Colony Ship - Why the Silence?

Pladio spotted news from the Colony Ship team:

Why the Silence?

As you probably know, Ivan Soloviov, our animator, the guy we worked with for 14 years, died on Sep 5 after being ill for months. It's a hard thing to deal with, so I didn't post any updates since his death (it just didn't seem important). Ivan handled animations, creatures, and everything that goes onto the character model, from weapons and armor to facial hair. The armor system is a lot more complex than the one in AoD which had only body armor and helmets. In Colony Ship we have boots & leggings, combat vests, jackets and coats, armguards, helmets, goggles, and breathing masks. When Ivan got ill, our progress in these two high-visibility areas had slowed down to a crawl and what we expected to wrap up in early 2019 was pushed back over and over again. We're making progress now but we're way off schedule, of course.

What's done: vests, boots & leggings, armguards, helmets, goggles, respirators, weapons; energy armor, implants, most ranged and melee animations for male characters.

What's not done: combat stimulants, jackets and coats (we have the "prototypes" that have been much improved and optimized; so we need to make variations which is relatively easy but like everything else it takes time), female animations (won't take long once all male animations are done), and hair styles. Jackets are being work on right now; should be done by the end of the month.

We have enough to start beta testing the combat demo and this time around we fully expect to finish the rest in 2-3 months. We will start the first round in mid Jan (closed beta with new participants added each week) with public release around mid or end of Feb. Better late than never and all that.

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Sorry to hear about their animator, that's tragic.
I'm looking forward to Colony Ship but I haven't been watching development closely - a February release date is much sooner than I expected! I hope they make that deadline.

That's a tough blow to take, I wish them only the best. I'm looking forward to the game, you can count on me to be picking it up when it's done.

Originally Posted by Pongo
Sorry to hear about their animator, that's tragic.
I'm looking forward to Colony Ship but I haven't been watching development closely - a February release date is much sooner than I expected! I hope they make that deadline.

That's just for the combat demo I believe.

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Originally Posted by Pladio
That's just for the combat demo I believe.

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Ah - I misread it. Thanks.

Always hard to lose someone you have been friends and worked with for so long. My condolences.
It doesn't matter to me if I have to wait a bit longer for the game. It will be a day one for me anyway. Best of luck to the team!

It can be difficult to lose a close co-worker and friend like that. Our own work group went through something similar. My condolences.

The game project is looking excellent as always, and the delay is quite understandable. Good quality work all around. Thanks for the update.