Winter 2009 Update news

Overview

Hello TPOF Fans!
I'd like to take the chance to give you the lowdown and the updated
TPOF Gear down schedule. Now, I hate to say that TPOF is finalizing
very soon, especially when a lot more can be done to improve TPOF.
But it seems I have some bad news. Homeworld 2 is getting to not be
able to handle TPOF for some reason. Most of us have gone over a lot
of the code and the problem seems to be that our code is getting to
be incompatible with the Homeworld 2 engine. Simply put, we started
coding outside of the homeworld 2's engine capabilities. Which, when
dealing with anything involving complex programs like this, is not a
good idea. But, shaving off these pieces of code would ruin the
gameplay horribly. Since we cannot simply rebuild the entire game
from scratch, we're going to patch up what we have, and try to hope
for the best.

Campaign

All of you have been patiently waiting for the TPOF campaign. I'm
sorry to say that because of the restrictions homeworld 2 imply, we
cannot deliver the campaign we original had in store for you all.
But, we have crafted a very good replacement. Instead of doing a
point-to-point campaign, we are instead going to create a handful of
Mini-campaigns (1 or 2 missions a piece). That will have a satisfying
amount of story and action to them. We choose to do this simply
because we think we can squeeze more out of homeworld 2 with this
approach.

The Future

As
we finish up TPOF, we have a lot of plans for the future. We are
currently working on a top secret game that will be written from
scratch. It is an original IP, and completely original design. While
it will not be the greatest thing that hit the market, it will be
simple, hardcore fun that you've come to know and love from TPOF.
Originally, we had planned to do a follow up to TPOF called Uprising,
but we decided to can that for something a bit different. I hope you
all will love this game, but we do not wish to reveal any details as
of yet. However, we are going to keep the TPOF codebase on Ice,
because might have a use for it in the far future.

Timeline

The
finalized timeline is as follows:

• End
  of December '09 - All
  of our features will be finalized and a 2.5d will be released to the
  general public and tested
• Mid-January
  – 2.6
  Will be released, with a small campaign preview.

• End
  of January – Skipping
  2.6b,c, and d, we will release 2.7 with bug fixes and more previews.
• Beginning
  of March '10 – we
  will release 3.0, the final release of Slipstream: The Price of
  Freedom.

• Mid-March
  '10 – Massive
  amounts of coding will be stepped into high-gear on our secret
  project.
• Summer
  '10 – Announcement
  of our secret project.

*subject
to change.