GameMonger wanted me to give everyone an overview of the development progress, so here it is.

For several months following acquisition of the Source Engine (last year), we spent the time learning the technical ropes and understanding what we could, and could not, do in the engine and editor.

Then we made lots of changes so that we could get the engine and editor to the point of handling much larger scale maps and more content. We discovered that doing that to the degree we wanted would mean some major changes, which still need to be made, but we were able to get a 9 square km map created, with dozens of ruined buildings, and hundreds of various post-apoc props. We also engineered a way to allow charaters to use armor as it is used in RPGs - armor pieces that can be mixed and matched, and a layered clothing system that would allow many variations for both player characters and non-player AI characters. We also scaled the vehicle physics to get that working with our new larger map, and many other little things like decals, overlays, particles, etc. That phase took another several months, and brings us up to the first couple months of this year.

Through mid May 2005 we focused on the investor prototype and multiplayer capabilities, and a few more things to pretty up the world, like a decent land shader and some effects. Though we had a network design, we quickly discovered it needed a lot of work. Since the investor demo needed to include multiplayer capability, that became the priority. Meanwhile the art team continued to pump out assets and animations to populate the map. What we ended up with was a decent investor tech prototype (just in time for E3, during which we showed things to several interested parties). Combined with the game play design (which had been worked out last year, for the most part), we got a fair amount of notice during E3 (without actually having a booth and public demo, anyway - that will change next year).

So, what we have now is some modified client technology (Source) that can handle close to what we want, and a back end network that works, and is scalable. We also have a section of a ruined town, a Post-Fall village and Hold (basically a fortress), a bunch of unique looking characters, several sets of armor/clothing, a physics-based vehicle, birds that fly around, some sound, and a respectable sized map complete with custom multi-layered land shader. All of which is also integrated into the modified Hammer map editor.

What is in store for the next several months? We will continue to refine the prototype and invent new capabilities, both on the art and software sides, and continue defining the game mechanics, as we await a publishing deal or further investment, so that I can finally hire more staff to allow us to move on with finishing the underlying software systems, game mechanics, and start content production. No, we can't say who we have been talking with, that needs to remain confidential until we have a deal that allows us to keep the game design and implementation relatively untouched. Suffice to say we have had some preliminary talks with both large publishers and smaller investing groups. It will be a harrowing next several months for us, as we do our best to convince investors what you guys already know - that Twilight War will be an awesome game, with the potential to rival the traditional mainstream MMORPGs, and certainly offer the community something very different (and sorely desired by many) from traditional MMORPG game play.

Some of the things we are tackling now are skin shaders for characters, height mapping to allow us to more easily make large scale terrain, adding more capability to the AI, and working on the first set of creatures for the game.

- GP