Please let me start by introducing us as a team. We are InterWave Studios, an entertainment software and technology company that was founded at the beginning of 2008 by source community developers.
Our History
So what more can I tell you about us then? Well over previous years from working through projects such as SourceBans, SteamBans, Detox Anti-Cheat, IRCRelay, TodaysBigFail.com, from our programming team, and with and art team that has built experience in development through large modification titles such as Insurgency, Black Mesa: Source, Firearms: Source, Half-Life² Capture The Flag, Deviation, Sven Coop and more, through various means we essentially joined together as a team with the express purpose of developing a retail video game, designed and made by gamers, for gamers.
The Idea
Our goal as a now complete, full-circle team was to build a commercial product that would be more interactive and immersive for players than existing retail products. Being born from community development, the steam strapped together the remainder of the Stargate: The Last Stand design to finish its beta build. The idea to do this was born of care for the community that got us where we were, and of an appetite to get our production machine well greased for our big show, a product that we designed called "Distant Hope".
While we took the road down our own project developments, an unfortunate set of circumstances had overcome one of the most outstanding modifications ever designed for the Source engine, Nuclear Dawn. The original founders of the project were so incredible with their free work, that major studios couldn't get enough and swiped them all away one by one. As we drew to the end of the Stargate game's development, the incredible uniqueness of Nuclear Dawn's design was at the very brink of being lost forever... until we found her.
The Mission
Our Operations Director, Ben Palmer headed up a recovery mission to get each original developer of the project, and bring them all to a table for discussion. He saw an opportunity to combine our passionate ideas that we had been brewing for Distant Hope with those existing entities already in place for what Nuclear Dawn's release should have always been. After much negotiation, Ben brokered a deal with the leaders and surrogate leaders of the game, giving InterWave Studios a chance to show off what we could produce with the current aspects of Nuclear Dawn, a chance to begin to merge our own product and refine the design, making the player engagement more functionally advanced than the designers ever had a real opportunity to achieve - a test for which the result would return the opportunity to finalize it into a commercial product.
After many months of finalization work on existing projects, and a little presentation work for the original team, we can now officially announce that we will be continuing the development of the Nuclear Dawn game into a fully fleshed out retail product.
Armed with an all new design document, grown and evolved from the original concepts of the Nuclear Dawn modification at its heart, the game is in full swing development for release at some point in 2010 (next year).
But why in the world is it going to take so long? Well as soul-destroying as it is to say, and admit for the remainder of the original development team, a large proportion of the publically released content for the mod version of the title was in one way or another fabricated for PR.
This is, not to say that the artwork was not beautifully crafted for Nuclear Dawn - however, in a slightly bizarre move for the previous key project manager, certain functionality was fabricated for the sake of various publications, which have since haunted the product and the community left trying to hold what was left back together. of course not! This lead to various cut backs and dissections of the game in an attempt to get it released before death, thereby leaving a mangled Counter-Strike capture the flag mod with a couple of incomplete levels, disguising the remarkable artwork and just as remarkable programming behind it.
Going Commercial
So, as a commercial studio, our team are working on producing the game in the glory that you have all secretly wished for deep down inside for all of this time. We are active with our community, and will be keeping you, the community, involved through every step of the way, with news updates and forum interaction throughout our experience working on the product.
We have to be clear that InterWave is not developing this product out of commercial greed - we are developing it out of passion and commitment to gaming, in the knowledge that we can create something spectacular for a whole new community to be born from.
The game will be as true to its concepts as ever, with our own implementations as well as the key originals, re-applying all of the features that were lost in the final month's of the product's life as a modification. As a retail product, we are not looking to extort our community, however, with financial backing the product is capable of so much more than ever before as a free mod, with all of the bells, whistles and goolies that you could dream of in a big-name title.
From this moment onward, Nuclear Dawn escalates to an all new level of incredible, intense, immersive and engaging team-based play on the Source® engine and its vast, loyal, dedicated community of gamers. This product - this game... is a game for true gamers, that know the meaning of online combat.
