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Hi Everyone,
My name is Lucas [Demonic]. I’m an ex-competitive FPS player. I was, officially, Lead Level Designer from 2019 to early 2021, though since I've been mostly supporting the project from behind the scenes. I have done a lot for this project over the past 5 years ([i]wow, it’s been this long already?[/i]), way before early access was released and before the company was even formed. Basically, though you may not have heard of me, I am one of the core members from the very start of the project, one who had an impact on the decisions and gameplay vision of TFE — pre-alpha, alpha and early access.
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Before RSS and before TFE, my dream has always been to build a spiritual successor to the old titles we know and love. That was my sole original purpose for pursuing a career in the video game development industry. I was going to build a team and build this dream game myself after acquiring the necessary education, knowledge and experience to do it right, to do it properly. If TFE didn’t exist I would have remained dedicated to this vision. The spiritual successor would be made regardless.
Life is full of surprises and a start was made when an opportunity to work on a project now known as Task Force Elite ([i]maybe you’ve heard of it?[/i]) arrived on my doorstep sometime back in 2018. In terms of my own development, it started as a hobby and a great learning experience. Later, it was a part-time job during my video game development studies. Afterwards, it was a full-time job in 2019, before returning to being a hobby near the end of 2020.
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Even if the core members from the early days were to step away from working directly on the project, we still feel responsible for leading and for supervising the vision of what the game is supposed to be, what it’s supposed to feel like. So, until we can be fully replaced ([i]can AI be trained to be Demonic?[/i]), we will stick around, forever pillars of the project. Profit is not our aim. It never was.
Luis [Psycho] has selected me to continue the vision, to supervise and to mentor new members. With support from Luis and others, I will be functioning as Lead Game Designer at RSS, and will continue to supervise the design contributions to the project.
That said, I can only do so much for this project in a short amount of time. My contribution will be seen and noticed mostly in the long term, as I too have professional commitments during the weekdays which I love and enjoy, and I simply choose to help out and support TFE during my free time strictly on the weekends.
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[h1]What has the team been up to?[/h1]
With that introduction out of the way, I would like to share what we’re currently working on.
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Due to the decision to revert the TFE patch from 4.4 back to 4.3, we’ve got our hands full with identifying what and where things went wrong, while incrementally adding stuff into an older and more stable version of the game, whilst also onboarding new team members, trialling potential contributors with most of that taking place on weekends.
Here’s what the team has been up to:
[h3]Demonic[/h3]
‣ At the start of the year, I worked on porting the weapon and gunplay changes from Unreal Engine 4.25 (TFE 4.4) back to Unreal Engine 4.23 (TFE 4.3.1). It took longer than expected due to the fact that unreal assets are not backwards compatible and my time has been occupied by mentorship, supervision, and a large part of writing this blog and announcement. The reason for going back and applying these changes to the older version is so that while we’re waiting for a stable build of a newer TFE engine version, we can continue to collect feedback on the gunplay balancing, as well as to have enough testing time during multiplayer scenarios to gather data. I am currently collaborating with other designers on fixing visual clarity issues and adjusting gameplay bit by bit. More details on this in the next parts of the blog.
[h3]IcIshoot[/h3]
‣ Seth is currently focusing on learning the codebase, debugging and building the game from the source while fixing things he finds along the way with Jake; the goal is to release a new version of TFE on a newer version of Unreal Engine. After learning the code base, which will take some time, the plan is for Seth to start working on the game code directly. Since our goal is to find more C++ developers for the future, we’ll have more opportunities to work on new features and mechanics. Seth is improving our internal code documentation and workflows so that new developers in the future have a shorter and more comfortable onboarding process. Seth is crucial and we’re very glad to have him on board!
[h3]Jake[/h3]
‣ [i]The[/i] Jake, despite officially stepping away from the project back in 2021 due to his own professional commitments, has been supporting and helping us with all sorts of technical questions and issues and we greatly appreciate his time and efforts in the process of onboarding new team members. ([i]Thank you so much for your continued support![/i]) Recently, he’s taken steps to bring TFE to a newer version of Unreal Engine, working on it directly with Seth.
[h3]YP[/h3]
‣ Daniel, as mentioned in his post last month, will be looking at the roadmap and plotting a path for us to take, given the recent changes to the team. All the while, he will be collecting feedback from the community, organising it and presenting to the dev team for added efficiency. ([i]Daniel’s determination and passion for the project is contagious![/i])
[h3]Psycho[/h3]
‣ Luis is tirelessly working on business opportunities for RSS to grow. This task is no easy one; his goal is to ensure viability and longevity for the project. The future of TFE is one where it supports itself financially without our own finite personal financial investments.
[h3]Kawasaki[/h3]
‣ Edwin is managing our servers. He keeps them running as smoothly as they can.
[h3]51[/h3]
‣ Matias is another of our core members from the beginning of the project, responsible for upholding the original vision of the game. He is currently unavailable to help us out with the game directly due to professional commitments. That is about to change, as we have plans to onboard him to contribute directly in the near future, starting out as a Junior Gameplay Developer, though he also can contribute by supervising other core concepts of the project. We look forward to having him back when the time is right.
[h3]franekma[/h3]
‣ Franek is responsible for helping our newest community map makers bring their first maps from zero to completion. He works on documentation for TFE and RSS. Franek will also be in charge of our social media accounts and will prepare and release announcements and future blogs to the community.
[h3]MattyWS[/h3]
‣ Matt has joined us recently, as a contributor and partner who also helps out the project during his valuable spare time. We really appreciate having another experienced designer joining our team. He's currently hotfixing many of our assets that are used across our levels, improving the performance, visual clarity and overall quality on an older version of the project. We plan to bring his changes and all of his contributions to the next following updates as soon as possible.
We do also have cool stuff happening in the background involving other members of the team that we are not ready to talk about yet, and if those items are proven to be successful they’ll be revealed sometime over the course of the year, bit by bit.
[h1]Hiring and Recruitment[/h1]
As briefly mentioned, potential new team members are also taking part in trials to work directly on the game: C++ developers and new designers alike. They will be vital for reworking and polishing levels to raise the bar and take TFE to the next level. They will have our full support to ensure their work is in keeping with our vision.
An area for improvement for us internally is documentation of the project and workflows. Only recently has it become clear just how important documentation is for new members to be onboarded, and it’s for this reason that the onboarding process takes much longer for us than is usual in the industry. It is a mistake we will learn from and it will help us with TFE in the long term.
[i]-Demonic[/i]
[i]Stay tuned for Part 2 of Demonic’s development blog post due next week.[/i]