UBerserker wrote:Reading more about BFNP makes it really sounded just too massive to be done. Plot seemed quite super complicated, 30+ NEW maps, new weapons, new monsters (making one new monster is already an over the top thing). I honestly have no idea how could you have even finished this, it sounds more like something that an indie gaming dev team would do (and iirc indie gaming wasn't still a thing 12 years ago or so).
I'd like to disagree with you, but on the evidence I guess I can't.
Looking at the number of people who were on the team, I do think that, if everyone had prioritised BfNP and truly committed their time to the project then we could have finished the maps at least. I remember being a bit shocked when RD was announced just after we did a lot of the brainstorming. I had thought the community was going to pull together to build BfNP and create the sequel that Unreal deserved, and had I known about RD beforehand then maybe we would have been a bit less ambitious. This may sound like a personal jab at Prophet but it's not really, as nobody besides myself made a lot of progress with their maps, endlessly committing themselves to too many other things or simply not doing anything much.
Modelling and coding was always going to be the greatest challenge, but these are elements that could have been scaled back without scuppering the whole project. Even one or two new creature classes would have provided a feeling of freshness.
Could it have been finished? I think it could have if everyone had done their bit (and I'm not pointing the finger at any individual here). Huge amounts of textures and some great music was produced. Enigma was well on the way to totally revolutionising the 3d engine itself. Just look at what Turboman has achieved on his own with Firestorm. But, in the end, I guess it just wasn't meant to be.