You can have a long answer too
I don't think anyone knows really - you could try and calculate a release date, perhaps, by looking at information, estimating time for each thing and adding everything together.
Firstly, look at the three trackers :
3D Graphics Development Tracker3D Armour Development Tracker3D Misc Item Development TrackerThat's pretty much a list of everything that needs making, but it's only the first stage.
That's making :
1 ) All body types, and variable skin textures for each.
2 ) Armours and textures for all armour types, to fit all body types.
3 ) Making all carryable objects (e.g. weapons and any other object which can be held)
After that :
4 ) Each body type needs to be rigged to a skeleton, then needs all animations to be produced for it (i.e. run, walk, dodge, shoot, hit, use etc).
5 ) Every armour needs attaching to all body types, and if necessary, with extra animations attached to it (to fit to the animations of body types above, additionally, long clothing 'flying back' when a character runs etc).
6 ) Every object needs sizing, rotating and positioning in relation to the model, and attaching to relevant animations (i.e. how weapon is held in hand, which animations to use when firing or hitting).
7 ) A couple of hairstyles, to be attached to models, resized, repositioned and animated (i.e. long hair man's hair 'flies back' when a character runs).
8 ) Special gory death animations need to be produced. May involve models, animations, particle effects?
9 ) Creating inventory icons and "object on floor" models for any new content
10 ) Scripting / mapping work to replace current people and objects
11 ) Adjusting timings of animations (I'm pretty sure that currently, the shot is fired and enemy is damaged, before the "gun is raised and shot" animation is complete)
12 ) Any other models, animations or textures required to create an equivalent of what we already have - i.e. you can play the game exactly as you can now, except the characters are 3D instead of sprites.
At that point, maybe it will be implemented for testing?
Some other optional things, probably not essential to test it, but would need doing at some point :
13 ) A "pixellation shader" needs to be written, to make the 3D models look more like the original sprites.
14 ) The lighting and shadows on the 3D models needs adjusting - if you stand a 3D man next to his equivalent sprite, the shadows on the right side of arms / legs and underneath the chin etc aren't dark enough.
15 ) If possible, "shiny maps" for the textures. Shiny surfaces don't shine at the moment - so highlighting can only be painted on, which will look wrong from some angles.
16 ) Refining textures or models, to make them better. Ideally with the end result that the 3D model would look identical to it's original sprite (i.e. you could stand them next to each other, and not be able to tell which was which).
So... when I add all that up in my head, I can't come out with a better answer than
'soon' unfortunately. As annoying as that may sound, there's really too many factors to calculate anything more accurately than
'soon'. Like all development on the game, it's done voluntarily, and people have school, or work, or 'fun and normal living' to do as well. It's done on those evenings where you say "Not tonight, dear" or "No, but I'll be out tomorrow night" or "It won't matter if that's done tomorrow instead".
One thing for certain however - we can definitely turn
'soon' into 'sooner' with some extra people helping out - even if it's the "boring stuff", it all helps.
Even for people who don't know 3D modelling or texturing so well, I think there's enough time to learn it, then become good enough to contribute something before we're all finished. People who know how to animate or rig models would probably be particularly useful, as currently every single model goes through Karpov, who despite personally managing to do the work of an entire factory himself, would probably appreciate some help from time to time. For people who don't want to learn such things, there's a lot of text files that need editing (all the guns need rotating correctly - this is literally just typing numbers in), or as always, suggestions, feedback, advice, thoughts etc are always useful.
