I'm sure many of you suspected this, especially since the last update was over half a year ago at this point, but I have decided that I need to officially hit the pause button on The Blacklight Arena. Don't assume it's dead forever, but I'm currently not in a position to pick up development on it, and I don't know if or when  I will be again. There are several reasons for this, and I'll try and explain them as best I can. 

First, and most importantly, the game as we know it now was a prototype, developed in the time window you'd expect of a studio trying to make a proof of concept. But like most proof of concept models, the game we produced was too scaled back, with too many missing pieces, and code that is too inefficient to operate at the eventual intended scale. I thought that once we got past the showcase point, even if I was losing the team I'd worked with to get this far, I'd be able to pick up development right where I left off and continue expanding upon that. But the more I tried, the more I realized that the only real way to progress would be to throw out the last 6 months of development and start over from scratch. It wasn't just the code, although that *is* woefully inefficient. The only thing that might still work at scale is Aaron Keilman's artwork. Beyond that, though, the level design plans were redone 3 months in once it became clear we were not going to have vehicles done in time. The level was scaled down and pathways around it reworked to accommodate the lack of vehicles, which also then informed decisions about the swing power levels on the golfing mechanic.

Second, part of the reason the controls need redone, aside from the inefficiency of the code, is I realized after the playtests and demonstrations we ran that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Melee mechanics needed to function. I assumed a simple swing and block would be sufficient, but play showed that to be a boring and ineffective way to fight when the guns were so accessible, and that was before I removed blocking due to it simply not working as written. But melee combat needs to be rethought a bit. Distance closers, a good block that works, and a better distinction between the function of Strikers beyond swing speed and melee damage will all be necessary. 

And finally, I am currently just not in a position to be actively developing a project as ambitious as this one. Between job hunting, podcasting, and helping some other cool collaborative works to get off the ground, I simply cannot give this the time it deserves. 

My original plan was to wait until Unreal 5 and some key plugins were out before migrating the project over there to see if the new and improved dynamic lighting system helped with some performance issues the December Showcase build has been plagued with, but I wasn't doing nothing in that time. I was researching, reviewing, materials, and trying to find the best way forward. Unfortunately, this seems like the safest play at this point in time. I thank everyone for their support, getting us to this point, and I hope you can remember how cool this project was whenever I can pull it back off the shelf!