Ghost Recon Modder Interview
Mr Moon

Mr Moon is a relative new cominer to the Ghost Recon modding scene, initially joining our Ghost Recon forums less than 3 years ago in 2012.

Since then he has been busy creating some fantastic Ghost Recon mods, which have been added to our latest Ghost Recon mod collection which has grown to 32Gb and is now available on USB Flash Drive.

Hi Mr Moon, would you like to share what part of the world you are in, and what age group you are in?

Hi Rocky, I'm 25 years old and living in the South East of England, and I must say its a real honor to be featured here on GhostRecon.net!

Before we look at your Ghost Recon mods, can you share with us your gaming and modding background?

My relationship with gaming is kind of weird not many of my friends know just how into gaming I am, certainly very few of them know I mod games. I guess I'm kind of a closet geek.

I've been an avid gamer since I was 6 or 7 years old, playing games on my dads SuperNes or on our family PC. I've always liked old or older games, mainly because we could never really afford the newest consoles or the fastest computers, so I made do with what I had.

Wolfenstein

I first started getting into mods to make the games I already had last longer and it wasn't long before I wanted to try it myself. I think the first game I started to mod was Wolfenstien 3D, and later Half-Life. Needless to say my early work was not very good and only for my personal amusement. I never really thought I'd get anywhere with it and lacked the confidence to tackle anything more then a bad re-texture.

Then there was Operation Flash Point, my first encounter with a tactical shooter or milsim. I was hooked from day one (I also sucked and died a lot!). I would download hundreds of mods and set up huge battles and scenario's.

But again my patience and lack of confidence prevented me from learning or making anything of substance. Then after a long several year abstinence from gaming I bought a new PC, dug up and completed OFP (using a fantastic enhancement mod I couldn't run before) and swore to myself I would learn and toil and cry until one of these ideas pinballing around in my skull could be made into a playable mission.

I learned to script, I made my own Addon's I screamed "why won't you work!?" a lot and eventually came up with 'The Garden of Death' my first fully playable mod. And although only a few hard core OFP people played it they seemed to like it a lot and praised my efforts wanting more, what a brilliant feeling that was.

What motivated you to start making Ghost Recon mods in 2012, over a decade since the games original release?

Ghost Recon really is an anomaly, even today there is still no game quite like it, or any game that even tries to do exactly what it does better.

I remember coming across Ghost Recon by accident in like 2010 I think? My brothers friend had this huge stack of PS2 games and I just took it out put it in the console and couldn't believe I'd missed this one all those years ago.

I loved it and I knew the PC version would have a huge back log of new content for me to rip through and wow I still have yet to play my way through the huge Ghost Recon mod vault.

Ghost Recon also has some of the best modding tools I've ever seen, both official and user made. The scripting system is so simple and easy to learn, yet challenging to master, its spoiled me after straining my eyes at line after line of script in OFP.

I also much prefer the self contained 'activated' mod system over the Arma series 'addon' system which is so troublesome, annoying and time consuming at times. I can't think of a Ghost Recon mod that requires you to plummet the depths of the internet looking for some ancient lost pistol mod to get a mission to run correctly.

Your first mod release early in 2014 was Serpentine Dream Theory, a Four Mission Campaign for Ghost Recon that has been downloaded well over 600 times. This being your first Ghost Recon mod, how did you find scripting missions, adding new game assets and altering maps?

First of all there should be a section in the Ghost Recon modding forums somewhere titled 'what not to do when scripting missions'. I made a ton of mistakes that would drive me crazy and lead me to scrap my first mod 'Chaos AD' (later released as an expansion pack for SDT) and begin work on Serpentine Dream Theory.

I had a whole week off work with which to get the foundations ready and god do I wish I could get a week off now lol.

I had decided I wanted every mission to have something unique about it. I wanted every mission with its objectives, atmosphere and characters to feel fresh, new, interesting and memorable.

Exploiting the theme of a mission whether it was chemical weapons, an arms deal in the desert, a city under siege or a storm swept naval base was a whole ton of fun. Although after my week off work it became far more challenging, I had to make modding task lists while at work, figuring out what I could do in a few hours and what would need to be worked on less casually.

