I'd love to release this project, whether complete or incomplete, some day. However, there are a number of reasons I choose not to talk about a release very often.
1)
Legal issues - With all the hooplah over the fan production battles a couple of years ago, I tend to stay quiet about things with regards to a release. It's best to portray this is a "fan art project" and keep a low profile. I also work as an environment artist on Star Trek: Online as my day job, and am therefore working under contract on an officially licensed Star Trek product. So, again, without going into too much detail, it's best I just keep treating this as a
fan art project and not try to push it as an actual
product, even though I have no intentions of monetizing on this project at all. All that being said, I'd love to release this, someday, in some form, even if just as a private release to all the people in this thread that have supported my projects over the years.
2)
Depression is real! This is going to dive into my personal life a little, so be warned. Ha. I've touched on it here and there in this thread and my blog, but I suffer from episodes of depression and issues regarding addiction and alcoholism (I've been alcohol free for 6 years now!). The first iteration of the TOS project, which is featured at the beginning of this thread, was completely derailed by a huge bout of depression that I experienced back in 2013 about a year into my sobriety. Therefore, because I'm one person and I work on this project in my free time, it's hard to commit to an actual release, because I never know when or if that nasty asshole called depression is going to completely stop my progress again. I'm very candid about my depression elsewhere (outside of this thread) so I don't mind being honest about it here as well, so I'm willing to share with you people that I am actually currently experiencing a round of depression-related issues, but I'm now armed with better medication, a therapist, a psychiatrist, mindfulness and meditation practices, and other tools in my toolbox for dealing with it when it comes around.
3)
A release date would turn this into a job - This is a passion project, and one that I receive great creative satisfaction and entertainment from. This hobby of mine is what kept me sober during my early sobriety, as it gave me an alternative to going out and partying all the time (and, needless to say, working on it requires my brain to be in a sober state). Also, pouring all my time into this hobby eventually is what got me noticed by the Star Trek: Online team and therefore put me into my chosen career field without a degree. And although I enjoy my job on STO, I get a different kind of satisfaction from having this passion project to work on in my off time, and is very dear to me because of that. So, making this project a "job" or responsibility of sorts by committing myself to a release date would increase the chances of doing this to
not be fun anymore. It would feel like work. There's a fine line between doing something because you're passionate and because you feel like you have to, so I try very much to stay away from ever feeling like working on this project is a drag.
4)
There's so much more left to do! - I'm sure many of you saw the list of areas I'd like to get complete for this project a few pages back, but other than just making those rooms, creating the corridor network to connect them all is a task in of itself. And I'd also like to have some non-player characters walking around, doing stuff, etc, which is another task to be competed as well. There's a ton of work to do, and because of all the factors I've listed here, it's just really hard to speculate about an eventual release.
Anyway, sorry for the long explanation. Ha. I'm sure that was more than you'd asked for.
Fortunately, you can scale the graphics of unreal engine that even modest rigs will be able to handle it. It won't look as good, but you'd still be able to run it.
Thanks for the compliment! I've recently been considering buying a VR rig and seeing how all that would work. I just have very limited knowledge about what it would take to turn this into VR at the moment, which I why I've never really talked about it. Like I said, so much to do in terms of modeling and texturing before I even get that far. Taking a break to investigate VR potentials would take time away from getting all that modeling done
Glad you asked! I actually started by trying to use "practical" blinking light objects behind a translucent object instead of an animating texture, but unfortunately the effect looked weird for a variety of reasons (mostly related to limits of Unreal Engine's translucent materials). So I then opted to make an opaque animated texture in photoshop instead and the results are much better.
