#unleashed project

Jacey and Rose continue their adventure through the the better half of Sonic Unleashed.

So, it's been around four months since the last update on Unleashed Project's channel. What's going on? Is it dead? Has it been delayed? A lot's been going on in my personal life for a while and I want to shed some light on why no updates have been released in a long while. Before you go panicking (first of all, I'm flattered, but second of all) the release isn't cancelled. It's not even seriously delayed, all things considered.

I'd been working on the project on-and-off for a long while, since 2014 even. Since I didn't want it to become my own personal Duke Nuken Forever, I resolved to put my personal projects on hold starting 2016 until Unleashed Project 2.0 was done. After all, I'm doing 90% of the dev work on this update; it probably wouldn't exist without me. I didn't want to let people down, and with the Sonic Hacking Contest being held in October/November (the general deadline I had wanted to set for the release) it seemed like the best idea was to buckle down and dedicate as much time as possible to getting work done.

That... didn't go well. Due to the pressure of having to port, iron out, and thoroughly test over 30 stages in less than a year (a decent chunk of work had already been done going into 2016, but a lot of that old work needed fixing up too) and only being one person doing all of said work, took a huge toll on my emotional state. I was already not in the best of places emotionally, but the added pressure turned me into an anxious wreck nearly every day. Friends can attest to me constantly talking about the looming deadline I'd set in determination to get the work done; they can also attest to my refusal to change the deadline or give myself any sort of extended break.

Unfortunately, it's not all as easy as it might sound. Sometimes I spent literally my entire day's development cycle just trying to get a camera right or something of the sort; it may sound trivial, but I pour as much time as I can trying to get every detail either accurate or enjoyably translated. Other days I couldn't get anything done because some glaring problem refused to be fixed without tons of time dedicated to debugging (I can only bug Dario so often, he's busy most of the time). Development just isn't a smooth process no matter how you look at it, especially when you're working mostly solo.

So, what happened? I was determined to make my deadline, nothing was going to stop me. Well, so I thought, anyway. It was late April that something really serious unfolded in my life; something I can't go into detail about, but that essentially forced my attention away from the project until it could be dealt with. Unfortunately, before even that situation was resolved, I was sent to the hospital due to my Crohn's getting concerningly bad. I had been tolerating the physical pain of it for a long while, but it was beginning to seem potentially fatal, so getting me treated was very necessary.

I spent around a week or more in the hospital before being discharged, before almost immediately heading off to TMG, as it was something I had been looking forward to. It was a great time, but once I returned home, stress hit like a truck once again. I was becoming physically unstable in addition to my emotional state, so after talking it over with my girlfriend, we decided to fly me out to visit her and a friend for a few weeks. It was upon spending time there that I realized where I had been living was a large contributor to the stress I was facing; our rather impromptu solution was for me to stay with my girlfriend and move in permanently, flying out to pack the rest of my things and take care of a few appointments.

So that's where I am now. I haven't flown out yet, but I'm living in a new place which I just moved into, without any access to my files for Unleashed Project. I fully intend to get almost straight back to work once I have my computer back, but you probably realize by now this means the release is being delayed; I don't know exactly when to, but I imagine somewhere early in 2017. I'm really sorry to have to announce this, but I wouldn't have stopped working for even a moment if my personal life hadn't seriously demanded it. I didn't want to have to push the release back to 2017 at all, because that's hitting four years since the 1.0 release, and it makes me worry that interest in this release will be diminished. Nothing's worse than dedicating years and tons of stress to something only to find out no one really cares about it.

Of course, I don't intend to let that worry stop me. I know there are people who still want to see the release through and enjoy it when it's out, and I won't disappoint those people. If you've been following the project and my work on it this long, I want you to know that I really appreciate your patience. I'm working as hard as I can so that you can enjoy the finished product, and I hope you will when it's out. Please forgive me for the delay and the things in my personal life that have kept me busy, but I hope you look forward to more updates coming very soon.