Sometimes you think something's gonna be simple "Ok I get permission for this, I copy the relevant files and then edit the hell out of it" and you miss something tiny but very important and end up spending all night trying to figure out what went wrong!

It was fun though, working within the constrictions of time and my ability, figuring out what map could look like a Syrian city with a little make over, and what character model could be made to look like a dude in a NBC suit or a sailor. Although that can mean lots of semi procrastinating playing through various Ghost Recon mods, hunting down that one asset that will complete the look.

Of course after its done you find and figure out things that would look or sound way better. And of course a few months later I brought out a patch that pretty much changed the look of the mod completely. And wow my first attempt at making the intro and outro vids using just the GR engine, Fraps and windows live movie maker, that was a challenge!

I will say this, without some really good people in the community I would never have released one mod never mind three.

Were you pleased with the way Serpentine Dream Theory worked out, and what were you most proud of?

Honestly, I was a lil disappointed at first that it wasn't downloaded as much as I'd hoped. But the great feedback I received from people made up for it (its like crack to me I can't get enough of it lol).

It should be no surprise though, many of the people who where still playing Ghost Recon a year ago have moved on. I am indeed eternally grateful to everyone who left a comment or sent me a message it made everything worthwhile. I guess the thing I was most proud of was the fact that I might have made something actually half good, something that could potentially give a player the same kind of joy I had playing my own favorite mods.

I guess I was also really pleased with the atmosphere I had wrapped the campaign in. You don't get many military shooter stories where your objectives and motives are as unheroic and questionable.

Although I do still enjoy modern shooters (well some of them) I often find the romanticism and glorification of war and nationalism rather naive and hypocritical at best. I mean come on COD, you build a giant unwieldy death laser in space, capable of killing millions and don't find it a little ironic when its used against you?

Anyway I may have made the Ghosts a little too mustache twirling evil but its a theme I'm gonna revisit in a more subtle way in Thanatos.

Your second mod was Kreigsmaschine Gotterdammerung, released 9 months later in September 2014. This mod was a little bit different from the majority of Ghost Recon mods as it was specifically a horror, based around World War 2. This was a great mod and its probably fair to say that it has been hugely under appreciated for what it achieved. What were you most pleased with about this mod release?

What was I most pleased with? Actually turning a very grounded, no bullxxxx, tactical shooter into a horror game. I mean sure theres only so much horror you can shoe horn into a game without melee attacks, flash lights or the possibility of conventional zombie or monster A.I. But I did actually have multiple people messaging me telling me they had actually gotten pretty scared playing at a number of points! Again the feedback I did receive was very nice and I was so grateful for it.

The thing is, when all in game opponents alive or undead are gonna be using firearms (which are not 'scary' at all) you have to get creative. Using custom ambient sounds, cutscenes and some cool scripting tricks I was able to envelope the traditional and conventional Ghost Recon gameplay in a kind of dreadful atmosphere that constantly foreshadows things getting darker and weirder, leading up to the nightmare climax in the swamp. Or at least that's what I was going for, perhaps people where just talking about the cheap ass jump scares lol.

Yeah again even with the boosts from the moddb and blog links the downloads remain a little disappointing. Again though what should I expect? Most people play Ghost Recon for some 'realistic' tactical fun. Zombies? Not so much.

GhostRecon.net forum member Wombat50 was a huge help, he re-textured three of the four maps and did a ton of effects work for me not to mention the play testing, feed back and criticism he offered, hes a cool dude.

It's funny while I was working on the proto version of Thanatos I got insanely sidetracked by the urge to make this crazy WW2 horror thing. And now while I'm back on Thanatos I'm tempted again to return to it and make an expansion. I was thinking... Kreigsmaschine Gotterdammerung: Afrika Korpse haha.

Your most recent mod, which the title image is taken from, is Thanatos Five Zero, the first installment of a series of Future Soldier missions. These are very enjoyable missions, and I know everybody who has played them is looking forward to the next instalment. What can you tell us about this mod and your plans for developing it further?

I rather enjoyed Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for what it was, a modern third person shooter with some stealth and tactical elements thrown in to justify the name. It was fun sneaking around using optical camo, throwing sensors, flying drones, using magnetic vision and setting up sinc kills with your team mates at just the right moment to keep your victims mates none the wiser.

