People on the forums seem to think that we're being quiet.

People on the forums are reading things into this, as in "the mod's release must be imminent" or "they must have quit working on it."

No. Neither is true. We are still working on it. In all honesty, we're moving a bit slower than we were over the summer (due to people going back to college/uni, or being busy with other life-related things) but progress is still being made just as always. No secrets. No conspiracy... just... nothing amazing lately to report.

People always seem to ask for a percentage of progress. While I understand the question -- and can also understand from a first-person perspective the anticipation of wanting to play FF--there really is no way to even answer this question. It's not a matter of looking at a checklist of things left to do. It's more organic than that. It feels to me as if someone were to ask you "What percentage of your life have you lived?" If I had to answer that question, I guess I'd say we're somewhere in the end part of the middle.

For those of you who are really interested, I'll try to sum up where we are as best as possible:

There are no completely finished maps at this stage. There are a few (dusbowl, well, push) that are close to being done, but are still being tweaked for playablity/art touch-ups. The map progress seems to happen in pulses where a lot of work gets done in a short period of time, and then longish periods of time go on between the pulses. Also, a lot of mappers have come and gone during the year I've been on this project.

Player models have all been created, but the models have little issues that result in some weirdnesses like odd animations and texture stretching. The models are being worked on, but, as you do this, you have to redo the textures to fit, and tweak the animations to work with the new model. So you have a situation where you can't work on B or C before A is finished.

Weapons are mostly done, we're still missing a few (that from what I understand will be finished this week) but there's a bit of a bottleneck when it comes to getting them animated. If you know of an awesome animator who's worked with source, let us know. We already have an awesome animator, but he's stretched too thin.

Programming is more complicated than I could imagine. It's not just a matter of knowing the code to make something happen--it's strategically working with a cascade of ripples.... it's like playing the old game othello where every piece you play can change the pieces around you. Bugs are constantly being discovered and crushed. Features are constantly being implemented and creating their own ripples. This is the heart of FF. Here is where a percentage of completeness is most impossible to calculate. The game is playable and all the TF-ness is in place, but there are lots of little nuance behaviours still being addressed.

Lately it seems the bot team has been the busiest department. They're working on training modules as well as general gameplay performance. Once the maps are done, the bots can be completed.

Sound, for the most part, is done. Any sounds found to be missing get filled pretty quickly. Audio is 95% done. There ya go, something with a percentage... and good news at that.

The hud and menu system is roughed-in, and looking good. There's still some functionality issues, and they're being worked out.

Anyway, the main point I'd really like to drive home is that making a mod isn't like baking a cake. Everyone knows it's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake. But we're not. The mod isn't a box of Lego pieces that we just have to put together. I'm not trying to complain that what we're doing is difficult--but I really want to explain it from our point of view that we ourselves don't know what percentage along we are. We move forward, we see progress, but we know it's not ready yet to release. I've waited for my share of game release dates over the years. I've checked professional game design houses and wondered why they could never answer the percentage question... why they didn't know how much longer we'd have to wait. The answer is because each game is unique. We haven't done this before. Even professional game companies with previous releases and huge staff putting in 16 hour days can't tell you when a game will be finished... unless it's EA where the game ships on the date claimed whether its finished or not. :P We're not a professional company. We don't have hours--other than the ones we can spare from our jobs, our loved ones or our lives in general--so we're going to move a little slower than an established company of paid employees.

The closed beta is going on. We are still alive and working on the mod. We are not abandoning you when we don't update. We are excited as ever to get you guys to play the game. We're on it... don't worry.