Apocalypse Rising It is time for a release.

[ReaLNero]

Hey y'all! I'm one of the many people who check whether AR has been released now and then, and I believe most of us will agree that we have gotten used to always hearing "it's done when it's done, we'll release it then". 

At this point, my only guess is that the developers have internalized that sentence, and have never given a second thought throughout the years on when to release it. I noticed that in recent years, the forum's popularity has unfortunately decreased. Maybe it is time for the team to consider releasing the game?

As I understand it, the reasoning behind this policy is that a bad release would leave a sour taste in people's mouths. On the contrary, I believe the long wait has caused much more people to dismiss the project over the years. So I do not think this reasoning is valid.

As another point for a release happening, I have no doubt that the developers hearing fans enjoying the game would improve their motivation for the project, and make developing more fun! Just to be clear -- I'm not saying the developers are unmotivated, but that it would their motivation would benefit.

Don't think I'm breaking forum rules by saying this -- I was a tester for a while a few years ago, and the game was very fun. I can only imagine it's getting better now! 

Of course, nothing against the developers and testers -- I heavily appreciate their work. I do not mean unwell on anyone. I would love to hear what the AR team thinks.

Edited April 3, 2020 by ReaLNero

[Killing_You]

I'll give my two cents here, but I'll leave the bulk of answering to the project heads. First off, I want to thank you for approaching this with the level of respect and friendliness that you did. I'm more than happy to have a discussion about this with you.

Simply put, while it can feel like the game has been stagnant as far as developing goes, this isn't quite true. AR has gone through quite a number of changes just in the time that W3D Hub has existed, much less the length of time that I've been with the team, or even the full life of the project. These aren't small changes either; the unit roster has been tweaked several times, and there's been quite a few mechanics implemented, toyed with, and proposed throughout the years.

There's also the unspoken fact that APB Delta was quite a game changer. No longer does it feel right to release a game that is more-or-less a reskinned version of Renegade. It has to know what it is, show a lot of polish, and truly feel like a legitimate game in it's own right. We really want these games to knock your socks off when they come out- and trust me, they will.

[Einstein]

1 hour ago, ReaLNero said:

As I understand it, the reasoning behind this policy is that a bad release would leave a sour taste in people's mouths.

I can affirm that this is the position held by AR's project leads.

1 hour ago, ReaLNero said:

On the contrary, I believe the long wait has caused much more people to dismiss the project over the years.

I worry about this myself, and my personal opinion falls somewhere around here, but I'm not in charge

@Killing_You is spot-on however. Much has changed, and new mods are now held to a higher standard because of how Delta raised the bar so much above everything prior. Plans may still change, but there are no current plans for a non-complete* release.

By "non-complete", I am referring to a certain milestone that the leads have in mind.

[ChopBam]

2 hours ago, ReaLNero said:

As another point for a release happening, I have no doubt that the developers hearing fans enjoying the game would improve their motivation for the project, and make developing more fun!

If I may offer a counter-point, and I am not speaking as an AR developer but an experienced developer for other projects who's had many ups and downs with motivation: a bad release can mean fans won't enjoy the game which can actually hinder motivation.

[MPRA2]

To quote our lord and saviour Shigeru Miyamoto:

Although it would be a good move to throw out a few PR blogs/trailers for the big projects currently being worked on, as to draw more interest in the now very active C&C community (due to the remasters).

[Yah-Nosh]

I second what the others here said: no good can come out of a premature release. Even if we had the capacity to do some kind of "Early Access" approach, an actual business with more people and more experience than us can mess that up. We have to good on the first impression.

That being said, if you think more of a PR push would be a good idea (i.e making sure people don't think these projects are "dead"), then feel free to make suggestions.

3 hours ago, MPRA2 said:

To quote our lord and saviour Shigeru Miyamoto:

Although it would be a good move to throw out a few PR blogs/trailers for the big projects currently being worked on, as to draw more interest in the now very active C&C community (due to the remasters).

Ah, Miyamoto. Why didn't we listen to you?

[moonsense715]

I think even the devs are missing the point here. I am the only active AR developer left here. That does not help make this proceed fast. It's not motivating to be alone.

[OWA]

9 hours ago, ReaLNero said:

Hey y'all! I'm one of the many people who check whether AR has been released now and then, and I believe most of us will agree that we have gotten used to always hearing "it's done when it's done, we'll release it then". 

