Return to Mana Media Release

[Sui]

It’s been forty-three years since the war. Forty-three years since the Empire’s relentless invasion came to an end… forty-three years since the ancient magic, mana, was the only thing standing between your kingdom and the immense destructive power that had come to claim it. And now, just as the scars from that conflict are finally melting away, the darkness has returned. Your kingdom is once again on the brink of war. Your kingdom is once again in need of heroes. Will you bear this responsibility, and defend your lands? [br] [br] If it looks as good as this, hell yes. [br] [br] Now, there are lots of ambitious mods in development presently, most promising a great deal yet delivering very little- but Return to Mana is different. Just look at these media shots. The RtM team have already sculpted a stunningly beautiful landscape; lush trees in a haze of lime shimmer from sunlight that pours from clouds above... the scenery looks more like it’s been painted in watercolours than stuck together in Source. Just take a look for yourself: [br]

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[br]Make sure you visit their site here. If you can’t read German, you may have a little trouble browsing through, but you can just take after me and look at the pictures. Apparently there’s an English site- somewhere- so I’ll keep you posted if I find it. [br] Update: *Ahem* English Site

 

[Sulkdodds]

I love the way they've actually managed to stylise the visuals so much, to create the cartoonish, vivid kind of look. It's a thing few mod teams or even game developers do, and it's not just simple cell-shading either. It looks incredibly cool and original.

Yeah, I translated the whole damn story for Suicide before we realised there was an English site.

43 years ago, the world was at war. The Empire, using pillaged ancient technology, came from the East, invading our kingdom - and we were powerlesss to stop them.

All seemed lost until 3 heroes took their first steps towards the Empire. They used the power of the Mana, the world's oldest form of magic, to try
and destroy the Empire - but at a terrible price.

The mana vanished from the world. Without it, the 'reason framework' was shaken but the Kingdom survived its place in this world and thus began the long road to reconstruction.

Now the peace that lasted 43 years begins to crumble,and reports from the East tell of the Empire's re-arnament, as monsters once again walk the forests. The clouds the war hover again over our kingdom. A new hero must rise.

The time for peace has passed. It is time to Return to Mana.

On an entirely different note, go buy darwinia.

 

[GonzoBabbleshit]

On an entirely different note, go buy darwinia.

Are we on commision!?

 

[Sulkdodds]

Naw, I just <3 it.

I will endeavour to be more objective in future.

 

[GonzoBabbleshit]

I don't mind, it's not like someone telling me to buy is gonna actually convince me!

I've downloaded the demo, I'll play it when I can be bothered...

 

[Salamandra]

AHHH! My eyes!!! (really, really colourful)

Looks very nice. Although some of that shrubbery looks... strange.

 

[Loke]

Is it just me or does the waterfall look like... Liquid?

Other than that, looks splendid.

 

[JNightshade]

Looks great, except for the player model. That face looks pretty fugly to me...

 

[Ren.182]

The waterfall looks like liquid metal but damn... i love it!
The environments look so good...
Looking forward to this mod.

 

[The Mullinator]

I remember seeing screens of this way back when Half-Life 2 was first released. I was very disapointed for awhile though because I thought the mod died. Now I see these and it brings a big grin to my face. :E

I absolutely love the graphical style and setting for this. It is a welcome change from the standard mod fare that we get with most first person shooters.

 

[houndeye]

Holy J. Crapnuts! Who cares about gameplay when your mod looks like that?! I could be happy just walking around that happy little world... And that little cotton ball monster is super cute!

 

[omikron]

ok so the way they did that little cute thing is.....a map with another one on top and a mask applied to the top one, am I right ? (btw I m talking about this weird fur looking texture used on it it) I like it, very original.

 

[ZoFreX]

I don't like the visuals much.. the foliage just looks crap to me :/

 

[bigburpco]

Don't like the cartoonish foliage... Eclipse's, now, was very nice (could have been longer though).

 

[JNightshade]

yeah, Eclipse was sick. If it were a full game, it would rock quite hard.

 

[bigburpco]

The cliff face is quite nice, though. Eclipse didn't really have plateaus, and it could have done with some.

 

[Captain M4d]

Wow, that is beautiful.

 

[OvA]

Firby of DOOOOMMM

 

[Mountain Man]

Looks awesome. I just hope the devs have their shit together with the owners of the "Mana" IP so this thing doesn't get Foxed before release.

 

[Kon]

foliage definatly needs work, all the trees look the same. The waterfalls need a more sprayed look aswell, perhaps replace them with some large falling particles?.

 

[NeoNight]

looks good am glad to hear the MOD is still in production. Then again the devs did say they expected the mod to be out in like 3 years or more.

 

[Birdie]

That's not water, it's mercury, melt silver or something. It just shouts "yaaay, advanced shaders!" like some friggin' 3dMark01. I always loved how Half-Life 2 kept things realistic and didn't overuse the enviroment mapping etc. Also, the main character's face looks a bit crooked, the modeler should check on that.

Now, that was just nitpicking, and nitpicking is a favorable form of criticism because that means that I don't see any major flaws in the design and have to "whine" about the small and quite irrelevant things. Though, the beauty is in the details, as they say.

Looking forward to this one, too, whenever it's gonna be released.

 

[Kalashnikov]

Looking great! My only comment would be "is that a crowbar in the bottom right corner?"

 

[Betelgeuze]

Most original looking HL2 mod so far!

