Zeitgeist - An alternate reality HL2 tot Created 12 years ago2012-02-14 15:51:41 UTC by Albatros

Hey everybody,

my name may sound familiar to some of you as I made a map that made it into the TWHL vault back in 2008 (dod_nuernberg). I went into hiding afterwards to work on a few concepts I made long ago, then somehow a single player modification developed out of these. Now it's 2012, and that mod project is being developed by a team of 14 artists and could probably end up being a full-grown HL2 total conversion.

Right now, we're attempting to promote our Trailer and Facebook page, although the latter is going slower than we were hoping for. Please forgive me if you have seen parts of the following text before; I didn't change it because the content and story haven't changed. Thank you everyone for looking at this!

The Story:

The story behind Zeitgeist takes place in the 1930s of a fictional time line. The 'Great War', as it is called, did not end in 1918; with the Lusitania not sunk, the Russian Revolution failed and Italy having left the Entente, the war lasted until 1929 when most of the reserves were gone and the continent's economy finally collapsed. Now, in 1934, a league of nations is about to be founded in London: an end to war and a solution to all the national conflicts.

Then, a terrible attack crushes the hopes of the european people in a heartbeat, and the next and probably final episode of the Great War seems inevitable. Peace now depends on Richard Czerny, a journalist who happens to bump into the terrorist right after he planted the bomb in the conference hotel. In a race against time, Czerny, wrongfully accused of being the terrorist himself, must defend himself against the police, a radical militia and an ancient secret organisation trying to keep the flames of war burning.

The Setting:

Zeitgeist features several European cities such as London, Prague and Venice. The fictional 1930s allowed us to place intact old towns, baroque and renaissance buildings next to modern art deco, art nouveau and bauhaus-architecture. Neon signs and imperial insignia might appear in the same scene, just as horse-drawn carriages, steam trains, Zeppelins and highly modern streamlined vehicles. In order to keep the technical and historical background's credibility high, we spent years on recherche and employ a trained transportation designer.

The Images:

As by now the number of finished or almost-finished levels has risen to almost four dozen, I'll try not to show more pictures than necessary to give you a first impression of the visuals we're trying to create for Zeitgeist.

I'll try to keep this posting up to date with new picture material!

The Books:

I'm currently working on three novels about Zeitgeist. Actually, writing the books was only necessary for the creation of a plot and a cast for the game. Then it turned out to be more fun than I was hoping for, I developed a kind of workflow and now the first novel totalling 700 pages is mostly ready for printing. I am still looking for a publisher - in case I'll find a solution for that, I'll have the books translated into English by a professional. Naturally, there are lots of minor characters, locations and story twists that will not make it into the game because of their complexity and the enormous amount of time needed to include them, so reading the novels might be an option for those who'd like to know more about the story.

The Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhm9sZyP14w

The Zeitgeist prologue trailer.

Our Communities:

We are active in lots of different communities so we can maintain connections with other developers and creative artists all around the globe. Zeitgeist has the following communities, accounts and pages:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/zeitgeist

If you want to know more about the history of Zeitgeist's development, our "news" section on ModDB contains a complete backlog with all the important updates between 2009 and today.

http://www.facebook.com/zeitgeist1934

The facebook page & group... if we manage to get beyond 500 likes or so, our chances for the future development

http://www.twitter.com/zeitgeist1934

I'm still too stupid to use that properly.

http://www.zeitgeist-thegame.de

The official Zeitgeist website featuring the Ouverture.

http://www.northcapestudios.com

Our showcase and studios website.

Last but not least: our Steam Community.

We'll be happy about your visit! If you have any questions, I'll answer them as soon and as complete as I can.See you soon,

Til / Albatros

Those screens are beautiful sir! The project sounds amazing and really extroadindary that you wrote a book as backstory for the mod. incredible!

Thank you!

Yeah that book thing was the most unexpected part of all lol.

I'm excited what may become of that, too... : )

Cheers,

Til

Congratulations for creating a great project! And of course, congratulations for an impressive achievement of writing a book!

The idea itself is something really new, very unique and opens vast range of possibilities. The concept of mix between past and future is something very unnatural to people's eyes and I think that's exactly what people unconsciously want.

It reminds me a bit of a movie called "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"However, I won't lie - there is a lot room for improvement. At least from the images the level of detail in some maps seems too low for Source engine. Some places look great, but some look like it's GoldSrc. Also, I think it's quite repetitive in some places. The neon letters look very similar everywhere. Lighting too. The connectivity between old and modern could be a bit better. For example the modern glass building doesn't blend with the surroundings well. I could compare it to early HL2. You guys really need to polish everything a lot. But it's not a problem. You have a strong base - great story, big team, a book and the project itself seems very quality. This is definitely going to be a success, but you must not hurry! Also, I would really, honestly recommend to get rid of this yellow color correction/color tint or whatever it's called. I just think it makes things look boring and not alive.

The trailer is composed really great but production itself is pretty unprofessional. Some scenes seem like straight out of Garry's Mod.

So, I think it's just a matter of time. You should eventually go from a level similar of early HL2 to HL2 as it looks right now. Your game looks way better than early HL2, I must say.

Sorry for quite a nasty amount of negative feedback but I just want it to turn out even better! Good luck, my friend!

Hey Bruce,

thanks for your long and effort-showing reply.

To be honest, I do agree with most of the points you've mentioned; what we lack most is time and muse to finish the parts we left unfinished for now.

Of course we are going to walk that last bit of the way, too, before risking a botched release :).

Cheers and thanks again,

Til

Screw time! Like Mr. Gabe Newell once said, make it perfect or release it imperfect and it will suck forever. Don't let time influence you.

"No one will remember if the game is late, only if it is great" -Jay Wilson

Those screens blew my mind by the way.

Learn, my fellow men...

Hey guys,

many thanks to all of you for the input.

I think what I wrote above might have been misunderstandable: actually, we did lack the time for finishing and quality passes in the past, but from now on we will definitely take the time and polish every square foot of the Zeitgeist maps. Nothing will be in WIP status when the demo goes live : ).

In other news, I managed to translate the novel's prologue with the help of a great scotsman. Working on the other chapters now.

You can find the prologue here, keep fingers crossed for BBcode to work.

Able to write a book, too stupid to use BBCode.

Sorry fellas :V

Edit: it worked!!

And now that that is done, one more thing: you can find the prologue by clicking on "The Story" in the "About Zeitgeist" tab menu.

Please give me some feedback if you can : ).

P.S.:

Our Plesk control centre was nuked by our coder and myself to prevent it from getting hacked by installing an update. Apparently, we shot ourselfs in the knee :P. But we're about to install our backup now...

P.P.S.:

Everything is up and running again. Wooo...