01-01-2024, 06:51 AM
State of Contingency 2023 | End of Year Update
Hello, all! I am Zeph, the new project leader for Contingency. In this update, I will provide information explaining the current state of Contingency and announce what to expect in 2024.
Lets begin with the game as it is currently available to the public. The core gameplay of Contingency is more or less complete. The Alpha contains a complete vertical slice of functionality that allows players to start the game, play as much as they want, and then quit while gameplay statistics are retained and added to on subsequent play sessions. That was the threshold former team leader Cobby required for a release and it was met well before the Alpha was made public. There are still a good number of technical features on Contingency's list to finish up but they will only augment the core game. More on those later.
The visual fidelity of Contingency is currently nowhere near the bleeding edge of lighting and rendering capabilities possible in Unreal Engine 4. But it is of a high enough quality that when something is wrong it stands out. A number of the game's assets were authored on the order of a decade ago and were absolutely stunning compared to the AAA titles that were released/showcased at the time. If the game were released back then, it would have created a media frenzy. But a great deal of time has passed; and as time passes further the lower-end of Contingency's graphics will look relatively bad while the higher-end will look increasingly average. Priority one for visual content moving forwards will be to replace the remaining temporary meshes, textures, and animations with finalized work so as to reach a "content complete" state within the game. A lower priority is to address the "errors" within the game that put it at risk of death by a thousand paper-cuts. Such errors range from UV maps with unaligned seams, collision geometry mismatches with render geometry, and so forth. I would like to see it all done eventually, but I prefer to have the game leave alpha/beta and hit a v1.0 release over remaining in development hell.
Of all the levels in Contingency, both public and private, only Overlord is considered complete. It was submitted to the project on the condition that it not be modified and I intend to honor that agreement.
Cardinal is in an odd spot. I personally consider this level as the game's test laboratory due to it going through immense drastic changes its over its life. If I had the time, I'd love to take a screenshot from each build of the game just to see it evolve and devolve time and time again. A great deal about Unreal Engine has been learned by the team through tinkering with this level and I consider it to be one visual pass away from reaching the limit of what the current geometry can sustain. I would like to see it get some new geometry here and there to do some cool lighting effects, but it is a low priority.
The current composition of Asgard is basically a whitebox layout where third party meshes are used instead of white boxes. This has given it a look and feel that suggests it is much further along in development than it actually is. There are some custom meshes in the level, but they need to be overhauled and expanded to encompass the entire play area. Thus, Asgard should be considered ready for its first art pass to more successfully blend rugged terrain with sleek Forerunner architecture.
Jaywalk was introduced to Contingency as a true whitebox level. In the time since the Alpha's release, it has been getting a visual overhaul with new geometry for the roads and buildings. It's all coming together nicely, but it isn't quite ready to be shown off just yet.
The exact fate of the main menu is currently undecided. Its current form was crunched together in the weeks leading up to the Alpha's release. Priority 1 for that crunch was to ensure that all available features were controllable through UI. The end result was functional but it fell short of the original vision of the user experience when not playing a match. The good news is that the engineering that went into the main menu during the crunch was quite good and can mostly be left as-is even if we don't stick with the current "flat" UX.
Next, let's discuss the state of the team behind Contingency. Among the current developers, activity levels are currently low. Very low. I attribute this mostly to the real life of our devs taking priority. Over the past few years I have seen some from the team start families, get new jobs, go back to school, get promotions, begin their own business, move on and publish their own game(s), and more. To a lesser extent, the crunch leading up to the Alpha's release pushed a few members into burnout. Whatever the cause, a good chunk of the leadership has stepped down from their roles and/or left the team. Some of those leadership roles have been filled while others remain vacant. Given that the inertia of the game's development was generally maintained by the leadership being active, it has been difficult to move out of this most recent bout of low activity. More on this later.
The infrastructure supporting the team is currently healthy overall. When I stepped into the project leader role, I quickly ran into some bus-factor of 1 scares where some development data was believed lost. Most of those deficiencies have been resolved and as far as I am aware, only a single non-critical one remains to be solved at leisure. It is safe to say that if Contingency has lost access to any data now, it's simply because that data hasn't been handed over for storage. Contingency also recently saw some well needed server upgrades take place. A new generation of hardware components should make all services, both public and private, much more responsive.
To conclude, lets discuss the bigger works in progress and what to expect in 2024. I'll admit that the planning for Contingency was no less ambitious than Bungie's feature set for Halo 3, ODST, and Reach. Single-player, Multi-player, Theater, Forge, and more were all on the table and I see little reason to cut them as a feature at this point. Especially when some of them are already functional and viable. Theater mode is mostly complete and mainly needs user interface work completed before it is ready for ring 1 testing and beyond. It's a shame that it hasn't been finished, because it has already been used internally to help track down some bugs. If it were available from the start of the Alpha, I feel that a good amount more problems would have been found and addressed.
While it's not a full fledged single player campaign, solo-play online lobbies will be much less empty thanks to AI/Bot support being added into the game. Bots won't debut with much more than basic shooter logic, but they will help fill lobbies on quiet nights. I won't promise anything in regards to numbers or performance yet, but this does open the door to some Big Team Battles on the scale Contingency's founders could only hope to see some point in the future.
