I am very, very sorry to have to say that I am canceling Project Vega.

The bottom line is this: In my search to find a publisher, I have discovered that it is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible to find one willing to team up with us. From what I’ve read, I would basically have to a nearly complete game and/or have an established game company to have any hope of landing a publishing deal – in other words, to get funding from a publisher, I would have to be in a position in which I don’t need their funding. At the very least, I would have to have something that looks much, much better than what we have right now.

So what’s to stop me from just finishing this up and self-publishing it over Steam? Unfortunately, I can only do so much. I can only program, do the game design, and make crappy levels. I can’t model, animate, texture, make HUD graphics, write music, create sound effects, etc., all of which are absolutely critical to making a quality game. Unfortunately, getting outside help has proven time and time again that it simply will not work. People simply have other priorities (work, school, social lives, etc.) and cannot devote the time necessary to a project of this magnitude. Either I’m the worst manager in the world, or this model is simply doomed to failure. Maybe both.

I knew this would be tough from the beginning. But, I thought that any obstacles could be overcome with hard work and passion. I was wrong.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I am canceling this project. I’d like to thank all of the fans of this project – it’s good to know that there are others out there who are as sick and tired of modern shooters as I am. I’d also like to thank everyone who’s been a part of this project over the past two years. Without your support, there’s no way I could have gotten this far. Finally, I’d like to give a big thanks to Mechadon for designing and setting up the blog, and to WastedYouth for being there in the very beginning to help get the initial technology off the ground.

It’s been a pleasure knowing all of you, and I wish you all the very best of luck – I certainly wish you more luck than I’ve had. Take care, everyone.

–  Brad Carney

After 10 months of being codenamed Project Vega (and even longer being known internally as Strike), I’m very pleased to announce the true, permanent name of this game! I was planning on waiting and doing this with a little more fanfare (with the launch of a new website, logo, etc.), but I figure I better do this now before the anticipation and expectations builds to a level at which we can’t possibly reach!

And so, the name of this game (drumroll please) is…

Last Bastion

So what the hell is a “bastion” you ask? According to the dictionary, it’s “anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc.: a bastion of solitude; a bastion of democracy.” And this makes sense HOW, you’re asking? Basically, in the game, you’re the only one standing between mankind and annihilation. You serve as mankind’s last hope… mankind’s last bastion!

I hope you guys like it! It rhymes, it’s easily abbreviated, and most importantly… it sounds cool!

… is not the real name of this game.

So today I went to see the person who is now my lawyer to discuss several things, including getting the real name for the game codenamed “Project Vega” trademarked so it can be shared with the world. The real name for the game up until a couple hours ago had been “Strike”. I really liked that name – it was short, simple, descriptive, sounded cool, and had some interesting properties to it (Strike 2? Strike 3? Hah! Get it?!?!). However, certain other games already have a claim to that name, so it just plain wasn’t going to work. Hell, even throwing something before “Strike” (ex. Counter-strike… oh boy, aren’t I funny) was going to be a long shot.

As a result, I’m going to have to come up with something else. I’ll be doing a lot of brainstorming over the next few days to try to find something that both sounds cool, and is defensible. Did I mention I’m doing all of the mapping and programming? Yeah, that too. It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks, but I’m up for it! Thankfully everything is going well, even if it is a big work load.

I just want to make a quick post to let everyone know that in light of recent events over at skulltag.NET (boy does that feel weird to say), everything will continue as normal here (minus the grand “forum copy+paste” threads, of course!). I’ll have more details later, but the bottom line is that we’re nearly complete with a brand new demo that we plan to start showing to potential publishers. Neat, huh?

Stay tuned!