I apologize if this is a silly question, but I’ve seen a lot of buzz lately about people wanting to do total conversions for HL2. I was just wondering if such a project would require the final product to be FPS, or if said projects could be pulled of third person?
Does an HL2 Total Conversion have to be FPS?
ColdFace
#2
No you can make whatever you want. The engine may be geared towards a first person shooter but you could turn it into a 2d side scrolling game if you wanted.
LordDubu
#3
Well then that prompts more question.
Is there a reason to use the HL2 engine if you’re not doing an FPS?
OR would it be wiser to use an engine geared toward the exact style of gameplay you’ve got in mind?
Finally, is there a third person shooter engine that is as robust in terms of physics, graphics, animation etc as HL2?
ColdFace
#4
It does not really matter which engine you use. Certain engines may be geared to do things better than others because of special optimizations. But in the ned you will be adding your code to make it do what ever you want.
But say you wanted to do a FPS then alot of code will alread be there in the HL2 engine. If you wanted to make a RTS you would need to write a lot more code.
In regards to a 3rd person shooter any engine that is geared towards a first person shooter will be good enough. The HL2 would be a good choice but you will need to write code for a robust camera system(they might already include one?)
Check this site out for a list of engines.
Protoman
#5
If you’re talking about a user based mod, then third person viewing should not be anything more complicated than the flip of a switch.
Is there a reason to use the HL2 engine if you’re not doing an FPS?
Yes, because like coldface said you were making an RPG then virtually none of the systems or UI would be in place to have it function anything like morrowind.
These could be added by modifying or reworking the engine, but at that point you may be better off going with an engine that already supports the bulk of the features you want.
Some things could be modified from the existing game engine to produce the desired RPG result, but given that the engine was geared towards the FPS from the get go there are some things that you would never be able to do without recoding the game engine itself.
From a mod standpoint especially, yes there IS a reason good reason to pick an engine that is already suited to the style of game that you want to make. It saves on coding time, makes things smoother, and cuts down on the arbitrary limits imposed on your game.
Even HL2 is not the supreme engine when it comes to FPS modding. If you want to have a massive 120 player online war simulation, then something like Joint Operations would be a better choice over HL2.
There are even some things the Doom3 engine does better, but not much. So it all comes down to analyzing what you want out of your game, and then picking an existing engine that would make this task easiest for you.
Valve did this when they were talking about HL2, but they eventually came to the conclusion that no existing engine would support what they wanted - So they built their own.
LordDubu
#6
Cool. I’m beginning to get a better understanding of how modding works, and you’ve helped out considerably.
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