Right, so we've been posting pictures all over the place. Time to hit you with some knowledge.
So, obviously, we missed our hundred day deadline. It's way off back there somewhere. ButI think that the ladt six or so months have been probably the most intense sustained burst of real work on the mod in literally years, and it is absolutely paying dividends, both in the assets which we've been showing off and in less visible things (missions, background fluff, non-model assets like head anis, etc. etc.). So I'm going to brng you up to date with where we're at in some detail, and where we want to end up.
First of all, assets, specifically models. With VA's completion of Blackwood, we now have functional ingame models for every single ship in Act 1. 2 of these models are using incomplete textures (not placeholder - they're both partway there). One of these, unfortunately, is a particularly large job, and may take a few weeks or more to finish, however it will not in any way impede testing or FREDding or bugfixing or anything that we still need to do. It can literally be the very last thing we put into the archive before release.
Next, missions. Every act 1 player mission is now in a state which I'd be happy to call alpha-ready, with one exception. That exception applies to an older mission which was actually complete, but, due to its unique nature, became unplayable after we upgraded to Fury AI. We considered scrapping the mission, but we've received some help from m|m, who's offered to script some interesting new gameplay mechanics in for us, which should go some way to fixing the balance issues. Unfortunately, until I get the script, I can't rebalance the mission, so we're in a bit of a holding pattern on that one.
You may also have noted I said "Player" missions - we have three ingame cutscene missions in Act 1, of which 1 is finished, one is half finished, and one is yet to be started. Fortunately, however, the completed one is probably the most complex, and none of them are really likely to be particularly time consuming - once you eliminate the pesky player's influence, bugs tend to be less common.
Other assets are actually pretty good, I think. Our backgrounds have been assembled for awhile, and the skybox we're using for EP is the only one we need for Act 1. New weapon effects/sounds (few that they are) have also been done for awhile, although VA is in the process of sprucing up a few key effects for one of our key sequences. Otherwise, most of our little bits and bobs (HUD guages, head anis, weapon tech models etc. etc.) have been built mostly during fits of procrastination, so we're fairly good on that front, although filling in the gaps will be one of the tasks I'll be undertaking during beta testing.
What we really lack are music tracks and CB anims, though we don't need all that many of either. And, luckily, neither of them are critical from a beta testing PoV. So, the net result of all that? I can assemble a fc2 and, for the first time ever, we'll have something resembling a campaign. In short, Act 1 is going to Alpha.
Of course, I call it alpha, but at the stage of completeness we're at, it's closer to beta, really. It's just a useful way to distinguish the "rough edges" release that'll be tested internally over the coming days and weeks in order to produce the slightly more polished, more refined version that'll go out to external beta testers (once I have the script I need and have finished the last of the ingame cutscenes, of course), to be viciously ripped apart in search of bugs and inconsistencies.
This is a really big step for us, and while it's come later than I would have liked, I'm also stoked to have finally gotten here.
Keep an eye on this thread over the next few weeks, things are really going to start speeding up now.