Template talk:ModStatus

Should have every mod updated that was part of either the Beta, Alpha, Dead or Released categories. Use this Template in place of the old strict Beta/Alpha/Release ones. Full options for the template code is: {{ModStatus|size=small/big|status=alpha/closed beta/open beta/released/dead|engine=Source/Goldsource|download=url}}

size: Small for the in-line small box, big for the 80% width one. If omitted, small is default.
status: Status of the mod. If Open Beta or Released, you must specify a download URL. If Dead, you must at least have "download=" or you can have a link to the last released version (for like if you put up an Alpha version after deciding to drop development).
engine: What engine the mod runs on. Source/Goldsource.
download: URL for download if you have status set to open beta, released or dead.

This template will also automatically add your mod page into either the [[Category:HL1 Third Party Mods]] or [[Category:HL2 Third Party Mods]] categories based on what engine you specify. It will also automatically add the correct mod release category (Mods In Alpha, Mods In Beta, Released Mods, Dead Mods) based on the status. --Remmiz 01:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

On the 17th of July, 2009, [[Category:HL1 Third Party Mods]] was replaced by Category:GoldSrc mods, and [[Category:HL2 Third Party Mods]] was replaced by Category:Source mods. However, a lot of articles still continued to individually use the older categories, but now I've taken a few days to recategorize them all through this template, and flagged the old categories for deletion. I can't say for certain that there isn't mods that still use individual Single Player or Mods in Alpha tags (among others) instead of this template, but in theory, you should now be able to assume complete control over mod categorization through this very template. --MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 04:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

My ultimate goal is to make all the mods on this wiki use this very template for categorization (instead of categorizing mods individually). This means that a lot of mods have to be converted into using this template. To find a mod that does not use this template, search for one of of its categories in the search box, like for instance "[[Category:Single Player Mods]]" (quotes are necessary) will bring you these results, listing all unconverted single-player mods. (Some uncategorized mods can also be found in the Orphaned pages list.) --MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 22:08, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Questions

• Question 1: What is the criteria for labelling a mod dead? How much time has to pass (without anything being mentioned on this wiki/ModDB/official sites/the internet) before this can be presumed? Return to Mana did a surprising comeback after being labelled dead, for instance.
• Question 2: What do I label mods that just say that they are going to be released sometime this year, but don't have info on whether they are in an Alpha or a Beta stage? (This is the case of Return to Mana as well.)

--MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 22:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

After a couple years it's probably good to assume a mod dead; we could reduce the time if their official website goes down or similar. It's very easy to change the status if there's ever evidence they've come back. Thelonesoldier 18:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"PreAlpha" mods

I spent a couple of hours going through the orphaned pages, and there are lots of mods there. Some were awesome, but most mod articles were crap. They were some young kid thinking "It would be awesome if there was a mod that had everything, based on that movie I just watched. I can't believe that nobody thought of making this before, but that's why I'm awesome and they're not. All I have to do now is to assemble a team to create my world for me. It should be ready for release in a couple of months." and often not contributing anything else to the wiki than a shallow fantasy. They're a waste of space. I say we declare once and for all that creating articles for mods that are in "prealpha" is not allowed, and that such articles should be deleted. You can compare this to some boy posting an article on Wikipedia about how he will one day become the ruler of a small country. Unless there's some proof of concept, the mod is not fact.

--MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 04:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I brought this up before. If a reasonable person would assume that a 14-year old created the page with their mod idea, and they state they need a person to fill every single possible position on the mod (soometimes listing themself as "suprivisor" and saying they aren't good at anything for some reason but they are good at telling people what to do), we should just delete the page. Thelonesoldier 18:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

My proposal for mod article general standards

I'm not at all informed about what rules and policies this wiki has for making mod pages, so I may be completely wrong here, and I hate to get in the way of a mod development or discourage a developer at an early age, but the way that I see things is that a mod article (unless you make it a subpage of your user page, but I'm not sure this is allowed either) should be treated like any other wiki article. That means that it should only contain facts. Personal mod pages are for blogs, personal web pages, and the mod database (although they have standards as well). Any user is allowed to edit your mod page, not only to change templates and correcting spelling, but also to remove POV speech, subjective claims, so that the article focuses on facts. This also means that the author of a reknowned mod doesn't have a say if he would like to remove his own mod from the wiki. If it's no longer being developed, it is to be labelled as dead - not removed. While I do understand why one would feel embarrassed about a dead mod, blanking a reknowned mod page should always be considered vandalism.

I also think that a mod should be reknowned before being posted here, and reknowned before being posted here. The mod should be something that at least a small part of the community knows about and is looking forward to, or else it's simply not noteworthy enough among the 30 million active Steam users who has probably had 60 million mod ideas by now. I think a good (although harsh) rule of thumb would be to be posted on a site such as (but not limited to) Planet Half-Life before an article about the mod is allowed.

What do you think?

--MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 11:23, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

There probably isn't any policy for making mod pages (anyone feel free to correct me). I've written several help/policy pages that needed writing, I think with the way this wiki goes, if you think there needs to be a policy on something you might as well write it up yourself; if the rest of the wiki disagrees on anything you can collectively refine the idea. If you want to start a Help:Mod Profiles or something I'd be happy to help/lend my opinion. I get the impression we largely agree on what the policy should be; I think if there's no evidence that there is a team and they are past the concept stage, there shouldn't be an article. I wouldn't say it needs to be renowned, necessarily, but they need to have most of the positions filled and screenshots of some levels and character models, or similar, along with their own website or a legitimate entry at a mod-related website. Thelonesoldier 18:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Mods vs. Maps

I'm wondering whether or not there's a difference between a modification and a map pack. For instance, I encountered a "mod" here that declared that it would not modify anything - just make levels in Hammer. Does this technically count as a mod? I'm looking for a line to draw here. --MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 14:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

GoldSrc and Src vs. Source and GoldSource

Are you confused about what the engines are actually called? I just found the following explanation from Valves own Erik Johnson (from his own blanked Talk page):

"When we were getting very close to releasing Half-Life 1 (less than a week or so), we found there were already some projects that we needed to start working on, but we couldn't risk checking in code to the shipping version of the game. At that point we forked off the code in VSS to be both $/Goldsrc and /$Src. Over the next few years, we used these terms internally as "Goldsource" and "Source". At least initially, the Goldsrc branch of code referred to the codebase that was currently released, and Src referred to the next set of more risky technology that we were working on. When it came down to show Half-Life 2 for the first time at E3, it was part of our internal communication to refer to the "Source" engine vs. the "Goldsource" engine, and the name stuck." -Erik

--MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 01:21, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Needed to change color

Comment: Open Beta status just unreadable. Click on the "unreadable" and then go back to this page. You will see, what word "unreadable" is really hard to read. —Unsigned comment added by Mehiller (talk • contribs). Please use four tildes (~~~~) or {{Message}} template to sign your username.