As competitors get more sophisticated, they start to demand more from games which are often created to appeal to the most novice of gamers. Quake, one of the most modded games ever, is no stranger to mods for match play and bug fixes. With all the changes made in the Source games, many people are trying to restore their favorite games to the gameplay that attracted them in the first place. While CSPro (www.exegamers.com/portal/story/32185) has gotten a lot of attention, without too many tangible results, the Prodod Mod has been off in the background getting work done. The fruit of their labor is about to pay off as they release their mod today. I spoke with Andrew ‘PuRe’ King of the ProDoD mod team to see what their mod is about.

Thanks for talking with me Andrew. Why Prodod?

The ultimate reason or purpose behind Prodod’s creation is to make DoD:Source more suitable for competitive play. There is a good portion of the competitive DoD community that is not satisfied with DoD:S in its current state (this includes 1.3 AND source players), and it is our aim to correct this by changing certain things in the game that Valve has consistently stated they will not ever address.

So is the Source engine flawed or is it just implemented poorly?

Like any of the other engines out there, the source engine does have its flaws, but in the case of DoD:S its really just a matter of poor implementation. The reasons behind the choices Valve has made for the game are the subject of much speculation, but our best guess is that it ultimately was a business decision. Although it really should come as no surprise to anyone that Valve’s largest market segment is the casual gamer, and judging by the recent DoD:S updates that included “neato film grain mode”, its very clear where their focus is… and its not on the competitive community. In fact since last fall when DoD:Source was released, the valve developers have repeatedly stated that they have no intentions of ever fixing the game per the suggestions and complaints of the game’s player base, supposedly because they are satisfied with the game as is.

Do you aim to get players to switch from DoD 1.3 to your mod, or are you just targeting the Source players?

One of our main goals with Prodod has always been to unite the game's split competitive community, so obviously that includes both groups. While it is true that the 1.3 players are still riding a high from the recent WSVG event, we feel that Prodod has the potential to go much further than 1.3 ever can again. In order for a small game like DoD to get an official game spot at CPL again, it needs to offer something more than just a competitive player base for sponsors to consider pouring money into a large official tournament. Unfortunately these same rules don’t seem to apply to CS1.6 because of its absolutely massive competitive community, and DoD1.3 is really in a position where big companies aren’t going to put up cash for a small game on an aging engine. With this in mind we are going to continue developing and improving the mod after release additions such as the k43, rifle melee's, and of course new maps.

Any plans to make changes to the DoD:S maps?

Unfortunately Valve has made it very clear to us that they do not want us decompiling, editing, and then redistributing their stock DoD:S maps. However we are working on several updated ports of classic competitive DoD maps, namely chemille and railroad. After both those projects are finalized we plan to either move on with an original map, or possibly explore another port. It really all depends on what happens with the game.

Do you expect to get league support for this mod with CAL and CEVO supporting 1.3 and source?

Our main focus at this point has been getting the mod into CAL as a possible subdivision of DoD:S. While I can’t go into all the specifics, I can tell you that CAL-Operations has set several “hoops” that we must jump through to even have the mod considered for a division… the main one being that we get a minimum of 32 teams to express serious interest in playing the mod. The reason why we have yet to really start contacting leagues like CEVO is because we don’t want to potentially spread the interest in the mod too thin. While there has been a lot of hype surrounding the mod in the DoD community, we really don’t know exactly what the numbers and interest are going to be beyond our own rough estimates.

Have you talked to any members at Valve about your mod? If so what was their reaction?

Yes, the Prodod team has been in ongoing communication with several people at Valve for a while now. Unfortunately I can’t really go into their current position on the mod as a number of things are still being discussed.

Valve has not updated Anti Cheat as often as needed. Any plans to add AC in your mod?

Anyone that has ever competed on the source engine is most likely aware of the various security loopholes and the massive amount of “customization” that the engine allows. This is the main reason why plugins such as CSP and zBlock exist for CSS, and also why leagues are working so hard on Anti-Cheat setups such as DSP. For Prodod we are developing a system similar to what DSP is trying to become with a client and server setup. Essentially our server plugin handles rate and cvar blocking/enforcement and communicates with a client that is handling file checking and such. There is also other functionality for league play built into the server plugin such as demo recording and server tickrate reporting. Other features such as an ingame steamid database/reporting system are also being worked on.

How do you choose between 1.3 and Source features for game play?

Well DoD1.3 was the basis for a lot of the weapon balancing in terms of how the guns should “feel” and be setup, but we wanted to include as many of the source features as possible so that the game still felt “new” and “different”. Its really a very fine balance, but by assembling a beta group that consisted of both 1.3 and source players I think we were able to maintain the speed of source’s gameplay while keeping the feel and nature of the game that has made DoD the great game it is today.

Do you feel your mod has caught a bit of the backlash of people not seeing any results of the CSPromod?

No, not really. I don’t think that many people outside the DoD community even knew about the mod until now, even though we’ve been working on it since last December. The two mods are also very different in terms of their approaches, so I doubt there really has been any rubbing off.

Thank you for you time, any closing thoughts?

I would just like to remind everyone that ProDoD goes live today, the 16th, and we hope that you’ll all come out and give the mod a try. Any and all feedback is welcomed and should be directed to our forums. Thanks again to all of our supporters, and thanks to Gotfrag for the coverage.

Official Website: www.prodod.net

Download the Prodod Client here