A while ago a mod was released called Riot Act and it was warmly received. I contacted the author and requested an interview. Like all people who are good at something he was quite busy and we only recently found the time to chat about the mod and some other stuff.
My name is Germano Guerrini, I’m a 31 years old gamer. I started mapping almost 10 years ago with Heretic 2 from Raven Software. I made 2 (unreleased) deathmatch maps which, luckily, I’ve lost?
Then I made some experiment with Quake 2, because Heretic 2 was a Third Person Shooter and I was more interested in designing a real FPS environment. After that I moved to Half-Life, and it was my first serious attempt to create something I can “safely” release. The result was “The Long Night”, a single player map pack counting 10 levels.
For the rest of the story, you just might want to visit my site.
It’s the first serious mod I released. A few years ago I started “The Falling star”, an ambitious single player mod for Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Sadly, it never saw the day of light.
Oh at the beginning “Riot Act” was a completely different mod. It spawned across three chapter, with a new vehicle (some sort of Combine jet ski), new weapons and environment… just like many other starting mods. I and Flavio Mauri (the guy who helped me with the design) made documents, sketches; I even created a Gantt chart. The lack of manpower changed it as you might have seen yourself. We retreated to a smaller and more manageable project. Cutting out features was not nice, but in the end it helped us to get focused on smaller details.
Well, I’d simply say: “Create something you would like to play”.
I try to reach a balance between the two. In fact, you start with a nice action bubble or puzzle idea, or you have a view about a nice vista. If you start to iterate on those concepts when you are still at a designing stage, they suddenly become two faces of the same medal. After all, balance is not a goal just for gamedesign, you know…
We had like 6/7 people playing it, and they tested the mod more than once during the development, at different stages. Their job has been fundamental, not only to debug the mod, but to dramatically improve gameplay, both on a large scale level and on a smaller one. We iterated through this process until we felt it played smooth enough. Of course, if you really want to have some advantages from a beta testing, you have to be ready to cut out or completely redesign parts of your maps if they don’t play well. Nothing should be set in stone.
It really depends on your taste. A lot of people liked the last level, and it really makes me happy because I spent endless hours on it. I made the bridge model in two weeks and I never used XSI before. But, in a lot of way, the best part of it is the second level to me, because it’s huge, it’s dense, it’s fun to play and it’s visually consistent. It even was the level where the collaboration with Flavio on the design reached the top, and, in a way, it ended the era of the “lonely wolf” designer.
Keeping things coordinated for such a long time has been a great challenge. In the end, the greatest lesson has been how to dose your efforts and measure your possibilities in order to complete a project setting the bar as high as possible, no more and no less.
I’m quite reluctant to give advices, it makes me feel pretty old 
, but in short I’d say: create a beta testers team and listen their advices.
Never underestimate the power of good dialectic.
That was for sure one of my favorite part, I always liked close quarter combats: to me it’s at heart of the FPS genre. Moreover, I was thinking about a prison map since Max Payne 2, even if I hadn’t the time to learn its level editor. Another important thing is that with Nova Prospekt we were able to reuse VALVe assets. We are a VERY small team, we all have a job, and creating hundreds of new textures or models probably would have been disastrous. My first objective with Riot Act was to create AND release the mod.
I’d make it longer and more various, and I’d expand the original Half-Life 2 universe with new locations. Also, I think we only scratch the surface with voice acting possibilities and narration. Again, you need a lot of man power if you really want to make original stuff.
I’d say so.
The classic “more of the same” comments . Honestly, I partially agree, but we were restricted by technical limitations.
Again, the lack of custom content.
The second one During the development I left my previous job, I moved to a new home, I got graduated, I got another job, I got married and some other things?. That’s why I say Riot Act is really the result of inexhaustible passion.
Leaving the judgment of my strengths to someone else, I’d say my biggest weakness is probably the lack of “wild thinking”. I’m working on it, though.
I know most of them since almost ten years now. Flavio Mauri is an old ICQ friend. You can really think of him as a co-author of Riot Act. Marco Capone, the hands modeler, is a pretty old colleague. We worked together at Multiplayer.it since 1999. And Michele De Luca, the musician, is Filippo’s brother, the author of “The Specialists” mod for Half-Life. The only “outsider” is Daniel Rodrigues, the voice actor, a guy from London who popped out all of a sudden saying: Hey, can I help you? A real bless
In the end, I’m pretty satisfied. Getting it done has been a great achievement. Obviously, everything is perfectible.
We recently surpassed 100.000 downloads, not counting it has been featured on a couple of DVD included in game magazines.
Not surprisingly, I think Minerva is the most polished to date. I was really looking forward to Nightfall and even Rogue Threat, which I shortly worked for, but they both got cancelled.
It looks like our real lives were eagerly waiting for us just behind the corner after the release, so it’s a hard decision. We had enough feedback from the community to know exactly what aspects we have to improve. We just have to decide if we will be able (and have time) to do it. We have a lot of ideas on the table, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I don’t have a favorite one, because they all have different style, and I like variations. And I’m not really interested in judging too I prefer to have sheer fun.
The first time I finished Double Dragon with a friend of mine. We were in a bar and I was like 10 (dang it! 20 years ago!), we had a crowd of – other – children behind our backs looking for our “performance”, spurring us, screaming like they were in a stadium. Amazing.
30th November 2007
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30th November 2007
Great interview, and I look forward to more…
…..and I remember “La Lunga Notte” – good HL1 mod.
30th November 2007
great interview i’m really curius if Germano has still RTCW content?
1st December 2007
Hey Stef,
yes, I still have some content: maps, textures, various scripts… even a website template:)
Are you interested in continuing it?
2nd December 2007
wow how awesome the mods the makers, PP again real games 4 gamers. loved this mod. hope theres more, even for pay {mods to mainstream} nice work!
2nd December 2007
Man sadly i have no experience and mostly no time if i want to continue playing and review stuff but the last really active people in the RTCW community that did a lot of translation and two mod (the fortress and 1 & 2 ) could perhaps do something with it…
in case here is his email address
vicpas1 @ gmail dot com
6th December 2007
I really enjoyed riot act, it is up there with the likes of Metastasis or Nightmare House for immersion and gameplay quality. Kudos Guys!
5th March 2008
Germano -
Thanks so much for making this mod. I didn’t know about it until a few days ago, when Jose mentioned it in the interview he and Chris did about their mod “The Citizen”
Your mod was GREAT! I love it when the antlions become your allies. There were many memorable battles and unique twists, but I never got lost or stuck anywhere.
Very enjoyable!
5th March 2008
the antlions become your allies in the Game, also
6th March 2008
Yes – that was one of my favorite features of the original game, but I’ve never had that feature in a mod – and I didn’t expect it. A nice surprise.