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I haven't got the chance to get my hands on PC Zone's 200th landmark issue, but Computer and Video Games did and was kind enough to provide an outline of Deus Ex 3's story as well as share their feelings of the whooping ten-page preview featured in the magazine. In a nutshell, they were particularly impressed by the new art style which is unlike to any Unreal Engine game currently on the market, yet raise some potential objections about the newly introduced gameplay mechanics which could, as one comment cogently points out, make the game more action-focused than ever before. At any rate, if some of you had that magazine, I should be more than glad to hear your take on the preview!

The story:

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You're cast as average joe Adam Jensen, who works as a private security officer at a technology lab specialising in biomechanical augmentations, a forerunner to the sort of nanotechnology shown in the original Deus Ex. One day the path of his life is unexpectedly altered as a team of black ops commandos break into his company's HQ, and using a security plan from Jensen's own hand, a mass slaughter ensues and the conspiracy begins.

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Controversial gameplay mechanics:

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Combat won't be influenced by stats, but will rely purely on your personal marksmanship skills. Instead stats will influence "a vast array of fully upgradeable and customisable weapons", and you'll be able to tailor your arsenal to your play style with mag upgrades, scopes and other add-ons.

What's more, stealth will now rely on a cover system rather than shadows, and damage will be dealt with by a very Call of Duty-style auto-heal. There's probably going to be some debate over those two.

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Thanks Gishank and cheer up!

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The title of this news post is quite an accurate description of an awesome level which ZeroPresence has just completed (as well as a quote from an equally awesome movie). That's all I'll say about that level for now, as it's designated *Secret*.

As usual, progress has been progressively productive, a virtual preponderance in predominantly prosperous new products. Code and graphics are all coming along as well as they have ever been, and mapping is chugging along even with our shorthanded mapping crew. Speaking of that, we still need mappers! We may be able to "get by" with our current team, but an extra mapper or two would serve to greatly increase productivity. If you think you have the 'm4d sk1llz' required, please contact us!

We have again failed to update the POTW, but never fear! We have instead updated the Maps section of the Media area. The update includes 3 new shots of the Slums, 2 new shots of the Downtown Sector, 2 new shots of the Weapon Shop and 2 shots of the never before seen PartyZone club! That should keep you all busy for a while.

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This week your news update is once again brought to you by me due to Trestkon's... general... business. Or something.

I realize this week's POTW may need a better explanation than what is given in the comment. It actually displays a feature we added a long time ago, but only recently got around to bug-test: A Pawn augmentation system! Just in case you don't know, "Pawn" is the development term for a non-player-character. That is, any living creature you might find in the game. In Deus Ex, the characters you encountered didn't actually have augs, it was all faked by eg. coding them to always take half damage from energy weapons. Our new system brings 4 improvements:


1. It's easier for the mappers and scripters (such as myself) to change which augmentations a pawn has, it can be set in its properties in the editor!

2. You can now see which augmentations a specific character has by regarding his statistics with the targetting aug if you upgrade it enough.

3. If you catch an enemy off-guard, you can deal some damage to him before he has time to activate his augmentations; this is especially useful with using the GEP-gun on enemies who have the Aggressive Defense System aug.

4. If you expose an enemy to EMP damage, you may render him unable to use his augmentations, making him much easier to defeat.


The system is not entirely complete yet; we haven't decided whether the augmentation list in the Targetting display should be justified to the left or - like in the POTW - to the right.

I say, that was rather a large amount of text to spend on an explanation of the POTW. Maybe we'll choose a more easily understood picture for next week.

So, what else is new? Well, we haven't made that much progress since last week, things are just going along nicely. Midashand has started sending us pictures of his Goat Templae, the entrance of which is looking extremely impressive. If you're lucky, you may get a picture of that within too long. Zero has had quite a time creating Despot's flat, which you may find quite unlike any other apartment you've ever visited. Beeblequix has started over on the corporate sector because all the extra stuff we'd made him throw into it had messed up his cool design. Now that he knows exactly which buildings should go into the map, he expects it to be finished pretty soon.

Grub has been working on brushing up the voice lines we've received for use in the game. We now have 6 completely voice-acted characters. Two of these were done by Ryan, who has further 3 characters on his to-do list so far... excluding his own. As Grub expresses it: Ryan is a bridge.

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Yes, it's 2 days late. But seriously, blame Trestkon. I sent him the POTW last saturday, and he said he'd update the site "later". I didn't know he meant half a week later. So I decided to handle it myself now that I have time anyway.

