Mafia - The Prequel. Released now!

[vapno92]

Hey guys, here you have link for downloading mod.
Let me know your thoughts
Download here

Thanks to everyone, who is interested.
Some technical details:

- You NEED TO HAVE version 1.0 to play this mod. With version 1.2, it should crash or not load right in main menu. I made it intentionally like that, because if I let you start playing on 1.2, you would experience some weird things to happen pretty soon.

- Mod is multilanguage, Czech players will have Slovak subtitles, EN, FR, DE, IT and ES version will have English texts in game.

-PLEASE, don't forget to turn on subtitles. Mod doesn't have any voiceover, only subtitles. I can remember some kids let'splayers laughed on this back in the day, that "Haha they use telepathy or something". If you don't understand, that it's NOT possible for one single guy to do complete voiceover in 2 languages for whole mod, please do me a favor and go kill yourself. Thank You
#sarcastic

- There is no really possibility to do new character models to Mafia. I was forced to recycle models from original story, at least I used those non-significant ones you are unlikely to remember.
Main protagonist is Enemy92.4DS with few modification to clothes. DON'T CALL HIM Vito Scaletta, for GOD'S SAKE! Please

For those who wondering, yes, some music is from L.A. Noire, it fitted into dark atmosphere nicely and I love that game almost as much, as Mafia.

Anyway!

Let me introduce to You Jimmy Thompson. One of Don Pepóne's mobsters, who in a fall of 1925 decides to quit from job, because he can't handle it anymore. Ha have a strange suspicion, that Salieri and Morello are up to something against Pepone, so he is afraid about his own safety...

This mod is kind-of story mod, story is very stereotypical, not really well written, but I did my best. My idea was to have some backstory to follow and let you play some mission, that are quick and enjoyable to play. Unfortunatelly, I ommited extensive cutscenes, complex gameplay mechanics or modelling new areas/locations. Sorry, but it would take too long for one person to do.

I tried to NOT be stereotypical in terms of gameplay. Most of mods like this are basically like
-drive A to B
-kill 20 guys
-kill one guy with 999HP
-drive from B to A
Which I DIDN'T WANT!

I tried to be more original, there is of course driving, there is one mission you will kind of hate for this, but it fits to concept pretty well.
I tried to build atmosphere, so I decided to use night+storm theme in few missions and evening/sunset in others. I really loved that evening setting in Mafia back when I was first playing it.
I also increased visibility in city, not to infinite, but like 3-times more than original game.
I must admire, that look from one island to other with high drawing distance, with bright orange sunset and Giuliano Bridge is just STUNNING to this day.


I hope, you will like it even without new locations and extensive cutscenes.like I said, there are some original gameplay elements here, so I am curious about Your opinion, guys

Story of this mod started back in 2012 when
Mafia community was still living strong and many new mods
were being released.
Back then, I met guy called Samo149, and we started our project.
We had big ambitions - to create the greatest story mod ever.
We were disgusted by pretty much shitty quality of some mods back then.
I guess, you can remember it. Mods with awful technical quality,
buggy, glitchy, easy to break down, authors often didn't bother with
implementing fail triggers, using more, then one ambient light etc. etc.
So we said, we are going to make something big and special, something, You can
compare to original Mafia missions. MichalSberatelJS had mod like this, if you
remember, if his mod had voiceover, they could be a part of Mafia when it
was released. Anyway, inspired by him and HBO series "Boardwalk empire", we got
to work at summer holiday 2012. We wanted strong story, dark atmosphere and open
world experience with many side missions to do. Also cutscenes. We wanted really
cinematic cutscenes, like original story did...

