{"id":120,"date":"2009-01-05T01:00:23","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T08:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/?p=120"},"modified":"2009-04-18T20:48:38","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T03:48:38","slug":"a-history-of-fall-from-heaven-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/a-history-of-fall-from-heaven-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"A History of Fall from Heaven (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fall from Heaven<\/em> is a dark fantasy Civilization IV<\/em> mod, built by a team headed by Derek Paxton.\u00a0The first version was released on December 16th, 2005 and last month – exactly three years later – the “gold” version was uploaded. The project is the most successful Civ4<\/em> mod yet created, with hundreds of thousands of downloads and positive nods from critics like Tom Chick<\/a>. I recently had an opportunity to interview Derek and his team on the final release of his the mod, which is available for download here<\/a>. (Note: Fall<\/em> requires a fully patch version of Beyond the Sword<\/em><\/a> to play.)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Soren<\/strong>: Perhaps a good place to start is to talk about the current reception of Fall from Heaven<\/em>. What is your fanbase? Do you have a sense of their size and what type of players they are? Who have been some of your most important public champions?<\/p>\n

Derek<\/strong>: Fall<\/em> has been distributed\u00a0on the CD\/DVD of 4 gaming magazines, and it is hosted by numerous sites. \u00a0The most popular of these, CivFanatics, has recorded 200,000 downloads and over 150,000 posts about Fall<\/em>. \u00a0Fans have hosted their own forums, including those in Russia, Germany, Israel and Japan.<\/p>\n

Our target audience is\u00a0the guy who loves Civilization IV<\/em>, but wanted more. \u00a0Since these are the most likely players to go out looking for mods it was a good fit.\u00a0\u00a0Because the players already knew Civilization IV<\/em>, we were able to create a game whose complexity would have been overwhelming in an original title. \u00a0In essence, we piggy-backed on Civilization IV<\/em>‘s learning curve.<\/p>\n

For the first year\u00a0of development, this worked well and we continued to march forward implementing the items in our design document and adjusting them based on\u00a0community feedback. \u00a0But as Fall<\/em> become more popular we began to appeal to players who weren’t interested in posting in the forums and reading the thousands of posts about Fall<\/em>. \u00a0Designing a game for the vocal die-hard fans and the growing silent majority forced us to consider both the benefit and the cost of our complexity. \u00a0In the end, we stayed true to our mandate, that we were making a game that was significantly more complex than Civilization IV<\/em>, but we tried to find every available way to make that complexity as elegant as possible. \u00a0And certainly cut any complexity if it wasn’t providing enough value.<\/p>\n

So now we have a mix of casual players that may play a game or two without reading the rules or even being that familiar with the mechanics of Civilization IV<\/em>, the short timers who enjoy\u00a0Fall<\/em> for a few weeks and then go on to something else and the die hard fans who have been with us for years enjoying the development process.<\/p>\n

Fall<\/em> has had a lot of help getting the attention it has. \u00a0Most notably Firaxis allowed us to include a Fall from Heaven<\/em> themed scenario in the Beyond the Sword<\/em> expansion. \u00a0This really got us over the biggest hurdle mods face, just getting people familiar enough with your mod to try it out. \u00a0Thunderfall, the administrator of Civfanatics, has also been invaluable by allowing us to host our own website on his servers and granting us our own public and private development forum. \u00a0The media has also treated us well, especially the editor of fidgit.com, Tom Chick.<\/p>\n

Soren<\/strong>: So, where did this all start? Did you first want to make a fantasy mod, or did you first want to make a Civ4<\/em> mod?<\/p>\n

Derek:<\/strong>\u00a0In my opinion fantasy is just the setting, it doesn’t make the game any more or less fun. \u00a0I choose the Fantasy setting because it was something different than Civ4<\/em> offered, and I had a fairly deep back story already developed from years of running Dungeons and Dragons games. \u00a0But what really excited me about the potential for a game on Civ4<\/em> was 2 of its new features, promotions (the ability to level your units and have them gain abilities) and religions. \u00a0Both features had a lot of potential and I wanted a setting that would let me really develop them.\u00a0 Promotions and leveling was already a standard of\u00a0fantasy role-playing games, and creating a fantasy setting allowed us to have a lot more fun with religions than we could in a real setting, where applying various advantages and disadvantages to real religions makes it hard to talk about the game over the political concerns. So I wanted to make a Civ4<\/em> mod first. \u00a0There turned out to be a lot of good reasons to make it a fantasy mod, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Soren<\/strong>: I often forget that the current version of Fall<\/em> is technically a sequel. This can, I’m sure, lead to confusion at times. As probably much fewer people have played the earlier version, can you explain what are the biggest differences? And why did you guys decide to branch off into a sequel instead of just iteratively improving the first version?<\/p>\n

