We’ve finished primary production on Revision 1.0, and have now started our final pre-release playtest. We will be using feedback from this playtest to polish up the gameplay experience and catch any remaining technical issues.

Hello!

We’re into December. This is a shorter update than usual, simply because we just don’t have that much area to cover. First up…

Development targets

We’re aiming to wrap up production, and ideally, launch sometime within the next ten weeks. As before, this is a loose estimate based on current progress and team member availability, and until environment design is finished, it will remain difficult for us to commit to a fixed launch date. In other words, we won’t know when we will release until we’re nearly ready to do so. This is simply part of making a non-commercial project with a widely distributed team; as much as we would love to, we can’t guarantee a steady development pace.

This leads into the next bit…

What we have for you right now

Currently, the environment being redesigned is Area 51 Sector 2- the entrance area to the underground bunker that houses staff barracks and recreation. We’ve got a few screenshots of that to share:

We’ve also got another tune from the Revision soundtrack: Enemy Within Conversation.

A few general comments

We know that development on this project can be frustratingly slow at times, so thank you for bearing with us. We’re closer than ever to completing this project, and we always appreciate your support.

Stay tuned.

Hello all!

Welcome to our September update.

Since our previous update in July, we’ve finished production on our soundtrack. Both the in-game files and album versions are completed and implemented, so unless we find further issues with it, that part of the project is pretty much done. The album, which consists of a series of suite arrangements, is going to be available on Bandcamp and some other venues (such as YouTube and SoundCloud) when we are ready to release the mod.

In mapping news, we are still working on the exterior Area 51 location. Progress there has been slow, as it’s a large map and our environment designer has been busy with his personal obligations. It is close to being done, and compared to the original map, has nearly tripled in playable area. We have also tackled the bug list quite a bit, and coding-wise some bits and pieces have been optimized and trimmed. Various other improvements have been made to a wide variety of the other maps such as implementing our own wish-list items, adding decoration and improving on the assortment of ambient sounds in the game.

The playable area has been vastly expanded.

We are also proud to present that in collaboration with unifiedDX we have implemented switchable 1x/2x UI sizes. For those with a resolution of 1280×960 or above (note that both the height and width have to be larger) can use the new 2x graphics mode so that texts, menus and other screens will be readable. Our graphics artist has also been busy recently with creating new 2x Davavault images in addition to the 1x that will be used by default. These new datavaults will contain more details then their 1x counterparts due to being 800×800 compared to 400×400.

As an example of lingering technical difficulties I’ve personally struggled with, I’ll talk about a BSP issue in the Paris Cathedral map. A BSP issue is where the world geometry is not assembled correctly by the Unreal editor. This particular error occurred after I went in to fix a texture misalignment on a “mover” object, which requires having the editor reassemble or “rebuild” the map. After the rebuild I discovered the BSP error tearing up a piece of a house near the canal in the map. A lot of time and effort went into trying to solve it by changing surface solidity and the positioning of brushes (geometry details) on the house, with several attempts at rebuilding it (each rebuild takes around 15 minutes). When that didn’t solve the issue, I finally gave up and removed some brushes on the house, namely a set of windows. That solved the problem, but then another issue came up with house nearby. As much if not more time went into fixing that second house, creating zone portals for all the windows, changing solidity and so on. When that was finally settled I found out when testing that the entire map was accidentally flooded due to a leaking water zone- although the method of fixing the issue is quite different, it is a remarkably similar problem to the real-world circumstance. And that’s what I am working to solve right now.

There are some lousy plumbers in Paris.

I’m looking forward to sharing more with you all as we begin to finish finishing Revision.

Hello all!

Welcome to our July update.

Over the last two months, we’ve been steadily working away without too much to talk about. People have come and gone from vacations, and development continues. We’ve been getting a fair amount of feedback from our playtesters, and are working to solve the bugs and issues that they have reported. We’ve also been getting feedback on the soundtrack, and while the response has been broadly positive, there have been some valid concerns about a few specific tracks, and we have been addressing those as well.

For those of you who are interested, we’ve moved to an online bug-tracking service; if you’d like to take a look at the issues we’re working to solve and get a sense of what we’re doing behind the scenes, check it out here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/dx-revision. It is updated regularly and shows the issues we are encountering and fixing, as we encounter and fix them.

In recent weeks we’ve also been running a pair of articles on the Eidos Montréal community blog. These two articles serve as a general introduction to Revision, and go into some depth on the process of creating the new soundtrack. We have a third article planned, so keep an eye out for it in the coming weeks. Our thanks go out to Sacha R. and John T. at Eidos Montréal for being kind enough to make this happen.

The Creation of Revision

The Music of Revision

We have a couple more things to share with you:

First, over in our gallery, we have a first look at our Area 51 overhaul, which (on the surface, at least) takes a few cues from Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s Panchea location.

Second, we have our Battery Park exploration music:

That about covers everything for the moment. Enjoy!

We’ve started the second playtesting period for the full version of Revision. Everyone on our closed beta mailing list should have received an email; please check your spam folder if nothing has appeared in your inbox.

The first of our articles on the Eidos Montréal Community blog has gone live: http://community.eidosmontreal.com/blogs/Guest-Blog-Creation-Revision. This one is an introduction to the Revision project. Our thanks for their willingness to help us promote our work.

Hello all,

Welcome to our April update.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve started up our semi-final playtests. Initial feedback has been excellent, and we will be moving forward with those playtests as we’re ready to do so.

We’ve also been forging partnerships with other community mod creators. To recap: We will be distributing New Vision, HDTP, Shifter, BioMod, improved UI scaling support, the Direct 3D 9 Renderer and a customized version of Kentie’s game launcher with Revision. New Vision and HDTP will be mandatory parts of the installation, although we will have the HDTP character models disabled by default as they are stylized to such an extent that enabling them is a matter of personal taste.

We’ve also had another development in recent weeks, one that has led us to reconsider our release timetable. We realize that the delay is unpleasant for everyone who has been anticipating Revision 1.0, but we’ve had an offer that is too good to pass up, and it means that we can avoid crunching in these next couple weeks. Revision is not canceled by any means, and we still plan to finish production and launch in the near future. More on this as we’re ready to talk about it.

To cap things off this month, we have a new video, in which I talk about my experiences working on the project. Enjoy!