DuRuS speaks to raf1 about his plans for the MW2 Promod

With the upcoming release of MW2, I had a chat with raf1, the maker of the last Promod, to see what his plans were for releasing the Promod when the game comes out.

Raf1 has made it quite clear that he will not fall into this trap, and will not try and get the MOD out just so it is the first MOD on the market.

Unless Activision and InfinityWard mess things up, ModernWarfare 2 will be out for the PC on the 10th of November, something that everyone in the CoD series is desperate for. But we all know how much the CoD series is in need of a new game to push it forward, and how important MW2 is. But what we do also know is that a Promod is going to be one of the most important factors of determining how well the game will play as a competitive title.

There was only really one question of who was going to make this MOD, the same person that laid the foundations for the final Promod that everyone used in CoD4. Knowing that he would obviously be the main man in charge of making the next MOD, I went and spoke to raf1 about what he was planning to do with the MoD.

The first thing that came across while speaking to him was his wish to make sure that he didn’t enter a “MOD race”. Though time is going to be quite important to allow the game to be ready to play competitively, it is also important that any MOD that is released needs to not be buggy and doesn’t require copious amounts of “version 1.112”’s to get it ready to play.

Are we going to get MW2 on the 10th November?

This is something we saw in the second run of MODs at the start of 2009 just after the release of CoD:WW. The MODs were released by various individuals in a very short space of time, without them properly being tested. But as soon as it was out there would be a bug reported that needed to be fixed. This not only slowed down the competitive MOD but it also almost tore the scene apart.

Raf1 has made it quite clear that he will not fall into this trap, and will not try and get the MOD out just so it is the first MOD on the market. To accomplish this he sounds like he will be running some sort of beta test for the MOD to make sure that it not only meets the high standards of the community but also to make sure that all of the features that he implements are all completely and properly working. Though details of this beta test are not going to be made public, nor will raf1 be accepting “applications” as such for it, we have been assured that it will contain enough members of the “top level” of the scene to make sure that the MOD has enough attention to it to make it exactly what is needed.

Raf1 was adamant that he wasn’t going to try and recreate another CounterStrike or a Quake game.

But those changes aren’t going to be massive ones that completely change the game. Raf1 was adamant that he wasn’t going to try and recreate another CounterStrike or a Quake game. This is a brand new game, and that is how it is going to remain. Rather than trying to model another, older one, he would try and work with the base code and keep it original as possible. Obviously the fact that this is a direct follow on from CoD4 will mean there are going to be similarities, especially as people have been looking at this game and calling it an expansion pack for CoD4, with some new guns, features and MODs.

This is definitely something that is really important. Though people don’t want to be playing a game with airstrikes and UAVs active all the time, it is also important that this isn’t exactly the same as CoD4 with a few different maps. Unfortunately the CoD community is not like the CS community that can be happy with one game for years on end. They need and like a change, the ability to try something new out and move up through the skill curve again, fighting for their place at the top of the 2on2 CB EU ladder. If raf1 just implemented all the same changes to make it almost identical to how CoD4 is at the moment, then I think it would lose a lot of players. Maybe not as many at the top end of the scene, but certainly a lot at the lower end; the public end.

Though we may not like or thing these guys are that important to us, they are. They are the “fresh blood” that we need to inject up through the ranks of the clans. Group stages of tournaments need teams that aren’t going to get through to the playoffs. The i-series needs UK teams to turn up, get the prize fund up, and then allow the fewer bigger teams to give us some great games to watch. Though this may sound like a very selfish approach, it is exactly the same as saying “all Sunday league football players are pointless, it is all about the Premiership”. They are an essential part of the run up to the top level.

MW2 probably will need to have its graphics toned down slightly with a Promod

This is something raf1 has seen, and wants to progress. From my brief chat with him it was clear that he not only wanted to make this MOD, but he wanted to be a key part in pushing the whole scene forward further than it has ever gone before. One way of doing this will be by attracting the public players and implementing changes that will attract them.

