[Jim]

There's also another game that pretty much suffered the same fate as SIN, being overshadowed by Half Life, Called requiem Avenging Angel, it looks similar to SIN, but has tons of cool spells. So it's almost like "Sin with magic"

[xMobilemux]

Is it true that Ritual is working on a new SIN game with Interceptor & 3DR?

I think there was a rumor, can't remember.

[HiPolyBash]

xMobilemux, on 19 September 2016 - 03:17 AM, said:

Is it true that Ritual is working on a new SIN game with Interceptor & 3DR?

I think there was a rumor, can't remember.

https://forums.duke4...post__p__256058

[xMobilemux]

Isn't that just Fred confirming that they'll release old SIN material?

I heard Ritual was making a whole new game.

[cosmonautcowboy]

xMobilemux, on 19 September 2016 - 03:17 AM, said:

Is it true that Ritual is working on a new SIN game with Interceptor & 3DR?

I think there was a rumor, can't remember.

Does Ritual still exist in some capacity? It would be nice to see something new for SiN, but if 3DR/Interceptor are involved, I hope it's only as publisher. They need to focus on one project at a time,IMO. If they weren't doing work on Rad Rodgers at the same time, maybe they could have focused more of getting Bombshell out the door in a finished state.

[HiPolyBash]

xMobilemux, on 19 September 2016 - 03:44 AM, said:

Isn't that just Fred confirming that they'll release old SIN material?

I heard Ritual was making a whole new game.

Yeah, it isn't like there'd be a reason that he just so happened to have heaps of SiN material and was going to announce something soon completely unrelated that he just so happened to mention in the same post. Read between the lines. That's where the rumor started to begin with. Fred has a couple of posts here that hint towards it heavily.

[HulkNukem]

Its only fitting before Duke Reloaded Fred tried doing a Sin remake that he can now re-release/remake/make sequel to it.

Time will tell if he finishes his original remake of Daikatana

[PokeThePower]

Matthias stumbled across a couple of old images a couple days ago from when we sat next to each other at Ritual.

[HulkNukem]

How was it working on Sin?

[Marphy Black]

And what ever happened to the Love Ewe?

[Mr. Tibbs]

Sheder, on 16 November 2016 - 06:55 PM, said:

Matthias stumbled across a couple of old images a couple days ago from when we sat next to each other at Ritual.

Man, you and Matthias must have been so young! Were those Dallas shooter-frenzy days like the wild west of game development? It feels like there were real development communities and rivalries back then.

I think it's unbelievably cool that you're both still working in the industry on amazing projects.

[PokeThePower]

HulkNukem, on 16 November 2016 - 08:00 PM, said:

How was it working on Sin?

Imagine the best time of your life. Now imagine the second best. That was Sin. Duke Caribbean was the most pure moment of "developer fanboy life" I can imagine possible.

Everything that has followed has not been worse in any way at all... but I have changed which makes my perception of the situation different.

I find myself saying things to new developers that I remember Levelord telling me in 1998 on Sin. I could write volumes on my understanding of Levelord, but I understand him well enough now that I would never utter a word until death do us all part. Not because he's bad, but because he's actually such a great man.

Marphy Black, on 16 November 2016 - 08:36 PM, said:

And what ever happened to the Love Ewe?

I have no idea. That was a joke that I was outside of aside from some silly photo taking ops.

I mean yeah, I get the broad joke... but I don't know why it was a joke they cared about enough to sustain over time. I have speculations, but that's all they are.

Mr. Tibbs, on 16 November 2016 - 11:26 PM, said:

Man, you and Matthias must have been so young!

19/20/21 ish.

We are now about 40.

Mr. Tibbs, on 16 November 2016 - 11:26 PM, said:

Were those Dallas shooter-frenzy days like the wild west of game development? It feels like there were real development communities and rivalries back then.

You know the answer to that because you've asked me before.

He's what I'll say in current year about the Glory Years of shooter development. When I entered the industry... what I had to deal with most was the extreme diversity of people I was suddenly forced to interact with and be productive with. As a southern baptist computer science major... being dropped into late 1990's FPS game dev was like being dropped into the center of hell incarnate.

Except these people were AWESOME human beings.

So I had a choice, I could either reject the facts in front of me or I could accept them. I decided to accept that these overt Satanists weren't awful people.

When I entered the industry, that was when it was at its most diverse in all measurable ways. Because you didn't get in unless you had skills, and skills didn't ask your philosophy on life.

These days we MIGHT... MIGHT... have a more diverse set of genetic traits... but mentally and emotionally this industry has become a fucking BORG. Not just a borg, but a hypocritical borg.

When I got in you heard every possible point of view that existed. Everything was an option, and only what worked survived.

Heaven.

Mr. Tibbs, on 16 November 2016 - 11:26 PM, said:

I think it's unbelievably cool that you're both still working in the industry on amazing projects.

