Plans/Goals for MSC

[Dridmar]

So I've come to accept that MSS will never be made ( I think it's missed the boat anyway), and our playerbase is either staying level or very slowly dwindling. I'm very thankful that patches are still being created, but they generally seem to be slopped together with random a combination of items, maps, and enemies.

I don't know if anyone else feels like I do when I say this but at this point, I don't think the mod can continue to survive if it doesn't have a direction to go towards.

With greenlight and their acceptance of mods, could that be a good goal for us? It'd just need quite a bit of polish and more original content, since at the present moment there's little to no chance of being greenlit. Being a free game on steam would help the playerbase thrive for sure.

Or are we still only continuing this mod in hopes that a sequel will be made eventually?

I think we should discuss this and maybe make a plan?

 

[Thothie]

I dunno what kinda rose colored glasses you be looking at MSC's past with, but if you look at the changelog, you may notice that all the patches have been kinda slopped together with whatever happens to be available at the time.

The latest updates to the engine have made this damn thing near impossible to work with, so between that, and the fact that our only scripters life has been so hectic, I'm happy we have a patch at all.

Until we get a better handle on the changes to the engine, we're kinda limited to what we can do though.

I'm a little afraid to submit MSC for Greenlight in its current state... Less afraid of wasting the $100, more afraid that if it gets the thumbs down, it may not be possible to submit it again. I don't think we currently have the man power to replace all the retail media, though I suppose I should at least make a list... Not that I expect anything to happen, given that some of it has been on a list for over half a decade now.

On the other hand, if we can't find a way to deal with these engine changes, Greenlight is probably the mod's only hope for survival - especially if yet more crazy random changes come through. I've not managed to verify it, but it sounds as though some very fundamental HL1SDK functions have been broken - like grabbing the # of players, clientcmd/servercmd, some netcode, and other such core basics.

So the only plans I have at the moment, for MSC, are to try to get it walking straight again, try to get some of the community made media we have in game, and, maybe, provide some continuous main line quest, to at least provide some illusion of progress and thus alleviate some of the grind for new players. Then there's the ever back-burnered Titles and magic system, and Oyster's epic map collection, that's going to take months, if not years, as it has to be released all in one go.

As for MSS... *sigh* There's not a lot I can do there at the moment. I was tasked with compiling some of the maps into a demo package, but I've not even had time for MSC, let alone MSS. If they don't have the manpower even to do that themselves, things are not looking good on that front either. :\

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I'm very thankful that patches are still being created, but they generally seem to be slopped together with random a combination of items, maps, and enemies.

Truer words are seldom spoken around these parts. This mod can absolutely be revived, but not without a near complete overhaul of what we already have. From maps, to models, to monsters, there is just way, way too much superfluous 'stuff' in this game. I actually think our patches are killing off our player base faster than it's bringing new people in. I know I am not alone when I say that this is precisely why I stopped playing MasterSword and I can say with full confidence that I will never play this mod, ever again, if something isn't done to fix this mess, and throwing out yet another patch with more 'stuff' in it doesn't count as "fixing" a mess.

I don't think we currently have the man power to replace all the retail media

I have plans to buy content for us off of turbo squid at some point. Obviously I can't replace all of our stolen content by myself, but if others could contribute, combined with maybe some actual custom content being made, I think it could be possible to get us closer to an acceptable state for greenlight.

I could also make an effort to write new tunes to take the place of our harry potter/other stolen music, but again, I doubt I can come up with enough music to replace all of our stolen stuff by myself.

 

[Thothie]

Sadly, we don't have the manpower to replace the stuff we already have. We should be grateful we have it at all. All we can do with patches is add more stuff, maybe some features, and fix existing stuff. Given that's what's been going on for the past decade or so, I dunno why you waited until now to get fed up with it. But I dun see that changing anytime in the near future, if ever. We'll probably always be a community built mod with media from a thousand different sources held together with duct tape and chicken wire. But hey, that's part of our charm.

Buying models isn't going to make things look much better and certainly not any more consistent. Not that there's a whole lotta retail models we need to replace, but it's difficult to find the models you need, all rigged and animated proper, at a reasonable price (if at all).

Music isn't a major problem... Most of the stuff we have is PD or OC, and we can just copy some of those PD/OC tracks over the few that aren't. It'd kill some of our better tracks, but wouldn't detract all that much from the game.

 

[Dridmar]

For the past week I've been learning to make textures for maps so I'm hoping when I become more proficient with that I can perhaps update or remake some maps so they will be more greenlight worthy.

I'm not afraid of chipping in some cash towards greenlight, however I'll only do that when I think we have a shot of it being successful.

I was thinking about remaking edana eventually, but with the newest nightmare_edeadna map I may try something else as I don't want to immediately undermine work that was done by Furion. I also heard of a nightmare_heras that is close to being finished so I won't touch that one either.

I would be willing to put a lot more sweat and blood into this mod starting now, I just want to make sure it wouldn't be in vain.

 

[Thothie]

I was thinking about remaking edana eventually, but with the newest nightmare_edeadna map I may try something else as I don't want to immediately undermine work that was done by Furion. I also heard of a nightmare_heras that is close to being finished so I won't touch that one either.