Derek:<\/strong>\u00a0The first was really just a proof of concept, to see what could be done. \u00a0It only involved a few minor source code changes that were used in the final version to clean up some\u00a0issues.\u00a0 By the time\u00a0it was complete, we had a few members on the team, and we had a ton of great feedback from the community. \u00a0When we sat down to do the high level design for Fall from Heaven II<\/em>, everything was reconsidered. \u00a0It really was a new project from the ground up, not just a further iteration on a common design. \u00a0I like to say that I designed the first version of Fall<\/em>, but Fall from Heaven II<\/em> was\u00a0a team effort.<\/p>\n

The biggest difference is that the original Fall from Heaven<\/em> doesn’t have any unique civilizations. \u00a0They are either just the standard leaders\/civilizations from Civ4<\/em>, or some placeholder fantasy leaders that a fan made that use the standard Civ4<\/em> traits.\u00a0 Not having access to the source code forced us to concentrate on a smaller prototype version for the first fews months. \u00a0In hindsight I think that was a very good thing. \u00a0We really played with the model and the game a lot before ever digging into the more technically challenging and time consuming parts of mod design. \u00a0I know professionals prototype their games, but it isn’t done very frequently in the mod community.\u00a0 It really allowed us to develop the whole picture before delving into the details.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Soren<\/strong>: Could you actually give us a year-by-year timeline of the project, from the very beginning to present day? I’m interested in how the scope grew over time, and in what order you tackled the various game systems.<\/p>\n

Derek:<\/strong> Civilization IV<\/em> was released late in October 2005. \u00a0I loved the game and was excited by the modding capabilities. \u00a0At the time there was very little out there to tell us what we could or couldn’t do, so I sat down and wrote a design doc for a fantasy turn-based strategy game that I wanted to play. \u00a0I had no programming or art skill, so once I had a vision for what the final game would look like, I started to implement features as I learned how to do them. \u00a0The first version of Fall<\/em> was released about 6 weeks later on December 16th \u00a02005.\u00a0 By today’s standards of what is happening in the Civilization IV<\/em> mod community, that version would not have compared well, but at the time it was enough to stir up some excitement.<\/p>\n

I found out early on that there were a lot of things in the design doc that I wouldn’t be able to do until Firaxis released the Source Code. \u00a0Those things were pushed to Fall from Heaven II<\/em>, and we concentrated on what we could do without the source code. \u00a0I think it was very important that I originally designed without regard to what was possible, and when we got together as a team to do the high level design work for Fall from Heaven II<\/em>, we kept any practical technical concerns out of the conversation. \u00a0There would be a time where we would have to drop or curtail features because of technical limitations but not in the initial high-level design.<\/p>\n

By February of 2006 Fall<\/em> was complete, and we started working on Fall from Heaven II<\/em>. \u00a0Firaxis didn’t publicly release the Source Code until April of 2006, but I was fortunate enough to get invited to beta test it, thanks to you, a few months early. \u00a0That allowed Talchas and I to start doing proof of concept work for some of the more ambitious functions we had planned. \u00a0We needed to make sure that a Spell System was possible before we started Spell System design. \u00a0We needed to make sure we had the ability to really distinguish the civilizations before I asked the team for ideas on what to do with them. \u00a0Once we saw what was possible, it was time to invite the team to start design work, which happened on February 15th of 2006.<\/p>\n

We came up with a huge amount of things that we wanted – too much to tackle at once. \u00a0So we broke all the features into 4 big phases and ordered them so that the game would remain playable throughout.\u00a0\u00a0At a very general level, this is the list we came up with:<\/p>\n

“Light”- The base 16 Civilizations and the spell system (on top of the FfH1<\/em> features that were maintained)<\/p>\n

“Fire”- Infernal and Mercurians civilizations, the Armageddon Counter, Hell map, rituals<\/p>\n

“Shadow”- Svartalfar and Sidar civilizations, equipment, 2 new religions, unique features and wilderness areas<\/p>\n

“Ice”- Illian civilization and 18 Scenarios<\/p>\n

This way, we kept the team focused on what we were doing at the time. \u00a0If ideas came up that fit better in a future phase, we just noted it in the thread for that phase and let it go. \u00a0This was important so that the game stayed playable, we had enough loose threads just in the phase we were working in we didn’t need active work on a few dozen features all at the same time.\u00a0 It also allowed us to focus test since we changed only one part of the game at a time (at a very high level).<\/p>\n

Also, in February, my work sent me to England for 3 months. \u00a0I was there without family or friends, but I had a nice little house to bounce around in, Internet access and plenty of time to mod when I wasn’t working. \u00a0This was the most time intensive part of the project for me; I learned how to program by reading the source code and copying what I saw (so if I have any bad programming habits, they are really your fault!). \u00a0By May 19th of 2006, I was in my final few weeks in England, and we released our first version of Fall from Heaven II<\/em>.\u00a0 As the phases went, that was the first version of “Light”.<\/p>\n

