Post feature Report RSS Half-Life Mod Expo Interviews

With the Valve 2002 Mod Expo having come and gone, many may still be wanting information from the fab mods that attended! Thanks to BlueWolf, he has sat down with each of the mod teams and had a chat to them about their mod and the experience at the expo!

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HL Rally (2 Part) Interview

Part 1 (With Creme)
ModDB.com: Please state your Names and Postions in the Half Life Rally?
Creme: Game Designer and Lead Programmer

ModDB.com: How long have you been working on Half Life Rally?
Since November 2000, when I started mapping for the mod. I later took on the coding role around mid-2001.

ModDB.com: Did you ever expect it to be this popular and make it to the Mod Expo?
Yes, we always knew we had a fairly large following, however the Mod Expo entry really caught us by suprise! We werent aware that previously featured mods do not show in any future expos.

ModDB.com: How was the expo? What did you do and if you could explain how the expo works for future mods?
The expo was really great. Held at the CPL meant there were a couple of thousand competitive gamers and game enthusiasts around to come check us out. It was very busy, with cameras and interviewers lining up to interview each of us. We answered an absolute ton of questions from fans and on-lookers and everyone enjoyed the HL-Rally playtest on the 6 demo machines. The video which has since been released on the web evoked quite a reaction from many viewers, and a number of times 'Wow, Is that the Half-Life engine' was muttered and asked of us!
Part 2 (With Fragmented!)
ModDB.com: Please state your Names and Postions in the Half Life Rally?
FragMented: FragMented!, HL Rally PR Manager, Coder, Webdesigner

ModDB.com: How long have you been working on Half Life Rally?
FragMented: One and a bit years, since 7th October 2000

ModDB.com: What is the general theme/story of Half Life Rally? For those who live under the biggest rock!
FragMented!: HL Rally is a racing modification for the highly acclaimed Half-Life Engine. Its basically a total-conversion from what used to be a first person shooter into a Rally Racing game with convincing physics.

ModDB.com: Will there be any major changes/modifications to the Half-Life Engine on the release of Half Life Rally?
FragMented: We have added chrome effects and modified the rendering routines for the models to make them look smoother than ever before. Unfortunately, source code for BSP leaf rendering is not available for mod designers to modify.

Final thoughts
For all the HL Rally fans out there, come join our forums at Forum.hlrally.net and join our chat on #hlrally on gamesnet
Exclusive Images

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Related Links: HL Rally - Official Webpage | modDB Profile

Buzzybots Interview

ModDB.com: Please state your Names and Postions in the Buzzy Bots?
- My name is Daniel "Ditlew" Pedersen, and I'm the founder of the BuzzyBots. I'm the Team leader plus so far the only coder, but that is about to change.

ModDB.com: How long have you been working on Buzzy Bots?
Hmm .. thinking. About 18 months. I started work on BuzzyBots right after having released the last version of NNBot for CS.

ModDB.com: What is the general theme/story of Buzzy Bots? For those who live under the biggest rock!
The game takes place 25 years ago (but on the other side of the galaxy .. hehe). What used to be a planet of peaceful BuzzyBots of mixed colors, has changed to a planet of war. No one can remember why, but outsiders have speculated that is has something to do with the strange "Skrunks" that came to the planets, only a few months before the first battles started. The "Skrunks" seems amused by the warfare and don't hesitate smashing a few robots them self, if there are anyone nearby.

ModDB.com: Wias there be any major changes/modifications to the Half-Life Engine on therelease of Buzzy Bots that was just released??
No, not really .. The Half-Life engine pretty much had what I needed from the start. I only had to make some few modification like adding the flying move type (I use this for the spies), since the SDK doesn't include one of those.

ModDB.com: What Inspired you to create such an obviously great mod?
Futurama and Robot Wars, plus being really sick of CS clones. I wanted to make something that was simple and focused on being funny, notthing more.