Media
Below you can see a concept from one of the first new levels under development. Based on the infamous Empire State Building in America's Big Apple, the building is found at the heart of our manhattan environment.
Then, followed closely, you can see our new Consortium Faction Exo-Infantry. Based on the same concepts, these player models will replace those existing in Nuclear Dawn as you have always known it. The previous player models (as beautiful as they are) became prey to wild dogs one night in the creator's bedroom - that is to say, they were given to a mod in development and we are not to talk about it.
As always, stay tuned, and keep watching this space, and we will update you with our progress.
On behalf of the entire InterWave Studios team I would like to express my admiration for the extended devotion that has been shown to the Nuclear Dawn community for all of these years, and we would like to assure you that we are here and settled in for the long haul with all of you.
Kind regards,
Michiel Beenen
Managing Director InterWave Studios
Holy crap, awesome! Not too keen about the whole going retail part but we'll see, I'm pretty sure that it'll be worth it! Thank you guys so much for saving this mod, thank you!
Without going retail its almost impossible for us to dedicate all our time onto it and work on it the whole day.
I understand what you are saying and I did mention that it will probably be worth it. Looking forward to it nontheless!
thank you :)
Natural Selection is going retail that was a former mod, Iron Grip: Warlord is a retail game that is a spinoff from the Iron Grip: The Oppression mod. I use those two as examples as they are both RTS/FPS games.
As long as the price is fair and the quality is good i don't mind paying for it.
WOW! I really look forward to this mod. I hope the development goes smoothly for you guys and I hope your mod doesn't die.
As an idea you guys could have an intro for the game which is a nuke going off.
lol wut?
hmm lets see about that
Mmmmm. If you put enough hard work into it and this becomes a great game it was certainly worth it.
Good luck I've been watching your project for years.
Good to see Nuclear Dawn is back from the brink of death.
I am pleased with the level of community interaction Interwave have been providing. It seems that the game is in capable hands.
just moved this from the "mods" to the "games" section.
THANK THE LORD this has made my easter holiday, im so happy that a project with so much potential has been picked up again, good luck !
I guess that I will be watching this as I'm a fan of post apocalyptic settings and scenarios. I was never an avid follower of Nuclear dawn but it sure looked like it had a lot of potential. I hope you will make this into something great and that it wont be too expensive heh.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Been following this mod since the article in PCG!
Nice to see my hopes tuned out right!
there would be a lot more player, if you release it for free. thats my oppionion.
hopefully the community wont die the first weeks after release. I wish you good luck to make it worth it.
I'm a bit skeptical to be perfectly honest.. but I guess we will see. I will continue to watch the project in any case. Whether I will end up buying it is a different matter. Keep it up, though!
nice work, not into the over self-indulgent style of the announcement but I look forward to seeing more sweet media
OH HELL YES
Aww retail!
Dammit.
Oops, I was supposed to reply to a comment. Ignore this.
Everyone knew about the fabricated stuff anyway. Can't say I'm really for commercial development but whatever, good luck I guess.
I think some facts definitely need some clarification here.
- A "large proportion" was not 'fabricated for PR'. This makes it sound like it had no place in the game and was more of an advertising campaign. I can't find anything other than concept art and the model poses in the screenshots that has been shown as media that isn't in the game files.
The only possible thing this could be referring to is when Dave took the HUD concept and allowed/deceived/colluded with a magazine to omit the fact this was a concept paintover. I would not call this 'a large portion of the functionality', and its an error that the vast majority of the team at the time was not aware of, including myself. I have asked IW to change the statement to show who was actually responsible for this decision, because I was PR Manager at that time, and it definitely wasn't something I orchestrated or was aware of.
