Project X name and idea finalized! Project lead wanted!

[Number1SuperGuy]

Project X's name has been finalized as... Project X. We're going to need a project lead for Project X. We're looking for someone who has headed up the development of a mod before (or someone who has had a major, major role), preferably in a UT engine. We would like this person to be experienced in almost all of the following areas: Mapping, 3D modeling, Animation, Unreal Script. The project lead should also be devoted to Project X and capable of seeing it through to completion. If you're interested in the position, please post your resume here:

http://www.unrealtournament3forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=75&sid=051cd91ae6e817a7a1b756f52c25e9b3

Project X can be summed up in these 2 quotes fairly well:


This IS how Project X will be designed. And the initial name "Project X" will remain as the actual Game Title.

Story conception and application will still have to be worked on and finalized but for now we will at least be able to get set-up with a basic understanding of the game layout and what sort of things we'll be needing to get accomplished.

The game will take place mostly in a city that has been attacked and destroyed by hordes of what can be most easily described as Zombies, HOWEVER the game won't start that way.

Doom 3 and Half-Life had EPIC introductions, I.E. you are part of the game before the metaphysical **** hits the fan. The player should play through an introduction that is brief enough to keep from boredom, yet long enough to immerse the player and allow them to start feeling like things make sense. Once they hit that point, there should be a disaster that messes with their recently acquired sense.

For example, the player is outside in the city streets when suddenly they see people start pointing to the sky and yelling, or just fleeing. The player (from first-person perspective) would naturally look to see what is happening and would thereby discover that a biological warhead (from other humans) is heading their way. The warhead crashes into a building in the distance, obliterating it in a hellstorm and immediately dispersing a flesh-eating, mind-rotting viral agent that causes the entire city to turn instantly into a zombie mad-house! Perhaps the character had been stationed in the area due to suspicion of an attack on the area. Using the first-person perspective when hell breaks loose is exactly what we need to make players immediately feel like they have a reason to do what they're doing.

The game should take place in the near future and we should probably design a new arsenal of weapons. We wouldn't need many, just enough to allow the player to decide what to use in certain situations. I'm thinking a Pistol, a Sniper Rifle, a Semi/Fully Automatic Rifle, a Shotgun, and a Grenade Launcher. We'd probably also need to design civilians, soldiers, & zombies. Level design would be mostly basic city shapes allowing us to work on details. Sewer/basement levels will also be a necessity.

When we are done with this, we don't want players to think "Half-Life", we don't want them to think "28 Days Later" we don't want them to think "Resident Evil"...

We want them to think Project X.


Lance scanned the building for any survivors. As he walked up the stairs, he pondered the idea of how odd it was that the zombies had not swarmed this area yet. It seemed funny that they would not have come here yet, in their sanguine thirst for human blood and flesh. He clicked over to his second-in-command, Michael, on the shortwave radio he had found earlier in an abandoned truck.

"Mike? You there? Look, I'm not finding any survivors, but I've got a bad feeling about this. I say we get the hell out of here before they find us. Call the dropship. Over."

No response.

"Mike? Mike, say something!"

Suddenly, he heard hissing and screaming coming over the radio. Wherever he was, it wasn't good. He looked out the window to find, to his disgust, hundreds of zombies beginning to invade the building through any entrance they could find, windows, doors, the bigger ones even using their massive stone-like fists to punch gaping holes in the walls for the smaller ones, taking crude weapons with them and brandishing them loudly.

And at the head of them, sitting atop a behemoth, was a figure in power armor, dripping with blood and now beyond his once human form, raising a stolen chainsaw in his violent reverie of new life in death, and let out a primal scream.

The feedback deafened Lance's ears. Mike had been kind enough to leave the radio on to give Lance the time to pray before the horde would overtake him, held up in this broken building.

But he wasn't going down without a fight. With a frightening, insane grin, and a minigun in his hands, Lance knew his last crusade would not be silent.

He walked down the stairs, into oblivion.

[NakhtiUT3]

I was the project lead for the HaloUT mod ... developed by the Project Torlan team. I started off being in charge of all QA issues (since that was my background as a Test Engineer) and then I became co-lead and finally the lead left and asked that I take the reins. Now what I lack in technical skills I more than make up in terms of managing resources and staying on top of everything 20 hours out the day. If you want Google Project Torlan and HaloUT and download and take a look at what my team managed to do. Evil Engine was the main developer and he was damn good ... he is now part of Team Orbit though. I also did some of the vehicle and weapons coding ... we had a great vehicle person named Magnum77 and if he is still around he would be a great asset to this project.

