Fallout Modder Interview: Timeslip

No Mutants Allowed has kicked off a series of interviews with noteworthy Fallout modders, starting with Timeslip, who has done some indepth work on the Fallout 2 engine and made the mod manager for Fallout 3, as well as non-Fallout RPGs.

Q: You have done a lot of work on other games. What work are you most proud of?

Back while I was still working on it, Morrowind Graphics Extender would have won that hands down. It started off similarly to sfall; it had a few tweaks, (antialiasing and the like,) but no killer features. Then I announced I was working on adding oblivion style distant land, was greeted by a chorus of ‘that’s not possible’s, and then went and did it anyway. There was a very valuable lesson in that; never claim that something is completely impossible, because there’s always the chance of embarrassing yourself later. Unfortunately it was a lesson I didn’t learn too well; early on in sfall’s life I said that a resolution patch that increased the viewable map area wouldn’t be possible, and then Mash went and did it in my despite. Although in my defence, I was careful to limit myself to making excuses about needing to redo the maps, rather than flat out saying it was technically impossible, which was what I have to admit to thinking.

Since I left though, MGE has been taken over by more people who, while perhaps not knowing how to get started with such a project, certainly know a heck of a lot more about how efficient graphics engines are supposed to work. (And having more than 3 weeks of C++ experience, which was what I had when I started it, probably helped them too…) It’s changed beyond recognition, and I don’t really understand how half of it works any more, which makes me uncomfortable still claiming it as my mod.

In terms of shear number of downloads I guess oblivion/fallout mod manager would win, (well over a million, although obmm is long since dead, and fomm is now supported by Karburke rather than myself, so it’s probably time I stopped counting) but there wasn’t much there that I can point at and say that it’s really something special. It doesn’t do much more than grunt work.