Articles - Editor's Notes

Crankshaft games makes some noise with the latest offering of their Half-Life 2 mod, Eternal Silence. Learning from the mistakes of previous lag-ridden launches, the development team behind Eternal Silence beta 3.0 promise their most stable and feature complete release yet. Is this the mod space combat fans have been waiting for or will it be doomed to get lost in the void? Read on to find out what ModDB's first impressions are and whether or not Eternal Silence delivers the goods.

Best flamethrower. Ever.

The Look

This mod has undergone a visual overhaul that has given it a more vibrant and saturated color palette. Leaving behind dark and dingy corridors of 2.3, beta 3.0 features ample lighting that showcases the excellence in texture work, modeling and environmental design within the maps. All of the ships retain their showroom shine thanks to some new shader implementation and the dazzling light show on display while engaging enemy bogeys out in space really is a sight to behold. All the old infantry weapons make their return but the damage they deal to the environment seems a little lackluster. In fact, the whole indoor, FPS portion could benefit from additional visual flourishes to heighten the intensity of battles within the capital ships (update: devs report to add this content in 3.1). Stuff like exploding consoles, falling debris and alarm systems to signify intruders and hull breaches would all increase the immersion factor. Overall, it really feels like the Crankshaft team has hit their stride in developing a unique, consistent visual style that is all their own.

David vs. Goliath ... in space.

The Sound

The audio in Eternal Silence sports original sound effects throughout. The space combat has also been given the special treatment in this area as well. Dogfights are reflected in the hectic soundscapes of missile lock-on alarms and automatically generated radio chatter. Add to that the low hum of giant laser beams narrowly missing you with the staccato pings of high caliber rounds penetrating your hull and you have an audio suite that compliments the space-faring action every step of the way. Unfortunately, the interior sections have taken a backseat here too. While the gunfire and weapons sound effects are adequate, there's little else to engage your ears other than the odd radio chatter.

The Feel

Crankshaft developers claim to have created their most stable and balanced release yet with beta 3.0 thanks in large part to the hundreds of hours in play testing. This is clearly evident while playing, as the action is evenly distributed over both modes of the mod by introducing attack and defend phases. Teams have to destroy the opposing forces corvette ships before they are able to board an enemy capital ship. This forces even greater coordination between teammates and you really feel like part of a strike force as you escort friendly bombers to their destinations. Capital ships are constantly taking damage from weapons systems so this avoids any stalemates that can occur during the ebb and flow of battle, as sooner or later one of the ships will explode. The order in which capture points you secure also affects the tide of battle and adds another layer of of strategy. Go for the weapons point and you can stop your ships from taking extra damage or capture the shields point and you can disable the defenses to increase the damage taken by the enemy capital ship.

There are a few mods out there that set out to incorporate aspects of two separate genres but do so only with limited success. Eternal Silence beta 3.0 achieves a seamless transition between FPS and space simulation that has you spending less time dealing with overly complex controls and focusing more on just having fun. You'll be able to launch your own space offensive this Friday, June 6th, when Eternal Silence beta 3.0 releases. See you on the servers!

Want to hear more about Eternal Silence? Check out the second and sixth episodes of the Modcast for developer interviews concerning beta 3.0.

Die in pain, rest in peace. It may not sound like a good way to go, but when you add a glorious fireball erupting from a twisted, blackened husk that was once your vehicle into the equation, it actually makes for some satisfying entertainment. I recently got the chance to check out this not so dreary, post-apocalyptic vehicular combat mod in its late alpha stages. For an initial release, D.I.P.R.I.P. manages to resurrect the car combat genre on the PC platform and does so with smashing results.

Vehicular combat is back!

The Look

The first thing I notice about D.I.P.R.I.P., before I even launch the actual mod, is the amount of polish and care taken to manage all the content delivered through their website and mod profile on Mod DB. Everything is fully fleshed out, just check out their sweet profile header. For a first impression it really does its job to pique my interest and the same can be said for the opening and loading menu screens. The graphics in every other facet of the mod have also received the same amount of polish. Vibrant explosions spew burning debris and billow smoke convincingly. Power-ups are clearly marked with glowing auras so you can see them across the map. Missile trails are tantalizing and informative - depending on the color you'll instantly know how devastating the payload.

The vehicles accomplish the kitbashed, Mad Max inspired look that is common in games of this vein. While the environments also do look complete (there are three available for the premiere release: Supermarket, Refinery and Village), the cars seem a little out of place - as if they had all been transported into a different time period. Aside from that stark contrast, everything manages to reach a level of polish that many mods have to churn through a few releases to obtain.

Boom boom, baby.

The Sound

Sound effects and music are an essential part of the playing experience and the D.I.P.R.I.P. team deliver in this area as well. There is no music in-game aside from the menu music, but it isn't missed. The cacophony of explosions, gunfire and revving engines all over the level provide more than enough to keep you enthralled. My personal favorite is the *thunk*
that's heard whenever you deploy a countermeasure to avoid incoming missiles. While there's still some remnants of Half Life 2 sounds in the mix, there's enough new content to differentiate this mod from the rest of the pack.

Ah, magic hour by the water.

The Feel

If you've seen the videos for D.I.P.R.I.P., you'd know this mod is one that caters to complete uncontrolled mayhem and chaos. With this release, you be able to control one of three different types of cars (out of the six slots that I saw planned for future releases) that all have different statistical advantages and disadvantages in armor, speed, weaponry etc. The manic battles manage to keep their attraction thanks to a healthy arsenal that provides machine guns, missiles and mortars to dish out the pain. You can also kill opponents by ramming at high speeds; nothing feels more satisfying than softening up some poor sap with a few missiles and then pummeling him into oblivion while driving out of the resulting explosion.