Anyway I have been looking for another project to head up that is based on original IP this time around so think about my offer. I am known as Exodus/AnubanUT so that is the name you will see in older threads on the UT2K4 forums and in the readme files. Also, I will be spending a great deal of time getting up to speed on the new dev tools. I have the CE version on pre-order and will be watching all the videos on development before I even play the game. Drop me an email and I can give you my private email address if you want. And yes I am an old man ... 40 ... and that is where experience and knowing how to deal with people of all ages comes into play. I have worked in development before in companies like Nortel Networks and Oracle so I really have a pretty firm grasp on this stuff.

[JohnnyInfamous]

Good to hear that you've headed up a serious project and have seen it through to completion. We're not looking for dropper-outers. But the next step for you to take would be to sign up on our forum and let everyone know who you are. You also should get acquainted with our forum and where everything is located.

We're setting up a wiki and a lot of other things for Project X at the moment so that we can keep track of it and everything that goes with it. If you get lost or have questions you could ask them here or via Private Messages (PM) on our board. Also, you should go ahead and send a PM to Number1SuperGuy or me to let s know that you're serious about this and ready to take on the project. We also need to make sure that the technical skills that you lack won't hold you back. ;)

[NakhtiUT3]

Good to hear that you've headed up a serious project and have seen it through to completion. We're not looking for dropper-outers. But the next step for you to take would be to sign up on our forum and let everyone know who you are. You also should get acquainted with our forum and where everything is located.

We're setting up a wiki and a lot of other things for Project X at the moment so that we can keep track of it and everything that goes with it. If you get lost or have questions you could ask them here or via Private Messages (PM) on our board. Also, you should go ahead and send a PM to Number1SuperGuy or me to let s know that you're serious about this and ready to take on the project. We also need to make sure that the technical skills that you lack won't hold you back. ;)

I am a fast learner man ... I used to code and like I said I have always worked in development and QA environments. Now I am disabled so I try to keep my skills sharp even though I am kind of stuck in the house. Anyway I will go ahead and sign up at your forums no problem. I will also send a PM to Number1SuperGuy but one of you needs to be the co-lead as this is really your ideas and I am just here to help you implement them. I don't mind having to report to someone as long as they are professional and can listen to reason without flying off the handle.

[JohnnyInfamous]

I am a fast learner man ... I used to code and like I said I have always worked in development and QA environments. Now I am disabled so I try to keep my skills sharp even though I am kind of stuck in the house. Anyway I will go ahead and sign up at your forums no problem. I will also send a PM to Number1SuperGuy but one of you needs to be the co-lead as this is really your ideas and I am just here to help you implement them. I don't mind having to report to someone as long as they are professional and can listen to reason without flying off the handle.

Absolutely. I can work with you myself to help keep everything in line. Also, if you know anyone that would want in on the project, you should fill them in as well. We're looking for artists at the moment to do some serious concept work. We're planning on moving ahead at a decent pace and we want to have a lot of ideas and inspiration ready for the game's release in a few weeks.

[Number1SuperGuy]

I'm very interested in having you on the project. Whether as a project leader or not you sound like you have the experience and the drive that we're looking for. I look forward to seeing you on the forum.

[NakhtiUT3]

I'm very interested in having you on the project. Whether as a project leader or not you sound like you have the experience and the drive that we're looking for. I look forward to seeing you on the forum.

Oh I can assure you I have the drive to get the job done ... I just need a good team ... my last team members can tell you how I stayed up all the time and was pretty much always available ... and I had to deal with devs from all over the world so that meant different time zones and not being able to just say "well its time for me to crash" ... many times I would work for 30 plus hours straight because I had to make sure all the areas connected correctly. When you have mappers, general coders, modellers, gametype designers, mutator coders, weapons coders, voice pack makers , etc things get really hectic and you really have to know how to keep people happy and resolve conflicts (and man there were many of those during the development of HaloUT let me tell you).

Let me give you a list of the devs from the readme who I had to manage (just remember I am actually Exodus and yes I did some actual work as well as manage this very large group ... some of who stayed until the end and others who helped when they could, etc.) :

VIII - Team Credits for P1.0-P1.75:

Everyone on the Project Torlan Team is instrumental and important and so I thank them all ... however, I want to take the time to give extra credit to the software engineers and support analysts involved in this Preview Pack alone:

