by sponge » Aug 14, 2006 @ 11:05am
They're called total conversions generally, but yes that's the gist of it. You make every single asset in the game with your own two hands, and instead of having the engine look for the original game's data, you have it look for yours. Warsow and Tremulous are two (freeware) examples, the former being Q2 engine, the latter being Q3 engine.
I do agree on your second point, although if you're choosing an engine which has mod support, it makes it SUBSTANTIALLY easier, nowhere near the level of months.
Personally, I'd rather do a project like this in the Q1 engine, but there's a couple things that bother me about the engine and PQ on the PPC that I don't like.
holy internets batman.