Part 1 - AQ2
Part 2 - AHLSo back in the beginning, December 1997. Quake2 is released. I personally, along with many, start playing it almost non stop. At the time I was in second year at college, and I can safely say I nearly flunked out because of Quake2. I played it for atleast an hour or more a day with friends in a private computer lab at the school. Soon I was making maps with Qoole; evil maps with lots of ways to horribly die. By the start of January we were playing entirely on my poorly textured death trap maps. Having mapped and modeled with Quake, I quickly started making some models. I replaced the blaster pistol with my own terrible creation, complete with terrible texture. It was safe to say I was well on the way to being hooked on modding Quake2.
By the end of January I was crawling all over Telefragged, looking for new mods all the time. Thats about when I noticed Action Quake2. I downloaded and installed it, crashed my server over and over with the coffee can handcannon. Loved it. That was version .32, or so. I forget to be honest. I quickly got tired of the maps and offered my services to the small team of 4. These 4 guys were probably some of the more interesting people I had met in the mod scene; they did not care if other people liked the game, only that they did. Born out of lan gaming with their small group, and a love of all things Action movies, they had created this very rough mod. Cail, Bartender, Pietro, and Vain.
I never did talk to Vain, and was told he pretty much did not go on the net, ever. So I can't really comment much on him. I did spend a lot of time chatting with Cail on ICQ, and to a lesser extent Bartender and Pietro. I really enjoyed the chats, the play testing, all of it. By time my first map, Mall, was released officially, I had logged dozens of hours play testing with the guys on a private server. It was fair to say we were friends by then, not just a team like is so common today. I was obviously more the outsider, not living next door to the other guys, but I none the less felt like one of the guys.
After working on some more mapping, I quickly set out to make all new models, because at the time the only models we had were reskinned and mangled Quake2 models, fun looking, but not very cool. I got maybe halfway done with some new models when a certain somebody showed up with a gift. Most of you will know Gooseman from Counterstrike, but back then he was the Navy Seals mod guy. Well turns out he was having issues with the team working on Navy Seals 2 and decided to drop the mod altogether. Problem was he had these amazing models, and code to drive them just sitting around. We of course accepted this gift and the next release of Action Quake 2, .92, changed the modding world.
With Gooseman's weapon models, and a bunch of newer maps, Action looked better than anything else at the time. The popularity was immense and immediate. Following the .92 release, the M4 was added into later releases, along with more maps; another player, Suislide whom later joined the team, contributed a new handcannon model too. I personally contributed Mall, Mall2, Cliff, and Cliff2 to the mod officially. All fun maps in their time. Unofficially there was also Mall3, a massive capture the brief case map, and a Cliff3 which looked way better than previous Cliff's, but played terrible.
Some of the more fun times I had play testing were when I was developing Cliff2. I had an entire AQ2 clan devote a server and their time to the development of that map. It was a great experience, and I thanked them in the map's readme. Probably the next best time was playing against Captain Immortal and his brother. You may remember the audio show he did back then, its name has slipped my mind. He and his brother loved to play AQ2, so we would invite them into private play testing sessions. Its fair to say they were good, as we usually lost to them.
With all this popularity, ranked the #1 Quake2 mod for a while, a funny thing happened. id called up Cail one day in July 1998; they wanted to pay us to put the mod on a retail expansion pack. Quake2 Extremities. We were so excited. A tonne of work later, and I do mean a tonne, we shipped out the final zip to id. There is one thing I would like to say at this point, something that has always bothered me greatly. I origionally liased with Todd Hollenshead directly to assemble the map pack that would go on the CD. I spent lots of time replacing textures that would conflict with copyrights with the help of map authors. It took 2 weeks to assemble this map pack. I sent it off. One of the other team members decided to send a different map pack 2 days later without telling me, the map pack that was used for the CD; the map pack that had a single crucial difference. All of my maps had been taken out. I was pissed to say the least, and have long since gotten over it. I just had to make note of it. To console me somewhat, for whatever reason, I got top billing on the credits in the CD sleeve. I didn't deserve that, but I did. I guess talking to Todd on the phone, I was memorable.
