This thing has died like 19 times. According to Zeo, at one point even the leader (Er... I forget his name) stated that the project morphed into something that didn't even resemble a game anymore. Good luck to the team, but call me when they release it, I'm not going to follow something with that track record.
Died? Not a fracture from 2003-2007 in development. Publically unavailable? Plenty of times.
There was good deal of downtime in 2004-2005 due to oktagone hosting issues. Downtime in 2006 due to DMCA host contacts (which resulted in alternative hosting measures). Project development paused in 2007 due to shifting focus to other more imperative (yet relative) projects.
The "project shift" you are refering to happened in early 2006 which more or less shifted the concept from a game to an interactive research study into NPR technologies. This ended up accomplishing a TREMENDOUS wealth of knowledge/skill in non-photorealistic modeling/texturing/rendering and design adaptation to abstract concepts.
Even without exposure or direct focus, there was never a loss in accomplishment due to the studies being performed.
Lite, eh? And on Quake 3? So I'm going to assume all that indie-game-engine stuff that excited us is out the window now? No more of these epic shader-based outlines? No more super-awesome overlays for auras and stuff? No more gigantic environments?
That sucks a bit...feels like what happened with the Crysis Jurassic Park mod. They tried to make their own engine, but it all fell through and now they're back modding for Crysis. Unless you can hack all these features into the Quake3 engine, as the good folks here at ESF did with Goldsource.
No worries there. The engine and it's sub-projects are still going QUITE strong. Pay heavy note to the appended "lite" label.
The overall idea here was that Dave, myself, and some others would take a small break from our other line of projects and get the old Quake 3 build and content assets from 2005 put to good use to someone. Since the quake 3 version had previously been HEAVILY modified to include a particle physics system, configs that FAR bested Bid For Powers, and tons of heavy art/code/music work from the ZEQ2 team of the past, we figured we might as well polish it up a bit and release.
It will be additionally be ported to the Pandora handheld.
So yes there is a gaping difference between the mechanics, artistic approach, and overall design goals of ZEQ2 and ZEQ2 lite. Years difference. Incidently, the former hasn't been in development in some time due to other project focuses. Additionally, it may end up staying this way to increasing potential legal strife considering the commercial applicability of the engine and it's sub-projects.
For now though a glimpse into what we had years ago (with a bit of spitshine, glitter, and bugfixing) should more than tide over a good selection of people, hopefully.
