Way back in November 2007, Frere D’Arme was sitting at his computer and made a decision.
At the time he probably didn’t realize that nearly 4 years later his life would still be deeply connected with that moment.
But that’s not to say he is unhappy with where he finds himself.
A little while before that, Eaglesg had also made a decision. He was going to make Wilson’s Chronicles for Half-Life 1. And work started and progress was made. Then, along came Frere D’Arme with a request to remake Wilson’s Chronicles in Source.
Being a nice guy, Eaglesg said “yes” and so started the secret development of Half-Life: Rebellion. A few WIP images were posted on the Eaglesg Studio’s forum, but nothing else was said about it.
Both Frere D’Arme and Eaglesg love Half-Life and the idea of mapping and modding. This love is often underestimated in mod production.
Sure it’s easy to say you “love” something, but there’s a difference between “fun” and working for many years on a project. Too many modders don’t understand the commitment involved. These guys do.
Then came the inevitable name changing, which seems quite prevalent in the modding community! Eventually, we had Half-Life: Wilson Chronicles for the GoldSrc mod and Wilson Chronicles – The Second Encounter for the Source engine version.
Tick, tock, tick, tock and time passes and work progresses, until the second quarter of 2008. That’s when things go public and news plus images get posted to more websites. The modding world notices the mod and the pressure ups.
Alas, one year later Eaglesg stops work on the GoldSrc version and “The Second Encounter” is dropped from the Source title, leaving us where we are today.
Originally, Eaglesg had chosen the GoldSrc engine because he was familiar with it and the events in the mod take place at the same time as Half-Life. At some point he realised that the limitations of the engine were limiting his vision, which is a common occurrence in gaming.
When Frere D’Arme made his decision, he wasn’t completely new to modding. By then he had made “City 17″ for Half-Life 2, which first appeared in 2005.
The goal of this mod was to bring you Half-Life 2 Beta’s atmosphere, but it only ever got to the Beta stage. In addition, “Shooting Range“, also for HL2, appeared in Q4 2007. This little mod had little purpose in its 2 maps, but offered the possibility of Iron Sighting as well as motion blur.
“Half-Life 2: Old School” and “Cube Story” were two mods for the Source Engine created with Al Bundy, who is also level designer for Wilson’s Chronicles. Cube Story never made it to a full release but it doesn’t take a genius to see the concept could have influenced Minecraft.
Finding team members wasn’t too hard and eventually they got the people they needed. I get the feeling that this team is closer knit than most other teams.
Everybody seems to know what they are required to do and there is apparently very little “leading” by Frere D’Arme.
I wonder if he realises how lucky he is, not having to worry about the normal mod team squabbles and petty politics.
One thing that does worry me about the mod, is the fact they feel they need to finish the level design before considering the voice acting.
Personally I think that’s like writing a story and only writing about the locations and fitting the characters in at that point. Of course, the locations are hugely important in gaming, but the locations should be based AROUND the story, not the other way around.
That said, the story was finished before the mod started, so perhaps I am worrying for nothing.
You may have noticed that recently the mod has been showing lots of models. Frere D’Arme told me this was due to it being close to the mod’s third birthday.
Actually, that got me thinking…should a mod’s birthday be the day it was conceived or the day it was born?
Wilson Chronicles is unusual in another regard compared to other mods teams. They released a demo. Now, normally, when a mod team releases a demo it’s the end of the mod. The demo turns out to be the only release, but not in this case.
The release of the demo was designed to simulate crunch time and also a way of giving back to the community who had been supporting the mod thus far.
It was downloaded over 5,000 times on ModDB alone, and who knows where else, so there is clearly a strong desire from the community. I mentioned that even with so many downloads he only got 48 comments, was it worth it?
He gave me a fantastic answer…“I would prefer to have 48 constructive, useful comments, than 5,000 comments that say nothing helpful.
Almost without exception, the modding community enjoyed the demo, and it was a fine achievement, especially when you consider how small the team actually is.
