March Update. This Project's Future is Uncertain news - Fremen's Foes: Redux mod for Half-Life 2

Hello everyone, it's been 3 months since the last article went public. In this one I'm going to show you some things I've been hardly working on. These are a couple of new game features, some City-47 apartment interiors... And a serious talk regarding the future of this project. But let's start with some good news first, shall we?

Yes, this is an actual lockpicking minigame in a source-mod. It's pretty simple - you push tumblers, until they randomly get set at the top. Your lockpick can randomly turn red meaning it will break if you push again, so the user needs to be careful while constantly pushing tumblers.

The primary reference for this mechanic was it's counterpart in Oblivion. I was trying to make it "somewhat" realistic, while keeping the simplicity of map-logic and some bit of difficulty. The main reason for adding this feature was the need for more resources in the game.

I've noticed my levels started to have much more additional areas for exploration, but I felt that just normal health/armor/ammo rewards are just not enough. I needed something more than that, so I added lockpicks. Now the player needs to keep atleast one of these, and when exploring the map, you can find locked containers or doors, that might contain good stuff.

What if you combined Deus Ex augmentation system with the famous ingame mechanic from Max Payne?

You get NANOMACHINES, son, that can slow down time, while you're jumping and firing a gun. Not satisfied yet? Well, besides that it also improves accuracy to the point that player can land headshots from nearly any distance. And yes, it uses BioElectric Energy, so the player needs to look for batteries - another new ingame resource.

I plan to add more augmentations, which will improve the protagonist's overall perfomance on his missions.

I spent last couple of months working on a rebel hideout. It's commander needs to provide the player and his sidekick some instructions on rescuing their captured friend, he also gives a single sidequest about supplies.

This is pretty much everything I did during these 3 months. I had exams during this period, so I couldn't work that much on my modification.

I wanted to thank everyone for voting Fremen's Foes: Redux as the 10th Place Best Upcoming Mod in MOTY 2021, even though I got massively disappointed, mostly by myself. (You can read more about that in my profile's blog)

This whole city map I spent around 4.5 months working on is still not finished, but I already streamed 40 parts where I worked on it in total of 70+ hours. Honestly, I regret making this map that big, it's hard to fill so much space with details and objectives and it takes alot of time.

You know, I spent more than a year working on this "remaster" of sort for Hunt Down The Fremen. The original modification had 7 fully playable chapters, so it's obviously that I have to rework all of them.

But after an entire year I reworked only first 2 chapters and a second map from the third one. In early stages of development I thought I will release this in just 3 months, but in reality this "jokemod" already took a year and I'm not even half-through. I often find myself wishing I could tell my past self, how much time it would've taken and just forget about it. And besides 7 chapters there is also a bunch of new features I've planned, but I haven't even touched the codebase since Demo released.

I barely managed to pass my retake exam at University, but even after that all the stress from education doesn't go away. I just feel like I'm gonna have less and less time as years go on and I'm only at remastering some "jokemod" I did in the past. Honestly, I really don't want to spend more years working on this, but at the same time I don't want to rush it and scrap most of the planned things, that should make the modification special. Especially when I actually DO have all the needed skills and knowledge, afterall I managed to do a lockpicking by using bare map-logic. But I just shake my head every time I think of living even more years in this development cycle.

Some of you might say: "Take a break". But I already did, plenty of times. I haven't worked on this project for about 3 months, because of aforementioned exams, I had a thought in my head for the last month which went: "When I'll pass that retake exam, I swear, I won't stop doing these maps after that". But now, unfortunately, I realise once more, that I have problems at making big enough progress. I get occasional thoughts about dropping this project, shortening the maps or whatever.

So I have no idea, my friends. I have no idea whether I will be able to continue the further work on this. Throughout this year of working on Redux I felt like my whole energy and passion about this whole "bad freeman" saga just slowly and unnoticeably faded away, and it saddens me when I realise that. I really don't know what to do. I just have major issues with seeing myself STILL working on this in one or two years, I really bit off more than I can chew.

So what do I do? No idea.

If you're passionate about this modification(meaning you played both HDTFremen and the Redux Demo and have atleast basic understanding of it's nature) and have decent mapping skills, feel free to message me on Discord or here, if you want to help. I can't offer anything in return, except for putting one's name in the credits, but I will appreciate any possible assistance. I'm not begging people to work for me, but I just know that it would really ease the load. It's really tedious to be one of these One-Dev-Armies, especially after such amount of time.

Well, that's all for today. SellFace out.