 

[Dr. Freeman]

Looks great, except for the player model. That face looks pretty fugly to me...

i agree, it all looks pretty except for the player model.
anyway very interesting.

 

[Yogibbear]

Looking great! My only comment would be "is that a crowbar in the bottom right corner?"

Yes it is! My god how original! Crowbar bashings with Mana...

 

[Sulkdodds]

Looks awesome. I just hope the devs have their shit together with the owners of the "Mana" IP so this thing doesn't get Foxed before release.

IP...?

Oh shit, it's based on Secret of Mana isn't it? We're going to need confirmation that they've got the IP if we're allowed to make any more news posts on it. D:

 

[Sui]

IP...?

Oh shit, it's based on Secret of Mana isn't it? We're going to need confirmation that they've got the IP if we're allowed to make any more news posts on it. D:

Only if they've specificly stated that it is a mod based around "Secret of Mana". "Mana" in itself isn't a copywrited term, and most of the monsters on the site look unique to the mod.

 

[Dodo]

Most original looking HL2 mod so far!

no it isnt. they use the term "mana"... that isnt original.
and the dudes face looks ugly.

-dodo

 

[Murray]

Looks like a really neat mod that. I hope it turns out a good remake of the original game. Looking forward to it.

 

[Ren.182]

I want to see it with HDR ^_^
I think the mod would have been stopped by now if the creators of "Secret of mana" didn't want it made...

 

[VictimOfScience]

Wow. I am glad they have continued with the development of this terrific mod. They have been working hard and it is really paying off. I love the style. Such a deviation from the norm--can't wait for this one! :thumbs:

 

[polyguns]

it looks fabulicious. i want to kill one of those little furries and eat it. to all those TROLLS ( see pumi i can name call too) ya don't know what your talking about, this is sweetness modding 101.

about the water, i love it. why not have mecury flowing through streams on alien worlds?

 

[Kon]

the characters look to be taken from the game, so i dont see how it is original

 

[Mountain Man]

Only if they've specificly stated that it is a mod based around "Secret of Mana". "Mana" in itself isn't a copywrited term, and most of the monsters on the site look unique to the mod.

Hmmm...perhaps you are correct. I remember when this mod was first announced, it was billed as an unofficial sequel to "Secret of Mana" and they planned to use characters and locations from that game, but it seems they've removed all references to the previous "Mana" games (except in the title, of course) and are a creating a new game in the same style as "Secret of Mana", which is how it should be.

If that's the case then I will allow myself to get excited, but I'd love to see some confirmation from the developers.

 

[StardogChampion]

You still can't remake a game in 3D then give it a different name.

How hard can it be to do an original RPG?

 

[iMMuNiTy]

Heh. Like the crowbar "easter egg".

 

[MobiusDC]

Hi. I'm Dylan "Mobius" Biery of the RTM development teamand I just wanted to stop in.

First RTM is in now way related to the square game, "Secret of Mana". While the origional goal of the team WAS to remake SOM, IP problems showed their ugly head.

While RTM hopefully carries the spirt that made SOM such a good game, we have created a unique game in our own world, populated by our own characters.

At its core RTM is a 3 player adventure game where the players use elemental magics to defeat evil. So in short, the game that was once based on SOM is now a different type of monster, ours.

Getting to your comments about the game. First creating a waterfall was one of the single most frustrating parts of the development process. All i can say is that it looks better in game now that we threw a new entity over the base water model to "break it up"

On the model side our mod has been plagued with modelers that never stay with the project for various reasons. Dieblien, the project lead has done a great job modeling the monsters but he admits that his main character models are sub par. We continue to seek the help of a professional level modeler that will stick with the project, if we dont get one then meh. The human characts will look alittle bad but the gameplay, levels, and story should make that up.

On the look of the game, Outlive our main texture artist drew everything you will see in the game by hand, no textures from photos nor anything from what came in HL2. Some people love the look, some don't

Lastly on the trees, it has been another pain to get something that looks like a tree and fits in our world. we resently replaced all our old bushs/trees with what you see and are working on tweaking each level to make sure all the trees look different (as best we can)

and thanks for showing an intrest in the mod

visit us at returntomana.com

 

[The Mullinator]

Just out of curiosity do you think you could release something kind of like an "artistic demo" to show off the level design. When I look at those screenshots I can actually see myself occasionally getting lost in them and simply wandering around for the fun of it. I was wondering if you ever considered releasing a level just for exploring and seeing the kind of unique artistry with this game long before any actual mod release? No enemies, no NPC's, just a player entity and the terrain.

I would absolutely love that and it would probably get a lot of people very interested.

Anyway, it is good to hear that there probably won't be any IP related problems. It always sucks when a good looking and promising mod is never able to release because of IP rights.

 

[MobiusDC]

Our goal over the past year was two part.

First we wanted to create all the things we felt the mod needed (trees, volumetric grass, waterfalls, ect) and mod the HL2 engine as needed.

Second we are in the final stages of combining all of our work into a CXP, our proof of concept that will include 1 character playing the first few maps. While this mini demo is ment to let the coders refine the game play while the levels, monsters, and NPC's are developed seperatly, there is a stong possibility that the CXP will be released along with lots of gameplay video.

Once we get a game that works we will spend now till completion churing out more maps, mobs, and spells untill we have a real game (5-8 hours worth of play).

So keep an eye out for some gameplay soon as it will come with a big recruitment drive, then it will be another long haul of development and testing before a public release