Hi ModDB friends!
I will keep this update as brief as possible; exacting upon the present status. In short, this project is not down or out, but ascending to new terrain. THEOS: A Chronicle of Faith is currently in transition from the Source Engine to the Unreal Engine 4.
WHY THIS IS:
The Source Engine was originally selected for its arguably superior facial animation toolset available to indie developers at the time. However, progress occurs rapidly within the game engine marketplace, and the Source Engine by no means solely possesses a production-level toolset in this regard.
For a protracted period of time, I found myself increasingly attempting to do things within the Source Engine that it was never designed to do; with predictably unsatisfactory results. This is no fault of Source itself and I still reserve great respect for this engine that I've spent countless hours with. Even so, the Source 2013 codebase isn't maintained, the SDK tools belong to a totally different era and the 2013 branch cannot be compiled reliably for any platform besides Windows. I had hoped that Valve would've released the Source Engine 2 SDK by now with it's supposed degree of backwards compatibility with Source 1, but this hasn't materialised and may never do so from what I understand.
This transition presents a great opportunity to rework things to take advantage of the vast capabilities of UE4. A 'straight port' could never do UE4 justice. I had already intended to refurbish much of the main assets and level architecture as necessary, with this engine transition providing a brilliant opportunity to do so at an even more technical level than is feasible within Source.
I want to thank all who've shown interest; I really appreciate it! So long as I have a head and at least one arm, I will continue to work. By the strength and guidance of the Lord, things will continue steadily forward in patient endurance. Prayer has always been paramount above all effort.
Thanks again! :)
- Stephen Gabriel
I understand your choice! I also love Hammer/Source, but by now it is very outdated. Unreal is a very good choice! And i to hope to see Source 2 released one day, but that doesn't seem to happen indeed. Valve is only in to Steam these days (years).
Leon
Smart move. This is gonna be even better. Keep up the good work.
Source Engine is great, but not perfect for making something not Half Life 2 related, so it’s a smart decision to move onto Unreal Engine 4. Wish you the best of luck!
Another interesting mod lost to Epic's Engine. Good luck on the new path in life! :p
I'm still looking forward to this, although a release of the old Source assets/builds of the original mod could be fun to see sometime in the future *wink wink nudge nudge* ;)
Sad to hear, although I agree that a release of the last Source build once the U4 version is out would be very nice.