I'm playing Mafia 3 right now and I'm appreciating what Matthias was trying to do. ... ...

Remastering Modern Warfare is the sort of accomplishment that will only be fully appreciated after the Rapture.

[PikaCommando]

Sheder, do you know how the idea for SiN came about? Things like the earliest days of SiN. How close was the final product to the original vision?

[Mr. Tibbs]

Sheder, on 18 November 2016 - 08:47 PM, said:

I'm playing Mafia 3 right now and I'm appreciating what Matthias was trying to do. ... ...

I finished Mafia 3 last month, and I'm really glad I played it. A little rough in some places which is to be expected (new team, new tech, new chemistry, etc.), but what works, works really well. Gunplay feels super rewarding, especially the enemy hit reactions. I would go so far to as to put it above all other open-world games in that respect. Their mix of canned, contextual, and ragdoll animations for combat are ridiculously fun. I recommend playing the game with simulation-mode enabled, too. It really makes the driving model feel unique.




The last COD game I played was Modern Warfare 2, which I really enjoyed. I stopped playing them after that in part because of the Infinity Ward/Activision fallout and the subsequent teams appeared to stop adding new, cool features like MW2's Spec Ops mode. I think all the Infinity Ward-efforts pre-2010 were great experiences, and you can definitely see some of that creative bombast in their uber-slick Titanfall games (the campaign for TF2 is absurdly entertaining). I have heard good things about the new one's single player, but this has already been a great year for shooters, so I might hold off for a while.

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to reminisce. I guess it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

[PokeThePower]

PikaCommando, on 18 November 2016 - 11:22 PM, said:

Sheder, do you know how the idea for SiN came about? Things like the earliest days of SiN. How close was the final product to the original vision?

Nope, I came in after their first E3 so their vision had already been established. If I were to project backward I would say "Blackish Duke Nukem in Quake engine with hot bitches, cool mutants, and big guns".

That might be more detail than was in the original vision. To put it another way, when I decided to change the oilrig from the kind of sci-fi-facility that Wardwell had originally made into a grounded modern day oilrig... nobody suggested I was violating the vision. I don't even remember asking permission to redo it completely (except for the purple table right near the end which was the one thing I kept as a respectful nod to the original)... though I probably did.

Mr. Tibbs, on 18 November 2016 - 11:48 PM, said:

I finished Mafia 3 last month, and I'm really glad I played it.

I'm enjoying it. I got into a somewhat heated text exchange with Matthias last night saying I think he mis-read the market and should have OWNED the "racism" in the game like Tarantino rather than apologized for it.

The project was so worried about being offensive by being honest, that it suggested every single "awake" white person feel like shit everytime something negative in the game is directed to a minority, while glossing over all the horrible stuff that is also being said/done to white people.

Had the project leadership been GamerGaters... they might have sold many more copies without changing a single control problem, etc. Because they would have been able to position themselves as friendly to anti-white-liberals, normies, alt-right, and racists.

Progressivism is bad business.

Mr. Tibbs, on 18 November 2016 - 11:48 PM, said:

The last COD game I played was Modern Warfare 2, which I really enjoyed. I stopped playing them after that in part because of the Infinity Ward/Activision fallout and the subsequent teams appeared to stop adding new, cool features like MW2's Spec Ops mode.

Flattery will get you nowhere.

If Modern Warfare Remastered becomes available as a standalone, I do suggest you try it out. I get no back-end profit from working on it... but my last year was neck deep in it and it is the first passion project I've been on since DNF. I loved getting to take point on it in the way I did and I loved the original enough that I wanted to make sure it lived up to the original as much as possible. I only worked on/managed the development of Single Player.

As for MW2 Spec Ops... we'll see if ATVI plans to bring that to modern platforms with modern connectivity improvements (the worst thing about SpecOps was the lack of online matchmaking).

Mr. Tibbs, on 18 November 2016 - 11:48 PM, said:

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to reminisce. I guess it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

I've not lost anything. Nobody will ever take the experiences away from me. However my awareness of reality, business, people, etc has become more grounded making it harder to capture the magic of childlike innocence and enthusiasm + free reign to create and have an audience that the late 90's offered.

There are game developers, especially in the indy world, who are experiencing the same thrills I did back then more or less, however they are the counter to the industry now where during my entry point the indy-free-thinker WAS the industry.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Sheder, on 19 November 2016 - 07:20 AM, said:

Flattery will get you nowhere.

If Modern Warfare Remastered becomes available as a standalone, I do suggest you try it out. I get no back-end profit from working on it... but my last year was neck deep in it and it is the first passion project I've been on since DNF. I loved getting to take point on it in the way I did and I loved the original enough that I wanted to make sure it lived up to the original as much as possible. I only worked on/managed the development of Single Player.

