Here's a thread from 2003 that mentions MR so at least 20 years.
Fallout 2 mod Mutants Rising...
- Thread starter .Pixote.
- Start date
Keep in mind that the project back then is not what it is today. There were big changes over time.
ironmask
A Smooth-Skin
Can any of the dev team go over these big changes, after the mod comes out one day? I'm interested in knowing what the original ideas were like.
Chris Parks
Vault Senior Citizen
I'm sure I could put something together before I pass if people were interested. It's been quite the journey.
ironmask
A Smooth-Skin
Please do. I would love to get a look at old design doc, cut content, and see how much the mod has change over the years. Also thanks for replying to me. Best wishes on MR.
Chris Parks
Vault Senior Citizen
Ok, here goes with a few thoughts. Obviously this is written from my perspective so I'll include a little backstory to put things into context. With the TC not been released there's a lot i cannot share at this time without ruining aspects of the game so I will reserve that for a time if it is ever released.
I got my first PC when i started comprehensive school - it was a multimedia PC, back when such a distinction existed, and came with a tonne of software and also a stack of games. Total annihilation, thief, blade runner, Caesar 3 and fallout. Fallout became a firm favourite. It took some time to get hold of Fallout 2 (ebay and amazon weren’t big at the time) I got the famous gold disk and played it so much that I eventually burnt a hole in the disk.
I was taken ill in the first year at Uni and had to have a medical year out. During which time, I spent a lot of time on NMA. I was sure that I had seen everything fallout 2 had to offer but started to see so many screenshots of areas I’d not played. That was my introduction to modding. I downloaded the mapper and FSE and started learning.
Nuclear Winter studios had been founded a couple of years earlier (http://www.nwsgames.net/) by Mads Trolle and a group of likeminded individuals. That had ambitious plans of creating new computer games and establishing themselves as a legitimate game studios. MR was begun almost as side project. During 06-07 I worked on a few projects of my own (EPA, Cold Hearts) along with Dude101 – he was amazing to work with and as passionate as I was for creating new things. It was around this time that MR folded and shut up. I didn’t want the project to go to waste so I spoke with some of the team and asked for forum access to essentially see if there was any content I could make use of.
To this day, I am still not sure how it came into being, but I ended up taking over the project and keeping it alive. In the earlier days it was tough. There were’nt many people working on the project. Some dropped in and out and kept in touch without contributing. I worked with Dude101 and an old veteran of the mod, SNorth, a professional writer and we fleshed out the design docs that had been left behind. For a long time, Trolle graciously kept the site running for us and paying for the upkeep.
A project of this size was ambitious, especially given there were so few of us actively working. Whilst a lot of work had been done on the story, little work had been completed on the actual game. I was trying to complete a chemistry degree at the time, which took up most of my time and didn’t leave too much time for modding. Nevertheless, we persevered. I decided to create a demo of the first area, Elko, both to get some interest amongst the community and help keep morale up in the team. The orginal team had left some maps for elko so completing the area wasn’t too challenging to complete. The maps were, however, fairly sparse so a new map was created for the demo. This has since been completely replaced with a new, and much better version of elko in the current game. The maps are smaller, spread out over several maps rather than one big metropolis. Much of the game content has remained the same though.
In the early days, one big decision was to cut two areas and slate them for an MR-restoration pack. These were hadding city and heavenly haven. Whilst interesting and very involved areas, they were similar to the EPA in F2. An interesting area, but could be completely ignored and still complete the game. I was against cutting anything in principal, I wantd to create something that couldn’t just be completed on a speed rujn in an hour but we also needed a goal that could realistically be achieved with a tiny team.
As time wore on, people came and left – many showed keen interest to begin with and rapidly dropped off. A lot of time was invested and subsequently lost training new people, many of whom disappeared and never even said goodbye. However, those that did stay, were amazing and hard working. .pixote joining the team was a boon that almost cannot be put into words. His mapping ability was beyond anything I’d seen. Without a full time mapper on the team, I had been doing some of the map work alongside project coordinating, scripting and whatever else needed doing. He created maps that were not only interesting to play, but also believable and sensible. I am still grateful for his contributions even though I’m long since retired. Jinx joined later on in the project, and along with a few others (skye for example) he created a lot of missing dialogue and also went over much of the older dialogue and vastly improved it. By this time, SNorth had gone and no members of the original team were still present so jinx has played and still does play an integral part in the mod. Artwork was always an area that needed lots of people. Continuum, whilst never wanting to be called a member of the team, dropped in and out and left talking heads behind which for me really bring fallout to life. Many cutscenes were created by sharae, a fantastic professional artist (and Dude101’s sister) She graciously donated some time to help with load scenes and end game scenes and with some town map screens. Equilerex was someone I appraoached over at duck and cover when I saw some art he had made. He eventually ended up joining the team and creating lots of fabulous artworks – he also took over hosting the forum when the original crashed and burned and trolle was no longer able to contribute.