After Extremities was released, and royalities started trickling in, the team sort of went our own ways for a while. I was going to work with Bartender on his game, The Jolly Roger, Cail and Suislide started on Action Halflife. Gooseman started on Counterstrike. The team fell apart. Even the AQ2 souce code was given to others for updates. Some time went by. If anyone ever wondered how much we made off of extremeties, it wasn't much. Worked out to about $700 USD each.
Part 3 -AUT99Action Halflife was started as soon as the game and tools were available. Valve had contacted Cail, and sold him on the engine. It was a logical step, Action Quake2 was done after all. Cail started coding, Suislide started modeling. Action HalfeLife Beta 1 was shown off at E3 in the valve booth in 1999 for the first time. It included most of the same features as AQ2 at that time. Not bad for a few months development time. This version was never released to the public, the following beta 2 version was. Quickly followed by a beta 2.1 patch, then a beta 2.5 patch. The 2.5 version was playable for longer than 5 minutes, not crashing peoples systems. It was not recieved well sadly due to game play issues, sub-par graphics, and Counterstrike. During that time the team lost Cail, adding Oddjob, Mr.Grim, Raven, Rawhyde, Holy Goat, and Lacutis in time for Beta 3 and the new Millenium; not to mention a little thing called dives.
Beta 3 added in probably the most notable feature of AHL, which was dives. This was a feature not found on any other FPS game, and something you either hated or loved. I loved it myself, and spent hours playing Beta 3 with people, usually in Doombank. I actually attended a lan party in January 2000, Undream's Lan party in Michigan, where I brought an early version of Beta 3, which we played a little. In truth we spent more time playing AQ2 than anything, not bad for a nearly 2 year old mod. Shortly after Beta 3 was released, Valve broke it with a patch. This was to be a trend sadly. Beta 3.5 was released, without dives. There was a pause in development at this point, certain things happened that I will outline later, but the team was busy. Suislide left. I happened to rejoin the team to work on Beta 4, no longer making maps, but making weapon models. This was something I had been working on for months previously, making replacement weapon models, and contributing to the then simple Haven O' Frags website.
On the Haven O' Frags website I would like to say a little. Its probably where I personally made my largest contribution to anything Action related, outside of the A-Team. From contributing models to the site, writing the odd review, and helping revamp the backend code of the site, I spent almost as much time on the site as I did on beta 4. Borg was a really fun guy to work with, so were the other guys like Paingypsy and Luebbi. I have always regretted not leaving my Canadian home to visit one of Borg's lan parties. I have probably missed out on one of the greatest Action experiences during my life time. I suppose I just want to get across what an excellent experience it was working on this website; I learned a great deal, and had a great time doing it.
Back on track with Beta 4, which we worked on rather hard. As Beta 4 matured, so did the graphics. No longer did we have the older look of pre beta 4 versions, but a newer look, with better animations, and much nicer models. Player models, weapon models, tonnes of models and animation were added. I personally worked on the Beretta, 1911, M4, MSG90, and Hand Cannon. For the next couple of years I just loved making new beretta and 1911 replacement models, along with some fairly memorable animations, including the twirly ruger's which was a pretty popular model skinned by Svugg, whom I hope some of you will remember. Of note is also Deimos, from FLF, who skinned the M4 and modeled, skinned and animated the MP5; as well as modeling, skinning, and animating the SAA pistols. Lplasma did the work on the shotgun and knife. Oddjob modeled the MSG90 and Handcannon, as well as skinned the beretta and 1911's. Oddjob also touched up the beretta animations. All in all it was a lot of work on weapon models alone, with a lot of excellent talent involved. I am not going to say it all went smooth, because it didn't. Artists don't always see eye to eye; but it did go well. I especially enjoyed working with Deimos, he is a great guy to work with. Fun guy to play with as well.