At this point, my only guess is that the developers have internalized that sentence, and have never given a second thought throughout the years on when to release it. I noticed that in recent years, the forum's popularity has unfortunately decreased. Maybe it is time for the team to consider releasing the game?

Hey there, cheers for taking the time to post. The reason that we haven't released AR yet is purely down to the fact that it's not on a state that we currently find acceptable for release.

We've put many years of development into this project and spent many of those years failing and refining the experience so that when it's released people will enjoy it. With all that being said, I feel no pressure to release AR. It's a project that I like to work on in my spare time that I'm passionate about. I know that there will always be people who will want to play it at the end of the development journey, so if we can achieve the goal of making something polished and fun to play, I feel it'll have a lot more impact than something that appears half-baked and with a bunch of things that don't work, are represented by placeholders and aren't up to the graphical quality of our other projects.

With Reborn, we've been in a perpetual cycle of re-releasing the same game with minor tweaks over the course of it's lifespan. Recognising that Reborn is nowhere near as polished as it should be, we have taken steps to completely overhaul it, but unfortunately this takes time away from AR. I'm currently not working on AR because I've committed to getting Reborn out of the door. But once that is done, I'll be heading back to AR full time.

9 hours ago, ReaLNero said:

As I understand it, the reasoning behind this policy is that a bad release would leave a sour taste in people's mouths. On the contrary, I believe the long wait has caused much more people to dismiss the project over the years. So I do not think this reasoning is valid.

As another point for a release happening, I have no doubt that the developers hearing fans enjoying the game would improve their motivation for the project, and make developing more fun! Just to be clear -- I'm not saying the developers are unmotivated, but that it would their motivation would benefit.

Don't think I'm breaking forum rules by saying this -- I was a tester for a while a few years ago, and the game was very fun. I can only imagine it's getting better now! 

Of course, nothing against the developers and testers -- I heavily appreciate their work. I do not mean unwell on anyone. I would love to hear what the AR team thinks.

As mentioned previously, I feel that a half-baked release would not be viewed favourably and I would feel very disappointed and demotivated as a developer if the game that I had spent so much time working on over the years, released in a state that I was nowhere near happy with. I'd rather spend time improving the game further so that when it does come out, it isn't played for a week and then forgotten about.

The way AR has been used over the years is also like a bit of a test-bed. Some mechanics that now feature in APB and Reborn were originally features that were developed for AR, so when we have the time to develop it, we usually do some awesome work.

As @moonsense715 says though, he's the only one who is working on AR in any capacity right now, because our focus on a team is getting Reborn fixed and out there. If we had more developers, we could work on these two projects concurrently, but right now we just can't. I hope this post answers your questions!

[moonsense715]

Yeah with that said I still enjoy working on the game, but there is only so much one can do compared to a bigger team. Part of the truth is I made the bots for this engine in the first place to be my company in the test server.

[Voe]

17 minutes ago, moonsense715 said:

Yeah with that said I still enjoy working on the game, but there is only so much one can do compared to a bigger team. Part of the truth is I made the bots for this engine in the first place to be my company in the test server.

[ChopBam]

I will add a positive note here that currently we are working very hard to streamline the workflow for level design in w3d in general, and making some really exciting leaps and bounds with progress, particularly as it relates to performance. Currently TSR is the test bed for this, but have no doubt that AR will benefit from this greatly as well, as level designing is one of the biggest things it needs. 😊

[Raap]

@moonsense715 is more or less the main dev of AR right now. This is a temporarily lonely place for him. The bulk of W3DHub is currently focused on delivering TSR 2.0, which is effectively a total remake of Reborn with the exception of some iconic art assets (which we have remastered - more news on this soon!). We aim to release TSR 2.0 sometime this year, after which people will be (re-)assigned to AR.

As others touched on this as well however, we're constantly raising the bar of quality in terms of art, performance, and gameplay. What APB Delta did for TSR 2.0 in this regard, the release of TSR 2.0 will see this evolve even further for AR. The consensus of the art, design, and programming teams is largely this: Releasing a game of quality below a prior game, is unacceptable and not something we wish to delegate our spare time and personal resources to. All these games are ultimately passion projects we do non-profit, at our own expenses, and therefore we want to feel right about releasing the things we release.

This 'ever upwards' mentality didn't come cheap, and there are a few among the team that would be fine to keep the quality level consistent across the games, but ultimately the lionshare of the folks working on TSR 2.0 wish to ensure we ship a game that players can look at and say, "Hey, they really put a lot of work into this, and really developed the engine, gameplay and art styles a lot".