Mod HQ interviews Iron Grip!

[CrazyHarij]

The lads over at Mod HQ have just published a big interview with the team leader behind anticipated mod Iron Grip: The Oppression.[br]
The interview elaborates a lot on the combination of complex RTS and FPS elements the mod will revolve around, and it's obvious these guys have some really interesting ideas with the mod.[br]
Here's two short excerptst:

"We decided to experiment with various gameplay elements, and wanted to combine RTS with FPS in a unique way which hasn’t been done before. As a proof of concept we looked at board-games where this feature is “implemented”. We’re all fans of the board games we played as kids, in which you had a group of friends playing the “heroes” and one person playing the Evil villain. We basically started translating this aspect into our gameplay, with as extra letting the Evil Villain play RTS and actually build his minions!"

"
Q: Iron Grip seems to focus a lot more than usual on the RTS aspect, at least for players on the Rahmos team. How hard have your attempts to adopt Source to your gameplay design been?[br]</br>
A: Well, getting the RTS in this engine proved extremely hard to perfect, since we needed to build everything from scratch! We now have a fully functional RTS part of the game, with in game GUI etc. At the moment we’re trying to get the Resistance to function in its own way. FPS of course, but we want to get the Guerrilla-warfare in there, and not “rocket-jumping” Quake for instance."

[br]

Read this astounding interview in it's entirety right here!​

 

[Hugh_Jazz]

Gotta love unique ideas. I'd pay to play this mod... Well, I would if I wanted to, but I don't, so I won't. But it is looking very cool.

 

[aeroripper]

More games need the FPS\RTS blend... it has been done before (Ie... natural selection), but looks like those is closer to BF2.

I'd play it

 

[Al3xand3r]

Come on guys, read the interview, this really isn't like NS or BF2 at all (well, no more than any FPS is similar to another one), it's a new way to blend the two genres without compromising aspects of either.

 

[sk8boarder666]

Good interview. This will be an interesting mod to look forward too.

 

[bigburpco]

... Wow. Their ideas are quite cool. Good ideas, but IMO it sounds a bit like ZM.

 

[Mess]

Yeah sounds like Zombie Master only not as cool.

 

[Al3xand3r]

No offence to its developers, I look forward to it, but Zombie Master itself sounds a LOT like Possession, a game that is not yet released but has been known for a long time
http://www.youhavebeenpossessed.com/
The site doesn't have much but various good websites have had lengthy articles with more details about the gameplay.

Iron Grip has been, to my knowledge, in development longer than Zombie Master (I could be wrong). They seem to have done more progress too (or the Zombie Master devs don't show us much - damn them).

The "not as cool" part is arguable and depends on taste, the theme is totally different and the gameplay feel should end up just as different because of that.

Let's just hope both make it to the finish line

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Zombie Master was in development before Possession was announced.
Zombie Master started development in July 2005.
Zombie Master is at the beta stage of development - we just don't talk much about it. When the time comes, the news onslaught will begin.

 

[Al3xand3r]

I don't know when Possession was first announced but GameSpot's oldest news report regarding the game is dated back to April 2005. Of course, that doesn't mean GameSpot was the first ever website to mention Possession.

They don't seem to cover the game much, other websites have had articles with more details, explaining the multiplayer modes etc, while GameSpot has none.

A quick scan on the official website of the game shows that IGN had an article about it in May 2005.

Not to say that you guys ripped it off or anything, this is just in response to your reply above.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Well, you mentioned it in relation to ZM, not us.

 

[Al3xand3r]

And those guys mentioned ZM in relation to Iron Grip, so what

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

No offence to its developers, I look forward to it, but Zombie Master itself sounds a LOT like Possession,

What exactly was your point?

 

[Al3xand3r]

The same point people who said "it sounds a bit like ZM" when reffering to Iron Grip had, I suppose

 

[Sulkdodds]

It's not really much like posession at all really, as far as I can tell.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Relationships between Zombie Master and Iron Grip will be about the same as relationships between Warcraft and Age of Empires. Same genre (i.e. RTSFPS), very different playstyle. It's pretty coincidental how they ended with the same gameplay type, but I'll assure you they'll play very differently.

As for Iron Grip - it's definately one to look out for. Out of all of the mods I've seen previewed, this is one of the only ones that really gets my fingers tingling as if I'd just dipped them into monosodium glutamate. And they actually look like they're getting work done.

Big thumbs up to the Iron Grip team.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Ome_Vince]

ah

Although ZM and IG are totally different setups ( i totall agree with Angry_lawyer here ). I would like to correct the "online since" detail : Iron Grip was written December 2004, and online since January 2005.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=irongrip.net

Alexa info about IronGrip.net:
Online Since: 27-Jan-2005

Moddb profile registered since Mon 21st Feb, 2005
http://mods.moddb.com/4726/

Anyways, just to clear things up, we have been in production for a year now. Redoing alot of stuff as mentioned in the interview.

Btw, when is ZM due? Since i personally play alot of Zombie mods like ZombePanic and Brainbread, ZM should be a nice new approach to the genre

 

[Dr_Fripp]

Well, I hope Vince has cleared any confusion some could've had about the authenticity of our ideas. Angry Lawyer, I've known for a longer time that you've been busy with something similar since you mentioned you've been working on an RTS-perspective camera way back in this thread:

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76116

Back then we discussed the RTS gamestyle in HL2 as well, since we both wanted to implement the required camera type. It's a bit extreme to pretend it's "our" idea though: projection of a 3d point on the 2d image plane had been described in a VERC thread already before that point in time, so you can bet we aren't the only two people doing something RTS-style. I did forget to tell you that the work was meant for Iron Grip though, but that should be clear by now

Our approach tries pretty hard to incorporate as many components of the RTS genre as possible; it might be a bit of a bold step but it's worth finding out how far one can take such a thing. I get the feeling that Zombie Master is a bit more action-oriented than Iron Grip in that respect.