ModDB.com: Did you ever expect it to be this popular and make it to the Mod Expo?
Nope, though there ain't that many BB serveres outthere you know :) Making it to the Mod Expo has been a really nice 'power boost'

ModDB.com: How was the expo? What did you do and if you could explain how the expo works for future mods?
It was really great. Finally meeting all the big guys, plus other skilled 'modders' from around the world.

Final thoughts:
Remember gaming is about playing a game! It is meant to be fun!

- Daniel "Ditlew" Pedersen
< Father of the BuzzyBots + Team Leader and Head Coder >
Exclusive Images

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Related Links BuzzyBots - Official Webpage | modDB Profile

Monkey-Strike Interview

ModDB.com: Please state your Name and Postion in the Monkey Strike?
I am Friedrich Bode, one of the 2 founders and in the leadership of Monkeystrike. I am responsable for coordinating the work, PR and I work at several maps.

ModDB.com: How long have you been working on Monkey Strike?
I started the MOD with SuperPinki in June last year.

ModDB.com: What is the general theme/story of Monkey Strike?
There is no real story behind the MOD. It's basically about Monkeys fighting each other with crazy weapons in wacky, cartoony environments. There are 3 different gamemodes and 6 different monkey classes the player can choose from.

ModDB.com: Will there be any major changes/modifications to the Half-Life Engine on the release of Monkey Strike?
Nope. The MOD can be played in the classical ego-perspective or in a easy accessable 3rd person mode.

ModDB.com: What Inspired you to create such an obviously cartoon like mod?
In fact it was a jungle/island themed Counter-Strike map, which inspired me and a friend to make a MOD called "Monkeystrike".

ModDB.com: Did you ever expect it to be this popular and make it to the Mod Expo?
Not at all. At the beginning we were just kidding around and for months nothing happened, until I realised that such a MOD actually got the potential to become successful. I started a crappy site on a free host and SuperPinki started making textures. R2D2 the coder (who also animates the weapons) joined the team later on, he put everything together and made the MOD playable. He helped a lot and also became part of the leadership. I would like to thank all the other members (especially Blade our headmodeler) and our fans too, we wouldn't have made it to the Expo without you.

ModDB.com: How was the expo? What did you do and if you could explain how the expo works for future mods?
The expo, in fact the whole trip was awesome. Although the travel from Germany to Dallas was pretty long it definately paid out. It was great to meet the guys from Valve and other people from the community. The feedback from the Valve employees and the visitors who saw/played Monkeystrike at the expo was rather positive. Every team had one or two computers to show a video of the MOD or to show the MOD ingame. Additionally there were 6 computers the people could play the presented MODs on. A nice aspect was, that the expo took place during the summer CPL, so we could also take a look at that. I don't know how MOD expos in the future will look like, I think this one was different since it was held during the CPL, but I am sure it will be lots of fun for the participants.

Final thoughts:
Thanks to Valve (especially Cliffe, Eric S. and Denise) for organisating everything and Nvidida for sponsoring the Expo.

Exclusive Images

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Related Links Monkey Strike - Official Webpage | modDB Profile

Sven COOP Interview

ModDB.com: Please state your Names and Postions in Sven Coop?
Sven Viking: Founder/Team Leader. Also do some mapping and such... and all of us do a range of odd jobs on top of our primary tasks.

DeathBog: Team Mapper

ModDB.com: How long have you been working on Sven Coop? Whats next for the best Coop mod for Half Life?
Sven Viking: Over three years now.

ModDB.com: What is the general theme/story of Svem Coop? For those who live under the biggest rock!
DeathBog: There is no all-encompassing theme in the mod. Though a Half-Life SP theme pervades the majority of maps, there are also many maps that throw Half-Life to the winds and create new content on all levels to create an entirely new themes (My maps, for example).