Haha, I'm not necessarily trying to flatter you, it's just the reality that I became fatigued with the series after MW2. Spec ops, or some variant of it, should have been in all the games going forward, rather than just MW3. Following their ridiculous success with COD, Acti should have allowed Infinity Ward to make something new. Enough time has past that I want to replay the Remaster once this pre-order exclusivity nonsense passes. I had no idea that Certain Affinity worked on the game, but I was genuinely excited to see post-Singularity Raven in action.

There was a cool Q&A with Vince Zampella the other day, which discusses launching TF2 against Infinite Warfare.

Quote

Do you still play Call of Duty?
I don't. I haven't played through a Call of Duty since Modern Warfare 2. I will play Modern Warfare Remastered. And there's a good chance that I'll play Infinite Warfare. They're kind of getting a little close to home. I've got to see what they're doing.

BTW, do you have a favorite shooter this year? For me, it's a really close call between Doom and Titanfall 2. The movement in the latter is incredibly responsive and the creative campaign has no fat.

[Marphy Black]

Sheder, on 18 November 2016 - 08:47 PM, said:

I have no idea. That was a joke that I was outside of aside from some silly photo taking ops.

Well, I'm just glad that muttonbone.com still exists 18 years later. At this rate, I can only assume the site will outlive us all if not surpass the heat death of the universe.

And speaking of, I was looking over SiN's assets again, and I was shocked to realize that the Love Ewe billboard texture is not actually used in any of the maps. This means the bulletin board texture remains the only surviving in-game reference to the inflatable ruminant in question.

Thus, I figured it was only appropriate that I mod my copy of the game to restore this long lost relic back where it belonged:

[PokeThePower]

Mr. Tibbs, on 19 November 2016 - 12:34 PM, said:

Haha, I'm not necessarily trying to flatter you, it's just the reality that I became fatigued with the series after MW2. Spec ops, or some variant of it, should have been in all the games going forward, rather than just MW3.

That is very flattering.

I will say that Zied and Mackey are more responsible for the quality of MW2 Spec Ops than I. Even though I wrote the bulk of the MW2 Spec Ops script, the quality control was done by Z and M. They were excellent bosses.

Mr. Tibbs, on 19 November 2016 - 12:34 PM, said:

BTW, do you have a favorite shooter this year? For me, it's a really close call between Doom and Titanfall 2. The movement in the latter is incredibly responsive and the creative campaign has no fat.

Dying Light.

Marphy Black, on 19 November 2016 - 11:24 PM, said:

Well, I'm just glad that muttonbone.com still exists 18 years later. At this rate, I can only assume the site will outlive us all if not surpass the heat death of the universe.

Because fucking sheep is an eternal foundation of civilization?

[Mr. Tibbs]

Wider spotted on the coder cam, "goofing off and making levels."

A look at SiN and a quick tour of Ritual on a show called the Electric Playground back in 1998 (starts at the 9.20 mark). It includes cameos from Scott Alden, Jim Dose, Harry Miller, Levelord, Michael Hadwin, and, of course, Charlie Wiederhold!


One from E3 1997 briefly talking about "action-based outcomes" (at the 2.24 mark).

[PokeThePower]

Let us never speak of that video again.

Matthias texted me about it a while ago as well... neither of us can remember that day but it did remind me that at the time with Matthias you either got his curt replies like in this footage... or angry German. There was no in-between.

You picked an interesting frame to screencap. If you squint your eyes it looks like the microphone is Jim's penis and I'm about to receive his "gifts".

There is a bit of footage from one of the levels I was working on that didn't survive but a lot of plan file updates were made about. It was an experiment at large DM matches (32-100 players) and took inspiration from some of the spaces in Jedi Knight. 12:56, 12:59, 13:03, 13:06. Might be others.

[PikaCommando]

ErgoTheChappy, on 14 May 2017 - 05:15 PM, said:

There is a bit of footage from one of the levels I was working on that didn't survive but a lot of plan file updates were made about. It was an experiment at large DM matches (32-100 players) and took inspiration from some of the spaces in Jedi Knight. 12:56, 12:59, 13:03, 13:06. Might be others.

How did that level experiment turn out? Was it cut due to time/fun factor or was it too big for the engine? I remember Quake 2 was able to support some official 64-players DM maps.

[PokeThePower]

It wound up being irrelevant to the project due to the need to focus on what we knew for sure we were going to ship with. When I first got there I wasn't given any specific things to work on other than to start making some multiplayer maps while the rest of the LDs were working on the single player maps. The very very first one I started with wound up as "Pride" which was mostly an experiment in curves. The first room I built is still in the map, where the elevator is. The elevator was to learn how SinScript worked.

The second one was the gigantic one which never made it past a curiosity. The third one wound up being SinDM6 (the building under construction at night).

