Hehe, well I'll try to post a little bit of clarity. First of all, 90% of that CD cover is my "fault".. Joel has much more important real life issues, so I was doing my part to try to alleviate some of the Inf pressures on him. I threw together a rendering of a grassy hill with our guys geared up and ready to fight. The inside cover sheds more light on a particular focus while the outside cover is generalized.. which represents what Inf is partially now and is going to be as development continues. Inf represents multi-faceted combat, whether it is geared towards special operations or regular army, which you guys will see as subsequent versions appear.
Guys, I took a whole 2 seconds to think about this and not much more to put it together into a rendering. Could it have been done better? Hell yes. But the fact is, free project, budgeted time, limited resources, zero financing, all dictating what we're able to do in a given day/week/month. I should put that in my sig. Regardless of what we're compared to, how you think it should be, the fact of the matter is, this is what we have to deal with.
Second, I'm not a salesman. I never have been, and I've long ago accepted that I'm as good at marketing as I am knitting a sweater. Sentry Studios was created because it's easier to deal with outside companies and individuals as an entity rather than a group of sole proprietors. That's all it is right now. The focus of Sentry Studios for us is to put together quality entertainment of our choosing. We're doing this mostly for our own experience at this point. We've got some excellent documentation on great game ideas, but we're taking things one step at a time.
Third, this CD and t-shirt sale is for your benefit more than anything. It's definitely not going to make us a ton of money. After all, Inf is running on a two-year old engine. These CD sales will pay for things like software we're using (for example, a legit Setup and menu software rather than UT's) as well as specific hardware the team might need to keep producing the goods. That's about it.
Fourth and finally- to continue dispelling any rumors, the website was created by individuals who did not hold up the 2.87 release in one way or another. For the website to wait on the 2.87 release didn't make sense. With this website, we hope to further bridge the gap between Infiltration and its community. We're going to provide all kinds of little things within this website, from tutorials on developing Inf maps for EAS to clan news to Inf mods, etc. Stuff that just wasn't practical to do on Planet Unreal anyway.
Anyone who has worked on any software before will tell you that 99% of the time, the programmers are what make up the gist of the remaining development of a release. That's the stage we're at right now, and we've got damn good programmers working on it, but they have real lives that I always insist come first. I'm not here to make this enjoyable for anyone else but the team, so if it doesn't come out until Feb, so be it. If we lose fans because of the CD art, that's fine. If only 2 people play Inf after it comes out, oh well- we're all having fun
three years after Inf first came out, and that's more important at this stage in our gaming careers than popularity. Well, at least in my opinion.
Basically, praise, constructive bitching, suggestions.. it's all good!