A Discussion On Modding Hit & Run

Hello all,

I have been thinking of asking the community something. I've been keeping tabs on the site and discord during my absence, mainly looking at feedback from Community Releases and Donut Mod reveals. It seems the community is split on one particular thing. How mods change the feel of the game. As you all know, SHAR doesn't exactly take itself seriously. With the recent gameplay reveal for Donut Mod I thought this would be a great time to pose this discussion. While I'm certainly proud of Donut Team and the reveal doing some justice for the mod, as dates have been changed (because life happens lol) and as we have gotten closer to the end of the year multiple members have voiced their thoughts and concerns for the mod, and the new tools and resources tied to the release of the mod. The Map Builder has been heavily requested and in the limelight while Donut Team has been quiet about it. This isn't a bad thing, really because they have a good mentality on revealing projects, as all of us have learned that revealing things too early both creates pressure on the developer/s, and makes a certain expectation on release. Knowing the volatility of modding a game, sometimes us developers reach roadblocks that cannot be broken through either due to the game's limitations, or limitations with the tools. Really my stance on the reveal of Donut Mod and it's more darker, serious tone is positive. But that's because we have yet to see how it will interact with the rest of the mod.

Bottom line is I want to know your stance on how mods should interact with the game's tone. Should they be able to have darker, more serious plots and tones. Or should the lighthearted, cheesiness of the game and source material be most mods?

cheers,

- Thomas

It depends. A mod can be serious but there could always be a bit of humour, even if it's only in the background as a sight gag. This is The Simpsons after all. I think the billboards in Donut Mod 4 were great with balancing the darker tone with comedy. Another example is Housewife Duties. At the moment the story seems to take a dark turn but the bonus mission and the choppy sentence mixing (whether that was intentional or not) is funny.

The Simpsons never took itself seriously (there was an episode where the main character shoved a crayon in his brain), but if you can make a serious mod that works as well. Just try and match the feel of the show.

Basically, we're creating mods, they shouldn't be as serious as SHaR is (i.e. not really serious), but, yeah, it strongly depends on mod's theme
It can be either dark, funny, or just a serious story without puns.
However, the important thing here - stick to a selected "theme". For example, if your mod is targeted around funny plot with toilets instead of vehicles, changing the theme to something more serious in the middle of the mod would screw it up, isn't it?

So, in conclusion, I don't think every mod should be funny, you should stick to the theme of the mod, other than that, it's fine