As you can imagine, enthusiasm didn't last for very long. What we did, basically
was, that I modelled high quality apartment and bar models (which you can see in
mod), implementing sectors, advanced lighting, radiosity...
Samo did most of the excellent scripting for first mission and cutscene in port.
I had quite a few missions, which I didn't include in mod, because original idea
was set in 1918 right after World War 1, protagonist was supposed to come from war
and then become a part of family. We even had battlefield scene. If you are asking
- Yes, that's complete RIPOFF of Mafia II, only 27 years earlier.
I was progressively working on other elements of the mod, especially open world,
we wanted to have full economics, non-linear progress, weapon shop, car showroom,
clothes shop, street racing...
Anyone, who knows something about Mafia modding is now laughing probably, for the
rest of the people I just say, that Mafia works very differently from, say, GTA
San Andreas. In Mafia, you have to load everything in once, because original Mafia
is divided into "Scenes" and was NOT designed to be open world. There is no way to have whole game in one scene, it would not be stable at all (You can see it on mods like Ikarus Mod 3.0, it already pushed engine to it's limit in these terms). Worst problem was, you have NO WAY how to transfer variabiles between scenes. You can only transfer one number, which is used for example in FREERIDE missions to transfer money value. But we simply would NOT have a way to transfer information about purchases, already completed missions etc. from scene to scene. I had a great headache because of that and meanwhile, Samo decided to quit. I guess it was because Mafia community started to fall down progressively. People started to lose interest in Mafia, totally. One modder, which I won't call a name, who was well respected on CZ/SK scene and did one of the greatest mods of all times suddenly started to released many very bad mods, basically unplayable bullshit and he started to write strange religious/cult non-sense things into chat at
Mafia.czech-games.net, I guess many CZ/SK guys will laugh at it to this day.
Anyway, I can remember Samo saying something like "I don't want to mod Mafia anymore. Look at M**** (that guy), he is modding Mafia for like 10 years, it's totally pathetic, sorry".
I decided to continue anyway with mod change from story-oriented to strictly open world.
It didn't last very long, my hard drive failed and it was over for good.
I took parts, that I had backed up, "glued" them together and created a new idea in my head. I released in late 2012 as "Made man mod - DEMO" and basically let it sit for 7 years. Sometimes I had some idea, started working ... and left it behind anyway. Meanwhile, Mafia community, unfortunatelly, pretty much died completely, so my motivation was not there.
BUT! By some strange accident, one day in 2019, I saw a Mafia speedrun race between PTNGMS and Hannys on Twitch. Then I realized, that Mafia still have strong comunity between speedrunners and people from CZ/SK started to recognize me in Twitch chat and keep asking me abouts mods and everything.
Well and in March 2020, unfortunately, Corona virus striked as. While forced being at home instead of going to work, I managed to finish that FINALLY.



BONUS:!Some almost 10 year old screenshots from developing an original mod, it's worth looking at


Last edited by vapno92 on Thu Apr 16, 2020 9:34 pm; edited 2 times in total

[mammix]

Looks very interesting, including the story behind it all I will check it out hopefully soon.
On a related note - is the Mafia scene in CZ/SK still active? For some reasons, I see they never were too involved on foreign sites, rather closing themselves in their own circle... (mostly, of course)

[zdenda55]

I'm so excited for this mod! Nice work!

[vapno92]

[linukkis]

Absolutely love it and can't wait to try it out And man, those pictures are simply amazing! Bar de la MEME and the fuming horse are my favorites

[zdenda55]

I played it and it was very good. Great work!

[ASM.]

That definitely reads and looks tasty. I think I'll give it a try.

Also, thanks for the post-mortem writeup on how the mod came to be. It was an interesting read.

[vapno92]

Hey ASM and thanks for positive words.
Well, maybe it would be possible, I didn't thinked that .diff files might be helpful, but whole work is lost anyway.

I am glad I managed to get this thing done.

Thing with Mafia community, I am glad to see new people and some activity here, I am glad about it.
Sad thing is, when chat on mafia.czech-games.net was shutdown, it's basically over for Mafia community in Czechoslovakia, there are of course people from our countries here, but many visitors of Mafia.czech-games.net are not even aware of this forum. Such a shame

[Hunter]

Sorry to hear that.

Tell your friends ...not that I care. But it pains me to see these communities die, even if I have no connection to them.

[AMadeMan]

Awesome job man!!

Thanks so much for your dedication and how much effort you put into this mod. And yes, the Mafia community definitely needs a reawakening so new people can be introduced to the franchise and the first game's modding scene.

Regarding new Mafia stuff, I read that a Mafia 2 Definitive Edition rating got leaked...

[lubomir222]

I just finished the mod. And its one of the best mods i played this year. I really enjoyed this mod and i hope you will make more of them like this.