We had friendly / unfriendly rivalries with other teams. We often traded artwork with jesterka and BGE. I offered to help out scripting with FMF in exchange for some art here and there. This relationship dramatically fell apart when I went to log on one morning and found my account had been wiped and all my posts deleted “because of me soliciting MR too much”. They folded not long after that.
Sadly, during my third year at Uni, my mum was diagnosed with cancer – I had to take a long break to look after her and complete my degree. When I was eventualy ready to return and take the reigns again the team had moved on. They had a new leader, with new thoughts and ideas on what MR should be. I had to read lots of comments alluding to the poor and uncoordinated work of the old team, my team. It was made clear I wouldn’t be in command but I could test and help out as instructed. This hurt. Especially with how many years Id put in dragging MR back from the grave. I didn’t really want to but I had to walk away. I didn’t want to be a side consideration in something I had run for so long.
So that effectively ended my fallout modding days. I haven’t worked on anything since – in fact I have hardly played fallout. I drop into the forum from time to time but I don’t really know the current crop of modders on there too well.
So that’s been a logistics / coordinating overview from my side. As I said, theres a lot more I could share with regards to cut content / altered content but for now I must respect the current team and not ruin too much! If MR is ever released or folds then I could share a lot more if anyone is particularly interested.
I got my first PC when i started comprehensive school - it was a multimedia PC, back when such a distinction existed, and came with a tonne of software and also a stack of games. Total annihilation, thief, blade runner, Caesar 3 and fallout. Fallout became a firm favourite. It took some time to get hold of Fallout 2 (ebay and amazon weren’t big at the time) I got the famous gold disk and played it so much that I eventually burnt a hole in the disk.
I was taken ill in the first year at Uni and had to have a medical year out. During which time, I spent a lot of time on NMA. I was sure that I had seen everything fallout 2 had to offer but started to see so many screenshots of areas I’d not played. That was my introduction to modding. I downloaded the mapper and FSE and started learning.
Nuclear Winter studios had been founded a couple of years earlier (http://www.nwsgames.net/) by Mads Trolle and a group of likeminded individuals. That had ambitious plans of creating new computer games and establishing themselves as a legitimate game studios. MR was begun almost as side project. During 06-07 I worked on a few projects of my own (EPA, Cold Hearts) along with Dude101 – he was amazing to work with and as passionate as I was for creating new things. It was around this time that MR folded and shut up. I didn’t want the project to go to waste so I spoke with some of the team and asked for forum access to essentially see if there was any content I could make use of.
To this day, I am still not sure how it came into being, but I ended up taking over the project and keeping it alive. In the earlier days it was tough. There were’nt many people working on the project. Some dropped in and out and kept in touch without contributing. I worked with Dude101 and an old veteran of the mod, SNorth, a professional writer and we fleshed out the design docs that had been left behind. For a long time, Trolle graciously kept the site running for us and paying for the upkeep.
A project of this size was ambitious, especially given there were so few of us actively working. Whilst a lot of work had been done on the story, little work had been completed on the actual game. I was trying to complete a chemistry degree at the time, which took up most of my time and didn’t leave too much time for modding. Nevertheless, we persevered. I decided to create a demo of the first area, Elko, both to get some interest amongst the community and help keep morale up in the team. The orginal team had left some maps for elko so completing the area wasn’t too challenging to complete. The maps were, however, fairly sparse so a new map was created for the demo. This has since been completely replaced with a new, and much better version of elko in the current game. The maps are smaller, spread out over several maps rather than one big metropolis. Much of the game content has remained the same though.
In the early days, one big decision was to cut two areas and slate them for an MR-restoration pack. These were hadding city and heavenly haven. Whilst interesting and very involved areas, they were similar to the EPA in F2. An interesting area, but could be completely ignored and still complete the game. I was against cutting anything in principal, I wantd to create something that couldn’t just be completed on a speed rujn in an hour but we also needed a goal that could realistically be achieved with a tiny team.
