Well it's only taken a year, but Lost Outpost is all but done. We're just in that nasty limbo of trying to sell it now, the fun part ( Is there an emoticon for "That's not really fun, it's the worst" 'cause that would have been perfect right there ).

Firstly, why isn't it just called Outpost 2 like it was all during development ? We've had to be a bit grown up and set up a proper company ( Garage Collective ) and it turns out the Outpost game name is already trade marked. Ok, I know that in the Flash world where you can have "Mario fucks Sponge Bob whilst Sonic watches [ Disapprovingly ]" and no one cares, but if we want to grow the franchise more than we have then using a trademarked name won't fly.
We weren't happy having to change it, we still call it O2 when chatting amongst ourselves, but that's the way it is.

So, why has it taken a year to make a Flash game ? Couple of reasons really. I had to do client work during that time, including working a month on site in the US ( Which I'm really not bitching about, I loved it ). As soon as I was getting that additional income Lux ( The artist ) and I agreed to turn the game into a big vanity project, we were going to give it all the love it needed to make it as good as possible. Which takes forever.

The other reason is, the game is huge. We've got 10 levels in the story mode ( What was it in Haven, 8 ? ) which may not sound like a lot more, but we went a lot more filmic in this one. Every level has at least one unique set piece. Again that may not sound too big a deal, but there's a reason most Flash games don't bother with them.
The reason they're a massive pain in the arse to do is they're usually one shot code. As a coder is drummed into you to write re-usable code ( That's why OOP is a thing ), with a set piece that's all thrown out of the window, it's a case of making a cool effect just for the one run through.
A good example in Lost Outpost is the rock slide on level 7. I wanted a sequence like in "The Mummy" / "Raiders of the lost Ark", a frantic run with shit chasing you and things smashing and falling apart around you. That meant having to have specific case physics objects, a new baddie type, and three days to fine tune the sequence.

Along with that we've re-written huge chunks of the original engine. The particle engine was totally re-coded and runs a lot lot quicker which means we've been able to drop mist into areas, the baddie AI was done from scratch too, it can handle 40 or so baddies in Swarm mode. Speaking of which the wingman AI from Outpost:Swarm was pulled into the game and re-done. He actually earns his own money for kills now and will go to a terminal to upgrade his weapon.

So yep, this is why it's taken a year :)

The game will def come here, NG is the spiritual home of the Outpost games, we just can't tell you when yet ( I did mention the whole trying to sell it / being in limbo hell didn't I ? ).

We've also recently put the game on Greenlite. We're aiming to package up the entire thing, Outpost:Haven, Swarm and Lost Outpost into a "Directors Cut".
If you have a Steam account we'd be really grateful if you could check it out here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=177695239
( I hate asking like this, but, it's got to be done ).

Anyway I was going to finish this huge wall of text with embedding a video, but it doesn't seem to be liking the code, so it's just going to be a direct link I'm afraid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Hq0mmJ1AI

Thanks for reading, and hopefully Lost Outpost will be on here as soon as possible. I know this post is half advert, which I'm not really a fan of, but if you have any questions about the game, code or design wise, then please ask.

Cheers.