A Visible Suspension feature

[page=Introduction]

For the uninitiated, tell us a little bit about Vapour.

Vapour is an third party content delivery system. It gives you an easy way to find new mods or update existing mods, and also works with maps. It has a built in server browser and a chat room to help you find games to play in. It currently supports HL1, HL2, Quake3, Quake4, Doom3, and UT2004. We're planning to support more games soon. So far it's been pretty well received, we've only been running about 4 months and already have over 6800 users registered. Oh yes, and it's completely free to use.

Vapour's Preview Window.

Is Vapour designed to be like STEAM, but for Mods? What did you want to emulated from STEAM, and it what ways did you try to differentiate it?

Vapour was not necessairly designed to be like Steam. All we want to provide is a platform where independent developers can get their content out to players. This currently means mod developers and map developers, and we're looking to expand that to support other independent content too. Ages ago, Valve promised to let mods be distributed via Steam. While we're sure that one day Valve will probably do this, we support a lot more games and a lot more content than Steam.

Steam is about content for Valve games, Vapour is about content for any game. We're not limited by the same conflict of interest Valve has, we just want to support developers. Our team has several veterans of the mod community so we can appreciate firsthand how hard it is to get the word about your mod out and get people to try playing it. Vapour is here to make that easier.

Tell us some of the mods that currently use the Vapour platform.

We've got a lot of the bigger popular mods you've heard of, and maybe a few you haven't. For HalfLife2, we've got BattleGrounds2, Dystopia, HL2CTF, GoldenEye:Source, Garry's Mod, and many others. For HL1, there's Natural Selection, Sven Coop, Zombie Panic, and HL Rally to name a few. This is just scratching the surface, and we also support many mods for Quake3, Quake4, Doom3, and UT2k4. We've got lots more mods hosted and we also support custom maps for HL2, HL2DM, CounterStrike:Source, and Day of Defeat:Source. The upcoming release of VIP Mod for CounterStrike:Source will be utilizing Vapour as well.

Downloading Some Mods

And what benefits do mods that use it have?

Well lets say there is a catastrophic bug in the mod that was not found during testing. Instead of having to recompile an installer, upload it to the web-site, and cross your fingers that everybody updates, you can use Vapour and simply upload the fix. All the players can then automatically be updated the next time they run your mod. This lets mod developers put out more updates more frequently, and that helps everybody.

We've also just released a test version of Vapour for servers, which lets people running servers update their mods as well. When you release a new update for your mod, the servers are the first people you need to upgrade and Vapour makes it easier to do that.

Can you tell us some of the things you wish to implement in Vapour in the future?

We've got a lot of new things in the works. We're working on a two stats systems, one that can track your stats locally while you play and display information about the game. The other system is for servers, we'll be setting up a global rankings system where any server who's administrator is using vapour can easily submit stats to the database.

We're also expanding the types of content that we support. Right now we support mods and maps, but in the near future we'll be supporting custom models, sprays, AMXX/MetaMod style Plugins, custom sound packs, and just about everything else.

We're doing some initial testing of a friend/buddy/IM system which can tell you where your friends are playing or help you find new people to play with.

We've got a few other things in mind too, but we'll have to save those for later.

How secure do you feel Vapour is? Steam has different security updates all the time, it seems. What makes Vapour safe to use?

Vapour is pretty secure. We have plenty of security to stop users for accessing important areas of Vapour and we make regular backups. We also offer protected download areas where mods can host closed beta test versions that they only want their users to be able to access.

At the moment, it is necessary to reboot Vapour every time a new mod is installed. Will this be changed in the future, or is it set in stone?

We've had a lot of users mention this, so we're on it! Expect it to be fixed in an update soon.

Games List at it's Best

Can we expect to see more Single Player \ Multilayer maps on Vapour in the future, or is the emphasis always going to be on modifications?

Absolutely. We're adding new maps all the time, there were about 5 new maps added last week if I recall correctly. We try to maintain a certain quality of map but at the same time not turn away up and coming mappers. If a map is fun to play, we'll get it on Vapour. If you've got any suggestions for maps that we don't host yet, let us know on our forums and we'll get it hosted.

Can you tell us a little about the team and people behind Vapour?

Our programmer and director is Patrick 'valtrain' Flanagan. He coded the HL2CTF mod most recently and also did Q3 Gridiron and Q3 XCTF among others back in the day. Dustin 'Cartire' Curtis is our Public Relations guy, so he's in charge of talking to mods about the benefits of Vapour and helping them get hosted. James is the Web-Site Manager for Vapour, does coding on our websites, and also helps upload content. Anton 'Nucleus' Veermets, MarineXGen, and Vincent do art and graphics both for the app and the website. Jon 'Kalashnikov' Dominski of Black Mesa:Source fame and other Vapour members help out with content uploading and maintaining the forums.

What is your teams eventual goal with this free software?

We're here to fill a niche that nobody else is addressing. Everybody is setting up electronic distribution systems for commercial games and big movies, but everyone is ignoring the independent developers.

We want to give independent content creators a platform thats on par with the other commercial offerings, but we want to do it for free. We want to give mod developers a way to get the word about about their mod and make it easier to install and play the game so that more people will try it. We want to give map developers a way to get their map out there into as many hands as possible. We want to give developers an easy way to update their content and we want to give players an easy way to get those updates.

We want more people to play mods. Here at Vapour, we're all gamers and modders at heart. Some of us work in the gaming industry already, others of us are headed that way soon. We recognize that modders and independent developers are critically important, and we want to help them succeed.

Would you ever consider making commercial games available on your program, via a small fee like Direct 2 Download or Steam?

You bet. The support for this is already in place. We're working on recruiting the games, and we're hoping to start doing that soon.

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The ever useful link to Vapour itself:
Vapour