As time wore on, people came and left – many showed keen interest to begin with and rapidly dropped off. A lot of time was invested and subsequently lost training new people, many of whom disappeared and never even said goodbye. However, those that did stay, were amazing and hard working. .pixote joining the team was a boon that almost cannot be put into words. His mapping ability was beyond anything I’d seen. Without a full time mapper on the team, I had been doing some of the map work alongside project coordinating, scripting and whatever else needed doing. He created maps that were not only interesting to play, but also believable and sensible. I am still grateful for his contributions even though I’m long since retired. Jinx joined later on in the project, and along with a few others (skye for example) he created a lot of missing dialogue and also went over much of the older dialogue and vastly improved it. By this time, SNorth had gone and no members of the original team were still present so jinx has played and still does play an integral part in the mod. Artwork was always an area that needed lots of people. Continuum, whilst never wanting to be called a member of the team, dropped in and out and left talking heads behind which for me really bring fallout to life. Many cutscenes were created by sharae, a fantastic professional artist (and Dude101’s sister) She graciously donated some time to help with load scenes and end game scenes and with some town map screens. Equilerex was someone I appraoached over at duck and cover when I saw some art he had made. He eventually ended up joining the team and creating lots of fabulous artworks – he also took over hosting the forum when the original crashed and burned and trolle was no longer able to contribute.
We had friendly / unfriendly rivalries with other teams. We often traded artwork with jesterka and BGE. I offered to help out scripting with FMF in exchange for some art here and there. This relationship dramatically fell apart when I went to log on one morning and found my account had been wiped and all my posts deleted “because of me soliciting MR too much”. They folded not long after that.
Sadly, during my third year at Uni, my mum was diagnosed with cancer – I had to take a long break to look after her and complete my degree. When I was eventualy ready to return and take the reigns again the team had moved on. They had a new leader, with new thoughts and ideas on what MR should be. I had to read lots of comments alluding to the poor and uncoordinated work of the old team, my team. It was made clear I wouldn’t be in command but I could test and help out as instructed. This hurt. Especially with how many years Id put in dragging MR back from the grave. I didn’t really want to but I had to walk away. I didn’t want to be a side consideration in something I had run for so long.
So that effectively ended my fallout modding days. I haven’t worked on anything since – in fact I have hardly played fallout. I drop into the forum from time to time but I don’t really know the current crop of modders on there too well.
So that’s been a logistics / coordinating overview from my side. As I said, theres a lot more I could share with regards to cut content / altered content but for now I must respect the current team and not ruin too much! If MR is ever released or folds then I could share a lot more if anyone is particularly interested.
Oracle
Vault Senior Citizen
Thanks for sharing Chris, appreciated.
ironmask
A Smooth-Skin
This was very much appreciated. Thanks for sharing this.
Chris Parks
Vault Senior Citizen
I will share more when released. At some point I'll drag the old PC out of storage and rip the old files. There's lots of old maps which were slowly replaced by pixote and each tell an interesting story.
I would like to see the old maps again...memory lane!
Jinx
Killer of Mole People
Thanks for sharing Chris, and thanks for the shoutout. It's because you and Dude101 gave me a shot that I could do what I did and do what I do and for that I'll always be real damn grateful.
Ceratisa
Sarcastic SOB
Weird how time flies but I always end up checking back on MR once in awhile..
Syndicalist_Cat
First time out of the vault
This project is just awesome and it can't be released soon enough! One thing tho with the Pip-boy 2000 loading screen, I read in the Vault Dweller's Survival Guide(Fallout 1 manual) that the Pip-Boy is suposed to be a wrist mounted device not a tablet like in the art. Its not a problem of course I just mentioned it because it seems like a lot of people think that Bugthesda retconed this aswell(I hate it when they do that) like they did with many other things but in this case they remained faithfull to the original idea.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
It's wrist mounted in Van Buren (just like the F1 manual describes), but I honestly prefer the tablet version.
Violator
It Wandered In From the Wastes
this can be handwaived by saying it's just two different models of the same device
Syndicalist_Cat
First time out of the vault
I don't have a problem with anything I just mentioned it and tried to be polite as posible.
I saw something on twitter that implied it's near release. But I don't know.
It's still being worked on.