ModJam Day 5: H-Hour
The final day of the UWE ModJam was bittersweet. It was the day when all three mods began to show the most promise, and yet the day when all development on them had to stop. As the time ticked down towards the 1700 deadline the check-in messages got faster and faster. Each team set out at the start of the week with an idea for something great. Now, that idea faced a sink or swim moment.
It is never possible to finish everything. The mod can never be everything you want it to be. The temptation to spend 'just a bit more time' on your creation is absolute. Many of us struggled with the solidity of the brick wall that we faced at the end of the day: We had come so far, why did Last Stand, La Fauche, and Fighter have to stop now?
Dushan and Charlie discuss getting custom sounds into their mods
To struggle thus is to miss the point of the ModJam. As the hours ticked by, we could only see the flaws in our creations. The missing models, animations, features. The bugs and suboptimal game mechanics. What we should have seen, and what appeared on the livestream at 1700, was a wonderful expression of teamwork, creativity and technical ability.
Offsite, onsite. Employees, non-employees. Throughout the past five days, people have mixed in ways they have never mixed before. Everyone has learnt new skills. The contribution of some community members was above and beyond the call. The line between being on the 'team' and being in the 'community' was further blurred, and for the better.
In our haste to begin creating games on Monday, we did not quite think through to Friday. Each of the mods was built off an internal codebase, not yet present in the Steam build of Natural Selection 2. With everyone on the team exhausted, the public release of this code will have to wait until next Monday. At that time the source code and playable versions of all three mods will be released.
In the mean time, you can catch gameplay by watching the replay of the afternoon livestream. Along with source code, screenshots, anecdotes, and full credits for each mod will be released here on the UWE blog next week. For now: Sleep.
