[Reaper_Man]

Looks like I never got around to posting an AWOL release thread here on duke4. I just made a video of the effects so figured better late than never!

The AWOL Project was a large and ambitious cinematic total conversion in development between 2002 and 2005ish. The project was sadly and unfortunately abandoned late in development, mostly due to lack of mapping talent. The source code, art assets and a treasure trove of 1/10th finished terrible maps sat on my hard drive for about 2 years before I decided to release it all to the Duke community.

The release includes 4 demo maps, seen in the video, which show off the headline effects in the TC - advanced friendly AI bots, useable vehicles, and so on. The AWOL Project used eDuke very early in it's development and is one of the first mods to use the engine; many of the effects created for AWOL would not be seen or used again in a mod for many years down the road!

Download
Release (Readme) *Required*
The AWOL Project source files. Contains all of the necessary CON, sound, and ART files. Also includes 4 test maps to try out the fun stuff.

1.0 Patch (Readme) *Required*
The AWOL Project Patch 1.0. Contains misc. code updates and fixes some of the more glaring errors.

Map Pack (Readme)
Map Pack for The AWOL Project. 91 mid-development maps from various members of the development team, and a bunch of effects testing maps. Warning: these maps suck!


Video


Screenshots
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4
Screenshot 5
Screenshot 6
Screenshot 7
Screenshot 8
Screenshot 9
Screenshot 10
Screenshot 11

[Reaper_Man]

Special note: As of the time of this post, you will need to use the LATEST version of eDuke32 (not the Release) as there was an issue that caused friendly AIs not to work.

[VinsaneOne]

Looks cool from what I had time to watch in the first 5 min. Will come back to see the rest later.
Seems worth downloading for a test ride for sure.

[Micky C]

Out of curiosity, was the project abandoned because there weren't enough dedicated mappers, or because the mappers you did have just weren't skilled enough?

[rasmus thorup]

I would like to know too. You could deffinently use some skilled mappers ^^

[Reaper_Man]

Micky C, on 06 December 2011 - 02:52 PM, said:

Out of curiosity, was the project abandoned because there weren't enough dedicated mappers, or because the mappers you did have just weren't skilled enough?

A little of column A, a little of column B. We had really great mappers who didn't stick around, and then the rest of us non-mappers who knew how to make Build work but were far from excellent. Like, I have a few maps in the map pack release and they're awful. I was the sector error whisperer because everything I made would eventually error out no matter how simple I kept geometry. We wound up having a lot of effects/features planned and made (bots, vehicles, cinematic sequences), but no maps to put them in. People would leave the team half way through so we'd have half finished maps (which you can see in the map pack). I would have been happy to have only a couple of solid maps in a release version, but none of the maps we could get up to release quality were cohesive together.

But that's also not to say that mapping was our only struggle, just that it was the one that kept us from getting something really playable released. If mapping was our #1 problem, our #2 problem was lack of milestones and kind of just running wild doing whatever we liked. If there's one thing I learned from developing AWOL, it's that you have GOT to have development milestones in place and to have the team dedicated to reaching those milestones. No matter the size of the team, if you don't set goals and work to reach them then you're really just doomed to failure from the start. I have a good friend who has been working on "episode 1" of a mod for the Source engine for probably 4 years now. And as much as I hate to say it, I know they're never going to release anything because they don't have any sort of development goals and are just adding features whenever they find something new that's cool.

[The Commander]

Does it have "Realistic civilian AI!" ?

[Reaper_Man]

I can't remember if the friendly AIs were based off of those or not. I doubt they were, I was pretty unhappy with the realistic civilian AI.

[Mblackwell]

Reaper_Man, on 06 December 2011 - 03:18 PM, said:

A little of column A, a little of column B. We had really great mappers who didn't stick around, and then the rest of us non-mappers who knew how to make Build work but were far from excellent. Like, I have a few maps in the map pack release and they're awful. I was the sector error whisperer because everything I made would eventually error out no matter how simple I kept geometry. We wound up having a lot of effects/features planned and made (bots, vehicles, cinematic sequences), but no maps to put them in. People would leave the team half way through so we'd have half finished maps (which you can see in the map pack). I would have been happy to have only a couple of solid maps in a release version, but none of the maps we could get up to release quality were cohesive together.

But that's also not to say that mapping was our only struggle, just that it was the one that kept us from getting something really playable released. If mapping was our #1 problem, our #2 problem was lack of milestones and kind of just running wild doing whatever we liked. If there's one thing I learned from developing AWOL, it's that you have GOT to have development milestones in place and to have the team dedicated to reaching those milestones. No matter the size of the team, if you don't set goals and work to reach them then you're really just doomed to failure from the start. I have a good friend who has been working on "episode 1" of a mod for the Source engine for probably 4 years now. And as much as I hate to say it, I know they're never going to release anything because they don't have any sort of development goals and are just adding features whenever they find something new that's cool.

Yeah, I learned to keep it small and stick to your guns. Between two coders we had too much feature creep especially with our mantra where we told the mappers to make whatever they wanted and we'd just go ahead and make it work. So there was lots of half done ideas. Now I'm very much, "this is our feature set, this is the progression of maps, GO!" I get some flack for it, but it helps to have a goal in mind. It doesn't mean you can't round things out with new effects or things that actually improve the overall game you've been making but you have to think universally rather than, "Well, I suppose we could include particle waterfalls that spray apart when something hits them. Maybe someone will use that!"

The thing was by the time the three of us (you, myself, and Hudson) started nailing things down and trying to whip up the "troops" there was no one left to do the work.