You have no idea how much we rock.

Neither do we, we're only just starting to realize!

The entire 2nd mission of the mod is almost fully functional. That is to say, it is fully functional, we just have a few bugs to weed out and some extra stuff to implement. Steve Tack is currently checking out the main bug, which is a non-functional pain zone. We also have to merge two of the smaller levels to eliminate some needless loading. That Guy has just started the mission script. Now that we're on the topic of mapping, I spent three days of my winter holidays last week finishing one of the last levels. That level has some amazing sequences now, you'll enjoy participating in the impressive skirmishes, regardless of who you're working for. Kevo has also made some progress on the Downtown map which was depicted in last week's POTW (which I'm afraid I accidentally overwrote when I uploaded the new one), and ZeroPresence is continuing his quest to finish the remaining maps on his own - let's hope he won't have to.

okay, so what else? Well, Ricemanu is working on some additional skins for the fist weapon, Metche has mostly dedicated her time to the HDTP these days, but is still on hold to finish some advertisements and signs for us. Phas is generally being l33t, but since we have almost nothing left for him to do for us, he too is directing his attention to the HDTP, which we're quite okay with.

Leo Bad has just finished a large project for which he received money, and can now spend some time on the music he's doing for us. The voice acting is also going nicely, we've only finished voicing one character so far (voice by yours truly), but once we've sorted out who's gonna voice who, we can truly get to it. We've received a fair amount of samples, but only 1 from a female. This was to be expected, and Trestkon and I are currently working on hiring every female in our social circles to voice for TNM. It's quite a bit more difficult for me, because I live in Denmark; we don't speak English over here.

I'd like to thank those of you who submitted your samples, and the rest of you just remember that voicesubmissions@offtopicproductions is still open, mmkay?

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So... any you guys still check this site after several months of downtime? That's cool, kudos for that. If you're lucky, we'll have a new update and a great new POTW for you tomorrow, but until then, you'll have to be content with an updated credits list. Breadfan has been moved to the retired section of the credits list, Smeerkat has been removed altogether due to failure to keep in contact, and Midashand has finally been added to the list as a mapper - don't know why he wasn't added when he joined many weeks ago. He'll be working on the Goat Templae™.

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Hot on the heels of our last update comes an even bigger and more fantastical one, this time with user participation!

We are now welcoming any and all voice acting submissions. We're going to be starting with the barks and conversations of generic characters, and move on up to the conversations of the more important NPCs as things get finalized.

We'll be keeping a record of all submissions, so if you don't get a part right away don't be too discouraged, we have lots of characters that need voicing. We'll also do our best to respond to everyone and at least let them know we've received the submission. We'd also really appreciate any female voice actors out there making submissions; we know we're going to have a tough time finding enough women to fill out our cast.

Lastly, throughout the submissions we'll be trolling for an individual who is capable of voicing the main character. Such an individual would have to have the ability to record quality speech and commit to recording in excess of 2000 lines. If you think you have the guts for that glory, let us know.

Allow the following to answer any other questions you may have.

What do you want from me?

A sample of your voice.

How long should the sample be, and in what format?

If you're attaching the submission to your email the submission should be no more than 30 seconds long and preferably in .mp3 format. If you're linking to your submission and want to do a .wav file, make sure it's 22,050hz, 16-bit mono.

What should I say in my recording?

Anything you want. If you can't think of anything, pull some lines from Deus Ex, or your favorite book, or your physics professor.

Where do I submit my sample to?

All submissions should be emailed to us at voicesubmissions@offtopicproductions.com

Questions?

If you have any questions just hit the handy E-Mail link in our navbar and shoot us a message.


Happy voice acting!

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One of the most storied development studios in game history has shut down. Today, Eidos Interactive officials confirmed to GameSpot that the company is shuttering its Austin, Texas, studio Ion Storm.

A statement issued by the Britain-based publisher outlined the closure with typically cool corporate logic. "Eidos today announced locally that it is to consolidate down its North American internal development capabilities from two studios to one," read the statement. "This will mean the immediate closure of the Ion Storm studio in Austin, Texas, which has been focused primarily on the development of PC and Xbox games. ... This is part of [Eidos'] move to consolidate and strengthen its technical and management capabilities into a smaller number of studios which are capable of scaling up in order to meet the competitive challenges that lie ahead, particularly in anticipation of next-generation technologies and platforms."