But honestly even going in knowing full well I was getting Gears of Recon there was still disappointment to be had. The game constantly threw garbage like invisible walls and the goddamned diamond formation and tons of the cool stuff in the live action trailer and short movie was missing.

I was looking forward to my team rolling my UGV through the burning streets of Moscow while I infiltrated the enemy drone command center and took it out, making my other objectives easier to complete. And somehow the Russians didn't seem to get much near futurey stuff except the bodarks.

Thanatos Five Zero will be Ghost Recon: The Real Future Soldier. An attempt to bring the styles and themes of the 2012 game to the gameplay and freedom of the 2001 game we love.

Anything remotely future soldiery the game engine will allow me to put in will be put in. We've got FS Ghosts, Bodarks, Ravens Rock, optical camo for npc's, we've got Thales talon robots filling in for ugv's and his micro air vehicle filling in for the ghost drone. And the Russians have their own share of cool stuff, as well as being decked out in gear inspired by their own future soldier program they have their own drones and gadgets and I'm hoping to eventually add a GAZ Tigr a T90A MBT and the awesome S300 mobile air defense, no promise on that though as my 3dsmax skills are of the "BUTTONS, SO MANY BUTTONS!" level at this time.

And again a certain Wombat has been really helpful in the sound department lending me gun reports and sound effects to play with to make it way more immersive.

The story, of course takes place in the near future, and thanks to sanctions and pressure from the West the Russian ruble has collapsed and after a bloody year long civil war an unsteady ceasefire has been agreed between centralist loyalist, neo-Marxist and ultranationalst Raven'sRock forces.The Ghosts are sent in covertly to both reignite hostilities and weaken Raven'sRock (the strongest of the three factions).

You're gonna be launching raids on Gazprom refineries, locating and blowing up air defense batteries, dodging Voron assassins, supporting npc controlled ground drones, collecting Intel, assassinating military and political leaders, and bagging hostages for the CIA/SIS funded neo-Marxist underground. And while your main opponents will be the fascistic Raven'sRock there will be a lot of playing factions off against each other in order to further destabilize the country and gain the upper hand in the geopolitical sphere.

This theme of covert backstabbery was hinted at in the Ravens Strike dlc but never fully explored. In addition to this I will be going through the original campaign and updating all the missions with new enemies, effects, retexture the maps to a winter theme and change things up and throw in a few surprises here and there.

Of course development is going to be at a snails pace, I'm not even supposed to be working on Ghost Recon anymore and I still need to learn a ton of new skills. But we will get there eventually, expect a new mission with tons of new characters, custom sounds, imported weapons and a further developed story line in a month or two, or less.

Why do you think even after three more games in the Ghost Recon series, there remains such an interest in modding and playing the original game from 2001?

Like I said before even after all this time there really is no other game like it.

It's got a great UI, the player and command controls are very simple, responsive and easy to learn and still to this day handles the transition between open outdoor and indoor urban combat better then many milsims.

Don't get me wrong I love the ArmA series, they are awesome titles giving gamers years worth of hard core, military fun. But there really should be a modern title out there for people who want that no bullXXXX, serious, realistic, tactical experience, but who don't necessarily want or need to sit in a chopper for 15 minutes or hike for hours over open country, or have really complex controls and commands etc.

Don't get me wrong I'm fine with all that stuff but there's something about the more instant action nature of the 2001 Ghost Recon, the way it just says "hey we're here, this is what we're here to do, go get on with it" that I love.

Sure the old girl looks rough around the edges but we can patch her up and make her look a few years younger. And for me its always gonna be gameplay over graphics and until a better version of that gameplay comes along with a better version of that ui and better mod support and more freedom I'm sticking with the king.

Thank you, Mr Moon for taking the time for this interview and for creating some truly great mods for Ghost Recon.

No thank you for giving me the opportunity to ramble at you and all the fine people who visit this site.

And thanks to everyone who has supported, helped and given me permission to butcher their fine work, thanks one and all.

Mr Moon has his own website here, or you can reach him in our forums here.

Download his Ghost Recon Mods below.