Attila1945

6 comments by Attila1945 on Apr 29th, 2012

Why I wrote this?

This is a wrong way, extremely wrong one. There are too many bad habits in the Men of war moding community, maybe this will shake up few men.

In the beginnings, there was only gimp, max and notepad++

I remember my first days here. There weren't many mow mods, but these few was unique, interesting work, and worth to click on the download button. These mods were mainly re-skins, or big vehicle packs, with multi-player. I remember the old Eye for an eye mod, this was fairly a good one.

The golden age

Then, I started and released my first Stargate mod, showed that there is more in this engine. Its handles complex animations, high resolution textures, high poly models and easily convert the rts game play to a funny arcade vehicle game with amazing graphic. That is why mod developers discovered this game for their mods. I remember the start of many well know mod in this time, like the WW1, SW:CW, SL, or the Stalker. There were many map pack, rebalance mods, and we met with really funny, but at least unique and creative attempts too. The fan club always filled with life. Everybody made tutorials, tried to make maps, everybody wanted to learn. They were trolls and flame wars on the forums, and of course huge download numbers.

The trouble are comes with two

The bad things are started with the POT mod. I watched it with a little scepticism, well, with professional jealousness, but not baseless. Its "awesomeness" and "coolness" blinded everyone, and the players just wanted this shine, so these human models become standard nearly every mod. (Instead, I just started to seek out new resources and desperated myself with human modelling.) Off course, the secret is came out, they were cod models, and the company is wanted to delete them, so Pot mod was banned, and this killed a few major mods too. Then came the Arma scandal, which wasn't that big, but was a sad moment too. These problems made mow moding to a light-minded, porting here, porting there fun and many guy left because of these. Once, I was accused by stealing my own work! Ridiculous!

The new generation which is not good as the Star Trek one

Sadly, today making a „new" mod is just copy and paste from others, then upload it. There is a joker explanation which states these models are just place holders, but these mods are usually dies fast, or they somehow forget to change them, but there are too many of them. The biggest problem here is the lack of experience. Nobody born with a 3ds Max certification, but if somebody wants to, can study the methods and tricks. We live in the age of the internet, I can't believe if somebody don't find enough tutorials. I studied about a half-year the max and the gimp before I started to upload screen shots, and when I started, there was only the Dms exporting tutorial on the net. But worth it, to see my awful p90 model in-game in the hand of a German soldier.
So no need any more knowledge for to make a mod, and I see many example for this. The early days creativity is gone, anyway many of the old creative guys are retired too, they live their own life. Maybe they have a family or they studying in colleges, universities, or they get a job, or forgive me God, they maybe died. I am only a sentinel too.

Conclusion

The hope never dies, but I don't see too big chance for resurrection. Because this is a nearly dead community, one messiah is not enough for the salvation. There many old mod holds out, and good to see the few new one here, but we need many more new. The keyword is: CREATIVITY and OWN WORK. The moding is art not a work.