As August comes to a close and autumn approaches, many of us will find ourselves returning to the routine of daily life at work or at school, both in the development team and in the community. It’s been a very productive summer for us, and I hope that you’ve all enjoyed your respective vacations. Some among you will even be returning from trips to elsewhere, so I’d like to welcome you back to the community. In any case, our summer was preceded by an entire spring’s worth of effort, and will be followed by many more seasons of progress, each building upon the last in our goal to provide you, the community, with a quality gaming experience.

Recently, I’ve been asked about the history of the project. Interviewers and others have come to me with questions about our origins, our goals, our motivations. I have answered all of them, and will continue to do so. Yet, I also see a need to address the general curiosity of the community as a whole. Many of us have migrated from the Tremulous community itself, and there are those that have not yet heard about our project and have just discovered it for the first time. In addition, more than a few of us have originated from beyond the broader Tremulous community, and are not familiar with either Tremulous or Unvanquished. Thus, my goal is to provide the following, in three consecutive posts:

• Part I: the beginnings of our project. Where we came from, what started us off.
• Part II: the current state of our project. What we are currently up to, what our work is focused on.
• Part III: the future of our project. Where we want to go from here, what we expect to implement later on.

I will now begin to elaborate on the history of our project, but at first, we must begin with the story of yet another project, Tremulous.

Beginnings: Gloom to Tremulous

Around the start of the prior decade, a project named Gloom had reached its peak. It was a game based off Quake 2, which had several common themes that are still found in its descendants, such as there being two teams, aliens and humans, both of which possess unique capabilities inherent to the team. In addition, the two teams were both capable of constructing bases, and the destruction of the enemy’s spawn structures was a prerequisite to winning the game. Yet, as often happens in open-source gaming communities, the project reached its decline and produced two successors, Tremulous and Natural Selection. The former was a mod for Quake 3, while the latter was a mod for Half-Life. Our focus will be on Tremulous, as we are descended from it, rather than Natural Selection.

Tremulous progressed along over the first half of the decade as a Quake 3 modification, gaining traction and support first from the Gloom community, and then from elsewhere. Ultimately, around 2006, the game was released as a standalone version with the newly open-source Quake 3 engine. Tremulous received a rapid surge in popularity, being posted on many gaming sites and featured in the repositories of several Linux distributions. After the initial 1.1 standalone release, much discussion was made over a potential 1.2 release, with new maps, models, and other content promised to the community.

The peak of Tremulous was considered to be roughly between 2006 and 2008, with many player-operated servers going up. Intense clan activity during the time ensured a solid player-base, and Tremulous saw its golden age as a competitive game. Many new maps were produced, modifications were created, and writers pitched their stories to the masses on the forums. The vibrant community waited patiently for the next release, and much speculation went on regarding the supposed release date, as one was not announced. A few images trickled out here and there, teasers to feed the collective imagination of the community.

When the next update finally came in 2009, it was in the form of GPP, short for game-play preview as it did not contain any new artwork. The update altered the mechanics that many had grown familiar with during the days of the standalone release, and produced an immense backlash. Over the coming months, a growing rift developed in the community between those that played GPP and those that played 1.1, the old standalone version number. Unlike in 1.1, most of the activity on GPP was focused on a single server, US Main. The intent was to promote the standard version of Tremulous above all others by maintaining an official server branded as such.

Yet, GPP was not the update that the community had waited for. 1.2 was still rumored to be in production, but no serious official announcement had been made about it. As 2010 came and went, the community wondered if there was actual development on Tremulous going on, as the news updates provided by the development team had grown scarce. Many feared the project was in decline, and in hindsight, their fears were proved true as the player count from prior years was not maintained. During 2011, many spoke of the impending death of the project. Efforts were made to revive it or at least provoke the development team into giving information about the fabled 1.2 release, but to no avail. The final gasp of competitive Tremulous came in the form of a tournament held during the summer of 2011, and since then, no efforts have been made to reproduce it. Tremulous was dying.

