As we have seen in the recent past with two projects of writing a story in the BR universe with input from the habituals of these forums, if there is not a solid ground concept and north, the thing always fades away.
I once posted an idea in the old old old BladeZone forums (no, not those, the previous ones
) about creating a LA2019 environment in Quake 2 (colored lighting was the novelty back then and it was perfect for neon lights), just to meet there and chat in a "proper" place, no game or competition. Well, it was very naive, but I had this picture in my mind of loading the map, walking down a 4th Sector street and entering in a Taffey's-like bar, just to see the avatars of Gerry and "Harry Bryant" (Aaron) among others and join them for a little conversation. Of course, it never happened... I mean, we've never had even an all-members chat! And if it was scheduled, the sad thing is I probably could not come, because -besides Time Zones- as I've stated someplace else, I have very little money and I use a pre-pay card ISP service of 20 hours, so I have to ration my internet time to make it last a whole month, and that's the reason why I never chat or play online games... it would eat "a week" of the time in one day
Back to the game mod, I don't think that a find'em-n-shoot'em gameplay fits into Blade Runner. On the other hand, a gameplay system that encompasses the RPG elements necesary to make the game really BR-like, may be too hard to implement for multiplayer. So, as I see it, the options are: a) a plain team FPS a la CounterStrike with Reps vs BladeRunners, or b) a single player game a la DeusEx. The team match is of course much more easy to create, but, would it feel like BR? I doubt it. And then, there is no sense in dedicating a lot of effort to create the mod, if there are going to be just two guys around in the server.
The RPG singleplayer is a lot harder, but it would yield more satisfaction in the end. I've done bits of map editing in Qoole (that is, a map of my house) and a never finished model in Milkshape (that is, a model of my head
), so my skills are very undeveloped at this moment, but my system specs are high end... for an early 1997 machine. So I haven't been able to check out the UT2004 LA2019 map neither. I think Deus Ex has the right atmosphere for sure, even with the lack of features that newer engines have. Looking at the modding community for DX (Zodiac, Cassandra) I can say that if a project of singleplayer BR Mod is started, all the people involved must know it will be a long (and I mean long) term commitment, and, first of all, IMO, involving BR it must have a very, very good backbone story, or not exist at all.