However, there was one large blemish that marked this preview and that was the loose controls. The cause of this stems from the same reason why the HL Rally team abandoned development of HL Rally 2 for Source early on. Vehicle interactions are handled on the server side, so therefore the more latency you have the less responsive your controls. The server I was playing on provided a ping of around 100ms, yet I still did find it slightly difficult to steer through narrow openings and turn accurately. Hopefully upon release, there will be a wide variety of servers available to offer low lag solutions for everyone.

Servers available during alpha testing had a maximum of 10-12 people that could play. While this may seem a little low for a multiplayer PC game, the maps are designed well enough to allow for constant chaos. There's tons of destructibility in the maps; fences, trees, haystacks, lightposts and doors all crumble as you drive through them. This really adds to the mobility and interaction with the environment as it would be incredibly frustrating to get stuck on every little object in your path. I do hope that future releases would see the team expand on this premise. The ability to shoot down water towers that would crush opponents or blow up a fixed emplacement, like a propane tank, as your nemesis drives by it sound too good to pass up.

One helluva purple nurple.

The Verdict

If you're a fan of the car combat games of days gone by, then this is definitely worth a try. Find a server with good ping and rediscover the mayhem. Once you get past some of the inconsistencies with the steering, you may find this is one mod you'll keep coming back to. In any case, you won't have to wait long - Die in Pain, Rest in Peace releases this Friday, March 7th at 5pm GMT.

I decided to take a break from Crysis and shooters altogether to work on my single-player, action/adventure mod prototype. I plan to incorporate an engaging story within action adventure gameplay elements, without using guns. Something a little different that will draw the crowds from all the military and/or rebel militia mods out there. I feel as though the majority of mods today are just cannibalizing on one of the most popular sector in games today - the first person shooter. You see a lot of cannibalizing in commercial games and there's a reason for it. New intellectual properties with different gameplay are very high-risk ventures and sometimes aren't marketed right (see: Psychonauts). So they mostly stick to what sells, and what sells are first person shooters. So what we get as consumers are games that are just iterations of each other. Sometimes we'll get some innovation, sometimes they're just gimmicks, (see: Cold Fear with all-new boat tilting action!) but a lot of the time it’s just a Xerox of a Xerox. A copy of a copy. Blacksite 51 anyone?

Anyways, back to modding. Modders are only limited by their technical know-how, imagination and time they have to dedicate to a project. Yet there's still a lot of mods out there that tend to stick to cannibalizing past games. There's more to interaction with your environment than just shooting it. Try taking ideas and inspiration from outside mediums, from life. Something happens when you take the gun out of a player’s hand. The thought process goes from, "What can I shoot?" to, "What can I interact with?” It becomes a different kind of adventure- one that may be a welcome change. Now, it can be argued that the games with the most robust editing suites (Half-life, Unreal Tournament) are first person shooters so that's why there are so many mods that are FPS style. However, with sufficient work the possibilities of creating something fresh can surface. I did a little bit of digging through the catalogue here at Mod DB to check out what mods for Half-Life 2 dealt in adventure sans ammunition. Here's a few of the treasures I came across:

Weekday Warrior

The students at Guildhall SMU bring you a mod that whisks you away from the throes of reality into the magical land of ... boring drudgery at an office? Yes, that's right folks; this Office Space inspired mod pits you in the role of Doug, resident office slacker. Making your way around the everyday doldrums of the office, you are eventually tasked with retrieving some questionable documents for your boss in a 3D point-and-click adventure. Makes you think, if you had a game like this with writing as solid as The Office TV series, there might be some great entertainment in there somewhere. It was very refreshing for a Half-Life 2 mod considering I didn't fire a gun throughout the whole bite-sized experience and still enjoyed myself. Oh yeah, and they won last year's IGF best singleplayer mod competition.

Iris

Iris is a prototype put together by a team of Danish students in one month. You play as Iris as she sets out to find her parents in the setting of Chinatown 2024 & 2006. Puzzles are solved by jumping back and forth from the dark, dystopian future to your bright, cheerful past. The mechanic may not be unique (it's similar to The Ocarina of Time and the light and dark theme used in many Nintendo games) but the universe and environments it sets you in immediately grab your attention. Iris is very short and rough around the edges but that doesn't disguise how well it is put together. The presentation reels you in from the beginning and leaves you wanting more. Voice acting is some of the best I've heard in a mod with well-written dialogue to boot! Hell, this unfinished prototype has more polish than probably over half the 'finished' mods I've played. Anyone attempting a story-based mod of their own would do well to check this one out.

Insects Infestation

This multiplayer mod dives into the world of the teeny tiny and pits ants against termites. Powerful mandibles, acid spit and poop are your weapons here. While I'm sure I didn't get to experience much of it, (no one playing this anymore?) what I did see looked good. The visuals and sounds made the experience so visceral that it all it needed was a hushed, soft spoken narrator to make me think I was in a nature show. Worth a look/second look if you’re searching for something different.

There's more where this came from of course, but it's all hidden under a layer of gun-toting and explosions. It's difficult to think a little different and peruse a concept or gameplay style that might not be mainstream. At some point though, I think hardcore gamers are going to want more than just your run-and-gun variety. So, to all the fellow modders out there, push yourself into new directions rather than just sticking with the tried and true mechanics. You might just find yourself a hit.