BlackSector

Hi, my name is Unreal1ty, I am from Frankfurt, Germany and I am the Project Lead and Lead Designer for the Half-Life 2 total conversion mod BlackSector: Subject H.O.R.I.Z.O.N.

It all started out with the idea of an original Unreal Tournament 2004 modification in the year 2005. I just thought about a simple modification of the game, like changing some models and weapons. I was always a huge fan of science fiction arts and computer games. That’s why i loved playing Unreal Tournament and when Gears of War came out, i was totally stunned. So i teached myself Unreal Editor 3.0, because i just had some experience with the Worldcraft and Hammer Editor from the original Half-Life game. After i created my first map i was not quite satisfied by the result. I realized, that this was nothing special and I definitely wanted to create something people would say “Hey man, look at that, this is quite extraordinary“. So I took two friends of mine and asked them to help me creating a total conversion mod within changing nearly everything of the basic game. Creating models, maps and new game types. They were like “Alright, we try to help you out, but we don’t know what the hell to do with the Unreal Engine and Editor. Couldn’t we simply use the Source Engine and Hammer Editor, because it has a huge community and support?“. And i thought about that suggestion long time, i liked the idea of creating a highly science fictioned mod for the Source Engine, which had quite a lot of good mods, but they all looked like Half-Life or Counterstrike.

My goal was to do something totally different from Valve. A dark and intense game with a strongly war inspired gaming experience, focused on fast paced multi-player combat. BlackSector: Subject H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. would be settled in an future end time scenario, a destroyed earthly environment.

I draw a lot of weapons and buildings, made my way up with Hammer Editor and teached myself a bit C++ and 3D modelling. Finally after we created two maps, i was left alone with my mod due to time problems. I created the moddb profile in 2006 and hoped to get some help from the community. After some job ads and connections to other developers, i could welcome 3 or 4 new team members. I got some really nice concepts from famous scene artists and we could gain more and more publicity on our profile.

After several years of conception, mapping and searching for talented artists. We have about 3 model artists, 3 level designer, one coder and a few concepts artists, a sound designer and a website designer. We are currently working on the alpha version of the game, testing maps and models and discussing about different game types and modes. My job is almost doing a bit of everything like creating paintings, maps and models, working a bit with C++ and the most important part:
Stay in contact with the team members all over the world. I bought our own domain (theblacksector.com) and set up the developer forum.

In the next few weeks we hope to bring out our new fully featured website with all information about the BLACKSECTOR universe. Really important to me is to give constantly updates and show that the mod is not dead. We are all working on this project in our free time, but we are constantly working on it with passion. We plan to release first in-game footage in the next days to give the community an intense taste of BLACKSECTOR and to show that development is coming pretty well and that we don’t just work on renders or concept arts.

BlackSector: Subject H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. deliveres some original and interesting features. The player has the ability to chose between two factions: Human warriors (UASC) or the alien force (Wraith).
This is really special and new, because you can take control of an alien race to destroy humankind. Every faction is played in Over The Shoulder View (OTS) and not simply in First Person Perspective to give the game a more tactical aspect. You can hide behind walls, climb over obstacles and explore the scene in the Thermal View to spot your enemy first.

Website: theblacksector.com
ModDB: Profile

4 Responses to “BlackSector”

1. David says:

   July 29, 2009 at 5:28 pm

   Thanks to Unreal1ty for guest posting

   Reply
2. Darren says:

   July 29, 2009 at 5:56 pm

   Great art, I’ll Mod Watch this on ModDB.

   Reply
3. Xzeara says:

   November 1, 2009 at 1:53 am

   This sounds interesting so I shall try and stay tuned in.

   Reply
4. Jason says:

   December 18, 2009 at 2:48 am

   i shall try this wicked game hahaha:D
   kool mani.

   Reply