I somehow don't think Furion would mind, as all he did was take the source and make a bit of a gag map (and I've sadly been sitting on that for ages)... And isn't the new source for heras yours anyways? :\

Not that I think Edana is one of the maps that really needs to be remade... Though there are some lore/quest related bits I'd like to see added - probably stuck in near the current, somewhat out of place, healing pool. I dunno why I've not at least tweaked it up to fix the legacy boar spawn yet.

I would be willing to put a lot more sweat and blood into this mod starting now, I just want to make sure it wouldn't be in vain.

Well, all mod work of this sort is ultimately in vain, save maybe for the practice/portfolio value (perhaps even some message value, if you want to tell a really interesting story), but I'll try to make sure anything you create at least comes to light.

Granted, that'd happen a lot quicker if we could get someone to learn scripting proper, and be seen by more people, if we could fix this damn code and all the new engine problems that come with.

 

[Dridmar]

So earlier Valve greenlit more games and among those is a Single Player half-life mod known as Half-Life: Before
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... d=95853157

I honestly believe we should put the mod up right now. Our community driven development of the mod may work in our favour to get people to help. It'd be a unique concept for sure. Lets make this happen!

 

[Dridmar]

Reviving this thread...

Half-Life Before finally has been released on steam (still requires Half-Life purchase) and it's fucking horrible. 2 Small maps, most monsters optional to kill, and takes <10 minutes to complete. This mod makes MSC look like a fucking AAA title. Don't know whose dick they sucked, but if this thing got Greenlit then I think that we definitely have a chance here. I feel if we wait and more of these 'mods' are greenlit, it may lead the public to turn away from green-lighting future GoldSource content. (although at this point it seems like GoldSource is dead)

Now?

 

[zeus9860]

This has been discussed a few times, still don't know what's holding them back and give it a shot.

 

[Jelly]

Well, an entry costs $100. But if some sort of greenlight donation event was set up I'm sure a lot of people would tip in.

 

[zeus9860]

Last christmas i was offering to buy the greenlight pass to go ahead with this thing, though it's not my go on what to do with this mod and someone else would have to use it and give it a shot.

 

[PBarnum]

I think donations for greenlight would show just how many dedicated followers MS:C has.

As for MS:S, I have some things I've been working on I want to show everybody... after I make them presentable. I'll be done with modeling classes after this semester so that gives me a lot of free time.

 

[zeus9860]

I would rather see the donations go towards running the website tbh, it's also important to keep it up y'know.

Speaking of them, when are the bills going to hit the door again?

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

...and I'd rather see donations go towards buying new models off of turbosquid, so we can replace all of our stolen content. Then we'll stand a better chance of being green lit since we'd actually deserve it at that point.

 

[Thothie]

I would rather see the donations go towards running the website tbh, it's also important to keep it up y'know.

Speaking of them, when are the bills going to hit the door again?

I'm a little uncertain exactly, but I believe we are covered for "several years" under RKS's discount rate. Granted, he's not charging us for the extensive HLDS server hosting.

He's also not charging us to submit the game to Greenlight, which he has proposed to do...

As has been discussed elsewhere, there are numerous copyrighted elements within the game. There is no time, crew, nor willpower, to address all these at the moment, though the most dangerous of them - ie. the music - could easily be fixed.

That said... I need to make a complete list of copyrighted materials... But if you wanna help replace media, but has no skills to do so - replacing copyrighted music might be as easy as Googling around some. There's plenty of PD music out there, music up for grabs, and a few of you are amateur musicians yourselves. (And if you're interested in doing that sorta thing, you may want to check out this post.)

Beyond that, given the time frame, and current state of the "team", I'm afraid the game is going to have to be submitted as is. Worst case scenario, they deny the request... and hopefully they don't deny us again later after replacing the offending bits - whenever we get around to that.

 

[Dridmar]

Good... thread is picking up some steam.

Since it hasn't really been brought up yet, what about...the name? Surely there's some sort of problem with Master Sword?
Aside from that and the music, I suppose if we sure to let people know quite a few things are temporary placeholders then we shouldn't get flamed too much. If we do get lit, it'll probably be after a while anyhow, so I think we'd have plenty of time to continually post new pictures of updated content so people don't think we're full of BS.

 

[Thothie]

It's been Master Sword since 1998... While it is often confused with the sword from Oronica of Time, SFAIK - Nintendo never copyrighted nor trademarked the name. It's actually pretty generic.

It'd be kinda nice to have a less generic name, TBH - but then we'd have to change all our stationery and letterheads, and you know how that goes.

Finding and replacing copyrighted music is easy enough, even if it means copying OC music over no-no music... Models are trickier... Gonna take me awhile to track them all down - plus there's a lot of "ambiguous" ones... Some of the other greenlighted games seem to getting away with minor copyrighted models, or altering models just ever-so-slightly... Then there's really weird situations - like the Blooddrinker - which is a 100% from scratch original creation - save that the design concept itself was apparently stolen from WoW, unbeknownst to everyone else involved with the model. *sigh*

Textures and sounds I am not bothering with (save *maybe* distinctive logos). Even Valve's own retail software contains ripped sounds and textures.

Also not dealing with the various brush built offenders - like the star gate dials and, well, this. (Sorry about that clip, best I could find on short notice.)

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

It'd be kinda nice to have a less generic name, TBH - but then we'd have to change all our stationery and letterheads, and you know how that goes.

I've always felt that we should call ourselves "The Fatesworn Chronicles" and that "Mastersword" is just a chapter in the history of said chronicles.