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As co-head of the U n v a n q u i s h e d project, I want to clarify some things and give everyone a better picture of where we are now.
I want everyone to know that above all, it is my only wish for Unv to see the continued development of Trem style play in an open way. We aim to use new technologies and assets which enhance the play experience, and to give players, server owners and admins some needed features and tools to take this game to new heights and to bring it to a new generation of gamers and hardcore fans alike.
I want to state that I am against these personal attacks and have tried to discourage them as much as possible. I don't like the negative attention that has been surrounding the project, and would like to see an end to it so that we can get on with things. The actions and statements of some of the individual developers do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the official development team.
Founded by Player1, the Unv project started as a collaborative effort to bring players within the Tremulous community together to develop the game in new ways in an open, educational and developer friendly environment. The plan was simple; get the right people together, get them excited about making a new game, and let them run wild with it.
I joined the project a couple of months afters its launch for the purpose of learning about open source game design, and had been dreaming up a game which involved three teams, so it was a perfect match.
Unfortunately, life gets in the way, plans and people change, and things don't always turn out as exactly how we like. Player1 had to leave the project and he then charged me with the task of continuing this dream, which I am still dedicated to.
In early 2009 I met Volt through the modding group. This was when we were originally planning a mod for Tremulous, and later started planning a new sci-fi based game built loosely around Trem style play. We had worked together on various projects related to Unv, but eventually Volt had to take an extended leave, but stayed in occasional contact with us.
In late 2010 I started a sister project 'TremHD', which aimed to get a discussion going about producing new assets, to serve as a repo for said 3D models and artwork, and to educate players and artists about asset production. Sadly the project was short lived, because in spring of 2011 all of our various project's web services suddenly died when our hosting provider shut their doors and closed down without notice to their customers. It was also during this time that I had to step away from the project for a while due to some real Life™ stuff.
In summer of 2011 I came back online was glad to see that Volt had ran with RedSky's concept artwork for aliens from the NeoTrem project and had formed the Trem Z project with people related to Trem, Unv, Dretch Storm, and other projects.
Trem Z would be a graphical update to Tremulous with new assets, and new features, and run on Dushan's OpenWolf engine, which was a fork of the ET:Xreal engine - plus improvements from ioq3 and other codebases.
In the fall of 2011, Volt brought Dushan into the project directly, during a time in which many new experimental development ideas were being heavily debated. It is my belief that this was timed poorly, as Dushan didn't receive a proper introduction, and his ideas were then presented prematurely in an inappropriate arena with an inappropriate audience.
Shortly before the originally scheduled release date of Jan 1st 2012, Volt stepped down, and named both myself and Celestial Rage (`Ishq) as heads of the Trem Z project. Volt would continue to work offline on a new HUD and sounds for the game. We moved the planned release date to a more realistic date of Feb 29, 2012.
Development continued, and we voted as a group to rename from Trem Z to Unv (which Volt supported). Namely, the name change was needed because Trem Z was only the 'working title' or 'project name' and was not intended for long term use, and we felt it wasn't appropriate to base the name on 'Tremulous', the same way Tremulous isn't named after Gloom.
Dushan continued working with us for a while but ultimately things got ugly and he left due to inter-personal conflicts with other /developers.
Although he was leaving, it was understood at the time that Dushan would continue to develop OpenWolf to support all q3* based games, and we would stick to developing just what we needed for Unv. The projects would be friendly but have different goals. We decided to re-brand, calling our implementation of the engine Daemon.
In the weeks leading up to our first release, Volt came forward with a list of complaints that he had about the project. The points he raised were largely non-issues when we discussed them - many apparently based on misunderstandings generated by a simple lack of communication caused by him being outside of the development group, or so it seemed at the time.
On leap day, Feb 29, we released U n v a n q u i s h e d Alpha 1. The first release was very rough around the edges, but still received a warm welcome from the players who checked it out.
Days later, accusations were made inside of the development group that Volt was possibly making assets which may have been based on copyrighted material and claiming it as his own work.
With some further prying on my part, it was also revealed to me that Dushan had quietly moved his repository for OpenWolf to a new host, in which Volt helped maintain a separate 'secret' Trem Z branch.
Amidst these accusations, I raised the larger point that the real issue is that there was zero transparency to Volt's work and so there was never an opportunity to review if his work was legitimate or usable for the game.
I also raised the question to HermXIV if he would honor Volt and I's agreement to name me as head of the project and to be a contact with our hosting provider, and also if he was willing to help with the rebrand to Unv. He stated that he had no intention of doing either, to which Volt claimed ignorance about his indifference to both matters.
Instead of dealing with these issues in a mature way, Volt launched personal attacks on others and then banned several developers, including myself, from the Trem Z forums.
Because I had suspected foul play and predicted that there would be some immature behavior, I revealed that I had already been in talks with the hosting provider and secured a new dedicated server, cutting HermXIV out of the picture completely.
So as you can see, it is not the case that Unv forked from Trem Z. As a result of my line of questions to Volt, he banned devs and now Trem Z is the hijacked remnants of the old project. I briefly considered Dushan's offers to make peace, but really his involvement with the project directly is not needed at this time, and ultimately the idea just didn't gel well with the majority of the artists and other devs, who have already rallied together against Volt, and banded together under the new Unv name.
The remaining (minority) of players and devs who currently support Trem Z are free to do whatever they want, and really there should be no hard feelings about this in the future. What happened, happened and it's done.
Who #knows, maybe the play changes that Trem Z want to do might work out great, but I feel that Volt's approach has been very heavy handed (to say the least), and ultimately Trem Z does not really represent the goals of the other devs.
We've since released another Alpha with many bug fixes and continue asset production, and continue to stabilize the project and plan for the long haul. But anyway, it's no secret what we're doing - anyone can get involved.
The question I ask myself now is, 'where do we go from here'? Unv will continue to do monthly releases and I believe it is in the best interest of the game, for whatever we do, to include the community in the process and push ahead forward, together.
TL;DR - Decide for yourself.
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It is OK to use copyrighted materials to do prototyping / mockup.
