Hello everyone Richard here, it’s been some time since the last update, so I think it’s time to keep people up to date and posted on the situation. Firstly, for all of you that supported me with my second game release you rock, Gunsmith had a great launch and we’re in a much better position now to continue with game development on all titles. As I explained to people earlier in 2018 I needed to secure my position as a game designer and a business to continue making progress on all titles.
So for that I thank you all for your support and patience in turning the situation around.
In regard to Prospekt and it’s future. I have noticed there is understandably low morale among quite a few of you and I just want to address that. Over the last 4/6 weeks I have been looking into moving Prospekt onto the Unreal 4 engine.
Now I understand many of you will find this strange.
“What’s the point of moving it to Unreal 4 when Prospekt is already finished?” Etc.
There are many questions like this floating around so I’ll just address a few. Firstly, this is very much a maybe situation and I’m trying to get to the bottom of whether it can be done or not. As you can imagine there are some complexities around switching engines and the powers at be must decide if that is something that can be done. I am still waiting on this. If it’s a flat out no then we shall continue to do what we are already doing. If it is a yes however then it will be my intention to do this.
Why? Well I’m just going to say it how I see it. It is my honest opinion that Source engine is and has fallen behind modern day standards. Not only in its technical ability but in it’s support as well. That is hard to say as I am a massive fan of this engine and it all blew us away back in 2003 with it’s impressive features. And credit to it for punching above it’s weight for so long. I remember leaving my PC on overnight to download a 300mb video of Counter Strike Source because my internet speed sucked at the time. But when I got home after school that day I was blown away at the leap in technological advancement.
I will also say there are teams using it that have had great success and it’s performed perfectly for them so I’m not discrediting it in that regard at all. However, these days for a small team that is trying to implement new features that is not the case. It’s proving extremely hard. It’s not that it can’t be done because it can, but it’s just hard to do and the framework is not streamlined. I don’t give up on issues easily so when I say hard I mean it’s hard.
Can I stress I’m talking about Source Engine 1 not Source 2. Which I’m sure when and if that arises will be much, much better. However, I have no idea when or if that is ever coming and that means I cannot plan a future down that path. However, if S2 was a thing I would absolutely love to work with it and see what it can do.
Having worked in UE4 now for over a year I’ve seen what it can bring to the table. Not just great graphical fidelity but also good optimisation, distribution methods that are almost automated and many other things that have had the heavy lifting done to save much needed time during the development. Not to mention almost weekly updates with fixes and or improvements and on hand support.
As a small team these kind of features make a massive difference, it’s hard to explain how much of a difference it makes but to sum it up here’s an example. If you came and asked me, “Rich we want to do X in Source” Id say “I’m not too sure if you can without a tonne of work and I don’t know of any tutorials or guidance on that” If you asked me the same question about UE4 id be able to say “I’m pretty sure you could do that without much trouble and im fairly sure there’s information on it. I know that's quite vague but that is the general feel.
I’m not naming any names but I feel these reasons are probably why many others are migrating over to UE4 as well and I feel this will slowly begin to happen with everyone.
On top of all of this is the main factor. I want to make great games for you, the players and fans that love this universe of Half-life just as I do. When I see what I can make and the potential for the game down this path, it’s a no brainer. We can achieve much more and deliver better content. Instead of engineering the actual engine and bringing it up to speed we want to just use an engine that can help us to make a great game. We do not have the infrastructure to adapt an engine to our needs at that deep level.
If we can’t make the move then I will endeavour to continue production regardless and I will see what I can do in regards to upgrading and improving the current situation.
But that is where I stand. We will wait and see what our next move is. Please don’t be disheartened this is just a slow-moving situation but I am still here.
Also, for all of you that are asking will you have to pay again no, it will be a free update to everyone that already owns the game. If we do massive extensive work on the game and it gets a tonne of more features on top of the base game that everyone already owns, then maybe. But that is a long way on the horizon.
I have big ideas for the future of Prospekt. It will take time, but we will get there.
All the best
Rich
