Prmm Interview
Posted: 2006-02-02 08:32
I have seen no mention of this and I think That Jason put forth a Awesome interview. The trailer really Was sweet!!
TotalBF2 recently got a chance to interview Jason (aka [R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A), mod leader of the Project Reality mod. We were able to ask him a number of questions regarding many aspects of the up and coming modification. We were also able to receive exclusive images as well as a brand new trailer for the PR mod. Take a look:
TotalBF2: Tell us a little about yourself and how your mod got started.
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: My name is Jason (aka [R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A), as some of you may have read in our spotlight article of the February edition of ‘Computer Games Magazine’. I took over primary leadership duties of the mod in October of last year from Requiem (the founder of Project Reality), as we all know real life can often times get in the way of ‘modding’ as much as we like, and that unfortunately was why he decided it would be best to take a reduced role on the team. As for how the mod got its start: It started in July of 2004 (almost 2 years ago) with the goal of making a strong realistic shooter out of an already popular game. As a newcomer it's been a challenge but now we're very confident that we are closer to our goal then we ever were.
TotalBF2: What is the aim for your mod? Any ultimate goal you hope to achieve?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: The primary aim of our mod is to provide a realistic combat experience to players of BF2 while at the same time, adding in new factions, with all of the well known weapons, vehicles which that faction is known to possess. Along with modifying the original game in various areas such as weapon velocities, vehicle handling, infantry load-outs, and realistic tweaks to the player’s HUD at different stages of play.
As for an ultimate goal, we want to achieve the highest level of realism that gameplay allows, whilst always trying to push further with new & original coding developments.
TotalBF2: Has Battlefield 2 turned out to be what you had hoped in terms of a desirable game to mod?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: Battlefield 2 is definitely a unique platform when it comes to modding. Many people ask me why we didn’t use an engine like HL2, or Unreal Tournament which have been described as more modder friendly engines. My reply is always; can you name one other engine that has all the online multiplayer features that the Battlefield series has (infantry, land, sea, and air vehicles)? There are obstacles with any engine when one wishes to change something about it. The BF2 editor has increased the straight forwardness of making changes to the game. However some of the more advanced features we had wanted to put into the engine will need to be revisited/rethought at some point, either because of engine hard-coding or inadequacies of the editor itself. Also the recent transfer of mod support from Electronic Arts (EA) to Digital Illusions CE (DICE) is not what we hoped for. EA had done a great job of being very approachable, supportive as well as trying to push out the editor as fast as possible. We have never received support from DICE and were always directed to EA for any help, with this asset gone we are not anticipating further Editor releases (except small updates which just integrate booster pack information).
TotalBF2: A lot of your mod is based around realism, a factor of game play that there are many opinions about. Based on the criticism you receive, whether good or bad, from the community about the topic, how do you go about reworking your mod to reach a balance?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: This is one of the toughest issues that we face with the evolution of our mod, finding the right balance of realism and game-play. There are several factors which limit how ‘real’ we can make our mod: losing the all important ‘fun-factor’, BF2 engine limitations (parameters?) and compatibility with different hardware configurations (trust me, turning up the velocity of an MG or a Main Battle Tank’s main gun to near real life specs can cause the game to lag on a network and will drop your frame rates to very uncomfortable levels). Having these 3 points in mind we have a pretty good idea as to how far we can take the realism factor for various elements in the game. This is also seen through the feedback we get from our testing staff, and of course the reaction from the community upon release.
TotalBF2: Given the release of Battlefield 2 Special Forces and the upcoming booster packs, how do you feel this will affect your mod?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: Although they are structurally very similar, they hardly compare. We have been creating a modification that is of superior quality, is free to the community and will present far more original ideas (watch out for PRMM 0.3). In no way are we trying to downplay the ideas behind the booster packs, but their goals are short-term financial gains whilst ours are more along the lines of "sky's the limit".
TotalBF2: You have so far released two mini-mod versions of Project Reality that have been very successful, what do you plan to change for the first full release and what can we expect to see in it?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: The full release of Project Reality, thus far entitled PR.1, as previously mentioned will include the full compliment of British Forces. We used the PR Mini-Mods as a test bed to see if we were on the right track with our reproduction of realism on the BF2 engine. We will begin releasing more media in our Media Gallery forum very soon so watch out for this too (link: http://realitymod.com/forum/f13-media-gallery.html)
TotalBF2: When can we expect to see either the full release or the next mini-mod release? Any set hopeful release date?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: PRMM 0.3 will be released shortly after EA's 1.2 patch, whilst the release date for PR 0.1 is still TBD.
TotalBF2: Any closing comments you would like to make to the community?
[R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A: First off, thank you to our old partner, TotalBF2! We would like to thank our huge community (2600+ and growing) for all their support and as always encourage everyone to provide feedback or suggestions on our forums. We also have a survey anybody can take which includes questions relating to the content of PRMM 0.3 which can be found here (http://poll.realitymod.com/survey.php?sid=28) and a small gift after successfully completing it. See you on our forums or on the server!
Project Reality Trailer
We would once again like to thank [R-DEV] JS.Fortnight.A of the Project Reality mod for taking the time out to answer our questions as well as providing us with some exclusive images as well as the trailer. Stay tuned for more updates and eventually the release of this exciting mod.
