Dear Ascension Community,
It is with great sorrow we announce the halting of the development of Ascension. It has been a long and exhausting road at times, with many obstacles and difficulties along the way. Some obstacles we plowed through. But at the end, we simply did not have the resources available to us to make the game the way we wanted.
Many developers within our team have dedicated countless hours of their time to create what was on paper a fantastic idea - a game created by gamers for gamers, capturing the game play and essence of a game we have come to enjoy for many years. I believe we have grown in leaps and bounds over the years. And as we made our rounds through the long development process, it was done with no rewards along the way but the satisfaction of things coming into place, and amounting sense of accomplishment that came with it.
But reality got in the way. We encountered one too many crippling faults in the game engine we have been working with, and the engine simply proved to be too incomplete and buggy to work with. Furthermore, many developers have become a victim to circumstance. Many have moved on to take on full time jobs in aspiring fields, many have become enveloped in their schoolwork or are working towards their careers. Some have life-changing events happen to them, some for the worse, some for the better. It simply became a matter of priority that many people have had to leave the development team.
If there is anything I cannot stress enough, it’s the fact that developing a game with such scope like this took a lot of time, effort, and especially patience. Patience with the engine, patience with each other, patience with in-compliant software, and patience and with the development process. I for one want to thank every one of you who were patient with us, and believed in us. The community breathed life into us and kept us motivated- we were always doing it for you guys. I really feel like we let you guys down. But sometimes one has to face the music and move on. New beginnings come from other endings, and you can bet you will see great things done by the members of our development team in the future. Not only did we possess talent, skill, and an eye for aesthetics, but also a lot of passion.
After much discussion and internal debate we have decided to release our code base much as it is now. Although its a far cry from a final product we felt that releasing what we created back into the community would allow everyone to see what we accomplished. Our intent with this release is to allow the community to take a peak at what we have completed as well as hopefully use, play, and learn from our work.
Finally, we want to thank every member of this community for all of your hard work and support. You the community are the reason we started this project. You were the driving fuel that kept us motivated throughout the countless sleepless days and nights. You should be proud of your contributions to this project. I know every member of this development team feels the same way as I do when I say thank you for all of your hard work and support. You are the only reason we made it as far as we did.
Sincerely,
The RenWerX Development Team
