Optic mod for Alien Swarm

Hey everyone!

So it's been a very long time without updates, and we're sorry about that. This article ought to explain why we haven't posted in so long, and when we'll start posting again in the future.

First off, we kinda leapt to make a page here the second the game was able to run, meaning there was only really a HL2 template mod and some player models working, and we started off too ambitious, with a lot of jumping between engine versions and screwing everything up. We seemed doomed to fail since the start.

The issue with starting so early and pushing out content is there's a complete lack of content and it leads to posting a whole lot of nothing, or results of very, very simple coding that should have been in-game since the start. To make up for that, we just kind of stopped posting entirely. Oops.

But despite that, we've still been working on this game every single day and still continue to. There's a huge stock of art assets and some working code in-game. The reason we stopped updating is because after issues with Alien Swarm, and Source in general, we stopped and looked at how little we'd actually shown what the mod was about on this page.

We didn't want to reboot or abandon the project, however. A year later, and we stand on slightly higher ground.

As a brief reminder, the idea of the game is a team vs team game focusing on PvP. It is set in a developed universe with a rich history that's been in development for a long while. The game is a first / third person shooter hybrid, and will hopefully feature some kind of unlock or customisation system to keep it from getting boring after a while. This is a tad more complex than the initial idea, which is why the next thing is so important.

What's gone down so far is we've moved over to the Unity engine to develop with. This was decided because it was easier for us to create anything we liked with infinite freedom, as opposed to building upon a game engine built for first person shooters. We didn't want to have to code a lot of our ideas into Source, especially with the engine's age and relying on owning a Source game. This means we can get our own ideas in faster, from art assets to code and test it quickly on builds. It also means the game can be better optimised and prettier because we have a far greater understanding of the engine than we ever had with Source.

So what's going to happen? Well, we're going to maintain relative silence for a while until there's content we feel is really polished and worth showing. That way we won't make the initial mistake of jumping into being a full-blown project right away, and we can take it far slower. As content creators, we've made a few errors before and now are back to producing (hopefully) high quality content and eventually pushing out a release a few years down the line.

When that content is ready to show, we'll create a page on IndieDB or a similar site, and this page will link to it and then be closed down.

Sit tight. Updates are coming.