My interview with Neo_ad from Stargate: Brokenoath.
[02 October 2004 - 11:35 PST GMT-8]
Brokenoath
Half-Life Gaming: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Neo_ad: Hiya there, my name is Neo_ad and I am the head project leader for
the MOD , as well as mapping and many other jobs.
Half-Life Gaming: Sum up the story line of your mod in about 2 paragraphs.
Neo_ad: For anyone that’s not familiar with the Stargate TV show, The Stargate
is a round portal that can instantaneously transport an object from one point in
space to another by generating an artificial wormhole. A wormhole is created between
any two Stargates when one Stargate dials the address of another Stargate. A Stargate
uses 6 of 38 symbols, representing star constellations, to locate another Stargate
and then uses a final 7th symbol, unique to each Stargate, as its point of origin.
We are basing it around season 7 and 8 of the Stargate SG1 TV show, so you can expect
to see familiar locations and people that make Stargate what it is today. Keeping
the same action and realism you see in all the Stargate episodes.
Half-Life Gaming: Do you plan on basing this more on Stargate SG1 or Stargate:
Atlantis? And Why?
Neo_ad: We are only planning to base our MOD around Stargate SG1 at the moment
as we don’t really know enough about Atlantis yet in fact people in the UK haven’t
even seen it yet :). We don’t have long in the UK to wait for it now, so at some
point in the future when we are all up to speed with Atlantis we will be including
it in the MOD.
Half-Life Gaming: What has been the most challenging obstacle for development
of this mod?
Neo_ad: As with most MODS the hardest part is getting a decent coder, as
this is the heart of the MOD. And until you have a good coder on the team a lot
of people over look you, funny thing is this was the case with us. Then in last
than a week we had 4 excellent coders, but getting the coders has been the hardest
part “so far” :)
Half-Life Gaming: When you started, how did you get a team together and how
hard was it to do so? And why?
Neo_ad: This question is kind of also answered in the last one (you can blame
me for that :P) Once me and Zeuss the projects other Leader had got the basics down
and got a web site up and some basic info, we headed off to a LAN party around 4
weeks later in the UK, and PHL did a random post after stumbling on us I guess :).
Soon as this happened I spent ¼ of my lan fielding the 150+ e-mails from the public,
this then lead onto how we got a hold of our coders. So I guess at first it was
really hard but as time went on and we got more popular and my fantastic PR guy,
we just went from strength to strength.
Half-Life Gaming: How far along are you in the development process?
Neo_ad: Alpha 0.1 is wrapped up and awaiting Half life 2 SDK and the mapping
and model tools. We started off by getting a basic overview of what people from
the public wanted via e-mail and the forums, this then went onto the staff forums
for about 3 to 4 weeks of discussion as well as chats almost every night on mIRC
and big huge chats at the weekend. So we can say that we are ready and waiting to
get stuck in, /me waves at Gabe :)
Half-Life Gaming: What do you do when you start to run out of ideas?
Neo_ad: This has to be the best part :), we all own at least a season of
Stargate SG1 on DVD so we can take a break sit down and relax, and watch some episodes
and at the same time getting new ideas. This is also great as this makes sure our
all our ideas are true to what we see in the TV show.
Half-Life Gaming: What kind things will help set this mod apart from the
rest?
Neo_ad: Our 2nd flagship idea that will make this stand out will be our co-op
game mode, which you are pitted against the ever replicating replicators, with your
friends online together as a team.
If I may be allowed to quote from our site “You start off either separated or trapped
on a planet/structure and your number one objective is to go home, you are lost
and have very little fire power available team work will be essential or you will
not see home again. The replicators however are hell bent on making sure you don’t
escape”
Half-Life Gaming: What kind of equipment and weapons will people be able
to use?
Neo_ad: Basically any weapon that’s in the season 7 or 8 will be available
to use if on a certain map and chosen character etc. The huge range of weapons wont
be included into later betas but we expect to have at least 15/20 weapons included
for the first release.
Half-Life Gaming: What kind of vehicles will people be able to use?
Neo_ad: We hope to try include all the vehicles from the TV show, including
some of the smaller space ships. The death gliders will be essential to a lot of
the maps including maps such as Abydos.
Half-Life Gaming: Where do you get most of your inspiration from?
Neo_ad: We mainly get our inspiration from the TV show and of course the
film. Not forgetting the huge Stargate community that provides some very good inspiration
in the form of there own ideas. We have taken a lot of the inspiration from the
community and included it in the MOD already.
Thank you for taking the time to conduct this interview, I would also like to thank
all of our team for there hard work so far. We have a new web site with a huge overhaul
and content coming soon, as well as our promo video. So watch this space :), if
anybody has any ideas or suggestions drop them in an e-mail to me or post them on
the forums, we will answer every single one of them. Thanks once again Neo_ad, Stargate:Brokenoath