Forge is technically supported within the game, but essentially in limbo. I feel that after MCC made its way onto PC, that most of the immediate desire for it to be a part of Contingency started fading away. There's not exactly a big need to craft level authoring tools in Contingency because the level editor for the engine is easily available for use. You want a new level in Contingency? Join the team and use Unreal Engine's level editor to add one! But at some point Contingency may be feature rich enough with AI bots to have a meaningful need to design/script encounters in a level at runtime. At that point something like Firefight could easily be a community tweakable feature. Only after something like that is ready would Forge start getting some more development time from the team (don't expect it in 2024).
On the back-end of development, tools to better support the team's management are being written. Over Contingency's life, all sorts of productivity assistance tools have been used to try and organize thoughts and track activity/requirements. Google docs, spreadsheets, kanban boards, issue tracking, milestone lists, pinned chat comments, and more have found a use over the years but all of them have fallen short in one way or another. The primary objective of this new tooling is to facilitate discovery of what has happened in terms of development and what has yet to take place. When I stepped into the project leader role, there was nothing prepared to brief me on the full scope of the team's work this past decade. I had to scroll, dig, and interrogate to find things and there's a good chance I've still missed a considerable chunk of the team's history. If Contingency is still around after another decade, I don't want any new members to have to go through the same thing. Instead, I want them to be able to find all they need in one single resource.
Once this tooling is functional, a formal "Road to 1.0" will be plotted by a full auditing of the game to identify shortcomings. These will be converted directly into tasks with a priority, clear scope, and view of dependencies. For instance, an animation identified as missing would have a task created stating which source files in Contingency's source repository can be used to create the animation. Any available animator could find the source file, open it to see if they want to work on it, and then assign themselves to the task to ensure no one else's time is wasted. The task can then be updated or discussed as needed similar to a forum thread where the team can see progress as it is being made. Any commits to version control can be associated with this task automatically prompting peer review and/or critique if desired. If tasks do not get someone assigned to them over an extended amount of time, that is valuable information as well. The tooling can be used to report what skills are in the highest demand and prompt a more focused recruiting drive for talent.
It is my hope that having the development planning organized in this manner that the team can start forming positive feedback loops within itself to be more productive and attract new talent. Speaking of, Contingency is always recruiting. Currently the greatest need is for animators, 3d hard surface environment artists, and PBR texture artists but we are interested in growing the Contingency team in all disciplines. If you're interested in joining, please put together a portfolio illustrating your competencies and fill out the form from the "Join Our Team!" page linked in the header above.
Hello, all! I am Zeph, the new project leader for Contingency. In this update, I will provide information explaining the current state of Contingency and announce what to expect in 2024.
Lets begin with the game as it is currently available to the public. The core gameplay of Contingency is more or less complete. The Alpha contains a complete vertical slice of functionality that allows players to start the game, play as much as they want, and then quit while gameplay statistics are retained and added to on subsequent play sessions. That was the threshold former team leader Cobby required for a release and it was met well before the Alpha was made public. There are still a good number of technical features on Contingency's list to finish up but they will only augment the core game. More on those later.
The visual fidelity of Contingency is currently nowhere near the bleeding edge of lighting and rendering capabilities possible in Unreal Engine 4. But it is of a high enough quality that when something is wrong it stands out. A number of the game's assets were authored on the order of a decade ago and were absolutely stunning compared to the AAA titles that were released/showcased at the time. If the game were released back then, it would have created a media frenzy. But a great deal of time has passed; and as time passes further the lower-end of Contingency's graphics will look relatively bad while the higher-end will look increasingly average. Priority one for visual content moving forwards will be to replace the remaining temporary meshes, textures, and animations with finalized work so as to reach a "content complete" state within the game. A lower priority is to address the "errors" within the game that put it at risk of death by a thousand paper-cuts. Such errors range from UV maps with unaligned seams, collision geometry mismatches with render geometry, and so forth. I would like to see it all done eventually, but I prefer to have the game leave alpha/beta and hit a v1.0 release over remaining in development hell.
Of all the levels in Contingency, both public and private, only Overlord is considered complete. It was submitted to the project on the condition that it not be modified and I intend to honor that agreement.
Cardinal is in an odd spot. I personally consider this level as the game's test laboratory due to it going through immense drastic changes its over its life. If I had the time, I'd love to take a screenshot from each build of the game just to see it evolve and devolve time and time again. A great deal about Unreal Engine has been learned by the team through tinkering with this level and I consider it to be one visual pass away from reaching the limit of what the current geometry can sustain. I would like to see it get some new geometry here and there to do some cool lighting effects, but it is a low priority.
The current composition of Asgard is basically a whitebox layout where third party meshes are used instead of white boxes. This has given it a look and feel that suggests it is much further along in development than it actually is. There are some custom meshes in the level, but they need to be overhauled and expanded to encompass the entire play area. Thus, Asgard should be considered ready for its first art pass to more successfully blend rugged terrain with sleek Forerunner architecture.
