Goreagulation Is Unleashed!
Hello everyone! It's been a year since I started Goreagulation - almost a year since I first announced the mod - but Goreagulation is now released and ready to play! The feature list sum-up can be found on the file, but if you'd like a low-down of what to expect, check out the trailer below:
If that's all you wanted to see before downloading the mod, nab it here! An update has since been released, which is already linked below.
Before You Descend...
A unique background map has been created to begin your journey into the world of Goreagulation - bringing in all the key motifs of the game such as the spirals, moving flesh, and of course, an omnipresent eye looking at the player. With a new background map, a new track is also crafted - the final track on Goreagulation's soundtrack, which is ironic as it is now the first one you'll hear in the game. Given its beginnings, it is titled "Natal Concord", and you can hear it down below:
The whole soundtrack can now be listened to via a playlist here.
Concluding The Fleshcraft
Naturally, since the mod is being released, every single map has now been fully art passed. There's more assets I've decided not to reveal and spoil in advance, but enjoy this album of screenshots from Gore2, Gore3, and Gore4 as you wait for the mod to download!
Gore2 - The Gore Mines
Gore2's artpass was almost complete in the last devlog, and was finished not long after. The bulk of the time since then has been spent on the increasingly complex art pass for Gore3 and Gore4, which, as you'll soon see, have much more fleshy components than industrial.
Gore3 - The Flesh Labs
Gore3 is the first map where flesh outpaces metal, where there's ostensibly more organic material than man-made and also where you first encounter Elite Gorebine and obtain the Crossbone. This was also the first map where I kept running into the displacement limit, unsurprisingly, but clever use of Propper turned that around. The most notable individual art piece in this map is the bastardization of the Creation of Adam, which sees Adam turned into a bizarre amalgam of a man and God replaced with The Eye. This image was made using a combination of the Deep Dream AI and plenty of photoshopping with some original art stuff in places too. The full, unimpeded image can be found in a "bonus" zip I've put together which features this image as well as the mod's vmfs and also some dev maps too for the curious and level layouts I drew - you can peruse the bonus zip here:
Gore4 - The Spire
The final map of Goreagulation, The Spire, has plenty more I've deliberately not shown you in an effort to preserve some of the mystery of your final encounter in the mod. That all being said, there's plenty to ogle at in this map too, and of course, there is your fateful meeting with your creator...
Ever Evolving
So what's next? If a metric ton of useful feedback drops on my door about fixing issues that didn't come up after months of testing (and given the sample size of a handful of testers VS a whole community of players, that seems likely), then a patch might come out fixing up some things with the mod. Ultimately I never intended for Goreagulation to be anything more than this, but since creating the mod I have thought about where it could go next, if I wanted. I can't be sure anything like that will ever materialise, but I'll be able to decide whether to or not once the mod has been out a while. In any case, there might be a post-release article in a while, probably in 2023, depending on the reception and what analysis is necessary.
For this who privately followed my journey from beginning to end, thank you for your support and encouragement! To those who discovered this mod page just today, I hope you enjoy your stay! That's all for now folks. Thanks!
