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Speaking With the Devs Behind a 7-Year Game Mod Project

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-don't-even-remember-where-i-lived-7-years-ago dept.

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."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Marathon Too by adavies42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  2. Re:Rein, not reign! by adavies42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    hebrew-speaking friends tell me that "El Al" means "on a plain", thus making the airline's name a truly horrible bilingual pun.

    --
    Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
    -kfg
  3. Looks incredibly lame. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Rein, not reign! by Oori · · Score: 4, Informative

    Planely speaking, "el al" literally means "towards upwards". "El" means "to" and "Al" means "on" or "over". Combinatorial semantics apply here. As a person speaking Hebrew for more than 30y now, I think your friends got it wrong.