Jaywalk was introduced to Contingency as a true whitebox level. In the time since the Alpha's release, it has been getting a visual overhaul with new geometry for the roads and buildings. It's all coming together nicely, but it isn't quite ready to be shown off just yet.
The exact fate of the main menu is currently undecided. Its current form was crunched together in the weeks leading up to the Alpha's release. Priority 1 for that crunch was to ensure that all available features were controllable through UI. The end result was functional but it fell short of the original vision of the user experience when not playing a match. The good news is that the engineering that went into the main menu during the crunch was quite good and can mostly be left as-is even if we don't stick with the current "flat" UX.
Next, let's discuss the state of the team behind Contingency. Among the current developers, activity levels are currently low. Very low. I attribute this mostly to the real life of our devs taking priority. Over the past few years I have seen some from the team start families, get new jobs, go back to school, get promotions, begin their own business, move on and publish their own game(s), and more. To a lesser extent, the crunch leading up to the Alpha's release pushed a few members into burnout. Whatever the cause, a good chunk of the leadership has stepped down from their roles and/or left the team. Some of those leadership roles have been filled while others remain vacant. Given that the inertia of the game's development was generally maintained by the leadership being active, it has been difficult to move out of this most recent bout of low activity. More on this later.
The infrastructure supporting the team is currently healthy overall. When I stepped into the project leader role, I quickly ran into some bus-factor of 1 scares where some development data was believed lost. Most of those deficiencies have been resolved and as far as I am aware, only a single non-critical one remains to be solved at leisure. It is safe to say that if Contingency has lost access to any data now, it's simply because that data hasn't been handed over for storage. Contingency also recently saw some well needed server upgrades take place. A new generation of hardware components should make all services, both public and private, much more responsive.
To conclude, lets discuss the bigger works in progress and what to expect in 2024. I'll admit that the planning for Contingency was no less ambitious than Bungie's feature set for Halo 3, ODST, and Reach. Single-player, Multi-player, Theater, Forge, and more were all on the table and I see little reason to cut them as a feature at this point. Especially when some of them are already functional and viable. Theater mode is mostly complete and mainly needs user interface work completed before it is ready for ring 1 testing and beyond. It's a shame that it hasn't been finished, because it has already been used internally to help track down some bugs. If it were available from the start of the Alpha, I feel that a good amount more problems would have been found and addressed.
While it's not a full fledged single player campaign, solo-play online lobbies will be much less empty thanks to AI/Bot support being added into the game. Bots won't debut with much more than basic shooter logic, but they will help fill lobbies on quiet nights. I won't promise anything in regards to numbers or performance yet, but this does open the door to some Big Team Battles on the scale Contingency's founders could only hope to see some point in the future.
Forge is technically supported within the game, but essentially in limbo. I feel that after MCC made its way onto PC, that most of the immediate desire for it to be a part of Contingency started fading away. There's not exactly a big need to craft level authoring tools in Contingency because the level editor for the engine is easily available for use. You want a new level in Contingency? Join the team and use Unreal Engine's level editor to add one! But at some point Contingency may be feature rich enough with AI bots to have a meaningful need to design/script encounters in a level at runtime. At that point something like Firefight could easily be a community tweakable feature. Only after something like that is ready would Forge start getting some more development time from the team (don't expect it in 2024).
On the back-end of development, tools to better support the team's management are being written. Over Contingency's life, all sorts of productivity assistance tools have been used to try and organize thoughts and track activity/requirements. Google docs, spreadsheets, kanban boards, issue tracking, milestone lists, pinned chat comments, and more have found a use over the years but all of them have fallen short in one way or another. The primary objective of this new tooling is to facilitate discovery of what has happened in terms of development and what has yet to take place. When I stepped into the project leader role, there was nothing prepared to brief me on the full scope of the team's work this past decade. I had to scroll, dig, and interrogate to find things and there's a good chance I've still missed a considerable chunk of the team's history. If Contingency is still around after another decade, I don't want any new members to have to go through the same thing. Instead, I want them to be able to find all they need in one single resource.
Once this tooling is functional, a formal "Road to 1.0" will be plotted by a full auditing of the game to identify shortcomings. These will be converted directly into tasks with a priority, clear scope, and view of dependencies. For instance, an animation identified as missing would have a task created stating which source files in Contingency's source repository can be used to create the animation. Any available animator could find the source file, open it to see if they want to work on it, and then assign themselves to the task to ensure no one else's time is wasted. The task can then be updated or discussed as needed similar to a forum thread where the team can see progress as it is being made. Any commits to version control can be associated with this task automatically prompting peer review and/or critique if desired. If tasks do not get someone assigned to them over an extended amount of time, that is valuable information as well. The tooling can be used to report what skills are in the highest demand and prompt a more focused recruiting drive for talent.
It is my hope that having the development planning organized in this manner that the team can start forming positive feedback loops within itself to be more productive and attract new talent. Speaking of, Contingency is always recruiting. Currently the greatest need is for animators, 3d hard surface environment artists, and PBR texture artists but we are interested in growing the Contingency team in all disciplines. If you're interested in joining, please put together a portfolio illustrating your competencies and fill out the form from the "Join Our Team!" page linked in the header above.