The Ancient Truth Mod for Quake 4 Interview by Doomitalia.it news

Interview wrote:1) Ok guys, let’s start from the "basic". The Ancient Truth. Finally a nice Total Conversion project for Quake IV, a game that beyond the original single player adventure has not much to offer apart "HardQore" and some single player maps. How did the idea for this kind of project?

-The Ancient Truth was born several years ago from the mind of Gyppi, was initially conceived as a small parallel story of the Quake 4’s events, (something like the expansions of the first Half-Life) it was designed so, because times ago there was a rumor about an official expansion pack for Quake 4 which, as we know, it was never been released. The project, at the time, didn’t take the foot. One of the main reasons were the fact that there wasn’t a real team able to do everything necessary to achieve something "decent", the project was then in the pipeline until the end of 2007, when, formed the current team, it was decided to develop a single player mod. When the team was ready, we thought that the best thing to do was the realization of a small mod. In fact, the first idea was to create a little adventure set on an island, an idea suggested by Covin, few levels or just one, but then we realized that instead of designing something new and small, was better to take the old Gyppi’s draft, since this time there was a team that could create, more or less, everything necessary to carrying out a total conversion mod with good credentials. Then, the old mod story was practically rewrote from the beginning: locations, events, enemies and friends were characterized much more to give to the players the feeling that they are really playing something new. Speaking about the story and no more about its past, The Ancient Truth is practically a spin-off of another, and bigger, story (never told and designed by Gyppi), in practice the mod is a bridge between the world of Quake 4 and another one, it is also a sort of "springboard" for this big story that is partially told in mod itself, and if TAT will have some success, it could be continued in the future with others new works, not only based on the Quake 4 engine but also on other newest engine.

2) As concept and ideas, how much time and effort was needed? And how much time would still be necessary?

-Once decided to develop a mod based on the Gyppi’s project, the preparatory work / planning has requested about 4-5 months, since we are a small team, our time to develop this project is not so short. At the moment we reached 9 months of work, and we hope to show the firsts scenes, (maybe with a trailer) at the end of this summer. However the game design is not set definitively and "closed hermetically", we are always ready to implement new ideas that we consider interesting. We want to give to future TAT’s players a funny mod great to be played more and more.

3) About the realization, how much time and effort will be still required? Where is the development sliding more and where you could instead get into trouble?

-Our purpose is to publish the complete mod by the end of the year 2008, in November or December, and then after about 16 months of work, assuming that everything goes well, but if something will happen during the development and a delays will be needed, we though to the possibility to publish TAT in two or more "episodes", as separate episodes that once together represent the full game experience. Talking about "sliding", the design and the realization in the most of the mods is not so complicated, is not even needed so much time, where instead we go slower is the realization of maps, and then environments; with only two mappers we cannot proceed so fast. For this reason, we take advantage of this opportunity to inform you that the team is looking for collaborators. In the future we will do an official advertisement about that, but talking about mappers, is not important the nationality, the important thing is that whoever is able to create good maps, and then create structures, to work with entities and of course also know how to script. Anyone feel able to do it and has time to dedicate to the project can call us on moddb.com (http://www.moddb. com / groups / mechanical-brain-softworks) through private message (PM) or by sending an email to the team leader, Gyppi, "gyppifx at gmail.com."

4) Under what terms your total conversion will be innovative, compared to what we have seen so far in Quake IV?

-The Ancient Truth will bring a new gameplay in Quake 4, better graphic and a new story with new characters, things that will not be revolutionary enough to require the player to follow a tutorial or transform the game in a hybrid genre, we want to give new life to Quake 4 and at the same time "keep it on current rails", interesting innovations, not big revolutions.

5) What expectations of approval by the community you have in relation to what you have achieved so far?

-So far we have not shown or talked so much about the project, therefore is not much known, but those who have seen the announcement, on the various sites, including yours, and have left comments were very interested /enthusiast for this project, we hope to don’t disappoint them, we have the knowledge to make a good product, our only enemy is time. At the beginning of August we should publish another Media Update with new content and a sample regarding one of the novelty that we are developing, we hope you all will like it!