lol, fine on all fronts, I guess.

Bright......

Shame I never figured out that weird text.

Yeah I dunno what the hell it says either. Dunno what Hellscrag's template is either...I'm too tired to find out right now...

I have a question. Are you using a custom texture pack and if not, what texture pack(s) are you using?

[EDIT] Apparently, UA has problems with the mentioning of the crossed out words above. Don't ask me why. He just does.

Guess that's a suprise too...like this whole mappack

Actually I heard it was going to be more of just one level...idk...

Waff, I'd imagine that you're scrapping this project due to your recent life-changing events?

Absolutely not. There just won't be any talk about it until EXU2 is done.

This isn't "my" project, either; UA is definitely putting AT LEAST as much effort into it as I am, if not much more, and the same goes for EXU2 at this point. We work as a team; I just am the guy who does the most publicity shit because I'm used to it :p

That said, EXU2 is the focus right now for both of us and it will continue to be for the next however long it takes to finish it.

Excellent to hear. I'm beginning to understand that this community isn't going anywhere and we'll likely be mapping 'till we die.

I know that I won't be mapping for anything other than the unreal engine, BSP only. I've come to love all the quirks, and there's something about CSG which makes me love it so much more than modern techniques. Static meshes can go to hell.

dumb question probably but...any news/word on this?

forgive me for bringin' it up =P

Honestly, if I were in Waff's boots (and UA's), I'd keep my mouth totally shut not only until EXU2 completion, but until THIS PROJECT HERE is ready to be released. The entire PR Waff did here is set to totally cryptic, mysterious and so on, and so on. Even a single ingame screenshot could ruin the feel, reveal too much of what we are now waiting for. What keeps us at the edge of our seats is nothing more, nothing less besides the fact that we don't know anything at all. Whatever is in store for us, whatever will be in store for us -- is a total surprise. Waff -- I beseech thee -- make it stay that way. I want to be totally surprised when I first play this.

I'm making something too under Delacroix but his orders were to keep my mouth shut, and yes, IT'S GOING ON HERE TOO!!! =)

Situation: This is Colonel Schultz, LabSec. Right around the time our investment invitation was published online and distributed to potential investors, we lost contact with the RichterLabs AI research and teleportation experimental platform. We are preparing to dispatch a scout to the site for initial survey of the problem.
Details: We are unable to determine the cause of the communications interruption, but will be sending one rookie through an experimental teleporter. Dr. Julian tells me that this should, theoretically at least, allow us to get someone on the ground in just under a second. However, she tells me we only have enough power to send a few soldiers through the teleporter, so we are deploying just one for the initial sweep. Marine dropships followed by engineer teams will be en route following the scout, but obviously will take much longer to arrive. All soldiers: stand by for further details from LabSec. We absolutely must ensure that whatever is happening over there gets taken care of quickly; we don\'t want to lose any sponsorship over something stupid.
Latest Developments: - 1650 UST: Invitational message published. Contact with installation lost. Camera signals cut out. Invitation is corrupted.
- 1700: Unable to remotely access the webserver and take down the garbled invitation.
- 1705: Chief of Security dispatches emergency bulletin to all off-site security teams.
- 1720: Colonel Schultz orders dropships to prepare marine teams for deployment.
- 1732: More data corruption visible on the invitation.
- 1745: One scout is sent to the base via experimental teleporter using RichterLabs auxiliary matter transference platform.
- 1800: Awaiting confirmation of arrival from scout. Marine dropships en route. ETA: 6 hours.
- 1840: Still no confirmation from scout. Possibly due to whatever is causing the communications blackout. Additional typographical errors detected in the invitation that were not present in the original message, such as \'philantrhopy.\'
- 1935: More text artifacts detected, this time a large amount of unknown characters. Still no word from the scout; satellite images of the facility do not show anything out of the ordinary, though no one is visible on the landing pad or elsewhere. Network connectivity still established with facility, but technicians are unable to remote into any of its systems. Auxiliary platform has detected unusually large amounts of network traffic originating from the main facility.
- 2355: Contact lost with marine dropships. Possibility of EM field disrupting communications.
- 2359: Contact lost with off-site military installation 600km to the North. Communications outage appears to be spreading. Substantial text artifacting visible.
Intel: The original invitation bulletin appears to have some bizarre technical errors in it. We are uncertain what may have caused this, but are assuming it is related to the communications blackout. The invitation is still visible - here - indicating the base\'s servers are still operational. The invitation message has become progressively more garbled over the past few hours. Possibility of catastrophic reactor failure ruled out.

Theres some information taken from the project page. It'salso called the machine

OK, this is a loose end that should have been cleaned up a long time ago, so I'll just go ahead and regrettably announce that this project is canned. It has been unofficially for at least a year at this point. Really sorry, folks, but it is what it is! Nobody is more disappointed by this than me, though. I really, really wanted to see The Machine come to light, but I know for sure it won't - at least not on this engine.

This whole idea began as just a "let's take a break from EXU2 with a quick single-level thing that's totally different" concept between UArchitect and I one summer a couple years ago. It then ballooned almost out of control into something much, much more interesting and ambitious, and we started to make major progress quite quickly. But things stalled, and we resumed work on EXU2 until UA started having to focus more on real life concerns than game development. As of now, I haven't heard from him at all since early May this year, and before that, he'd been AWOL for about six months with only limited contact every few weeks at best. He hasn't been able to work on EXU2 since June 2011, and that's always been the primary project for us both. I had to make the very difficult decision a few months ago to restructure EXU2, and have been operating under the assumption he won't be back.

If he does return, he'll be welcomed with all the usual fanfare, but I can't just fly solo for a year and a half with next to no contact and still assume he's going to be back eventually. I've got places I've gotta be myself, and don't see myself still doing this kind of stuff for a really long time. So I'll be completing EXU2 myself and with the help of volunteers for specific tasks (more info about that when Open Beta launches, which I am very excited about), but The Machine is way too much for me to tackle myself, especially after EXU2.

However, the ideas in this project are well worth preserving, so I'm not gonna go into too much detail about what the game would have been like. But if my game development career actually goes anywhere, then who knows - maybe this project will be reborn as a brand new full game some time down the road if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Anyway, sorry everyone; I know a lot of people were excited about this due to the cryptic nature of my postings (which I'm quite proud of; the promo material turned out so well!). The map I was working on never got too far, though, so not much will be wasted, and there's not even enough to show WIP shots of what I had. Plus, you know, I wanna keep some of the designs secret and all, so I won't be releasing any of the content we made that isn't already public, at least for now. Well, I can upload the font I made if anyone wants it!

Again, I really hate to do this, but I think it's better than just letting this thing stagnate forever and have everyone wonder what happened. I don't want to pretend it's going to get completed one day if, realistically, I know it won't. So I'm unloading what's left and will continue to focus solely on EXU2, which, on the positive side, is actually thriving more than ever these days.

Thanks for the support folks! I'm glad that at least the concept was so enthusiastically-received.