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A couple weeks ago, I interviewed the Warm Gun team, who’s the first mod team to be working on a full-fledged mod for the PS3. Today, I’m interviewing the Black Sierra mod team who are working on a cool UT3 mod in the same likeness as the upcoming game, Left 4 Dead.

Noobkiller; Once again, thank you for accepting this interview.
Pariah’s Guild is looking forward towards this upcoming mod.

Black Sierra Team: Thanks for having us.

Noobkiller; Okay, so tell me about yourself, and what’s your job in the
Black Sierra mod team?

Corey: I’m the mapper, coder, and I also texture. Micah is the animator, and he is also working on the playermodels. Tyler is the modeler, and is the one who has created all of the amazing weapons we’ve posted. He’s also creating the game objects and texturing. Mark is the music composer and sound designer.

Noobkiller; Is this the first time anyone on your mod has worked on an
Unreal engine?

Black Sierra Team: We’ve worked on afew other things for UT2k4. I myself started by created custom maps for other mods. Tyler was a modeler for other games, one of them being Battlefield 2. After me and Micah met, we started a small mod called Subvert, which was mostly used for learning the ropes and practice. Tyler joined us later, and we ended up making a community patch for another mod, which turned out pretty good. Mark, hasn’t worked with Unreal Engine before, but what sound guy does.

Noobkiller; From reading the mod’s profile on Moddb.com, the mod sounds incredible! Can you explain to the readers of the blog what’s the backstory for this mod?

Black Sierra Team: We decided in the end, we were going to use a unique creature, that’s always been around. Basically, the story goes; that even in modern times we (being the human race) haven’t really explored ALL there is to see, so not every creature bigger than a rabbit has been discovered. The two most unexlpored places would be deep in the ocean, and deep below the earth’s crust. So basically, up in the small region of mountain towns where mining is your typical job still, miners are digging and they just happen to hit where these creatures are nesting close to the surface in these caverns. The creatures, being as they’re underground, have to have a strict diet, consisting of each other and other things found in the caves that aren’t known to man. When the miners blow a hole straight into one of the nests in the mountain, these creature wind up feeling threatened (considering a giant wall just smashed into their nest) and they, being very territorial, attack the miners. Now that the wall is blown, there is a gateway to new land, as well as a good food source. So these creatures start spreading out of the caverns slowly, but as they are use to being eaten by their own kind, they spread wide, into the many different towns of Black Sierra. This is where the player comes in. There isn’t much contact to the mountain, and Search and Rescue workers have gone missing that were sent in to rescue miners. So the county steps it up, by sending in armed S.W.A.T members.

Noobkiller; Another thing I read in the modd.com profile is that the
mod will have fully explorable environments. Just how much can you
explore in the world of Black Sierra?

Black Sierra Team: A decent amount. It won’t be completely open like Oblivion, you will still be going from point A to point be, but theres freedom to take different paths.
An example would be a small town we are planning. You have to get from one side to the other, but inbetween that, you have the whole town to explore and many routes to take.

Noobkiller; Now that UT3 for the PS3 enables you to download mods, are
you considering making this mod downloadable for the PS3?

Black Sierra Team: Of course, unless we run into an obstacle that prevents us from doing so.
It wasn’t our main goal, but essentially we’ll be working on it.

Noobkiller; Why not?

Black Sierra Team: I see no reason to exclude them. It would be awesome to witness someone playing BS on a console, especially if split-screen is possible and your able to play with a
friend sitting next to you.

Noobkiller; The hard thing to do in horror games (or in horror themed
mods) is to create that “o, I just wet my pants” feeling. What are you
and your mod team doing to create these moments?

Black Sierra Team: We’ll be doing it through the creatures in general, instead of having a monster jump out at you from the dark constantly, we want to create an all around spine-chilling atmosphere. A big part of this will be done through sound, and the maps of course. But the creatures themselves will be a deadly and creepy creature. The way we see it, we want to creep the player out, not give them a heart attack. It’s a creepy feeling knowing some thing could be out there, anywhere, and you might not know it. A main thing in the game will be that the creatures will blend into their surrounding quite a bit that they’ll be hard to spot, even when they’re ten feet infront of you.

Noobkiller; Here’s a quote from the moddb.com profile explaining the
creatures in the game…

“Creatures that are faster than they are tough, quick to take down, but
tough to hit. These creatures have the element of surprise and speed on
their hands, with sharp talons and razorblade teeth the creatures of
Black Sierra will lung, run, and stalk their prey (you!)”

It sound like the AI is extremely advance. How did you achieve this?

Black Sierra Team: They aren’t advanced yet, we are still working on them. What we want them
to be is very quick, agile, and hard to hit, but they won’t take that many bullets to kill. They also do quite a bit of damage and can take you out if your not paying attention. Thats where teammates come in handy, as they can watch your back.

Noobkiller; Although this is a cooperative mod, will there be a variety
of gameplay modes available like story or last man standing?

Black Sierra Team: We want to focus mainly on the story and coop aspect, not so much smaller gamemodes that don’t really go with the mod. Meaning we don’t plan on having DM, or Last Man Standing. Most likely there will just be story mode, and many options to play it differently.

Noobkiller; When can we expect this mod to be released?

Black Sierra Team: When its done.

Noobkiller; Once again, thank you for accepting this interview. We are
looking forward towards the release of Black Sierra.

Black Sierra Team: It was fun writing this up with the team. Thanks again for having us, and remember to keep an eye out for updates each month on moddb or our website.

To learn more, please visit their website.

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