Post by The Technoviking on Jan 15, 2013 14:27:25 GMT -5
Greetings all. Thought I would make a quick update on the status of Coven. Coven, as you know it, is indeed dead. Big surprise right? But any good vampire knows that death is just a beginning.
In the mean time, I have been working on Coven from the ground up on a new engine altogether. We have traded in the Source engine for the ioquake3 engine. Needless to say, the 4+ years of familiarity each team member has with Source is not quite as applicable to a different engine, so please bear with us as we re-learn a lot of the stuff we already knew and leaned for the Source based Coven. Also, we have chosen to go the stand alone route. It seems to me that people are generally extremely interested in original artwork, so having nothing to start with seems like a good catalyst for getting our butts in gear. That being said, we have extremely little to get us going so Coven will be a little slower going from an artwork standpoint and we will rely on community involvement as much as ever. The graphics engine itself is also a generation behind where Coven was before, but this might help us get some original artwork faster.
All in all I think all the team members are happy with the move. It sucks a little hard starting over from scratch so to speak, but I can personally say that what I have gotten done thus far is far superior to the Source Coven. Under the hood Quake 3 seems way better suited for all the Coven type things I have implemented thus far. Sure you might not get the glamour of full physics ragdolls, but I can guarantee there won't be enormous lag spikes every time you kill someone. The Quake 3 VM structure and prediction model fits very well with the way I would like Coven to work. If we can keep the fun factor as high as we expect to, Coven will rock just as hard and be a free to play, standalone game. Anyone with a computer less than a decade old will have no excuse not to play Coven!
Oh, and free bonuses! Now we don't have to deal with Valve patching the hl2 engine every week and causing havoc with clients. And no more invalid STEAM_ID tickets for no explainable reason whatsoever. And master server querying and heartbeats actually work. Imagine opening the in game server browser and actually seeing Coven servers!
It brings a tear to Technoviking's eye...
In the mean time, I have been working on Coven from the ground up on a new engine altogether. We have traded in the Source engine for the ioquake3 engine. Needless to say, the 4+ years of familiarity each team member has with Source is not quite as applicable to a different engine, so please bear with us as we re-learn a lot of the stuff we already knew and leaned for the Source based Coven. Also, we have chosen to go the stand alone route. It seems to me that people are generally extremely interested in original artwork, so having nothing to start with seems like a good catalyst for getting our butts in gear. That being said, we have extremely little to get us going so Coven will be a little slower going from an artwork standpoint and we will rely on community involvement as much as ever. The graphics engine itself is also a generation behind where Coven was before, but this might help us get some original artwork faster.
All in all I think all the team members are happy with the move. It sucks a little hard starting over from scratch so to speak, but I can personally say that what I have gotten done thus far is far superior to the Source Coven. Under the hood Quake 3 seems way better suited for all the Coven type things I have implemented thus far. Sure you might not get the glamour of full physics ragdolls, but I can guarantee there won't be enormous lag spikes every time you kill someone. The Quake 3 VM structure and prediction model fits very well with the way I would like Coven to work. If we can keep the fun factor as high as we expect to, Coven will rock just as hard and be a free to play, standalone game. Anyone with a computer less than a decade old will have no excuse not to play Coven!
Oh, and free bonuses! Now we don't have to deal with Valve patching the hl2 engine every week and causing havoc with clients. And no more invalid STEAM_ID tickets for no explainable reason whatsoever. And master server querying and heartbeats actually work. Imagine opening the in game server browser and actually seeing Coven servers!
It brings a tear to Technoviking's eye...