Rebirth: TremZ to Unvanquished

As the summer of 2011 reached its conclusion, several projects had attempted to bring life back to Tremulous. Among others, the one that had attracted the most attention at the time was TremZ, headed by Volt. Screenshots were made of purported development, and a promise was made to release the game by December 31st of that year, a symbolic date. A development team coalesced around Volt, bringing together members of the Tremulous community from both 1.1 and GPP, players who possessed the time and commitment to work on what was believed to be the true successor to Tremulous, a 1.2 produced by an entirely different team. The Tremulous development team remained silent on the matter, and did not react to the announcement of TremZ on the Tremulous forums.

Early on, TremZ promised a vast array of features, many of which were supposed to bring features of modern gaming to Tremulous, considering that the game had not received an update for years and was starting to show signs of aging. As months progressed, the development team grew larger, and developers began to be recruited from outside of the community itself. By the autumn of that year, screenshots of various stages of development were numerous, and community interest was intense. Many believed that the TremZ project would be the release they were waiting for, a sentiment echoed by the front page of the TremZ site, which at the time proudly displayed a countdown to December 31st. It was a time of great optimism, a time when faith was restored to an otherwise destitute community. Unfortunately, the hype machine did not provide the desired product.

The TremZ project began to show stress around late November, as the release date loomed over the horizon. Members of the development team questioned if the release could actually be made, and when December at last came, things were in a sorry state. The engine was unstable, no models were finished, and some of the earliest contributors had either left or burned out. In the middle of the month, Volt decided to leave the development team that he had begun, leaving things in a complete mess. One of the first acts was to choose February 29th, 2012 as a more realistic release date, while at the same time being a symbolic one, in that it was the leap day of that year. Replacing Volt was `Ishq, who had previously served as a programmer on the TremZ development team. New management was set up, and a to-do list was made to ensure that the project would be at a ready state at the determined time.

However, Volt did not leave for good. He rejoined the project sometime in January, and chose not to participate in the development of it, but rather remained as a sort of observer. At the time, he claimed to be working on something else with a new development team, an entirely different project. A few more screenshots were made by him of things that did not materialize, but he otherwise remained silent over January. In February, the decision was made to rename the project Unvanquished after the first release, and an immense amount of effort went into preparing the first release. The development team knew that the community would not tolerate another changing of the release date, lest it be branded as vaporware.

Ultimately, February 29th was reached, and the release, beyond all expectations, was made. The project was renamed Unvanquished, development was moved to new IRC channels, and the old TremZ branding was dropped. The development team became Unvanquished Development, and plans were made for a new site. Yet, this did not sit well with Volt. Angered over uncovered evidence that he had stolen artwork and doctored many of his screenshots, he decided to split from the development team and took over the old TremZ site, banning those that disagreed with him. An attempt was made by him to gather developers to his cause, but only three decided to team up with him, while the others remained with Unvanquished. Those that joined him have not been heard from ever since, having gone inactive just as the TremZ project has.

From then on, Unvanquished continued onward, adhering to three fundamental tenets. Having learned from the official silence of the Tremulous years, the first tenet would be that development would always be open to the community, and ever since, our development channel is open to all members of the public to discuss and observe development. The second tenet was that development was to remain constant, and we have committed ourselves to maintaining a release cycle of one alpha release per month, made at the beginning of each. Lastly, the third tenet was that development would not remain separate from the community, and that anyone could join the development team, as we were, are, and will remain a meritocracy. We believe that a developer is a position with responsibilities, not a blank title to be conferred to friends.

In a constant rhythm, we have made our releases, each providing entirely new content never seen before in Tremulous. April 1st brought the second alpha release, May 1st the third, and so on. We have already passed our sixth release, and in a few weeks we will reach our seventh, with no signs of stopping. The time is ours, the momentum is on our side, and we will ride it forth until we reach not the fabled 1.2, but rather an entirely new successor project. As the months pass and as we diverge further from Tremulous, it will become increasingly apparent that we will be to Tremulous what Tremulous was to Gloom. Onward, Unvanquished!

To be continued…