First Place: Red Orchestra
Red Orchestra puts you on the front lines of World War Two's Eastern engagement between Germany and Russia. The mod goes to great pains to ensure that ever faceat of the mod is historically correct so that your gaming experience is as close to the real thing as possible.
What does your mod bring to the table?
We add realism. Not only on a superb platform, but also in an unprecedended setting: the eastern front. We strive to make Red Orchestra historically accurate in terms of recreating battle locations, as well as how we represent the soldiers, equipment and weapon handling. We feel that our attention to detail, as well as our commitment to teamplay and realistic gameflow is our contribution to the Unreal mod scene. We strive to run our team in the most professional manner possible. The only downside to that is the fact that we've lost seven of our members to professional game development studios! I guess that means we're doing something right. ;)
What do you plan to change or add for Phase III?
As of this writing, Phase III has just closed. We released the v2.1 patch to fix some annoying little bugs, as well as introduce the objective map system which we feel improves the game, especially to first time players. Looking forward to Phase IV, we're weighing our options and deciding on what additional features we'd like to implement. Satchel charges were cut from the 2.0 release, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see that in the near future. Vehicles are being discussed as well, though we can't readily comment on that just yet. There are a number of enhancements in the works that RO fans have been asking for, as we find the community is also a great source of ideas. As things progress, we'll be making some announcements.
Will your mod be making the transistion to UT2004? If so, how has the transition affected your mod?
Like most Unreal-powered mods, we decided to migrate to the UT2k4 engine for a variety of reasons. Probably the largest was just needing to stay relevant and up-to-date with both the publicly available technology from Epic, as well as the community. There were so many benefits to us migrating the game over that it was a no-brainer. It did take a bit longer than we expected, hence the release delays. Now that we've fully converted, we would like to utilize this technology to further improve the gameplay experience.
How did you react when you found out that yor mod had placed in the contest?
We were delighted. The development team has been working hard on Red Orchestra for years now. The fact that the community as well as the team at Epic had such great things to say about us was humbling. In a way, it was a vindication of the time and effort committed over the last few years. We hope to continue to entertain in the months ahead with more improvements to the game. We're just happy that companies like Epic and Atari value the mod community enough to provide us with the tools to make such a game as RO a reality.
Second Place: Troopers: Dawn of Destiny
Troopers: Dawn of Destiny immerses the player in the deep universe of the popular cinema series, Star Wars. Through the mod, you can reenact some of your favorite battles from the movies.
What does your mod bring to the table?
Troopers: Dawn of Destiny is a Total Conversion for Unreal Tournament 2003/4 that crosses the boundary line between Game and Experience to bring you an atmospheric, involving, multiplayer-based tactical first-person shooter set in the fictional universe that has been at the heart of science fiction for over thirty years. Sporting an exciting combination of all-new playable characters; breathtaking, groundbreaking battlefields; completely authentic and technically realistic weaponry; and both old and new modes of team-oriented gameplay; Troopers completely revamps UT2003/4, turning the game into a supportive platform for a completely new breed of Star Wars experience. 3.0 is the current release featuring space flight and objective and TDM and CTF combat, but the team is hard at work preparing more content for the mod including but not limited to new weapons, maps, models, and Vehicles. Come experience the galactic civil war.
What do you plan to change or add for Phase III?
For phase III of the competition we have expanded our objective gamemode as well as revamped our traditional CTF and TDM gameplay to make them a weapons select gamemode and the objective to be a class bassed system. We have also added in space combat with the addition of the OBJ_Trench map as well any many new weapons and the class system and we are looking to add more.
Will your mod be making the transistion to UT2004? If so, how has the transition affected your mod?
Troopers has made the switch to UT2004 and experienced few difficulties in the transition. Overall we are pleased with all the new things we can do and are still looking into different possibilites.
How did you react when you found out that yor mod had placed in the contest?
When we learned we placed Second place in Phase II of the competition we where very excited. Our goal with release 2.0 was to put a polished demo of what we where getting to on the table and we feel we succeded. After placing second we became very motivited to continue to work on and improve the mod. We would also like to congradulate all the other mods that placed in phase II for some very excellent work that many members of the dev team have enjoyed. And good luck to all in phase 3!