- It's true that the design had massive cutbacks. There was a lot of argument over this, but in the end the overriding decision was that it had to be done. But the end result was definitely not CS CTF. There was a CTF mode that was added in addition to the primary game mode, principally because the primary game mode was getting a lot of stuff cut out from it. I think perhaps Michiel is slightly confused between that mode and the main mode which was point capture, with the points having flags indicating their location (similar to DoD). CTF is not the same as point capture. One involves static bases and two objectives, the other does not necessarily involve static bases (in ND it did not) and involves multiple objectives.
I just felt that should be cleared up.
(hit the character limit...)
I am looking forward to InterWave returning ND to something that is closer to the original design than where the mod had ended up (pretty much dead). I should also note that IW is very committed to engaging with the community. In many ways it makes more sense for a retail project to forge strong bonds with a community who can help them shape the best game possible and will make up a portion of the playerbase.
I know not everyone is excited about the prospect of a retail game as opposed to a mod. I say let's wait and see what IW can do before we judge. They've already proved they can complete a full mod in a 6-month turnaround, create and manage community websites, create anticheat applications and they are backed by an affiliate company which has helped them fund a Source engine license.
These guys are very organised as a team, very hardworking and very dedicated. They are the best option for the continuation of Nuclear Dawn and the entire mod team agreed to green light them based off a tech demo they put together recently. I for one wish them the best of luck with carrying the torch for ND.
So is the project completely in the hands of Interwave or are any original developers still around to work on the game?
It is completely in InterWave hands yes but some of the old members are still around :)
*waves*
good luck guys :) oh and great art btw.
well well well. There I was saying to myself "this mod is dead surely?"
never underestimate the power of whatever it was that got Nuclear Dawn going again
Welcome back and as was said above as long as the quality is good I dont mind paying.
I wonder which mod the creator of the skins donated to..
good to see nuclear dawn having a future.
:O Three mins. later... :O
YOU'RE BACK!!! YOU.... YOU'RE ACTUALLY BACK!!
*breaks down sobbing*
I expected something like this after hearing about the announcement that was going to be given. In any case good luck to the current team! Hope you can bring a solid product to us! Keep in mind there isn't that many FPS/RTS's on the market(you can count on one hand how many there are) so you have to do a good job so other studios and more importantly gamers can see potential in the genre!
I hope the retail side goes well for you, but I have to say, and take this with a grain of salt, other than the quality of the models and maps, there really didn't seem like anything new you were trying to do. Nothing that would make you stand out from the plethora of other MP bang bang shootem ups. Working off an existing backbone for a multiplayer game is easy compared to doing your own thing. Is it still Source based? If not, does your backer know that by retaining the existing modding team and early designers, it is a mix for another slow death? Or does getting paid for it make everyone's motivation for a failed mod go through the roof? Not sure, just tossing questions in the air and seeing where they stick.
There are only a few online multiplayer games franchises that have really made it or been worth the time to play. Valves selection, Battlefield series and only a few others. 1000 start ups fail each week, I hope yours is not one of them.
Make it different, new, exciting or it will cost your backer his eye teeth with nothing coming in, or likely to. All that said, best with it and I really do hope it goes very well for you.
Maybe you just need to read the newspost ;)
We are funding ourselves as a division of a large marketing company, so we are our own 'Backer'.
At the end of the day, we are gamers too, so we know what is fun, what sucks, and what people will come back to. You hit the nail on the head - Valve's selection hits the mark with consumers every time, but that is down to the way the company act, and not just what they produce. If you care about the consumer, the consumer cares about the product - this strategy outshines anything another games development company has ever done.
Thanks for the best wishes, we promise we will not disappoint ;)
(P.S, more like a few hundred)
So how do you finance yourselves? Did you get any publisher/ investor interested in your game?
Will it be available on disc media?or only via steam download(which would seriously suck for most of the people including me who have been awaiting for this mod to come out for about 3 years...i dont have a credit card to buy off of steam)
You can use paypal on steam, that does not require a credit card.