Models and skins - EE, Qx9, UbH, Slaughter, Xabora
Weapons - EE, Dandel1984, porkmanii, Oxygene2k, Exodus
Vehicles - Mark Jansen (though not affiliated with the team he is the original developer of Halovehicles), Dandel1984, porkmanii, Magnum, EE, Exodus
Maps - EE, Brandon (Yournan, Arcadia critcal reviews which lead to some major changes)
Gametypes - EE
Mutators - Porkmanii, Dandel, Mematrix, Exodus
Voicepacks - UnrealGrrl
UV mappers - Oxygene2k, Whistling Cool
Development Support - Xabora, Mematrix, Captain Valor, Exodus
Photos - Buffytheslayer, EE, Exodus
Release - Captain Valor, Exodus
Testing - Those who helped but Dragunov/DMDL, Mematrix, Dandel, and Valor really worked hard .. and of course Exodus

Past team members: Slip777, Cirion, MarZer, KJasnic

We even had a pretty decent sized community and on top of leading the project I was the moderator for our forums. So when the community wanted to make some content as well we said sure and some of the best talent from the HaloUT community as well as the devs of Project Torlan combined to make a fanastic CXP (Community extras Pack) which had more vehicles, maps, skins, voice packs etc. I also had to manage this phase and make sure everything went smoothly. On that project we had some new folks:


Credits:

Maps:

ONS-HUT-Nexus - Kyle "Dace" Brunette
ONS-HUT-Infestation - Ben "robo422" Wu
ONS-HUT-Oculus - Ben "robo422" Wu
VCTF-HUT-Oculus - Ben "robo422" Wu
DM-HUT-Battle-Creek - [^..^]Apo
DM-HUT-Gephyrophilia - Travis aka Disposable Hero
DM-HUT-Tubes - Travis aka Disposable Hero
CTF-HUT-StoneFalls - ArcadiaVincennes with assistance from Sjosz, Blitz, Saka, and Zio
CTF-HUT-XFire-SE - Brandon Furches & Ben "robo422" Wu
CTF-HUT-BattleCreek - [^..^]Apo

Vehicles:

* ScorpMBT – Magnum77 with assistance from Xyx and permission from Monarch to use his antenna light code for team colors. Texture assistance from Zenodey
* Banshee & Ghost weapons emitters updates - A special update package from 717 ... this replaces your current Banshee and Ghost textures and system files. One note however ... if you use these system files you will no longer have team skins; also this does not include the Cicada Bug patch code for the Banshees.
* WartHogs Texture replacements - 717
* MBT Camo Skins - Zenodey
* ScorpMBT mutator - UT2004 Addict
* Cicada Patch for Banshees - Exodus

Voicepacks:

HaloUT Jackal - LoparXL
HaloUT Elite - LoparXL
HaloUT SargeJohnson - LoparXL
HaloUT Grunt - LoparXL
HaloUT Female Marine - LoparXL
HaloUT SargeStacker - OutlawSkot33

Character Model Skins:

* Camo Covenant - Zenodey (note: these are missing unique portraits so you will have to view them in the User settings if you want to see them before selecting them)
* Camo Marines - HereticElite
* Tribal/Special Elites - HereticElite

And yes I was the one who made sure that Bungie gave us permission to do this project with no fear of getting the dreaded C&D letter.

Here is a link to the last thread that was made and that has links to the product although you can google it and you will be pretty surprised at how many places have it available for download. Also I am giving you a link to the video we made for the mod.


http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=503206&highlight=HaloUT+Project+Torlan (http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=503206&highlight=HaloUT+Project+Torlan)

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=504126&highlight=HaloUT+Project+Torlan

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=503206&page=31&highlight=HaloUT+Project+Torlan

Videos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vupev8P7dOs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_17U0vzC4Q

You can see we had developed a really cool gametype of our own ... the devs for that are listed above but I believe mostly Marzer who was a great coder and Evil Engine worked on this.

Also we had Buffy take all the promo screenies ... she is the best person in the entire Unreal Community at that type of work. She should be listed with the other project members.

Also here is website where the next phase of the project may happen if the community wants it to ... plus you can still download the files from there.

http://torlan.dragonstarelite.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=6

So there you have it in a nutshell ... my experience as Project Lead ... now I won't lie it went perfectly ... it didn't but in the two plus years I was with the project as co-lead and the lead we managed to churn out: HaloUT P1.0, then HaloUT P1.5, HaloUT1.75 and then the HaloUT CXP followed by P1.751 and the last I heard some one did make an updated P1.752 which redid some of the vehicle properties and turned out well. You could actually google each one of those seperately and they would all come up.

If you look through the credits you will see a few names that are recognizable ... these are modders who are still around doing work (like Unrealgrrl and Lopar-XL), and yes even the leader of the UCMP did a cool map for he CXP ... the link is actually above. So yes I have worked with many of the top modders around and I understand how to get things done even if it means getting hard when necessary. The key though is that people have to trust you ... once they stop trusting you they soon lose respect for you and then you have pretty much lost them. I learned that from this project as well as some times huge egos can get in the way of listening to people.