Since then, we have been releasing new major versions every 8-10 weeks. \u00a0I wanted each version to feel like a significant upgrade, to help generate interest. \u00a0But it was really important that they were frequent because the best way to fight burn out is to get positive feedback form the community, and to do that you have to release. \u00a0Also, I didn’t want to make too many internal changes without getting some public play testing to find any new issues we had introduced.\u00a0 The first version of “Fire” was released on February 16th, 2007.\u00a0 The first version of “Shadow” was released on December 16th, 2007 (our 2 year anniversery), and the first version of “Ice” will be released on December 16th, 2008.<\/p>\n

I always wanted to release frequently, and I’m very proud of the fact that Fall from Heaven II<\/em> never missed a release date.\u00a0 However, that was stacked in my favor. \u00a0I never announced a release date until I knew we were going to hit it, and release dates were never determined by having to have certain features, only that they would have whatever features were ready by that date.\u00a0 We didn’t have a plan from the beginning on how long each phase would take or even when the project would be done. \u00a0I was pretty aggressive about pushing it forward – you could spend months perfecting any system but at some point you need to call it and move on to the next step.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Sword<\/em> was released in July of 2007. \u00a0That was the point where we needed to reevaluate everything we had left to do (we were just finishing up the “Fire” phase at that time), and if it was worth converting to the Beyond the Sword<\/em> code base. \u00a0We decided to do it, and that was the first point where we really began to look at what was left, the light at the end of the tunnel, and started talking about a December 2008 end date. \u00a0Even though we didn’t have an end date from the beginning – because we just didn’t know how long it would take – we always had a vision for what the final version would look like.<\/p>\n

That vision was so important to making sure every contribution was valuable. \u00a0One of the major requirements to becoming a team member is they had to understand the vision. \u00a0There are a thousand great games that could be made, its important that we are always moving toward making the same one.<\/p>\n

Soren<\/strong>: Ha, I think I’ve heard that phrase before somewhere. We should spend some time talking about who the major contributors to Fall<\/em> have been. Who are they, and what roles have the played?<\/p>\n

Derek<\/strong>:\u00a0Fall would not have been possible without the team. \u00a0They were all hand picked based on their talent whether as programmers, artists or writers. \u00a0And we often say that everyone on the team works on design. \u00a0There is no doubt that they are producing professional quality unit models and other writing and art assets. \u00a0They are doing it for free in their spare time, and most of them have been contributing for the entire length of our 3 year development.
\nThe members are:<\/p>\n

Derek “Kael” Paxton<\/strong> – Team Lead, I hadn’t done any programming before Fall from Heaven<\/em> and started this project both to try to make a fun game and to teach myself a little programming.\u00a0My chief contributions are in establishing the direction and organization of the project, making sure everyone knows what still needs done, so they can find things to do that interest them.\u00a0 I also spend a lot of time in writing, designing and programming tasks.\u00a0 I’m not an advanced programmer by any means, but with the help of guides and the members of the team with programming skill, I have gotten better.<\/p>\n

Ben “Talchas” Segall<\/strong> – Programmer, Ben is the lead programmer for Fall<\/em>. \u00a0The first version of Fall<\/em> had very minimal programming. \u00a0I had written a design document for what I wanted in Fall from Heaven II<\/em> but there were some things on the list that were well past my capability. \u00a0At the time, Ben was making his own smaller modpacks (mods providing new functions to be used by other modders instead of being played). \u00a0His work was so far ahead of the rest of the community at the time that no one really knew what to do with his designs. \u00a0He was the first member I invited to the Fall from Heaven II<\/em> project, and for a few weeks, he and I just worked through some early prototypes to see if what we were considering was even possible. \u00a0Ben was able to provide functions for everything I needed to do, allowing us to invite the rest of the team and get to work on the specific design work. <\/font><\/p>\n

St\u00e9phane “Sto” Nadry<\/strong> – Programmer,\u00a0St\u00e9phane is our newest member. \u00a0He is a programmer who has been creating external resources for Fall<\/em> for a while and was invited to join the team after programming a mini-game that we wanted to add to the mod. \u00a0Since then he added a Trophy system to the game that will be the core of the upcoming scenarios.<\/p>\n