During Beta 3 MrGrim had dropped out of the picture, ushering in a new coder, Payback. Payback probably turned out to be the best thing to happen to AHL, as his coding skills allowed the mod to truly mature into what it is today; a clean, stable, well playing mod that stand alone to any other mod out there. Payback is a great guy, and I am sorry he has withdrawn from the community. Hes a guy I once offered a free place to live when he was considering coming over to Canada to find work. Hes a smart guy, and good friend. I am sorry hes dropped from the face of the internet. Payback, if you read this, drop a post here.
While all this modeling and coding was going on there were also maps being made. I wish I could recall just all who did maps, but I can't. Rawhyde did the Wicked series of maps, while Holy Goat made some great maps like Asylum. New comers also started contributing maps, like Banana, who I think we can all agree is a great talent at maps. I miss working with Rawhyde, who started his own company up in northern Canada and sort of fell off the face of the planet. I miss workin with Holy Goat as well, his skills as both a mapper and texture artist were grand. Banana I think would be my favorite mapper though. He has a feel for map flow that I have not seen, and I think its a shame no game company has picked him up; Banana, if you're reading this, I am lying, don't let it goto your head.
Beta 4 came and went. Beta 4.5 came to fix valve's patch. Beta 5, and its later revisions, followed that. Nothing remarkable happened. Team members left. New ones joined. By time AHL V1.0 was released almost nobody origional was left, they had moved on to other things, as had I. I'll get to that story next.
Part 4 - AUT2k4As I previously mentioned, when we broke apart after AQ2 I intended to work with Bartender on his project The Jolly Roger. Sadly to say not much happened with it at first, I got bored, and moved on. Seeing the popularity of Half Life mods, and the progress of AHL I decided that instead of pushing my way back onto the AHL team I would start work on something else, something nobody heard of. Action Quake3. Thats right boys and girls. In mid 1999 I started work on an Action Quake3. I started building a team, website, working on the mod, etc. I actually had a map and some models prepared at the time; it was going to be great, and it was what the fans wanted. It was at this point the AHL team contacted me in a panic. They did not want me to do an AQ3, to which I replied, so? Cail and Suislide were both gone, and I figured if anyone had a claim to the name, it was me more than them. I was 22 at the time, not as mature as I could have been. After a couple of semi heated arguments they let me in on the secret. EPIC had approached them seeing the success of AQ2, and the potential of AHL, they wanted us to make the next Action on the Unreal engine. Having previous experience myself, I was excited by the prospect, but not ready to drop AQ3. EPIC helped me with my decision.
First, they only wanted to see AUT, not AUT and AQ3. So an AQ3 was out of the question. Second, and probably the most persuasive, they were offering us money. For the second time I was going to make money by making a game mod. Seemed pretty cool to me, especially with extremities not that far in the past. I should clarify, they weren't going to give us cash, but they were going to give us anything we needed to continue. After personally speaking with Mark Rein on the phone several times, he actually insisted on talking to the most senior team member not the leader, we agreed on new computer systems for most of the guys, and software; as well as free copies of UT of course. 2000 rolled around, and so did all our free stuff. Most of us got Pentium III 667's with G Force 2GTS's. Pretty hot systems for the day. A couple of use got full copies of 3DS Max as well. The team at the time consisted of Oddjob, Raven, Rawhyde, MrGrim, Holy Goat, and myself. Good bunch of guys really.
It is at this point that I had some serious personal issues, and was only able to contribute to the mod in what I would call my strongest way, as a consultant almost. You see, after all the time I had spent working on so many game engines, I had something no one else on the team did, which was an ability to figure out damn near anything. It was a great spot for me, given that I could only be on the net for about 2 hours a week. So I did my best, and helped as best I could. Sadly we needed to bring in another modeler to fill my void. The guys found a really talented fellow with the handle Elmek. This guy was done professional work, and I hate to admit it, but he put my work at the time to shame. By time I was as good as he was, I was working a lot on AHL B4 stuff. My primary contribution to this stage of the mod was making decoration models for maps. I even made lots of glass object that exploded when shot. I had a lot of fun doing that. It was simple work, but it kept me in the game, and having fun. I also worked on adding in a simple MP3 player into the engine, which was later perfected by Gage. The last major thing I added was the ability to select the weapon mesh being loaded through an .ini file. My ultimate goal was to integrate an AHL Armoury like application directly into the mod. You would just add model packs to the right folder, and they would show up in the ingame menu. I never finished it, but I had a rough working version.
