Where I've been

Hey all, I'm just posting an update to let everyone know I'm still around.

I have good news and bad news.
We'll start with the bad, then end on a high note.

Bad news:
All EFPSECE development has been suspended.
This probably isn't a huge surprise, considering the last dev build was 8 months ago.
I went through some pretty bad burnout, and I've had a lot of general life issues that cut my spare time and motivation, but I've been slowly getting back into development over the last few months.
I'm avoiding discord because I know if I see the list of bugs/requests, I'll feel bad about the state efpse is in, and get tempted to work on it again.
Sorry to anyone who might have messaged me or tried to get in contact via discord (especially to the few people I spoke with regularly). I hope you're all doing well and that the community is still going strong.
Right now I'm trying to avoid any distractions from my current project, so I'll be staying off discord for a while longer.
There will probably be more bug fixes at some point in the future, but I'm not planning on touching any efpse code until my current project is ready.

You may be wondering what this "current project" is, so now it's time for the good news...

Instead of working on efpse, I'm working on a new 'easy' engine, which is designed to go far beyond the capabilities of efpse.
It's kind of like a mix between efpse and unity/godot, but with a strong focus on legacy hardware support.
For now I'm calling it 'EZ Game Builder / EZGB', but the name might change when it's released.
The main goal of this engine is to make it easy for anyone to develop 3D games that will run on basically any computer/console from the last ~25 years (6th gen consoles and newer).
In order to support such old hardware, there will be some rendering limitations and no support for custom shaders.
However there will still be many rendering techniques implemented to improve quality without shaders (lightmaps, shadows, reflections, materials, screenspace effects, etc...).
I wasn't planning on sharing details about this until it was closer to being released, but it's been quite a while since I've said anything to the community, and I don't want people getting worried, so I'm announcing it now.

I don't have an estimated release date or a list of every planned feature, but here's a short list of some of the most notable features:
- 100% free and open source.
- Export to multiple platforms, including phones and game consoles.
- Completely overhauled script/state system. All built-in gameplay code will be implemented in scripts that you can modify.
- Multiplayer support.
- A 3D Editor with script/state integration and the ability to create custom editors (like efpse's weapon/enemy/decoration editors).
- Easy asset importing/exporting.
- Multiple game genre templates (retro fps, third person adventure, racing, etc...).
- Automatic optimisation (lod/imposter generation, texture atlassing, static batching, parallel scripting, etc..).

Most importantly for this community, EZGB also has the ability to import efpse projects!
This allows a clean 'upgrade path' if you ever want to switch to EZGB in the future.
Plus, anyone who decides to stick with EFPSE will still have the option to use EZGB as a tool for exporting their EFPSE games to additional platforms.
Just keep in mind that ezgb won't support custom shaders, so games that rely on them will require additional work to port to ezgb.

Now don't get too excited, because there's still a *lot* of work to be done before I can release anything usable, but I'll try and keep you updated as I go rather than disappear for another 8+ months.
For now, here's a short demo of the editor, using an old demo build of REVEREND to test the efpse import functionality: