I am getting closer to release, but something I thought that would not be as hard as it has been is to find people to play it. The DOOM community is all about multi-person projects, and mega-wads that span 32+ maps in DOOM II. And lest we forget they take years to release. I am just a one-man team making 9 maps for the original game. But even then, its getting people interested to play that’s has become the current challenge. I’m pretty proud of my creations, but I have had others share quite the opposite. So while it was a pipe dream to think I could ever gain the half the notoriety of Romero or any of the Doom Community, I’m still pressing on to a release of BLIGHT.
There is one change though that I will make. Given that I’m finding it difficult to get others to even commit to a day or two of playing, I have decided to no have the box set and only release the mega-wad for free sans box set. Yes, trying to right the coattails of SIGIL and its box set release was probably a bit foolish. And while it sounds interesting to me, to even imagine having it printed up for myself, I have to face the facts that its not that interesting for someone with no name in the mapping community releasing a paid version of a free game.
While I expected it during the month of May, that could slip into the month of June. I have done most of the testing, and the few testers I’ve gotten have given me some good criticism and have found some things I didn’t catch. I’ve gone through several revisions and versions with incremental improvements, but have yet to hear of a person completing the grand opus that I have on E7M8. Only I have seen it through to the end. So if you are a fan of DOOM and want to be a beta tester for BLIGHT, by all means, leave a comment below and I will get back to you.
Who knows, maybe this will be released in a box set, with some special goodies in the future or maybe not. But I can positively assure the community that a box set will not exist at launch, and plans to release one are currently on hold.
Lastly, I can say that BLIGHT will feature 9 single-player maps across an unofficial Episode 7, tying together SIGIL II and DOOM II: Hell of Earth. It will also have 9 deathmatch maps included. What I’m not including is co-op through the main 9 single-player maps. So those who like to fight along side each other, I’m sorry to say that it will not be possible. I do want to meet deadlines, and if I can’t test something myself, I won’t release it. And I have no possible way to test co-op functionality on maps. Due to that reason, I have decided to cut that portion of BLIGHT.