By spring 2000 we had a working multiplayer demo with full weapons, player models, maps, new hud, even dives; everything. We even had a new feature, that like diving, had never been seen before. We had implemented a mixed akimbo system. You could have any gun, in any hand, in which ever way you liked. The same system was featured in AUT2K4, but not quite as we had it back then. We had a working game, that was fun to play. As outlined in our deal with EPIC we sent it to them before a release. They looked it over, and one week later made us an offer that almost destroyed us.
One long week after sending them our multiplayer demo, fully working with several maps, they got back in touch with us. EPIC loved what they saw in the multiplayer demo, saw incredible potential in us as a team, and requested a single player demo. A single playable level with weapons, some bad guys, and a rough story line with some ingame cinematics. Nothing big, just a demo of what we could do with their engine. If we came up with something as good as our multiplayer demo, EPIC offered to fund us for 2 years to produce a game on their next generation engine, engine liecense included of course. Talk about throwing a dog a bone, we nearly exploded with excitement. How many mod teams get this chance? Not many that I know of anyway. We absolutely blew it.
We started off with good intentions, right up to the point when MrGrim vanished off the net in the summer of 2000. In a panick we found a new young programmer with the handle of Gage. Gage is a great guy, smart, and easy to work with. When Gage started he had a hard time with MrGrim's source code; MrGrim had his own style of coding, which doesn't always make sense to others, but usually works. Gage decided to rewrite the code base himself. We as a team let him. This was mistake number one. We should have stuck with the working code base, and worked with it. Instead we started over from scratch. That set us back 6 months. Taking us into 2001, work slowed. Team members started to fight. We didn't quite have the multiplayer demo back, and no work on the single player was started. Tension among team members led to fights, which led to people quiting. Half the guys were young as well, and getting ready to go off to school. That didn't bode well for us either. We still had time to get the single player demo in on time, but it was running out fast. EPIC extended us until May 2001. We missed that date, with almost no progress. It was at this point that I knew we were not going to make it, that we had lost our chance of breaking into the professional level of game development. I gave up almost entirely shifting my work over to AHL almost totally.
The team continued to fragment, and by the end of 2001 work on AUT stopped, the game lost. It was a shame. It was a fun game. I regret the failure of the project to this day still. I often wonder what may have happened. I also regret not releasing what we had done, our almost complete game. I did eventually, on this very board release it, but not until 2005, 4 years later.
Who know what may have happened had we succeeded; you may have seen a real Action game, instead of the mods. The world may have been better for it, or maybe not. I suppose we'll never know, and thats probably what bothers me the most about it. I had a good time working with the people I did on this project. I enjoyed the game, the making of it, playing it. All of it. For a while there I enjoyed the thought of actually making it into the big times. In a way I did I suppose, people still remember us, still play what we made. In a way that makes us immortal.
I keep meaning to get around to doing up an AUT2K4/2K3 breakdown as well, seeing as how I was actually involved, although not much, in those as well. I found doing the last 3 so emotionally draining, especially the AUT99 one, that I haven't had the desire to actually do the final one.
As for retiring the franchise, that decision was made jointly between payback, oddjob, and myself. After AUT, and then the essential failure of AUT2K4 in regards to the MSUC, as well as in general, it was decided it was time for a break. Not wanting to give up creative control, but not willing to continue it either, we chose to retire it. I think the entire story speaks for itself really. AQ2 through to AUT2K4. Amazing success + amazing failure == getting no where.
where you got that?
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