Still I am very pleased with how much we were able to accomplish in that two years. We didn't get all that we wanted to ... namely the weapons were the weakest portion of the mod as we were only able to get three working guns from halo in the game. I was supposed to do the shotgun myself but I had no time juggling all these people around and keeping track of every single element of the project.

[NakhtiUT3]

We're looking for artists at the moment to do some serious concept work. We're planning on moving ahead at a decent pace and we want to have a lot of ideas and inspiration ready for the game's release in a few weeks.

I used to be a pretty decent artist so perhaps next week I will sit down and get some concept work in. I am best at people/creatures and decent enough with mechanical crap and some weapons so yeah we are going to be fine. I just need to get my system upgrade completed and then I can turn my attention to this big time. So by the end of next week my system should be completely stable and ready for dev work. And as soon as I get the CE I will hit the video tutorials for the new tools.

[Number1SuperGuy]

Glad to have your support and membership :D

With you as the project lead I'm sure we can turn out something amazing!

[NakhtiUT3]

Glad to have your support and membership :D

With you as the project lead I'm sure we can turn out something amazing!

Thank you for the confidence that you are showing ... I am going to give it my best as I always do when I get involved in a project. I was offline yesterday because my system is getting rebuilt. I will have it back by Monday and then midweek I really will need to start working on the project. At least some concept art and we need to go over the main concept some more and see if it can be tweaked further or not. Anyway stay passionate about this and we will be fine. I can tell you honestly that things will get tough and ONLY your passion for the project will allow you to overcome other obstabcles and get the project done.

As a matter of fact I am with my PC tech now and we are working hard on getting my new system up and running but running into all kinds of problems. But they appear to be ones we can solve so hopefully Monday (maybe even tonight if I get really lucky) ... Anyway I will be in touch and on the other forums soon.

[Mr.UglyPants]

Your starting up HaloUT again then?

Oh and Nakhiti, are you Neil or Exodus?

[NakhtiUT3]

Your starting up HaloUT again then?

Oh and Nakhiti, are you Neil or Exodus?

Exodus of course ... Neil was not the Project Leader for HaloUT from the beginning through two plus years and five releases :) ... he is supposed to be leading the new project I left the community with. That is why I left the community all the assets so they could continue if they wanted to and when I left I let the community decide who would be the new leader for whatever else was going to happen with HaloUT and I heard Neil became the defacto leader because he was the only person coding for it. I was glad to hear that and I also think Neil makes a good leader and this would be a good chance for him to lead a team if he wants. He just needs to make sure that if he is going to use Halo 2 assets then he should just double check with Bungie if it is okay since Halo 2 is now on the PC.

As for me I am looking to lead a project based on original IP this time around and hopefully get the project fully realized and completed as a bonafide TC Mod that maybe gets some notice. :) Kind of like how Dario is doing with GunReal ... I mean who wouldn't want to be in talks with a publisher?

[NakhtiUT3]

Well folks for all and any of you who worked with me on the Project Torlan HaloUT mods I am extending an invitation to work with me again on a brand new project featuring original IP. Don't worry about the story sounding too generic ... we will be working on that. I think most of you remember that I really want to be a writer anyway so the end story will be good with all the input from the founders and others it should be really solid. Anyway folks I would love to work with any or all of you again ... lets put any differences we had aside ... we all know how trying Mod work can get and the pressure that can accompany it. I am a couple of years older and wiser and more patient and you people have become older and more mature as well.

I really feel we could get something amazing and more importantly never before seen out the door within 3 years ... a full blown TC ... something that HaloUT never became. So please give it some thought and if you want to be part of a great new dynamic team with a passionate focus on making a fantastic UT3 mod then please drop me an email or pm me or whatever. And in case you still can't remember ... I am Exodus/Anuban ... ;) So I will be looking forward to hearing from some of you at least (I hope all of you tbh ...even Marzer :) ) and yes it would be great to work with EE and Magnum again ... my two most productive team members from HaloUT. But I think they are still with Team Orbit so I just have to continue to wish them luck.

[Mr.UglyPants]

Awesome, really you Exodus, great to hear back from you.

Also, try beyondunreal.com, they have a wide audience that you can get the message too.

[NakhtiUT3]

Awesome, really you Exodus, great to hear back from you.


Thanks I appreciate the sentiment greatly ... I'm sending you a pm addressing the rest of your post.