2009 Wrap Up - Viva la Hypertension!

Hey there everyone! 2009 is almost to a close! It's almost hard to believe everything that has happened this year, what a solid year of work to a game that had little to no legs in late 2008 now has a very powerful presence...it's really inspiring. Jumping from a few guys scrambling to diffuse drama at every corner to a competent team that works together - coherent thoughts and design, that's where it's all at. The magic starts there. I'd gladly take that and friendship over community whining/bickering any day of the week - and I can't say that we didn't try regardless.

We've had a lot of hardships this year, public, private, and absurd. We've lost team members who've been invaluable to development, lost allies, gained enemies, but at the end of the day, everyday, you take it as a stepping stone. You can't please everyone, and you can't change their mind. People are, as individuals, all different and believe something that just isn't true, or right, but it's their God given right, and it shall remain that way. Accepting that is part of being professional.

Going from underground to mainstream was very much a treat, but also an eye-opener. It's a very different world, but one that we have to acknowledge sometime. All in all, we learned a lot of lessons the past year. We're scrapping together a really nice and supportive community, whether on an Atari fansite or Game Informer itself, people are coming together to support this wonderful effort. A game of our own self-worth. Sure, we have a big Donate button that might seem odd given that we're remaking material that people worked on over 10 years ago - but that doesn't mean you guys have to push it, and I don't believe that makes us wrong either - after all, we've spent more money on the game itself so far than most independent teams will ever dream about - and if that's not passion, especially if the game is freeware and bred from 90% of our own imagination and creative direction, then I don't know what is.

That game is Hypertension. And TDGMods owes it to all of the people who believe and stand for what we are doing, for what we want - we want a game for US, Hypertension is US. It's TDGMods. TDGMods is all of your most awesome dreams and desires - a bunch of people sacrificing for a dream. We know that the game won't hit home for everyone - but that's not stopping us. Just because a community doesn't like it doesn't mean we're going to bow down either - and it's a risk we knew we were taking since day one. We are always going to be proud of the people we are, of the game we make, and of the struggles and skeletons we've all had to face head on. Man in the Mirror, as MJ once sang out about.




Our beliefs are a little extreme, our attitudes at times might seem out there, or we might be wasting a lot of money, but it's all part of having fun, of friendship and love, to passion with a game and technology seemingly "stuck in the past" - but if the Retro Revolution doesn't start here, and your early years stay trapped in your heart despite it all, then we're surely crazy. At least on some Alien planet out there.

Maybe Canada. ;)

EDIT: It's 2010! Happy New Year everyone!
-TDGMods

The screenshots never end

Haha, play on words there. Okay, so here's more progress shots. As you can tell, the game is coming together nicely. We're still adding new features every day - for instance, check out the Guns Akimbo! Also some of the exterior, outdoor shots look so amazing - and play better!

Remember to join our Forums for exclusive updates (that means news, screen
shots, and more goodies) that we won't post on the blog here!

Keep it fresh!

Merry Christmas!

Now go play some ROTT already! ;)

Wishing all of you happy holidays, be safe and have an amazing new year. I'm sure I'll post again before then, but in case I forget, take this as it is. =)

-TDGMods

Authenticity!

You know, despite our die-hard attachment to Blood, I have not played the game in a very long time.

That's right. I could not play Blood because of hardware issues. I relied on both my team members and memory to guide the way.

Tonight, I was lucky enough to receive a very old laptop, Pentium 2MMX era, and what I witnessed when I loaded up Blood just dropped my jaw.

Literally, I was floored.

Blood is an amazing game. Everything about it was just spot on. The atmosphere, the action, the mood. I was worried, for a very long time, that Hypertension was unable to capture the atmosphere. Literally, I would get worried sick for hours on end about it. My team members assured me that [Hypertension] was spot on. They tried telling me that Hypertension captured, and more, Blood in almost every single way.

LEFT: BLOOD RIGHT: HYPERTENSION
(Click for larger version!)

Well, I took a trip down memory lane. I played Blood for hours after work. Afterwards, very anxious, I loaded up Hypertension on my main machine.

Simply amazing.

Not only does Hypertension capture this spirit from Blood, everything from the atmosphere, the action, the mood, and the intensity is all there!! I was running Blood in SuperVGA mode and it looked great, but drab (like it should). I was complaining to my team that Hypertension looked drab as well, like nothing fit in the engine we were using.

Something clicked about half an hour ago. Going from Blood to Hypertension is like going from RC Cola to Pepsi. I mean no disrespect towards Blood's followers or the community when I say this, but it was a major, major upgrade. The OpenGL renderer I was so worried about fit the game incredibly well, taking Blood's grain and turning it into silk. The colors are more vivid in Hypertension because of this. The lighting adds a lot to the game, but I thought Blood was a darker game than what I remembered it to be. So it's not that much of a problem.

