I'll start with a message for two types of people: the ones who remember the old mod and new people who are reading about it for the first time.
Let's start with the former.
For the ones who remember "Admer: The Game", which later became "An unknown game", this mod is about the same vision, under a different name. You got the second universe, you got all the same characters, the same protagonist and everything (not really, but it's about the same on the surface).
Three things that change, though, are the following:
1. It'll have new features, thanks to programming.
2. It'll be of much, much higher quality than what you saw in 2015.
And 3. I'm never giving up, ever again. Because I'm not alone this time.
For the ones who are new to this, read on! Here's the mod description:
What is Utopia at Stake?
It's an ambitious total conversion mod for Half-Life, with new features for players, and new tech for mappers, while running on the vanilla GoldSrc engine.
What is it about?
Many things. Protagonist-wise, it's about a guy who, for the sake of his own future, leaves his home and moves to a whole other planet, which is located in so-called "Universe 2", which is essentially a whole other space. (in the mod's lore, Universe 2 had been accidentally discovered in the 1980s, long story)
Story-wise, it's about multiple things: an adventure story, multiple stories of friendship, some of betrayal, a love story, an action story, you get the point. It mostly takes place in Universe 2, on the planet U2-A. It takes time in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Feature-wise, I don't want to spoil too much, but let's say we will have vehicles, and lots of cool features for mappers such as a scripting system. The mod's source code will be released separately, under a different name.
As you can see by now, this mod is definitely not in the Half-Life universe. It will have an original story, new characters, weapons and so on.
But wait... "An unknown game"?
You must be asking: What is this, though? What are these old articles, images and things from 2015 and 2016?
Let me explain. This is, in fact, a sort of a reboot of a mod which I once gave up on.
Back in 2014, I was working on a QBasic text adventure, which I called Admer: The Game. That same year, I discovered Counter-Strike mapping, and next year I thought I'd convert my QB game into a Half-Life map pack.
That's how this mod started its life in 2015. It was such a low-quality mess, as I was pushing myself, learning music production, more mapping, modeling, texturing, even programming (and hilariously failing at that very skill). I was too ambitious, and my skill level didn't allow for the quality standard that I had. As such, with less and less motivation over time, I gave up in 2016.
As years went by, I was doing all sorts of things, and improving the skills I was poor at back in 2015. Then I remembered this old mod, and I badly wanted to get back, to correct what was wrong, and to work on it again, hopefully finishing it one day. When I gave up on the mod, I thought to myself "Maybe this isn't completely over."
I was right. It wasn't over at all, and I got back, albeit sooner than I could expect.
For historical reasons, I'll keep some of the old content.
The plans
Firstly, two things are being worked on: the documentation and the base. Documentation involves writing down everything about the mod, and the base implies creating a technical foundation for the mod, that means implementing all the features of the mod: logic entities, weapons, monsters/NPCs, various additions and so on.
After that, asset creation can begin. In the future, once enough content is made, a playable demo is to be expected. The exact date is unknown and generally, any release date about the mod is "when it's done". There is a great amount of work to be done, from approximately dozens of maps, to models (props, external terrain meshes, characters, weapons, vehicles etc.), to sounds, music and textures.