After the release, the team became more motivated and and received some, although mostly, repetitive feedback. I have been told that the levels seen in the demo will be part of the final mod but “minus the bugs“. PHEW!
One aspect I approve of is the sharing of ideas between mod teams and Frere D’Arme is in contact with a few other mod leaders. This sort of thing is similar to the early days of HL modding, whereas today mod teams seem to be stuck in their own “Creation Cubicle”.
I asked Frere D’Arme if he would allow the release of assets after the mod’s release but he was a little cagey in his reply. Saying they have no plans to do that, but they will consider releasing an .FGD file containing the new entities, which would allow mappers to make maps for use with the mod.
He has good reason for wanting to keep the team’s work private a little longer. He plans to remake Half-Life: Uplink in the Source engine. He’s got ambition, you have to say that.
There’s also talk of a sequel, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!
Work continues, with about 14 to 20 hours a week, although not all of it on the mod. At no point has he considered given up, and rightly too, he says “That would mean I have wasted over 3 years of my free time!”. Eaglesg also adds that he only stopped development of the first version, so he could concentrate on the Source version.
Sometimes you have to make hard decisions, and this seemed to be one of them. He still helps with the mod when he can but his studies take most of his time.
Their current objective is to release before Black Mesa and have even reduced the mod’s scope to faciliate this. But this is a friendly rivalry, because Frere D’Arme has huge respect for BMS, even if they don’t seem to work with their community very well, as he puts it.
At no point will he compromise the quality of the mod though. He made that very clear. When it gets released it will be the best he and his team can do. In both Frere D’Arme’s and Eaglesg’s mind, the mod is very close to what they imagined they could make all those years ago.
It seems that at the mod’s inception, this was going to be Frere D’Arme’s last mod, so he wanted to go out with a bang! But the passion stirred from making the mod seems to motivate him even more.
We come back to another difference between this mod and many others…it’s not a portfolio piece. Frere D’Arme doesn’t particularly want to work in the games industry and Eaglesg was to be a graphic designer but not necessarily in gaming. This comes back to the “Love” part.
They are getting closer to a proper release but they still need a coder for some things. Some maps are finished as well as other aspects, but it’s difficult to put a percentage figure on it, so don’t ask.
The mod will feature custom music that may or may not get released separately after the mod’s release.
Without wanting to over stay my welcome, I ask one more question. “If you could contact yourself three years ago, what would you tell yourself?”
“I think that there is nothing to say except “good luck”" he says.
And so, that’s how I would like to finish this report. By saying “Good Luck” to Frere D’Arme and his team.
For more information about Wilson’s Chronicles, please visit either their homepage or their ModDB Profile.
This is a new style of post, one where I chat (voice, text, Steam etc) with mod leaders and some members of their team about their mod.
I may have access to unreleased material and occasionally play Beta versions of some parts of the mod.
All media display in these posts is exclusive to this site. Images 2, 4 and 6 have been slightly brightened.
If you have a mod you would like featured as a Mod Report, and it is close to release, please contact me to discuss it.
12th October 2011
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12th October 2011
I like this new style of post, it was very interesting and informative!
12th October 2011
Thanks, I am looking forwarding to writing more if mods allow me to.
12th October 2011
Thank you very much for this Mod Report, it is so great =)
12th October 2011
You are most welcome. Thank you for allow me access to the mod and answering all my questions.
12th October 2011
Thank you for the mod report on your website Philip
13th October 2011
I enjoyed this mod report. But phillip, did you manage to catch what kind of coding they needed done?
Also, Opposing Force 2 is nearing release. Maybe you should have a chat with Menter
13th October 2011
No, sorry, they weren’t specific about it. May I pass your email address on to them?
15th October 2011
That won’t be necessary, I’ll get in contact with them when I have some time over the weekend.
