in active development but it looks like you will have to wait until January 2008 for the first release.

If necessary I will also release the mods on DVD, assuming the mod author’s give permission.
Darth Marsden 1st June 2007 at 13:49 11

Technoblue - Really? I’ve never had to do that. Huh.
Technoblue 1st June 2007 at 15:04 12

An example would be the ps07 mod, albeit its a multi-player mod, it still demonstrates the problems that can occur when porting a mod from hl1 to steam. I think I also encountered this problem when trying to play Scientist Slaughterhouse on steam as well (only to find out later that someone had already made a patch lol).

Anyway, I has thought about doing something similar, and i don’t mean to rain on your parade either. Good luck with it, and I don’t know whether to go ahead or not :/
planetphillip 1st June 2007 at 15:09 13

planetphillip Said:

Anyway, I has thought about doing something similar, and i don’t mean to rain on your parade either. Good luck with it, and I don’t know whether to go ahead or not :/

Why not work with me and Darth? I’m sure we can workout any creative differences.