Project Valhalla Postmortem Part 1

Sun setting in Valhalla Expedition base camp

Well, I think it’s time for me to pull the plug on this project. At least on my own behalf. I think I should take a moment to look back and write something down about this project. Game developers usually write up post mortems for their games so I think I’ll take a shot on that even though our project was a mod (but large enough to be a expansion itself).

Starting out

I started modding out of sheer boredom. I had some plans on various mods for various games (like making a mod for The Witcher based on the Finnish horror movie Sauna). Fallout 3 won as a platform mainly because of the nostalgia it gave me and because it was still quite fresh (I started planning the mod even before the game came out).

The aim of the mod was to add Europeans, mainly northerners, to the Fallout lore. I created the basic structure of the plot, wrote it down and posted it on some forums with some basic ToDo lists in hopes to form a team. That didn’t work out too well since most of the topics just turned into flame wars about how I was contaminating the fallout lore with filthy European influences

Also, generally people are not too interested in helping out someone with just an idea. They want to know that you could pull off the project by yourself if necessary. People want to be sure that there is something in it for them before they’ll sacrifice their time to help you.  That taught me very well that ideas aren’t worth anything unless you can implement them. That’s the main thing I want to say to all starting out modders and game makers. No one will finish your project for you, so don’t go looking for a team unless you are ready to do all the heavy lifting yourself.

Another attempt

After failing early on to gather a team, I tried a different strategy. The aim of this strategy was still to find a team to help me with the project but my method was quite different. I decided that the best way to attract attention to the project would be to prove others (and myself also) that I could pull it off. Fallout modding that time was still quite premature (the GECK wasn’t even released yet) and the community was craving for new weapons to the game. So, armed with a copy of Blender and Fallout Mod Manager (basically a hex editor at the time) I started making my own weapon mod, the Valhalla Rifle.

Render of the Valhalla Rifle

Rifle in game

The rifle is inspired by the Finnish SAKO TRG sniper rifle, but not a direct clone. This mod was one of the first unique weapon mods in FO3 and it became quite popular (you can spot it in many Fallout 3 related youtube videos for example and almost all fan-made weapon packs for the game). One of the videos I made about this rifle was actually featured on YouTube’s .

Through the rifle’s popularity I started recruiting people for my larger mod project. I managed to get quite a crowd together but in the end only a few were really interested in doing some actual work on the mod. There were however a few people who were genuinely interested in the project from the start. This group later became the coreteam of the mod:

• Istvan, pretty much wrote all of the dialogues in the mod and helped me to fill in the spots with the background story
• Illyism, crazy scriptkiddie
• KrazyKommy, GECK editing and QA .
• Erki, our star voice actor

We also had numerous of other contributors and if you’re interested you can check the full list here.

In the next part I will write about the planning process and early phases of development. To be continued…