The Australian has redesigned his mod for Skyrim into a separate game

Nick Pearce has developed a popular mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim called The Forgotten City. For his project, he received an award from the Writers’ Union of Australia, and now he is making a full-fledged game based on the mod.

According to Pierce, he spent 1,700 hours developing the mod. The mod was highly appreciated by the players, and the creation of the game looked like a logical step, but at first Nick doubted:

• he had no such experience;
• he didn’t know if it would be legal to release a game based on the mod;
• he had doubts that fans of the mod would want to play The Forgotten City again, albeit improved and in a new setting.

Gameplay fashion The Forgotten City.

Dan Pinchbeck, the author of the experimental game Dear Esther, which itself was once a mod for Half-Life 2, helped Pierce to decide. Pinchbeck said that fans calmly reacted to the fact that they made a separate game out of the mod.

Discussing legal issues with Bethesda took Pierce about a year, but finally the parties agreed. The most important thing remained – to make the actual game.

Nick decided to quit his job and hire a programmer who had previously worked on the VR game Earthlight: Lunar Mission. Pierce tried out several engines: Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, Lumberyard – and settled on the first one.

He restored the first scene of the mod using assets purchased on the Unreal Marketplace. The iClone and Character Creator created the characters, and recorded their lip movements using the Perception Neuron mocap suit. When the result became acceptable enough, Nick went to the government organization Film Victoria, showed them the project and … received a grant, thanks to which it was possible to continue working on the game (Nick did not announce the amount, but Film Victoria grants for game developers reach up to $ 150,000 – approx.).

The draft version of The Forgotten City looked like this.

Often, the decision to use purchased assets is criticized – most recently, the creator of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Brendan Green, had to justify himself for this. However, Nick Pierce is sure that such a decision is quite justified: it is necessary to bring the game to the largest possible audience and at the lowest price.

“Many independent developers, including PUBG authors, use original art together with high-quality, but licensed art. This reduces the cost of development, and therefore makes the game more accessible to players. That’s why PUBG costs $30, not $80. Therefore, paid assets are good for both developers and players.”

One of the made locations of the future game.

In the end, Pierce emphasizes, the main thing in his project is not the game elements, but the plot and the stories of the characters, many of which, by the way, he borrowed from his law practice.

“I constantly receive letters from fans who tell me which of the fashion finales made them cry, which plot twist made them jump on the spot or scream at the screen, which character broke their heart, and how they would like there to be more such games in the world.”

The release of The Forgotten City is scheduled for 2019, and the trailer of the game can be viewed now:

Also on the topic:

• How to make games faster and cheaper — Spearhead Games tips
• Director of Bethesda: authors of large projects should take risks

Source: Kotaku