However once I started taking on SP map work the efforts had to focus on ones that we knew we could ship and support and the giant map wasn't viable since it would affect everything from the networking support to making the UI handle that many people decently, etc. To be honest I've probably spent more time writing about it here than we did debating it internally... it was pretty clear it wasn't going to go anywhere. Did make for some nice looking radiosity lighting in the giant areas... for the time.

[PikaCommando]

There appears to have been live recordings of Ion Storm and Daikatana as well as Ritual Entertainment and SiN at E3 1997 here as ionrit90k.ram, but it looks like it was only ever hosted on Pseudo and not anywhere else on the Internet. If by chance anyone found it uploaded on another archived site as a still functional download, please let me know.

[PikaCommando]

Sorry for the doublepost, but I had to post some SiN 2 stuff here in case I forget them again.

SiN 2 page on Ritual's webpage.

Interview about the cancellation of SiN 2, dated December 24 2003 (a day after the news about SiN 2 broke):

Quote

We've all heard about the development of "SiN 2", the closure of the project due to the inability to find a publisher and the complicated situation in the bowels of Ritual Entertainment. We tried to get official comments from the studio representatives but received a strict refusal. And this is after the company officially introduced images of characters from the closed "SiN 2". Anyway, we managed to find a person who is directly involved in the development, which in exchange for complete confidentiality agreed to answer a few questions.

GAMEMAG : Tell us about the situation with SiN? Why was the project closed?

Ritual: The situation is very simple - we could not find a publisher. More precisely, the publishers did not like the amount that we wanted to get for the development of the project.

GAMEMAG : What was the sum?

Ritual: A few million dollars.

GAMEMAG : At what stage was the game at the close?

Ritual: We had modeled protagonists, as well as a technical demo version with two levels. We could not afford more because of the personal financing of the project.

GAMEMAG : Does this mean that "SiN 2" will never see the light again?

Ritual: I believe so. The time of this project has passed. Now shooters are somewhat different direction, although we do not give up hope to release this development for next-generation consoles. There, the market is more extensive and more loyal to unusual developments.

GAMEMAG: Well, what happened to "Counter Strike: Condition Zero?"

Ritual: We had to finish the game, trying to keep the balance, as a result, it was not what the publishers were expecting from us. To be honest, I always doubted the choice of this design.

GAMEMAG : What is the situation at Ritual now? What are you working on?

Ritual: Now we are resting. But after the holidays we will return to three developments. One of the projects will be announced at the beginning of the spring next year.

GAMEMAG : We heard that you continue to work with Activision, using the technology "Doom 3". Is it true?

Ritual: Probably.

GAMEMAG : Thanks and good holidays.

Ritual: And the same to you.

And here's low-res screenshots of the SiN 2 character models:



Blade looks pretty cool, eh? It's pretty obvious SiN 2 ran on the Source engine. I asked some ex-Ritual guys about it but it seems that they don't like talking about SiN, or maybe it's just because I'm a random from the net :V

[gemeaux333]

They put it (one episode actually) on the Half-Life 2 (source engine) episodic format after the release of HL2:EP1....

[Res]

God how I wish they went along with SiN 2 instead of Episodes. At least it'd exist in its entirety instead of being an eternal cock-tease every time I beat the first episode. I wonder if that SiN 2 developer demo ever had anything recorded of it.

[leilei]

PikaCommando, on 30 January 2018 - 09:20 AM, said:

Blade looks pretty cool, eh? It's pretty obvious SiN 2 ran on the Source engine.

They're two renders done in 3dsmax. It doesn't conclude any engine use and it's unlikely it would've been Source as that hasn't really "proved itself" in 2003.

[PikaCommando]

leilei, on 30 January 2018 - 07:08 PM, said:

They're two renders done in 3dsmax. It doesn't conclude any engine use and it's unlikely it would've been Source as that hasn't really "proved itself" in 2003.

Except SiN 2's page on Ritualistic say that it was made using an in-development 3rd-party engine. Of course, that engine could be idTech 4 or anything else, but they did try a simple port of SiN to the Source engine (although it says here it's for the SiN: Episodes). SiN 2 being on Source could explain why they chose Source for the SiN Episodes due to their familiarity with it when doing the SiN 2 demo.

Also, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines used the Source engine since it began development in 2001.

[KareBear]

It should be noted Ritual was also familiar with Id Tech 4 since they were working on the cancelled Quake 4 expansion (of which I have lots of concept art and model renders from to prove its existence).

[PikaCommando]

KareBear, on 31 January 2018 - 05:38 AM, said:

It should be noted Ritual was also familiar with Id Tech 4 since they were working on the cancelled Quake 4 expansion (of which I have lots of concept art and model renders from to prove its existence).

Could you post all that in the Quake Corner thread?