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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.
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 think you mean "plain ," unless you think Spain is covered in aircraft or woodworking tools. Hoisted by your own petard, eh?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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
No, he just recognizes that Spain is part of a separate plane of existence from ours.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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
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 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 [...]"
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.
Sounds like an Agile success story.
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