Hey all, thank you so much for all the feed back we received on our last news post, hopefully this one is viewed as an apt response to the last one. First off I would like to articulate where we currently stand on the engine swap issue internally. Hopefully the transparency will help us, help you, help us all.
FAIR WARNING, below the video is the more in-depth side of the engine transition discussion, if you just care about the continued source development (which is being continued) check the video out, and skip the bottom half of this post.
Timetrial with new goals system and Zach's latest map
We are NOT actively working on an Unreal build, it's simply an idea that has been tossed around for some time since the UDK is now targeted at small developers. They have a solid set of tools that are updated monthly. It also would allow for more detailed environments and the main thing we would love, much bigger maps.
That being said I want to address key concerns:
Movement -
A lot of people complain about how the UDK “feels” different, which I agree it does. I am not willing to have this sliding floaty movement in Tension. So believe me when I say, the movement will be very similar to how it is now. If it isn't, we wont be sticking with Unreal.
Art Style -
Another concern is the art style, most of the UDK games are “blurry” and “gray/brown”. This is mainly because of assets, not the engine itself. We will be implementing our unique art style that looks very different from a lot of FPS's on the engine.
All that being said let me introduce our proposed solution: since we are strapped for time/resources we are going to work on polishing off the Source version of Tension into a playable timetrial based game. The release will consist of a small campaign, simply to learn the controls and a group of globally ranked timetrial maps.
While it's being put to the test by all of you, we will try out the UDK. If we decide the UDK is up to snuff and the community seems to want a full story game as well as improved mechanics added features, we'll begin the monumental task.
Believe me when I say, I love this project, I will not be releasing something that I think is below the standard we have always held it to. Thank you all so much for the feedback and continued support, please Comment/E-mail/PM your thoughts,
- Alex Soustek
Love it.
absouloutey perfect idea
Woooah that was neato!
Udk is great. ideas are great. so lets do a great game man !
When Source mods move from Source to UDK, they always die. It's a loss of motivation after losing all the work they've already done and having to start over. Sure there may be a boost of motivation once you switch engines, but that will be lost shortly and the mod will most likely end up dying.
It won't.
I'm not trying to be negative. It's just that I've seen quite a few mods that switched to UDK and died. I'm not bashing the idea, I'm just trying to protect the mod because I'd hate to see it die.
Yes I agree here, 90% of mods that have switched end up dead.
Ok, so you'll keep the source engine version sitting around, release a demo, and if we like it enough you'll stay on source? Excellent =)
More like if UDK seems like it would make Tension suck.. But lets stay focussed on the source release for now.
It's probably going to be decided by how Alex feels about the movement and how much he can do to fix that slidey sort of running. If we're not satisfied that the build would be as good or better on Unreal, we're going to try and work out a more fleshed out, probably story-driven game on Source.
But for now we're going to polish off a Source build and hopefully have it to you guys before too long. Stay posted!
By the way guys, to those of you running lower-end systems, I wouldn't worry too much about not being able to run an Unreal-based Tension. Unless you're *right* on the edge of even being able to run Source, chances are you can run Unreal as well. It's a far better optimized engine and the way maps are built in Unreal allows for superior optimization in that regard as well. You may have to set the graphics down, but you'll probably be able to run it.
It takes guts I would say to shift from Source to another engine, not due to resources but due to a community shift. UDK's community are more delved in Development, rather than social forum status which Source is obviously all about.
My suggestion would be that you release this Source build as a tech demo, an alpha version of your game art-style and game mechanics. That way it isn't completely nulling the Source community, it would reach a much more reasonable 'medium'. Another point is that have you checked into the AlienSwarm SDK? Valve haven't completely killed the Source development scene yet and with the rumors of the Portal2 SDK, it could very well double your advantages using Source once again, not just for upgraded tools, but to have the Source community, as it is far bigger than UDK's.
Hm...moving it to UDK is somewhat ok but staying with Source SDK is great and plus were already this far why change it now? Plus are we getting ready into alpha/beta testing for the mod?