First Place: Unwheel
UnWheel is a racing modification for UT2004 with a twist. Instead of just letting you race, it adds some fun gametypes like K-Ball to spice things up a bit.
What does your mod bring to the table?
UnWheel basically takes UT2003 and UT2004, and turns it into a driving game. Not just focused on racing or Demolition Derby style driving, UnWheel offers the player a variety of game types to use with the wide assortment of different vehicles available.
What do you plan to change or add for Phase III?
Our Phase III entry has absolutely loads of new stuff over the Phase II version we submitted, aside from the fact that it's working in UT2004, we are introducing among other things, a new HUD, cameras, options, game types, vehicles, many new awesome maps, tucks and tweaks, etc. One of the biggest enhancement's you'll notice is the new AI recently implemented, although as of writing this, it's only working for the Race game type.
Will your mod be making the transition to UT2004? If so, how has the transition effected your mod?
We are definitely making the move to UT2004! Most mods seem to have had a fairly easy time making the change from UT2003 to UT2003, but UnWheel is so vastly different from standard UT, there are a lot of changes which have been made to the game which UnWheel needs to deal with. At some point, we may be moving away from UT2003's [slower] way of handling vehicles and more towards the way the UT2004 Onslaught vehicles are done, which should give us a decent performance boost.
How did you react when you found out that your mod had placed in the contest?
We were all absolutely stunned and overjoyed. For me personally, I would have been over the moon if we had placed 3rd or 4th, but the actual results just blew me away. There weren't any internet emoticons big or expressive enough for us to show our excitement :-).
Second Place: Deathball
Deathball is what Bombing Run should have been. Deathball is the perfect mixture of futuristic fragging and modern day sports, and might I say, it's very tasty.
What does your mod bring to the table?
Deathball is the new generation of the Fifa (etc) series. A football-like gameplay in first person. It's the first time that you can play football at the computer as a single part of a team with 100% controle over your actions, unlike the usual football games where you controle a whole team and being limited in everything you do.
What do you plan to change or add for Phase III?
- Several gameplay changes, V2.0 (the upcoming version) feels a lot smoother and better now
- New Player models, a novum among all mods, you can customize your character, choose your haircut, your hair color, your face (we also put your face into the game if you provide), you goggle, armor pieces, jearsey style etc etc. And additionally you can change the color of all. We won't get all done for the 3rd phase, but that's the plans, and we will have the model system added.
Will your mod be making the transition to UT2004? If so, how has the transition effected your mod?
We did make the change, it worked ok, took some time to get it all working again. Major problem is that Tennis and Warfare are not working yet, we are looking for coders to go on with these.
How did you react when you found out that your mod had placed in the contest?
I didn't expect anything from phase 2. They mentioned that they judge on changes, and we didn't exactly change a lot from 1.8 (phase 1) to 1.9 (phase 2). Basically we only added the replay function. So 2nd place is more than we could expect, since we really didn't have time back then for more. But we weren't totally excited about being in there, after winning phase 1, it was expected to be in...