ModDB.com: Will there be any major changes/modifications to the Half-Life Engine on the next release?
Sven Viking: No changes to the /core/ engine code (that'd require Valve to release a new Half-Life patch before the mod)... few core engine changes would help SvenCo-op, though. There are tons of general changes, of course... probably the majority of them are related to stability/bug fixes/small improvements, though they may be the least obvious at first glance. Not crashing with "Out of sfx_t" every half hour is a major advantage, though :).

DeathBog: Of course, new monsters will be added. A multitude of alterations fostering cooperative gameplay will also be included.

ModDB.com: What Inspired you to create such an obviously great mod?
Sven Viking: It had been said on a few occasions (and retracted on a couple of others, but the last word before the release was that it would include "Co-operative scenarios") that Half-Life would have co-op play, and I was looking forward to it... I've been a fan of co-operative games since things like Rainbow Islands. When I found that no co-op mode was included, I started looking into ways of adding one.

ModDB.com: Did you ever expect it to be this popular and make it to the Mod Expo?
Sven Viking: I'm not that certain of what I expected, to tell the truth. The amount of recognition the mod received early in its development was condsiderably less than I'd expected (there were somewhere around... three(?) mods available when SvenCo-op was first released. One was based on Dragonlance, with Kender and such... a good idea, but hardly any of it worked. That's the only one I can remember).

Generally, I expected more of an immediate reaction, but far less long-term support. I certainly never thought Valve'd be flying me to Dallas because of it, at some point :).

DeathBog: No way! The Expo, even though it was the Summer one, was a big deal for Sven Co-op. It has evolved from a very-small niche mod to a rather popular modification.

Sven Viking: Umm, just mentioning, there's only one Mod Expo per year... this year's expo just happened to be held during the summer, to coincide with the CPL Summer event.

ModDB.com: How was the expo? What did you do and if you could explain how the expo works for future mods?
Sven Viking: Great! Especially getting to meet everyone... Valve employees, fellow team members, developers from other mods... Getting to see some of the States was a lot of fun, as well!

DeathBog: It was fun. It was smaller than I thought it would be; there were at most 60 people in the Expo room at one time. Each mod sets up their mod running on one or two computers, and shows gameplay, demos, or movies to the fans. A few reporters come around and ask questions. 8 computers in the middle of the room are open to the public to play any mod they choose.

Sven Viking: (The various mods on the public systems were rotated during the course of the expo, theoretically allowing somewhere around 20 minutes each).

Final thoughts:
DeathBog: When the next version is released, cooperative gameplay for Half-Life will finally reach perfection.

Related Links Sven COOP - Official Webpage | modDB Profile

Post comment Comments
INtense! Staff
INtense!

Nice short and sweet interviews. Good effort BW keep these articles flooding in :)

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Sajt
Sajt

Great work intense! Features are fun for one and all!

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azzDB
azzDB

weee

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amckern
amckern

qll the mod teams?

hm pimp better, i was wanting to see sven coop

any ways good review man

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INtense! Staff
INtense!

sven-coop interview is now up which marks the completion of this feature. Admittably it is lacking Global-Warefare but at the time of written they were unavailable for contact :(

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chicken2112
chicken2112

POOP(HA more than 5 years later)

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VitorHunter
VitorHunter

EU SOU BRASILEIRO PORRA :D

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maxcheese3
maxcheese3

dang this is old.

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rocknroll237
rocknroll237

First news post... :D

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95acgrfs1228
95acgrfs1228

I'm staring at the face of moddb history...

I can't believe it. I feel like... a time traveler :D

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kgino1045
kgino1045

lol

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Qweekskowped
Qweekskowped

First 2015 commenter :)

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Dando[SVK]
Dando[SVK]

:D 2016

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YXBvbGx5b24wOTQ=
YXBvbGx5b24wOTQ=

One of the earliest articles on moddb.

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Guest
Guest

Wow

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Hydropoils
Hydropoils

somehow im both surprised and not surprised that the article breaks down halfway through and all the text turns into a link

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