Remako is cancelled
For those wondering what will happen to everything I made for the Remako 2.0 patch, please see the end of this post.
Why am I cancelling the mod?
While I finally decided about a week ago that I wanted to do this, I've been think about quitting Remako for a while now. This mod hasn't given me real joy in a long time. When I was working on it, it got frustrating very quickly and during the long stretches when I wasn't working on it due to demotivation, the prospect of having to finish this mod loomed over me.
A mod is never something you should torture yourself or feel unhappy about. And I don't want to lead you guys on forever, hoping that someday I will feel better about it and finish it. So by cancelling it I'm hoping to set you guys and myself free, so that we can move onto other/better things. No one is served by making this never-ending vaporware.
Developing and maintaining a mod like this requires a passion and dedication to the game, that I never had. That's why I recommend a mod like the Satsuki Yatoshi Mod. Their creator breathes Final Fantasy 7 and has created a complete and very impressive mod.
A rough path
On January 28th, 2019 I released the Remako beta. Things were exciting and manageable back then. I hadn't necessarily committed to redoing all graphics. I just wanted to do the pre-rendered backgrounds and maybe the world, battle textures and the FMVs. Remako had gone viral, it was getting a lot of attention and I was one of the first people to make a mod like this. I was at the top of the game.
After the release of 1.0 in May 2019 I got burned out on Remako for a bit. So I looked at other games. I developed WIP versions of a Half-Life: Source upscale (this turned into Half-Life: ReSrced), a Half-Life 2 upscale mod and looked a lot of other games too.
I'd always looked back at Remako from time to time as fans wanted more and I thought I wanted to provide that too them. That's how Remako 2.0 got announced. That was a mistake. The textures I had upscaled up to that point were relatively easy (definitely due to the 4xCut tool by Satsuki). After that came more complex magic textures, HUD textures, etc.
When I announced all the features for 2.0, I never imagined how much work those would be. Redoing the HUD basically means redoing everything by hand. That's not something that gave me energy. I should've just let it be the basic mod it started out as and let others do the other stuff.
So I got in a cycle of working on it for a few nights, releasing an update to let people know about that and then getting frustrated by something or another and then not working on it for months. I also lost files on multiple occasions (such as the magic textures, which I worked on for three separate occasions).
Combined with personal issues in the past 2 years/some on-going made development for Remako irritating and never-ending. That's why it's time to end it.
In dedication to my dad
Remako 2.0 source files
What's next for me
I can understand if you are disappointed with me for cancelling Remako. For me this however, this feels like a weight off my shoulders. It's giving me more peace of mind to do the things that do give me energy.
I don't think I will be making any mods anymore. This takes a lot of energy and they need to be maintained and I'm at a point in my life that I really can't find that energy/time (which is why Remako had to be cancelled)
I will however continue to make AI upscaling/sci-fi related videos on my YouTube channel. A video is a more self-contained thing, instead of a big project like a mod, with few if any expectations from the audience. While I do have plans for a regular schedule, if I feel like daily videos one week and no videos another week I can do that if I want to. That's the freedom I need from my creative outlet right now.
This blog really only existed for this mod and Half-Life ReSrced. So I'll let it stay up, but I don't think I'll be updating any more. The Moddb page will also stay up, but won't be maintained. If you want to follow my exploits, I recommend you subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Thank you for everything. Making Remako and the accompanying moment going viral is not something I will ever forget.
Comments
Remako 2.0 is the dream we all want to wake up to: HD REMASTER
I would gladly invest another 9999 hours into an HD REMASTER,
Overall, Remako > Remake; I don’t have anything nice to say about the remake; I could continue and illustrate a side by side comparison why I enjoy Remako > Remake but from this point on I will keep that to myself unless there is a following for this narrative, seems to be the unpopular conversation whenever I bring that opinion because then all of a sudden I am the [PG] asparagus-hole 🕳
Thank you for all of your hard work, and don’t be to hard on yourself. Don’t know what your Remako $ budget was but I am most certain it
pales in comparison to Square Enix FF7 original million budget;
Goes to show that SE should have lent their resources towards this fan made creation < > AS THERE IS A HUGE DEMAND FOR HD REMASTER > or = to REMAKE.
End of rant
I do hope someone, someday takes your source files and does something with them, but in the meantime I just wanted to let you know there are people out there that are grateful for the progress you made. Thank you.
Second, I will just say that Remako 1.0 was already an amazing achievement and a near masterpiece on its own. I played through Midgar and a bit further on the mod, and you breathed new life into the game for me, in ways that even the subsequent FF7 Remake could not fulfill. The lack of high-quality pre-rendered backgrounds has always been a *massive shame, given the rumor that all of the original high resolution graphics were lost during one of the corporate mergers at Square / Squaresoft / Square-Enix.
Your goals for 2.0 were impressive. But as in every project, the next iteration will always come with diminishing returns, and in this case you made the right call.
After seeing Sephiroth in Smash I was looking for 2.0 to drop to finally have my first playthrough of the game, but I was so anxious that I played with the current version anyway, it was so great that it didn't felt like it was missing something, you managed to improve in the most important things.
You made the right choice, no one would want for you to continue the mod knowing what you've been going through, thank you for giving us an update about it.
Thank you for your effort and this ambitious mod. :)
Also, rest in peace to your Dad. Looks like he was a cool dude, very understandable that it would affect you, I know one day I'll have to go through that as well, it terrifies me. Really sorry for your loss.