However, the brief statement was hardly a fitting epitaph for Ion Storm, which has seen some of gaming's most celebrated--and controversial--talent walk through its doors. The company was founded in 1996 by Doom cocreators John Romero and Tom Hall after the pair exited id Software. Shortly thereafter, the studio was bought outright by Eidos. Funded by Eidos and located in a Dallas penthouse, Ion Storm labored for the next three years developing and hyping the genre-bending PC game Daikatana. When it was finally released in 2000, the game received almost universally awful reviews. Its failure spurred Hall and Romero's departures, as well as the closure of Ion Storm Dallas in 2001

Despite Daikatana's failure, 2000 was not a total bust for Ion Storm. That year, the developer's Austin studio released Deus Ex, a groundbreaking hybrid that successfully combined shooter and role-playing game elements. The award-winning PC title (followed two years later by a PlayStation 2 port) was the pet project of veteran Warren Spector. A longtime employee with Dungeons and Dragons creator TSR and Ultima developer Origin Systems, Spector joined Ion Storm in 1997 and was appointed to its board of directors in 1999.

In August of 2000, following the closure of Looking Glass studios, Eidos picked up the rights to the acclaimed Thief series and made Spector project director of the franchise. Within two years, Spector had been appointed studio director of Ion Storm's Austin shop, now its sole studio. During his tenure, he oversaw two high-profile projects: Deus Ex: Invisble War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. Despite lofty expectations, the two games received a mixed critical and popular reception when released in December 2003 and May 2004, respectively. In particular, Invisible War was accused of being overly simplified for consoles, causing a backlash in the PC community.

As 2004 came to a close, rumors began to circulate that Ion Storm was in trouble. In November, Spector resigned his post to "pursue personal interests." In December, Invisible War executive producer Harvey Smith left to join Midway's newly founded Austin studio (nee Inevitable Entertainment). Ion Storm's future was further clouded by the financial woes of Eidos, which has been actively courting corporate suitors for a takeover since last summer.

However, it wasn't until today that Ion Storm's number was finally up. Eidos representatives said the closure will result in "the displacement of some 35 jobs." At the same time, Eidos announced it will "be scaling up development capabilities at its Crystal Dynamics studio in San Francisco with the recruitment of some 50 or so new personnel as it moves from a two- to a three-team studio." Though they did not say specifically whether or not any of the new personnel would be from Ion Storm, Eidos reps did say the "employee head count" at Crystal Dynamics, which is currently developing the new Tomb Raider game, would increase to more than 180 persons.

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Well folks, the news machine is back online, thanks only to our fantastical webmaster. We'll be sending him several dozen assorted desserts as thanks.

Progress is faster than ever lately, despite the loss of a few team members. I'll outline things by area, because paragraphs are too much work.

Graphics:

A fellow known as Breadfan (so has left us recently) completely all but four of our remaining NPC skins, which brings us to somewhere around 70 custom skins. Ricemanu has also been churning out some amazing graphics for various datavault pictures, signs and many, many other random areas that require eye candy (including the splash screen that pops up when you click the TNM shortcut, which rocks!)

Audio:

The new musician, Yarron, has been slaving away on some fantastic tunes for the WorldCorp levels. "Action filled" describes that entire level rather nicely. Sensei and Leo have also been working away on some awesome stuff for several of our other level. Another new recruit, Grub, has managed to complete our ENTIRE weapon/item sound TODO list in 4 days. To put that in perspective, we've had that list up for more than a year. The mod will definitely not be lacking in the audio department.

Mapping:

Maps are flying along. The last two maps that make up forum city are being worked on my Beeblequix and Kevo-sama. Both are looking fantastic and shall provide plenty of exploration time. ZeroPresence has been flying all over the place, touching up several levels at once, most of which I'm not at liberty to talk about. But take my work for it that they're all looking much improved.

Writing:

Jonas has also been doing an excellent job coordinating a lot of mapping/conversation changes. As well as touching up some maps himself. ATjazz has been doing an awesome job helping Jonas out with the text, writing dozens of emails and datacubes which contribute to the depth and atmosphere of the levels.

Conclusion:

As Grub has completed all his sounds, he's also been placed in charge of voice acting. We've decided to begin working on the barks for various characters (especially the generic type). Expect complete info on the voice acting and how to make submission this weekend.

EDIT: Check out the now fully functional Read News Archive link at the bottom of the page to relive the early days!

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