ModDB has fired up a new promotion titled “Summer of Mods and Indies“, and we’re extremely excited about it! The idea behind the promotion is to get the word out about the best mods from the first half of the year, mods that are often forgotten by the time their annual Mod of the Year contest rolls around. While there are no prizes for SoMI, the publicity they’re providing to participating mods is fantastic.
This week, The Nameless Mod will be featured, and we’ll be showcasing some very exciting content. They’re starting off with a pimped out, whiz-bang version of our post mortem. For those of you that have already read the post mortem, it’s still worth checking out just for the eye candy; we provided them with a lot of previously unreleased images from development and I’m sure there’ll be some interesting bits of eye candy in there!
Of course, we don’t want to just rehash old material, so we’ve spent the last couple of weeks putting together some juicy bits of TNM media that you’ll be able to check out later in the week, so keep an eye on the promotion page, and be sure to check out some of the other mods as they go up!
The Nameless Mod
Behind-the-scenes, ModDB, Post-mortem, SoMI
Today, GameCareerGuide has published my post-mortem of The Nameless Mod, which they call “one of the most interesting total conversions out there”. I structured it in the traditional form of Game Developer post-mortems, and it starts like this:
If we’d known what we were getting ourselves into, we’d have run away screaming. The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a single-player total conversion, which isn’t the easiest or most popular category of modification on the internet. Secondly, it’s enormous: The Nameless Mod features over 14 hours of voice-over, the average length of a playthrough is 15 hours, and that’s just playing one of two significantly different, mutually exclusive plotlines. Third, and arguably most notably, The Nameless Mod has been finished and released to very favorable reviews.
The project was in development for seven years, two months, and 11 days by an international team of hobbyists who never met each other. It placed enormous demands on communication, leadership, and quality assurance, and to top it all off, it started as that most reviled of genres: forum fan fiction.
And then I go on to talk about the development process and describe 5 things that went right and 5 things that went wrong, in the usual fashion. It’s as honest as I could make it, and I hope people will find it interesting and perhaps even be able to learn something from it or at least gain some inspiration.
The post-mortem may be found here.
The Nameless Mod
Behind-the-scenes, GamaSutra, GameCareerGuide, Post-mortem
For a bit of a peek behind the scenes of the development of The Nameless Mod, ModDB has just published their Developer Banter segment featuring Lawrence Laxdal, Jonas Wæver, and Shane Tapp of Off Topic Productions. Recorded a month before the game was released, it offers a pre-mortem look at the design principles behind the game and the process of developing TNM.
Developer Banter – The Nameless Mod
The informal interview deals with the role of feature creep in mod development, keeping the story in check, designing an open-ended yet narrative-driven game, balancing the wish to trust the player with the need to impart the necessary information, the team’s plans for the future, incorporating community engine enhancements, the advantages of modding to game developers, the health of the Deus Ex community, our favourite moments in the mod (including funny bugs during development), and advice for other modders.
The Nameless Mod
Behind-the-scenes, Interview, ModDB