“Chalid”<\/strong>\u00a0– Programmer\/Artist, Chalid created our most challenging monsters, including the Dragons and Giant Spider, as well as programming several key features and modeling other units.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Eli “Loki” Markham<\/strong>\u00a0– Designer, Eli is the guy we go to when we are out of ideas. \u00a0A typical request to him is that we feel an area is lacking, and we need a few ideas to improve it. He usually provides 20-30, so we are never at a loss for ideas.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Tom “Woodelf” Snyder<\/strong> – Designer, Tom is our resident play tester. \u00a0He was the first person I invited to the team and probably one of the few people that has played every version of Fall<\/em>. \u00a0He has also worked on several other mod teams and plays a huge amount of mods, making his feedback invaluable for what can be improved and ideas from other mods that may work for Fall<\/em>. \u00a0He understands Fall<\/em> in and out, and his instincts on what will be fun or not fun are always dead on.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Jon “Corlindale” Duus<\/strong>\u00a0– Writer, Jon was our first writer and started the process of creating a voice for Fall<\/em> by adding flavorful tech quotes to the mod as well as creating the backstory for several of the leaders<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Randy “Niki’s-Knight” Miller<\/strong>\u00a0– Writer, Randy took the scattered fragments of back story that we had written and tried to smooth it into one consistent story. \u00a0He matched up people quoted in various areas with great people in the mod and wrote background entries of his own to tie together sections or fill out parts that captured his interest.<\/font><\/p>\n

William “Wilboman” Nordan<\/strong> – Writer, William was one of the early members to join the team and has been contributing stories, entries, quotes and other writing assets ever since.<\/font><\/p>\n

Michael “AlazkanAssassin” Hall<\/strong> – Artist, Michael developed the “Puppet Mastery” technique that allowed us to easily use models from other games, such as Pirates!<\/em>, in Fall<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n

Philippe “C.Roland” C\u00f4t\u00e9-L\u00e9ger<\/strong>\u00a0– Artist, Philippe was our first artist and took an interest in Fall<\/em> well before anyone had figured out how to create new art assets.\u00a0 He developed and shared many of the processes he pioneered. \u00a0Philippe is currently attempting to get a job in the gaming industry as an artist.<\/font><\/p>\n

Martin “Ploeperpengel” Zutz<\/strong>\u00a0– Artist, Martin is the lead developer of the Warhammer<\/em> mod, which was our sister mod, and is a talented modder and artist on his own. \u00a0He does a lot of our animation work and has created some very unique units for the mod. \u00a0Martin recently got a job in the game industry.<\/p>\n

Stephan “seZereth” Wei\u00df<\/strong>\u00a0– Artist, Stephan is our lead artist. \u00a0He has contributed more art assets to Fall than anyone else and is responsible for making sure that Fall<\/em> maintains a consistent, unique and interesting visual style. \u00a0There aren’t many original art assets left in Fall<\/em> as Stephan has redone the units, terrain, and the interface to really give Fall<\/em> a unique look. \u00a0Stephan came to Fall<\/em> with the goal of making every civilization visually distinctive. \u00a0So that an Amurite warrior didn’t look like a Grigori warrior. \u00a0With the amount of units in Fall<\/em> and 21 different civilizations, I honestly didn’t think it was possible. \u00a0But he has been slowly chipping away at the art list and amazing everyone with both the quantity and quality of the work he has produced.<\/p>\n

Ilia “White Rabbit” Draznin<\/strong> – Artist, Ilia developed many of our early special units such as the werewolves and worked extensively with us on the Age of Ice<\/em> project for Beyond the Sword<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dave “Hexagonian” Sobotka<\/strong> – Artist, Dave joined us on Age of Ice specifically to develop some storyline slide shows for the project. \u00a0He also went on to create media for the main Fall<\/em> mod that kept that distinct style for the creation of wonders and the founding of religions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Philippe<\/strong>: Just a precision, I am not attempting to get a job in the gaming industry (I don’t consider myself ready for this). I’m only considering a 3D modeling program for my study. This is a career that I never thought of before joining the team, and I must say that Fall from Heaven<\/em> is the thing that revealed to me the passion I have for gaming art and all the digital art industry.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Soren<\/strong>: That’s a pretty diverse list. How have most of them joined the project? Were you recruiting them, or did they come and seek you out?<\/p>\n

Derek:<\/strong> I recruited every member of the team.\u00a0 Although we have been fortunate enough to\u00a0receive\u00a0offers to join the team from many people, we have never accepted anyone like that.\u00a0 If you have the talent and drive to contribute to a project like this, you are probably already\u00a0doing so\u00a0(Fall from Heaven<\/em> has an active community already modding for it).\u00a0 There are a lot of major contributors who aren’t team members and haven’t been invited just because at some point, having too many people on the team makes it more difficult to manage.\u00a0 We want a team big enough to spawn good ideas and discussion but small enough that everyone can stay focused on a common goal.<\/p>\n

See also Part II<\/a> and Part III<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fall from Heaven is a dark fantasy Civilization IV mod, built by a team headed by Derek Paxton.\u00a0The first version was released on December 16th, 2005 and last month – exactly three years later – the “gold” version was uploaded. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civ"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3EGlq-1W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}