He has already assured me that this by no means is him saying that he is going to compromise with the base game to appeal to both public players and top end competitive players. What it means is he is going to introduce other features, such as proper server filtering to indentify Promod servers, along with a lot of others that will, in his words, help the scene move forward considerably. “People will be steered towards clans from the moment they set foot in the server” as well say claiming that “the ability to game public is back again, giving that vital bridge back between the beginners and geeks”. Both of these things are of vital importance to the progress of the scene as they should allow a lot more people to “suit up” and take part in proper clan games.

These changes will be superficial ones, painting the surface of the public based MOD rather than changing the way guns recoil to suit the public players

But let me reiterate; he was very clear that this was not going to change the way the game plays itself. These changes will be superficial ones, painting the surface of the public based MOD rather than changing the way guns recoil to suit the public players. As for the gun changes these are of course going to be the most important and probably most highly contested changes. Raf1 however, made it quite clear he wants to push the scene forward even more. The MOD is going to be made with a future plan in mind. Rather than just looking at what is required to get the game going, things will be implemented to push the game forward.

Raf1 was shroud enough to keep the exact details away from me, as he wants to keep his plans close to his chest. But he hinted at increasing the skill gap in the game and also that he didn’t want this being a “3 gun game”. This is something we saw in CoD4, with the majority of people using the AK47, the AK74u and then the sniper. Hardly any of the other guns were used. With guarantees from InfinityWard that there would be new guns, I have the feeling that raf1 wants to take full advantage of these and try and give us a bit more option, but without compromising the game itself.

How this is going to be done we don’t know, but it looks like he wants to do things in moderation. Rather than nurfing some guns and then adding copious amounts of recoil to others, he wants to do small changes around the board. With a proper amount of testing taking place, I think raf1 is in a position to do just that.

One thing we found in CoD4 was that people took it on themselves to try and fix the game. At the start of 2009 we ended up with a lot of people thinking they knew how to code and wanted to change the game to how it would suit them. Raf1 however, wants to make sure that this MOD keeps an air of professionalism to it, and thus he won’t be releasing his code to anyone else rather just making the changes himself, in a controlled environment where he can properly test it to make sure it all works. This is certainly something that the scene needs as if you ask a lot of people, the destruction of CoD4 almost came about when we had 2-3 different people all trying to make different versions of the same game just slightly changing a bit of it.

Some of the early art work for MW2

Though this should in theory make the MOD a lot more professional, it could have side effects. One of the key ways in which people found out what was the best situation to play in, and what the best settings to use was through trial and error. Someone would make a MOD that he thought was the best, which would soon be slightly changed by someone else that had access to the same code. It was a role on effect, but in the end we didn’t come out with a MOD that everyone liked.

To add to all of this I got some great news off him, that he would not only be keeping all of the “media” extras that were in the latest CoD4 version such as the shoutcaster overlays and the score bots, but he will also be adding some other features as well.

However, if raf1’s rigorous testing regime pays off, and then this should all happen anyway, just without as many people, and without wasting as much time as well.

Overall raf1 looks like he certainly has his head screwed on the right way, as well as definitely having the motivation and the will power to make this MOD a real success. To add to all of this I got some great news off him, that he would not only be keeping all of the “media” extras that were in the latest CoD4 version such as the shoutcaster overlays and the score bots, but he will also be adding some other features as well. The details are locked away tightly in his head at the moment so we will have to wait and see what they are going to be.

The only bit of doom and gloom I got from the conversation, which came across quite strongly was raf1’s worries about the maps. These are things that are going to be outside of his control zone. If the base maps with the game are not up to scratch and playable then as raf1 put it, “if they’re bad I’m ruined from day one [and I will] drop out”. Let’s just hope that InfinityWard have left us with some small, playable and competitive maps, otherwise map makers, you are going to have just as big a task as raf1 is going to have in just over a month’s time.