The Natural Conclusion

Hello and a belated Happy New Year to everyone! There have been a lot of things happening for me and the project but where to start in talking about it? I have an announcement that would seem pretty big but then again, perhaps some of you have seen it coming for some time. I guess I’ll just start with what’s been happening with me and then get to the announcement last.

As stated in the previous post, I got a new job (a change of profession actually) which is a lot different than what I did for the last few years. This new job is satisfying to me on a personal level and I like it which is a great bonus but it also happens to be a very physically demanding job. Sometimes I’ll work 10 hour days and when I get home, I’d just be exhausted. I would wind down, eat, shower and sometimes just head right to bed to do it all again the next day. That left very little time to do anything on Infernal Dead and I’ll be completely honest; on my days off I had a lot of trouble focusing on what had to be done.

I tried to contract some work out to a couple of Programmers before the New Year to help out with some of the more advanced features I had planned but none of it panned out. One person did some work for me which I had paid for in advance because they seemed in dire need and they led me on a 2 month-long game of cat and mouse. When the work was finally turned over after I had filed a complaint with a third-party, it turned out to be useless. Perhaps this person used a different version of the engine than I did but whatever the case, it was incompatible and just plain did not work. Rather than go through more bullshit, I just decided to cut my losses and move on.

Fast forward a couple of months later and I contacted another Programmer (well-known in the community) for help with some hurdles I had been experiencing. This person was well-known and had a good reputation so we began to negotiate over a few days of private messaging on the forum. Things seemed to go well at first as this person appeared ready to tackle what I had presented. In a nutshell, I had some code that needed just a little bit of expanding. It wasn’t a hard thing to do for someone of his/her calibre but was beyond my scope as far as Programming. They were eager and wanted to start work right away but before I could even talk about money. At this point, I had to stop them and ask for a price quote first. Logical, right? Well, they didn’t seem too impressed by that.

They asked me what my budget was; how much I planned on spending. I did not reveal my budget but had an idea what it would cost. They assured me that even though the work wasn’t difficult, a lot of testing might have to be done and that they couldn’t give me a price until after they had completed the work.

Uhh, What? Isn’t that why it’s called an estimate?

So, I contacted some Programming friends of mine (different field of Programming work) and I gave them a number of what I was expecting to pay for this feature. Every single one of them agreed it was a fair price because the groundwork had already been laid and they cautioned me to not let this person stretch it along because of ‘testing‘ because then they could pretty much make the testing last as long as they wanted. I returned to this Programmer with a number for what I was expecting to pay and then never heard from them again! What a world.

So what the hell happened? Did they want to know my budget so that they could suck it all up? And when they found out I wasn’t willing to pay some ridiculous price they just left in search of some other sucker? It’s kind of funny but now that I think of it, the first Programmer (the Cat and Mouse person) also wanted to know my budget upfront, which I revealed (stupid of me) and they said they would do the work for that entire amount. It wasn’t until I said that there were other Contractors involved that I had to pay as well that they lowered their pricing to something more fair…for the same amount of work.

It all reminds me of a crooked Mechanic. You know the type ‘Uhh, so I know you just wanted an oil change but we’re going to need to overhaul your Flux Radiometer and that’ll be 1500 bucks and then we’ll need to rotate your windshield to balance out the vehicle, and that’ll be another 200 and uh, there’s a leak in your rear Bumper which’ll cost another 100.‘

Crooked fucking Mechanics of the Game Development world man…lol…

Well, those were some frustrating times and then coupled with all the problems that kept cropping up whenever I tried working with this engine…it all just made for a tiring overall experience. And this sort of thing didn’t just start happening but as you all know from past posts I made, happened for a long time.

This didn’t bother me the first 5000 times…but now it’s a little old.

So I did a lot more soul-searching and asked myself the following things:

1. What was I getting out of this?
2. What was I planning on getting out of this?
3. How much longer could I keep fighting this engine?
4. Was what I was planning to do, really worth my time or effort now?
5. How much longer will it take to create?

It hasn’t been a quick development process by any means. How long have people been waiting since I first announced this project? Too long for too little it would appear. So I came to some conclusions and again, maybe some of you have seen this coming a long time ago. Maybe it was the natural progression of the project that I had been fighting all along and that is why it has been such a struggle.

Infernal Dead (Daemonicon) was supposed to be a Spiritual Successor to Out Of Hell. But now that I think of it, what it needed to be was Out Of Hell. What do I mean by this? Well, many aspects, themes and even characters from Out Of Hell would have appeared in Infernal Dead. I had read in the past that some people were a little disappointed that the new project was not a direct continuation of Out Of Hell or an expansion of it. Maybe that was why I couldn’t garner the interest for the crowd-funding phase? I am not going to fight it anymore. I’ve wasted precious time trying to implement new features and mechanics that I couldn’t possibly know would work until the very end.

So the announcment is: I will be making this Out Of Hell: Complete.

I will rebuild this from the ground up (in that I mean, I will not be importing maps or other work from the old UT2004 version) and I will take into account all of the features that we talked about in this forum post: http://outofhell.freeforums.org/your-ideal-hell-t169.html

I will be using ALL of the assets created thus far for Infernal Dead and seeing as how some of the new monsters and NPC’s are expansions of Out Of Hell counterparts anyway, it should fit seamlessly. The original Out Of Hell can now serve as the ‘prototype’ or ‘blueprint’ and I can have a clear direction on where I can take it. I will do what I think I should have done all along:

1. I will completely flesh out the entire story of Out Of Hell.
2. I will further develop the characters that we’ve come to love and hate.
3. I will bring the visuals up to modern standards.
4. I will make sure that the atmosphere in this game surpasses that of the original.
5. I will extend the story past the original conclusion.
6. I will fix what was wrong with the original in terms of gameplay and performance.

This is my contribution to the loyal fanbase that has supported me all these years and my contribution to the medium and the art. I hope that this news brings excitement to you and you aren’t left disappointed. This will be a complete and total horror package. I think, that this is the natural conclusion.