As promised, a more formal announcement about the state of things. I could go on a very long rant regarding some things, but in the interest of keeping things simple and not starting any issues, I'll stick to the main points as concisely as I can. I also won't go into issues in the past or gossiping. I already said all I have to say about that in a previous post.
The state of things at the moment:
- Some models still need to be finished and are in various stages of completion.
- Despite claims that you may have heard, the missions are in no way done: most of them are horrible in a basic gameplay sense - enemy wing span, ships that just fly straight and are a turkey shoot for the player, some missions are downright impossible to finish, etc. They also don't fit in a coherent whole, narratively speaking. They don't communicate what they're supposed to communicate in terms of narrative, either. It's a mess.
- Other miscellaneous assets need doing, like skyboxes - at the moment, we have old, pixelated skyboxes.
- Ever since I left due to my health problems, development stalled completely. It's dead at the moment. Well, except that from time to time I load up 3dsMax and do something, slowly.
Going forward, the future of the project:
- After talking with the Admins, the best thing to do right now is to archive BWO for a while. I simply cannot do enough at the moment that justifies trying to gather a team. Also, obviously a new roadmap needs to be delineated. So for the moment, consider BWO hibernating or dead. This time officially.
- I'm still holding on to what we have so far, and people who over the years got access to our assets do not have permission to release them or use them. The reason for this is simple: I'm pretty sure that at some point in the future I'll have renewed energy to get back to this. When I do, the models will be in a workable enough state to be used in mission, we will have renewed documentation (something we're severely lacking, if new member's join) and a more proper roadmap. If BWO is ever coming back from the dead, I'll make sure that we have the preset conditions that it is in a good enough state to make working on it enjoyable to anyone new who might join.
- The exception to the above: soon I'll release the HTL GVI Cairo, GTFf Saphah and, what we have so far on the re-mastered demo if I have the permission of the people involved.
- I'll still be around HLP, even if just lurking.
So there it is. I hope this answers any questions you might have. If there's anything I left out, I'll be happy to answer.
