I have neglected to update this topic for a while, but rest assured that I'm still hard at work on I&A 3 (I be working on it every night after work and have at least one full day every weekend).
During the creation there have been a few minor changes, but the mission remains wholly as planned and, as mentioned previously, many of the core features are already finished. So what's taking so long, eh?
The idea of Invade & Annex 3 is to provide not only players with a dynamic, continuous mission, but to also provide developers with ways of easily expanding game-play without having to trudge through thousands of lines of code to see how to do it. This means, essentially, creating an easy-to-use API that both I and other developers can utilise to create fantastic, dynamic content that slots into the game with ease. This is actually how a lot of game development works in more complicated, open-world games; "tools" are created first which allow developers to churn out content faster and in a more user-friendly fashion that they would otherwise be able to and actual content is created in the later stages.
So what I'm currently working on is exactly that: an API. Tactical Missions (previously called Side Missions), for example, now have the ability to create their own mission entirely independent of Invade & Annex that will slot into the system quickly and easily. Creators of these Tactical Missions can provide their own sounds, hints, notifications, markers -- anything they want -- all independent of the core I&A files so missions can be slotted in and out like addons for the mission itself.
This will apply to every single aspect of the game and the plan is for this API to be created first, allowing me and other developers to fork out countless pieces of dynamic content into the game without disrupting other elements.
I probably should've put this at the top, but here goes. Alpha testing is expected to start shortly, ideally within the next couple of weeks. Actual content included in the game will be relatively low (about the same as I&A 2 at the moment), but the depth of these pieces of content is extremely high (see attachment below for a still-not-finished example of one of the Tactical Missions planned; each one of those boxes contains a good few lines of code, adding up to ~1,000 lines all-in-all). The idea is to get every piece of functionality down and then, with the help of this beautifully-crafted API, be able to churn out huge, deep, dynamic pieces of content almost daily.
I am already behind on the schedule I had planned, but I would much rather spend extra time getting the functionality prepared and ready than rush out a half-done job. I'm in a rare situation, unlike many triple-A games, where I have freedom from deadlines and time to focus on quality and expandability; I intend to to make the most of that time.
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