Nuclear Dawn
<div class="IPBDescription">Where did it go?</div>A few years back ND looked to be a very promising HL2 mod and a serious rival for NS:S on fps/rts hybrids. I guess I went through the Finnish military service and forgot ND while at it. Nowadays the mod is mostly considered a project going on forever without any real results.
What went wrong and when did the it turn into this?
What went wrong and when did the it turn into this?
Comments
Storytime!! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
It was vapourware, like I constantly told anybody who asked about it back when ND was popular. It didn't help that the project lead/marketing dude (I forget which) was a complete asshat. Funny fact, someone from my university claims someone hired them to work on a professional source game, and they linked me to the ND website. I laughed my ###### off in front of about 30 other students who thought it was an "amazing opportunity". I've never felt so awkward in my life.
And of those that DO release, about maybe 20% are worth trying unless you're a game dev and looking for cool ideas. Especially the RTS "oh look, I can re-skin and make new model" mods. blargh.
I had seen some screenshots and such, but didn't really look deeper into the project as I had no hardware to run HL2 at that point. What made it look vapourware earlier on?
Essentially when I joined ND really was going places, it had a ludicrously skilled team and a lot of content and code had been produced; for instance there were over 250 pieces of concept art made by the time I arrived. Right now if I look at <a href="http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/3125/ndproperties.jpg" target="_blank">the ND directory</a> it contains almost 15,000 files (that's about 2,000 more than Insurgency and 5,000 more than Fortress Forever, both substantial and released mods). However, the mod essentially imploded under its own talent and ambition. About 90% of the people involved in producing assets and code went to work in the industry for companies like Raven, Splash Damage, DICE, GSC Gameworks, GRIN, Konami, and so on. Most of the core members left in the past two years, but about a year prior to that the Project Lead, David Lyons, left and the mod was severely lacking dedicated leadership. Some members elected to take the reins but because they weren't just focused on management they weren't able to fill the hole. All this time the remaining team members were evermore interested in getting a release as soon as possible, so the game started to get watered down, with most of the RTS features being stripped out.
This didn't solve the actual problem: that the mod had no direction. There was a very old design doc that the Project Lead never updated, so when he left there was a lot of argument between the most vocal remaining members about what the design actually was and what it should be. Nobody really knew what they should be working on at any one time, only general "We should do this" comments were being made by the more senior members. Playtests stopped, the dev forums dried up except for a few people, everyone got jobs and work was only being done in trickles except for the Lead Modeller and the second Programmer. But after a while anyone who was still putting out work reassessed their situation, stopped what they were doing or put it on hold for other projects and that's essentially when ND stopped production.
Mark, it's funny that you laughed about that, because depending on when they mentioned it to you it was probably true, but of course you're entitled to boast authority on something you have no knowledge of, it is the internets, afterall.
Nowadays there are now two teams involved with ND, the second basically doing a trial to take it on. This second team is focused on reimplementing the RTS side of the game if they pass the trial and decide to continue work on ND. We haven't said anything official about it because either team may decide it would be better not to continue work on ND. This will be the last hope of a release for ND. If the other team wishes not to take it on or if we decide for any reason they are not suitable for it, we will announce the mod's death.
The most ironic thing about all the 'vapourware' claims was that they were being made when the mod was at its most active, and they only spurred on production. They were based on an ex member getting pissed off with Dave (a lot of people did) and wanting to get back on him. Dave made the mod very open to attack by providing a magazine with a mocked up image of the HUD and screenshots of in-game, yet posed player models. Someone with a vendetta, ###### Van Dyke aspirations and too much time on their hands decided to 'investigate' these screens.
<i>Dr. Strangelove</i> posted a 'whistleblowing' blog called <i>ND Nuked</i> and there was a huge amount of outcry from the internets that they had been tricked into thinking something was better than it was. Other mods, such as Black Mesa Source, revealed that they had enhanced screenshots to give an impression of the end goal and that it really wasn't that big a deal. Neither this, nor the fact that the HUD had the full functionality indicated by the concept, nor the fact that the models shown were in-game and animated to a very high level, nor the fact that the poses the models were in showed high-detail textures and rigging was ever given any logical consideration.
This can probably be attributed to Dave deciding not to show a video of the working HUD and the model animations, and instead trying to play damage limitation PR through rhetoric and spin. It's also definitely attributed to the fact that most people who follow mods know sweet FA about the processes involved in making a game and what games look like at different stages of development. Dave stupidly wrote a response without backing it up with videos and conspiracist theorists were satiated. A short while after, the Lead Programmer, livid with the vapourware accusations and Dave's PR management leaked a screenshot of the real HUD to the ND forums via a forum moderator but this was never put forward in any news announcement.
So suddenly a lot of angry men (actually, we were kids) came to the realisation that they had been duped and everything you see in games magazines isn't real. Furious and subconsciously embarassed about having been dragged out of their dream state and into the real world, bile and hatred was spewed forth upon ND, and ND was forever known as 'vapourware' (a fun new word the internets learnt around that time) and the bad boy of the modding world.
There have been worse mods since then, like the FireArms2 mod that stole an entire mod team's work from their FTP, banned them from their own forums and claimed they were the official FireArms mod, but these guys aren't well known or talked about. The reason ND is forever remembered is because it was the most promising Source mod at the time, and the quality of its art was on a par or better than a lot of commercial games at the time, and still continues to be. I still hope that one day the mod can be released and experienced for what it is, and until that day or the day the mod dies I'll still wear this sig with pride.
It was a few weeks ago. Like I said, I laughed.
Small world that you know the trial team.
You must be pretty desperate if you're getting those guys to work on ND :|
Have you seen the people working on Empires?
<!--quoteo(post=1703748:date=Mar 30 2009, 04:31 PM:name=locallyunscene)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(locallyunscene @ Mar 30 2009, 04:31 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1703748"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Small world that you know the trial team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1703786:date=Mar 31 2009, 05:57 AM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(spellman23 @ Mar 31 2009, 05:57 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1703786"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Have you seen the people working on Empires?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Clearly not the same people in that case.
I think he was just implying "If you think X is bad, Y is worse". Maybe I'm mistaken.
<a href="http://www.moddb.com/mods/nuclear-dawn" target="_blank">http://www.moddb.com/mods/nuclear-dawn</a>
Apparently there were also some fun exchanges with other mods, notably Insurgency. Good times. The entire recruitment philosophy basically hinged on poaching other mods, and if they declined, saying they sucked anyway and then claiming he had leaked builds and content or whatever other nonsense. As you can probably imagine, building recruitment on lies and taunting made a great name for the project across the community.
Edit: Worth clarifying, I know plenty of people who have been involved with this over the years and they and others have done some fantastic work... I just imagine a smoother start could have made a significant difference.
It's up to InterWave to fill in the rest of the details.
The plot thickens.
also:
<!--QuoteBegin-Interwave Jobs Page+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Interwave Jobs Page)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Animator
* 6 + months industry experience "<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Uhhh yeah, good luck with that.
<!--QuoteBegin-Interwave Jobs Page+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Interwave Jobs Page)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Modeler
* 6 + months working experience
* Working knowledge of Maya, 3ds Max, or XSI and Photoshop, Mudbox, Zbrush a plus<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Erm, pretty low standards for recruiting to work on a commercial game?
Like I said, I'll be surprised if this goes very far.
It looks like the advert is missing a semi-colon. The way I think it's supposed to be written is:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->* Working knowledge of Maya, 3ds Max, or XSI and Photoshop; Mudbox, Zbrush a plus<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->No company would want to hire an artist who didn't know how to use Photoshop.
They are an indy company, up until now they have had very little to pay people because they bought a Source license, which isn't cheap. They cannot afford to hire the best of the best and pay them big salaries up front. The experience they are looking for is long enough to prove that an artist has worked as part of commercial team. The rest will no doubt be based on their portfolio work.
A lot of people leaving uni will have this much experience if they did a sandwich year. They also might prefer to take a job where they can work from home, and possibly save money, rather than move to where the jobs are. A lot of companies in the UK have tightened their belts and are doing less recruitment due to reduced funding thanks to the credit crunch, which has affected the companies at the top of the chain who are bankrolling projects. Right now projects are being cancelled and postponed by publishers. In other cases studios may have to find a smaller replacement project if their project got cancelled. If their funding got reduced they will have to reduce their headcount and take longer in the meantime until they are granted more funding. The result is there aren't as many jobs going, and where a company might hire a few juniors they may instead be hiring only one person to do the combined work.