Those of you that seek more information about the Mod can refer to it's webpresence, which is located here. Of special interest is the Music page, which has a couple of the new soundtracks composed by Straius for the mod. Well worth the download, they are, especially "TheHunt."

[PlanetDeusEx] You are "The Oldest Existing Mod in the Deus Ex Community" according to your webpage. How long has Convergence been in development?

[Convergence] I know it may be a bit of an ambitious thing to state, but I believe it's true.

Convergence has been in development since April of 2001. But before Convergence, our team was developing a mod named Covert Operations. Work on Covert Operations began back in Late June/Early July of 2000. I was just the music man then, I wasn't the leader of the team. Originally our team leader was JonP from www.Deus-Ex.org. Our team has gone under a tremendous amount of change since then. As people's lives became crazy and everyone kind of drifted in and out of the project, as happens with all mod teams, we went under a leadership change. For a few months GreatAroo (A mapper and Senior member of Convergence) took over the job of leader. When his life got crazy he had to drop out of his position. It was then that the project almost completely died. We were in our final death throes when I started pushing for a website that we needed badly. While a friend of mine and I developed this website, Plaguelord (Another mapper and Senior Member) had an epiphany and brought up the idea of doing a Co-Op MOD instead of the CS clone we were currently working on. It went over really well and we completely changed our focus and started up an entirely new project. That was in April and the concept work started. I ended up becoming leader of the mod team since I had the most time to commit to the team and was bursting with ideas.

[PlanetDeusEx] Pages 2-4 of the Story section seem to give details of relatively minor players in the Mod. Judging from what the introductory page says, at least. Wot gives?

[C] Everyone of those groups are involved in a complicated storyline. While they all seem minor, they're all major players in the weaving of conflict that ensues. We don’t want to release too much information about the storyline aside from an outline of possibilities. Part of the enjoyment of any game is unraveling the story set forth before you, we wouldn't want to compromise that pleasure. ;)

[PlanetDeusEx] You've revealed three characters from the game so far. Will there be more in the finished project?

[C] Unfortunately these are the only 3 main characters that will be available to play as. Building a Co-Op mod is new territory and we quickly realized that maps developed for multiple players are going to have to be designed differently. There are so many more possibilities available now that 3 people will be working together simultaneously. It becomes extremely difficult to control the flow of a map and keep a balance between the map becoming too hard or too easy. It's because of this factor that we have limited the number of players to 3.

[PlanetDeusEx] The game seems to take place in Thailand, but one of the maps is from New York City, and two from Northern California (a little too close to home!) Can we expect the same globe hopping that was in the original Deus Ex?

[C] Yes, there will be a fair amount of travel taking place. Even Canada is included!

[PlanetDeusEx] One of the issues in Mods with real-world weaponry is the need to stay true to the real-world counterpart, without unbalancing the game. How do you handle this?

[C] We have 2 members on our team (Rambler and Smokescreen) who have very extensive knowledge of what seems to be every gun ever made. We rely on their knowledge of the weapons to make them accurate to their performance in the real world. Since weapons in games usually have very exaggerated differences, that may not be as large in real life, it seems that the most deadly weapon of all is the human wielding such weapons. Every weapon will have it's weaknesses slightly exaggerated in order to be noticed in a gaming environment, but the biggest impact will be a player's, or CPU’s, ability to wield such a weapon. After all, a gun is a gun and a bullet will kill just a surely no matter if it is fired out of an AK-47 or a Glock.

[PlanetDeusEx] Judging from your Skills page, we can expect a persistent (i.e. savable) game. How will the persistence be handled? Server or clientside?

[C] There has been a strong debate about this very issue going on in the development forum to the Co-Op Project. The problem with a server side save is that only the server has it, and the players are forced to play on the same server to continue their game. While we assume that everyone will be playing with friends, it would be a mistake to rely on that possibility. If the entire save game were to be saved on the clientside, massive 20MB files would have to be transferred over the server's connection. The Co-Op Project is looking into different ways of saving the data. It seems that the most viable solution is to have every character's personal data saved clientside while the game itself is saved on the server. But I wouldn't rely on that as a foregone conclusion to the problem. It most likely will change while development persists.

[PlanetDeusEx] How do you plan to handle creating a new game? Will the players have to start new characters?

[C] We are planning on having an option when starting a new game. The server/admin will choose then whether or not people will be able to use previously saved characters from other games, or if they must start with a clean slate. We want the people hosting and playing the game to have as much control and freedom as possible.

[PlanetDeusEx] If players have to start new characters, wouldn't that negate the replay value of the mod? If they don't, how will you explain the more knowledgeable/skillful characters in the Mod's fiction?

[C] You're right, if they had to start a new character every time they played the game it would pretty much make a replay boring as hell. We never directly discuss a player's ability. While each player has his/her specialty to begin with (Character Class) the extent to which their abilities have been developed is an anomaly. So basically, we don't explain their knowledge. It's just a quirk of the video game world. ;)

[PlanetDeusEx] How is character selection handled? Are players randomly assigned to characters, do they make a selection in-game, or pre-generate a character?

[C] What we would like to have is a pre-game chat room where people can talk and discuss who gets what character. There will most probably be more than one person who wants to play as a particular character. What we try to emphasize in Convergence is a need for teamwork. So we leave as many of these kinds of decisions up to the players themselves as possible. If they can't even decide who’s going to be what character, how will they work together in-game as a team?

[PlanetDeusEx] What is, in your opinion, the single most important part of creating a given atmosphere?

[C] Since I am a sound/music guy I've always felt that sound is one of the most important parts of creating a mood. Sound and Lighting. It seems that seeing and hearing are the very first sensory tools any person relies upon to gain an understanding of what is happening around them at all times. Touch is something we leave for a closer examination since the possibility of pain is one of which we are always concerned about. If you control the sound and light of a scene, you directly control a person's comfort level with their environment.

[PlanetDeusEx] What's a "Coffee Bitch"? Do we want to know?

[C] lol, our coffee bitch is our everything man. ;) He's our little secret.

[PlanetDeusEx] Any pearly words of wisdom for aspiring Mod developers?

[C] Sure, why not? I'll try not to ramble on too much...

The way i see it, there are 2 things that you MUST have before ever even attempting to build a mod. Teamwork and Dedication. Nothing comes easily when you're developing a mod, especially when every member has a real life going on in the background. If the leader to a mod is not dedicated enough, the project will fall apart, no exception. If you don't have an entire team of dedicated and excited people it will become boring fast.

When you recruit people for your team, recruit people that are professional but still know how to have fun doing hard work. After all, no one's getting paid to do this and when the fun level ends, so does their interest (generally speaking).

When something is really difficult or you seem to hit a block, just keep chiseling away at it, try another angle, it's a labor of love and in the end, no matter how much work you put into it, it will all be worthwhile when someone actually plays your game! Not to mention the added line to your resume ;)

And finally, have a plan! If you don’t have entire documentation for your game before you start you won't have enough focus and you can end up squandering months just talking about what to do with a game. It's important that everyone on your team has a clear goal to work towards, that everyone knows exactly what it is that they're building. It's a lesson I've learned from Convergence, something we're constantly struggling with, always know where you're headed. There has to be someone people can come to for answers.

[C] So I guess that pretty much wraps up the interview. Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss our mod with PDX, we’ve all been excited about it at Convergence. I hope this helped answer everyone’s questions out there.