It might seem like sarcasm but I genuinely think people are literally expecting it to take a year or two to come out as opposed to making snide remarks.

I don't think so, from reading Metche's comments I'd be surprised if it wasn't out by 2009.

I think they should release what they've got, and go from there. Small, frequent releases are always better for mods than trying to do these big, blockbuster releases. It keeps the project in people's minds, and if the worst (and most common) fate a mod can have befalls the HDTP, and it never gets finished, at least most of the work people did will have been put to use rather than being wasted in a large package release that never was.

HDTP couldn't do that though because of criticism. If they released every 3 months it'd just keep pushing us back as we'd be repeating the same models and textures over and over just to please everyone and this is what Rebirth had so much trouble with as certain "favorite" textures/models would be redone 12 times by several different artists because of criticism.

The way Metche has organized things works, HDTP made so much progress in the 4 years I was with the project.

I'm not sure I understand your complaints about criticism. If a texture or a model is going to draw criticism from the target audience, then it's going to draw that criticism whether it comes out this week or next year. A rapid release schedule doesn't invite any more criticism than the alternative, and it certainly doesn't force you to redo anything 12 times (unless you decided to draw a penis on a texture or something else ridiculous like that).

But what it does do is keep your mod at the forefront of people's minds, providing a much larger audience. Only the most hardcore of the hardcore are willing to follow a project for x number of years between releases. It provides for a much better system of receiving and integrating feedback from the players, after all if there is a problem with something, better that it be discovered and fixed now rather than several months to a year down the road.

I don't know. Being forced into big, bulky releases on an irregular schedule is something that professional developers complain about all the time, it's treated as a handicap. It just doesn't make much sense to me for either of the two mods to voluntarily limit themselves like that.

I'm in favour of releasing often, but HDTP already made a release, so I was happy with that and I still am.

Criticism got bad with the technical issues (weapons etc). It also was difficult when the characters would need to be finished to import them into Deus Ex, so they didn't look as they would in-game. People had different expectations of how characters should look, but I personally think that's important, and the criticism led to some incredible results.

I'm disappointed that I still don't have Deus Ex running in Unreal3, with every texture and model replaced, with new levels and all the philosophical questions pre-answered. Seen as an entire community, I'm disappointed that the community hasn't been able to instantly complete the challenge that many people took up. Still, looking at each project individually, they do awesome work, and they do the best they can. People I like, fixing the game I like, for free. Take all the time you need. We can't wait for the end result of all the time and effort.

@ SHodges: Nearly everyone in the industry shares that same thinking, smaller releases keep things in the minds of your consumer base, this is why we're migrating towards episodic content (see Valve for example).

With regards to criticism what I was trying to say is that people have their own artistic visions on things, with Rebirth anyone could submit what ever the heck they wanted. As a result they had 3 different JC models, 2 Anna's.. ect ect, the problem with that is these same people could have been working on other more important things than just fan treatment or personal artistic visions on how things should look, and I'll admit that I got carried away with that at one stage (see AR arguement) but I also helped resolved some (See Gunther's colour scheme and in a small case JC with my diagrams).

The way HDTP was set out, 1 texture artists, 1 modeler, they called it and will work on it. If they fail then by all means pick it up and get the job done- that happened a lot and I think it worked really well.

We also used an internal critiquing board to talk about how things should be looking (sort of a pre-QA discussion) so then we'd release that to the public once the team was happy with it. The problem was that once its out to the public, if they hate your work you get backlash and it is really de-moralizing to the team (again see JC for a good example of that).

The community has witnessed all of this going on, so we know why HDTP works the way it does and wouldn't have it any other way.

Actually, I didn't know much of that. I knew HDTP assigned jobs, but didn't know how artists called them for themselves. Interesting, how everyone would submit the same things to Rebirth, so the project would have to pick one, rather than improve one. Also, didn't know about the internal QA; that's really cool, though now I see what the issue was with a few works that were released to the community without the "internal review", what I thought was an OK stamp by the leader.

That's all well thought out and quite a thorough process. I guess I saw some of it, but from the outside it seemed a more rigid process with informal exceptions.

I think JC worked alright, but I don't remember many changes with criticism. Thinking back, I seem to remember JC as a sort of younger Tom Bosley, where he came out a more badass younger Bruce Willis. It sounds like I'm being silly, and I am, but Eidos was thinking the same thing with DX2 I believe-
http://www.deusexgaming.com/images/deus ... Denton.jpg
http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-conte ... bosley.jpg
http://blueopossum.homestead.com/Mystery/Tom_Bosley.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... -55-13.jpg
http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Bruce- ... 96808.jpeg

That is very silly. Tom Bosley? come on.. would he be badass in leather, no freaking way in hell. This might explain why I felt JC in IWar was a total moron - but also perhaps because he did something stupid at the end of the game didn't help either.

And to think he was so much cooler originally. How Deus Ex 3 plans to deal with the characters I'd love to know.

My idealism on this project is to tie everything together as a completed final product and test it till were blue in the face. The final product will not be released until I'm satisfied that we've given 100% in every pixel on every texture. Same goes for the model standard.

These things take time as you all know by now

I will not put out a half baked release only to patch it later on

And that gentlemen is my reasoning!

You would make a terrible producer.

We are not Ubisoft !</meow>

Or Atari.

Or EA.

Or Eidos.

Or, uhm... fuck it, take your pick.

Off Topic Productions - Those guys are WELL shoddy!

I will come over there and kick you in the groin.