13th October 2011
Is going Wilson Chronicles to be the first mod to re-peak the HL2 modding scene??, well is a hard answer, but definitely is going to be the first one reviving the flame and passion for the HL universe as a whole, about a year ago or so, i asked Frere D’ Arme via Mod DB, if Wilson Chronicles was about to have a sequel in HL2 universe, and he answer me in a really nice and kind way, they actually think in that, and they could keep developing the stroy in the HL2 line. So maybe that was a little bit ambitious and probably we won’t see that further sequel after many many years in the future, but i mean there’s a freash hope and a spark in this guys, i mean many developers doesn’t even took the time for answer or set contact with the mere “mortal” gamer as i am in the most basic way of getting contact with a mod developer which is via messages in MOD DB, and he did settle contact with me so that’s a really significative aspect in this love and passion for HL developing, i reffer to get in touch with your community of potential enthusiast gamers.
I actually still don’t understand why a mod like 1187 in it’s really own and original cool way of retake the HL1 plot spirit universe and bring it back to life again via source and contecting the two HL Worlds, is kind of underestimated or disliked even by some gamers. I mean nowdays here’s the time for new ideas and specially for modders to built along with their creativity really cool and shiny projects as Wilson’s Chronicles, 1187 and BM Source, the great gap between the HL1 and HL2 universes is open for great developing scenarios such as i insist, (and not only for being fan of that sinester prt of HL storyline), the 7HR war!!!, come on!!, somebody lookat that excellent scenario to develop some great mods!!!!!!, is almost a virgin field to built and scratch and re-scratch in it!!!
Human Error is also on this kind of linking HL1 and HL2 universes together along with really good quality and creativity, and so far i’ve just loved 1187 and HE, and rated it as Personal Favourites here on PP, so i mean this recent tendences in HL modding leads me only to one big hypothesis:
I mean just look at 1187 mod!!!!, 34,663 downloads via Mod DB plus the 442 here in PP, untill the time i’m writing this!!!!!, anyone can say 1187 is poor or a faliure, maybe has its dark details indeed but is not a fail i am convinced of that.
And finally i think when WC is released and BM too, this modding scenario never will be the same again let’s face it, these project are here to make history and they will do it, that’s for sure even if we like that as gamers or not.
13th October 2011
Yes, it’s very interesting and informative article.
Mod Report is a good idea IMHO. Good to read about history and some “behind the courtain” informations of a Mod.
I played the demo of Wilson Chronicles for Source,
but was very memory intensive on my computer (1 GB RAM, 2GHz CPU, onboard videocard).
However the graphics are beautiful, and it’s Black Mesa!
Thank You, Phillip for this article!
13th October 2011
I’m glad you enjoyed the article. Sorry to hear the demo gave your PC trouble.
13th October 2011
Hey I’m FrEEmAn, member of the Wilson Chronicles devteam as mapper (actually I mapped the first three screenshots of the article, Frere D’arme helped me for some details), there were some optimisation problems with the demo, some of them are just fixed now and it runs really well on most recent PCs. But it’s clear that your PC is a bit old for this kind of mod.
13th October 2011
Yes, now is better (2GB RAM, faster HDD).
I think i will try again…
I have no problems with other Source mods however.
And i’m glad to see more and more posts on this site…
13th October 2011
Now THIS I liked…very nice indeed, good demo. Will look forward to the whole thing sometime, the standard is probably the best I’ve seen, nice textures, effects (love the explosions), realistic sounds…just generally good looking….
17th October 2011
Hey, i played the demo this weekend (without lag).
It’s very good, textures, lighting, models all nice.
It will be a great mod, i can’t wait for the full version.
Congratulations to the mod makers.
BTW the vorts are very strong, they kill you instantly.
25th October 2011
Dear Phillip,
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
great article, thank you.
Best, – Jeff
p.s. LOVED Mission Improbable; the ending made me say “Nooooooooo, is that the end??” Congrats.
28th November 2011
look at it its amazing and its been in development for such a little time by such a small team these guys need to get hired!