Yeah, there are a lot of things in Hypertension that need tweaking, but for the most part, it's a really spot on rendition of the original. I just wanted to share that with you all. For those of you who are worried that we won't capture the atmosphere, hopefully we'll be able to prove you wrong (for the most part). =)

The only thing that I can say Hypertension doesn't quite get right is Blood's software diminished lighting, but it's a trade off for Hypertension's dynamic lighting, and it works well in comparison.

Had to rant! Talk to you guys later, enjoy the updates, and check the forums!

Just another night...

Business as usual. Here's a new screen showing off a level that I'm working on (!). I know, I know, I'm not a mapper, I got bored ok?

;)

Team Restructure

Well, it has to happen sometime. I mentioned in the last post that we're having a sort of team downsize, as the workgrind settles in. Our team shrank in size considerably, but this overall means better communication.

The things we lost though - our main texture artist, most of our OST team, and others with smaller roles.

While not hampering development in a negative way, I think some of this stems from the new ideas we are generating forward as this game evolves. Some of the stuff we were previously working on had no room with these changes and as such, roles were dissolved or given up. It happened sort of all at once, but it's to be expected.

So, the core team members are still at work here, and others like Lysander have proven invaluable to development. While we might downsize and now appear "slower" to provide updates, rest assured they'll continue to come in, as much as we can allow.



Season's Greetings fans, and careful what that new Tommygun, you'll shoot someone's eye out!

Oh Wait...;)

It's been over a month!

For our beloved trailer, we averaged out (on Youtube, not counting Diehard or other viral self-hosting web sites):

68,353 views (this climbs hourly!)
Comments: 55 Favourites: 29 Ratings: 55 Average Rating: 4.51

All in all, the trailer was a huge international success, making it everywhere from Game Informer Magazine to our beloved Doomworld. It's still hard to believe all of the success we've gotten from the press, and it's definitely pushed us way harder than we would've ever dreamed. DieHard GameFan Magazine did an incredibly amazing job handling the press, and as usual Sega Nerds/DCEmulation (special thanks: Juan)/DCJY/JSII covered it, which gathered a bunch of views too. Thanks guys!

As usual, every time I edit a trailer together, it's only a few weeks before we make something better than that. Haha, well yeah. Something better is happening, so we're going to release an exclusive gameplay video of one of the full levels of Hypertension in time for the New Year. It will give you an in-depth look at the game that will revolutionize retro titles forever.

It's quite amazing how we're featured on GameSpy/IGN/etc etc as real developers, that makes us all feel very good. While we've had a lot of trouble maintaining a solid team/publisher, things are looking good as we downsized a little bit, but still trudging along as always. I guess we're officially branded an " Independent Software Design Association". That title makes us all very proud of the work we've put into this.

In a whole, the drama is wrapping up - I've made things right everywhere and now that it's out of the picture, we can focus on finishing this title.

I want to thank the amazing people for helping us out with donations - they are going a long way.

As always, we invite you to become a part of History by partaking in our forum boards. Also - get the word spread out there! Anything helps and the farther we go, the farther we'll take you in our gameplay adventures!

Thanks for your wonderful support to TDGMods - nothing in the world means more to us.

-Corbin
TDGMods

Some new stuff

Bug fixing phase is over, time to continue development as planned! =)

Here's a new screen. Enjoy!

Hint: There's several more screens in the development thread at our forums!

Bugfixing

Still no new material, I've been working on mainly bugfixes the last 10 or so revisions to the SVN to try and get the game in a stable state. We're working on some new stuff soon that should wow.

Gotta go grab the pesticide, those bugs are a-callin'!

Welcoming Lysander

Just a quick announcement!

Lysander, an EDGE engine enthusiast, has joined the team recently. He's sort of a "jack of all trades" kinda guy. We'll see where he can fit into the development team as 2009 rapidly comes to a close.

Also, a quick heads up that Doomer1, another EDGE user, has contributed a lot of material for Hypertension recently, some of it having already seen previously. He's also the one designing Zombie Invasion, a spin-off gameplay type of Hypertension that we have yet to reveal details of.

So do me a favor and welcome these two to TDGMods. Hopefully their contributions and help will be ever lasting in our ultimate goal - to release Hypertension.

Kicking ass and taking names, one Cultist at a time. ;)

Infrequent Updates?

Sorry about that, guys! We've been busy-busy working on the game, and some of our personal lives have risen above it, but we're still hard at work!

Here's a new screen to enjoy for now.

Remember, to keep freshly up-to-date with Hypertension, our forums are just one (c)lick away. ;)