War of The Servers is moving to Unreal Engine?!
Yes, yes it is. Now you're probably ripping your hair out screaming why. Well, we recently had a conversation about what was truly possible with the Source engine, and admittedly we did over rate the Source Engine. As good of an Engine it used to be, most modern engines are now much better choices.

Why not source?
Well, we started shying away from source some 3 weeks ago. This is mostly because when it came to doing simple tasks with source, it just wasn't possible. After putting so many hours of work already into War of The Servers, believe me it was a hard decision to stop using it as it was a solid engine to use and is very developer friendly as well as this, it would've been a mod. However there are down and up sides to both engines, those explained a little later in the news. So, after many weeks of work, we just got tired of losing work because of Hammer crashing and having to go through millions of lines of really badly ordered C++ code. As well as Source being really developer friendly, however by developer I mean mod team, War of The Servers is an idea that is way too far out of the realms of Source.

Why Unreal Engine?
Well simply because the engine is much more modern and updated. We have more access to the code when it comes to unreal as well as Unreal Kismet being a really, really big convenience when it comes to scripted sequences or triggers and so on. As much as I have been a gameplay over graphics person, Source is beginning to show it's real age whilst it's a good looking Engine, Unreal Engine's graphics are really, really great. Now there's a few disadvantages and advantages to Unreal.

Advantages:

  • Better graphics, smoother gameplay.
  • Bigger maps and more detailed maps with true DMM.
  • Much easier to work with, less crashes.
  • Cheaper Engine and is worth the price for a commercial license.

Disadvantages:

  • Unreal Engine is 90% Model based, our current mappers are brush based mappers.
  • Steep learning curve for Infinity (explained more below)
  • Less pre-made content for us to use, this means that 98% of the content in WoTS has to be handmade by us.
  • Lack of Steam support (we are however willing to pay to attempt to Greenlight the game)
  • Longer development time required.

Steep learning curve
Obviously if we're going to hop from one engine to another, it's going to take a lot of learning. One of the things we can guarantee when you join Infinity is that you will always learn something new. The whole team are currently all learning the grips of the Unreal Engine which is going well so far. One of the major problems we face is the times span that it is going to take to complete War of The Servers. I don't want to give any estimations just in case we do not even come close. However it will be a long time, lets just say that. However, content is already being made for the game so we'll try to keep you interested on our journey.

From Mod Team to Indie
As much as we were a mod team that never released a mod, actually we did. Almost all of us on the team have worked on a mod at one point and one that has been released. However Infinity never released a mod, though we did plan too. Hopefully, jumping the gun and going to indie will work out, however it will not be easy.

As Infinity is going Indie, this means we have to start applying business models. We have already implemented these and we can guarantee you that War of The Servers will no longer be a free mod, it will be a full standalone game, however if you we're interested in the mod and wish to continue with our journey, discount codes are going to be given out to our most loyal members. So, how much will War of The Servers cost? At the minute we're not 100% sure, however we're not going to charge $50 for something that is only worth $12. We will make sure the price is reasonable and we will be cracking down on any pirated copies with our iAP system.

We hope you understand and appreciate our current situation, it's been a bumpy ride so far, but we hope the road ahead will smoothen out shortly. Thanks for sticking by us and giving us a chance in the world of development, we hope to see you in the further future!

Thank you very much for this update! Makes me feel even more honored to be part of the team. So this will be a commercial project, then?

Yep, War of The Servers will be a commercial project.

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

Exactly, it's time for us to expand.