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Speaking With the Devs Behind a 7-Year Game Mod Project
Gamasutra has an interview with members of Off Topic Productions, the team behind the recent completion of The Nameless Mod, a Deus Ex modification that was in development for seven years. They talk about how they stayed interested in such a lengthy, unpaid project, and also how their vision for the mod shifted over the years as a result of experience and feedback.
"We estimate that we recreated everything we did during the first 2 or so years because we got better. The plot went through 4 revisions in the first year and was continually tweaked, expanded, and revised. Most of it also simply came about as we experimented with the game and the engine and grew familiar with what we could do — originally we were planning something even more open and free-form than we ended up with, but when we realized how fundamentally the game was built for a completely different type of structure, we reigned ourselves in and adjusted our design. ... Also, I don't know if you ever go back and read what you wrote 6-7 years ago, but in my experience that's a great way to embarrass yourself — I spent a lot of time rewriting old dialogue to be less embarrassing."
There have been a couple Marathon mods that took about that long--Eternal comes to mind.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I plan to release it seven years after it's been released, which will be in... Oh damn, Slashdot comments aren't long enough to fit in the year, but it'll be a while.
... they can move over to the DNF team. Though these guys might be a little fast-paced for that crew...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Moss grows fat on a rolling stone, but that's not how it used to be.
Think about this. Demolition Man was released 16 years ago. As much as I liked the movie, and as much as it remains as topical and entertaining as ever, in the meantime so many other good movies were produced that to simply focus on one good movie over the years is to miss out on everything else.
Bye bye, Miss American Pie.
Congrats to The Nameless Mod team, the mod (well, now a full retail game in development) I'm really looking forward to is Alien Swarm: Infested - been in development since 2005 - http://www.blackcatgames.com/swarm/ - I played the UT2004 total conversion mod back in the day and it was AWESOME.
Bring it on! (also DNF)
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
GRRRRRR! Nerd rage!
A reign is the condition of a king's rule. A rein is a leather strap used to control a horse.
If your horse bolts and begins to run away with you, you take the reins and you rein him in.
A king reigns over his subjects. He begins to reign when he is crowned, and his reign ends when he dies.
And the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane.
Get it right, people!
Also, I don't know if you ever go back and read what you wrote 6-7 years ago, but in my experience that's a great way to embarrass yourself â" I spent a lot of time rewriting old dialogue to be less embarrassing
:P
This is very true for me. Whenever I come back to very old code, writings, forum/newsgroup posts, emails or the like, I always can't help but feel bad. Sometimes I'll happen upon a piece of code, think to myself 'what was this idiot thinking' and then discovering it's my own code
It's good I guess, means I'm changing over time (here's hoping it's change for the better).
....to release version 1 rather than ditch it and start all over, then go for another game with their improved idea? Reading between the lines I'm guessing they realized the engine wouldn't let them do version 1 properly, so they had to rework it.
It really sounds to me like a case of being scattered at the start, not designing well, then realizing that you can't do what you intended waaaay later than they should have. That's fine. They're doing it for free after all, but it should not be hailed as a triumph when a talented team only produces one thing in 7 years due to having to rework things.
Anyway don't know if I'll ever play it but thanks for the game - we could use more and more good mods. It's one thing that makes PC gaming so much richer than consoles. (Yes I know consoles can have mods but it's no where near as easy).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I've heard of other game mods that have taken that long. For instance, I'm fairly sure my copy of Half-Life: Game of the Year Edition came with an advertisement for the then-in-development Team Fortress 2 (and a copy of Team Fortress Classic in the box). In 1999.
The same Team Fortress 2 that came out using a different game engine (Source) and art style in 2007.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I think they ought to go work for the Duke Nukem 3D crew. Realy, they should! What do you think?
Deus Ex is a great game, probably one of the best games ever made, but this mod looks really stupid. It doesn't seem to be rooted in the Deus Ex universe and it doesn't look to create a compelling universe of its own. A mod based on the "social" interactions between forum users? That just seems too esoteric and trite for anyone to be interested in.
Maybe not seven years, but it's been in development for a while now. That's what I thought this article was about at first.
The Doom mod Mordeth has been in development for over 12 years.
wow very nice mod. amazing visuals and so much time put into it. Alot of people in the Civ4 community have put extended efforts like this, i am familiar with them.
-----
ModCast polycast.apolyton.net
The vapor that I long for most
The duke, the wolf*
And the Starcraft: Ghost
They saw their code build
So they'd boast
The day
Their sche-----dule died.
* http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/best-games-never-made1.htm - ""Werewolf: The Apocalypse" was going to be a PC game based on White Wolf's tabletop RPG [...]"
im going to loose days of my life again, aren't I?
couldn't they have waited till my uni work was over... argh..
They talk about how they stayed interested in such a lengthy, unpaid project
Really? I would have thought they would want to maintain interest, rather than trying to stop it. I also love the question the interviewer asks about half-way through TFA: -
Now that the game is released, do you feel vilified?
Seems like an odd thing to ask the poor guys after seven years of work. Perhaps he meant vindicated?
Sounds like an Agile success story.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Wow.. that truly does take some genuine interest to continue going on this long.. I write music and sometimes I look back on things I've written 2 years ago and i'm extremely embarrassed. Way to go! :)
"Yeah let's all judge this by its cover as being some lame forum 'meme' bull. Even though it has a 9.9 Moddb average(of 58 votes), many favorable reviews (Even one in a mainstream magazine http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/Luther_Crom/TheNameless4.jpg , and offers a rather long gaming experience for free." (I know the "free" argument is a tired argument, but I needed a third.)
DoSexForever.
thats what i read anyways.