It's quite strange that there are still a few that choose to cling to a false hope, that Volt will come and deliver what he has promised for so long. A "fully professional, commercial game", was it? I'll even admit to believing his bullshit at first, from the time I signed up to be his very first mouthpiece (a position now held by SamOz) right up until I pulled my head out of my ass last December. I was one of the first to speak up against Volt, and several times I've risked my own standing on the development team so that I could speak out and let the others know of his crooked dealings. Few things have been more deeply satisfying to me than the split last weekend, and as you've all seen on this thread, others have savored this chance to finally drop the self-censorship and call Volt out on his thievery.
Like many of you, I've been waiting years for the next Tremulous. I began playing on the [EBSF] server five years ago, right when Tremulous was in its golden age. I saw the decline first-hand, and watched as many members of the community grew bored and quit, leaving to play other games with active development. Imagine, then, how I felt when Volt first appeared last summer with his grand aim of creating the next version of Tremulous. At the time, he showed me a few models that he had laying around, and a couple of in-game shots. Little did I know, his shots were all mockups and he claimed to have a load more work done than he really did at the time. Dushan wasn't even around yet, and we didn't have an engine. Somehow, in late August, he believed we'd be done by New Year's Eve. I signed myself up and started doing writing tasks for the project.
Things looked bright and cheery at first, but over the coming months, Volt being increasingly erratic. As the release date approached, his plans started to become a little ridiculous, and a complete lack of organization prevented anyone from figuring out just what the hell they were supposed to be doing. While Volt was busy trying to figure out how to make a profit off the website and launch himself into a paid career, the rest of us were left to fend for ourselves and panic over the impending release date. Repeatedly, Volt claimed to be sending about "30 emails per day" to potential asset creators, none of whom were responding to him. He also claimed that he only slept for four hours every two days, and that he had an impressive list of skills, ranging from site design to sound production. As we all later discovered, his site and HUDs were copied from various websites, and his sounds were taken from an eclectic range of sources, including porno moans being used for his female pain sound.
I think the day that Volt finally lost it was when the Doom 3 source came out, and he immediately wanted to switch over to it. His estimate of the new release date using the new code would've been several years from now, and when I questioned him regarding the impact on the community, he repeatedly stated, "fuck the community" and "they don't deserve this." I eventually talked him out of this rather poor strategic choice, but things went downhill from there. Perhaps you all remember him deleting the old Picasa account because of people pointing out the lack of organization or explanation for things? A few weeks later in late December, Volt decided to ragequit the project without telling anyone why. He just packed up and left, with a week remaining to release time.
When `Ishq and cron stepped in as project heads, things were immediately reorganized, the release date was set to something more realistic at the time, and everyone was given their assignments and a direction within six hours after Volt's departure. I put advertisements out to recruit developers, and contacted a few directly, bolstering our development team in areas that were lacking under Volt's supposed leadership. Rather than pushing away the community, as Volt intended (see the log of him claiming he developed for himself first and everyone else second), we talked to you. I got a new Picasa up and started regularly reporting our progress. Things were not only looking great, but we all knew that we had a realistic shot at releasing the game.
For the entire month of January, things were blissful. Massive progress was made. Under our new management, everyone had (and still has) a place and a direction. At the end of the month, Volt came back. He claimed to have changed his ways, and that in the past he was stressed out and needed a break from things. Gullible as we were, we let him back in, not knowing just what he was planning. Of course, we didn't need to wait long for that. Volt's supposed innocence quickly eroded after his first attempt to take over, right in mid-February. He claimed the project wasn't going in the way he intended, and that he was taking everything over. Attempts to peacefully ask him about things quickly devolved into him freaking out and telling everyone to shut up because certain unnamed "people" were on his side. Soon enough, I discovered that neither `Ishq nor cron had agreed to anything he claimed they agreed to, nor did anyone else. Volt backed down after a huge backlash on the channel, and went back to being quiet.
The next flareup happened right after we released, and led into the split you all saw last weekend. Right after we revealed that Volt was stealing artwork, he once more freaked out, unable to answer anyone with anything besides telling them to shut up. Volt, with his puppet Herm, quickly took over the website and banned everyone that disagreed with him, calling them "traitors" in the ban reasons. The development team quickly coalesced under the new Unvanquished banner, leaving TremZ to Volt, several of his cronies, and a website so poorly designed that it looks as if it was lifted off a Myspace profile.
I'd like to clear up some misconceptions:
- Volt does not have a game. TremZ does not exist. The game you've been playing so far is Unvanquished. There is a bugfix release this weekend. Please visit our website if you'd like to stay updated.
- There is no active development on TremZ. The developers are all on the Unvanquished IRC channels. It's conceivable that at some point, Volt will attempt to fork Unvanquished, branding it as TremZ. This is possible within open source, and not outside the limits of Volt's lack of ethics.
- All that Volt has is a website. If you are posting on the TremZ forums, you are either posting about a game that does not exist, or a different game that was already released in an alpha state and does not involve Volt in any way, shape or form.
Now, I don't like to keep kicking a man when he's down. We can all thank Volt for taking the initiative in forming a project. Two projects, in fact. He was the first to start up TremZ, right around the same time that a load of other people were discussing forks. More importantly, his alarmingly foul behavior has provided us with a common identity of Unvanquished to rally around. We have learned from the mistakes of the past, as he has taken the initiative to commit them for us. Development will continue, but here are some parting words:
Good night, scum.
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