Again, we'd really prefer if people would post legitimate questions about Donut Mod here rather than complaining about the time it's taken. This conversation has gone on for about two thread pages now and I think the question has already been answered: it'll be done when it's done. This is a small operation and making a quality product takes time. Thanks everyone for sticking with us during this long wait. From what I've heard the final product is going to be excellent and well worth the extra time it's taken. We should consider this matter closed for now.

Okay, let's make a summary of what's going on, from the community's point of view.

Donut Mod has been repeatedly promised multiple times over the last couple of years. Each time the deadline comes around it gets pushed back further and further. This leads to confusion, disappointment and anger. People asking are basically being told that 'it will be released when it's finished' and at this point I'm f****** tired of hearing it.

Assuming that the development of Hit & Run started a couple of months after Road Rage's release, it averages out at around 1 and a half years of development. That includes all the game's code, missions, art assets, dialogue recording, and 7 levels of content. Donut Mod 4 has been in development for almost double that. While I myself think that it's better for them to take their time, it's an insane amount of time for a small mod like this to take, and it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to know why it's taking so long. 'It isn't ready' isn't a response, we want to know why it isn't ready. Otherwise it makes you look like a bunch of procrastinators that can't be bothered to actually work on this thing.

I also don't understand how this is supposed to be 'worth the wait' You mean that this is going to be good enough that it will justify over 2 years of knowing absolutely nothing? You've got to be kidding me, if you think that your mod is honestly that good then you're either delusional, or really self-centred. You've got to understand that 2 years is a lot of time, and you've made no effort at all to communicate to the community what is actually going on at all. And then you get people mass-downvoting posts like Danny's, where in all honestly he was just mad at you all for not bothering to actually communicate things like this. And rightfully so.

And then you get the mysterious status update, which is supposed to be 'the answer to all our problems' How is a 10 minute video supposed to do all that? If this video is meant to explain how 2 years was able to go by with so little information and actual progress, then I have serious doubts over your sanity. There's probably answers for the hundreds of questions out there, but a video can only answer a small fragment of them without getting to 2 hours long. You've effectively dug this hole yourself by repeatedly avoiding questions, and not giving information, making lame excuses that only would convince a 10 year old.

Interaction with the community is also dreadful. As well as the frequent lack of information and vague statements that are supposed to suffice as an answer, if your reaction to a post pointing out your flaws in failing to communicate and actually make the mod something too look forward to, is to get mad and immediately start pointing out their flaws, by saying that they're misinformed and exaggerating things, you're basically dismissing it and at the same time insulting the user. Imagine if a big company like Microsoft responded to a long post about how the Kinect was a dumb idea saying "Well you're a moron because you got one of your facts wrong" then there'd be huge backlash, because that's not a professional way to respond, neither is it fair.

Oh, and the map builder should totally be out by now. If 6 months has gone by with no progress since it was 'supposed' to be almost ready, then it really shows how little you care about actually getting things done. It's clear it's just being delayed to make Donut Mod more impressive, because it's impossible for anyone to do custom maps without the tool. We're not stupid.

I'm really pissed as you can tell. Downvote me if you want, I don't care. What matters is that I've finally said all the thoughts that have been bottled up inside me for a long, long time. You need to seriously step up your game, Donut Team, or you aren't going to last.

I want to play nice here, but clearly you don't. I've had it with this thread the last few weeks, and you're the one that's been instigating most of it, so if you don't want to wait for the mod, why don't you just find something else to do? I doubt many people here will miss you, because all you've done is b****. Donut Team is not obligated to do any of this. You are not a shareholder in the company. The constant comparisons of us to Radical Entertainment are ridiculous. You're comparing a small, four person modding team, most of whom have full time jobs outside of this, to a professional game dev studio who were paid to work on the game with their time. This is insanely shortsighted and immature. Many mods are in development for much longer than Donut Mod has been. Two years is not that long of a time.

I know Jake is also writing a reply to this currently, but I wanted to get mine in first to let you know that it's not just the devs that are fed up with this. Good day.

You've effectively done the same thing as the guy who told me that nobody cared what I had to say. He got a warned for it, so why does it make it okay for you to do it? Because you're higher ranked than me? Yes, I've been b******* a bit, and you've all been b******* back, so why is it okay when the staff do it but not me?

"We encourage viewpoint expression and want everybody in the community to be happy. That said, we'd appreciate it if there weren't comments like that."

I would hardly consider this a warning. We were trying to defuse the situation so it wasn't taken further, but you've done that yourself now. The stakes have been raised, and like I said, we're done being nice and we're gonna tell you what we want to now. No sugarcoating. If anyone else in the community wants to use a tone similar to mine, more power to them. You've opened yourself up with your previous response.

Sammy, I remember when this issue started, you had the most rational and clear-sighted response that we in some regard respected and understood. We've since explained why it is taking so long and you continually try to take us down a notch.

So here, this is my response, you can take it or leave it. I've tried my best to stay calm but this most recent reply just truly exacerbated our mood towards the issue and I feel like I am rehashing this entire thread again.

Regarding Donut Mod's release date

Donut Mod has been repeatedly promised multiple times over the last couple of years. Each time the deadline comes around it gets pushed back further and further. This leads to confusion, disappointment and anger.

I don't quite understand your position when you yourself were asking for a fake date:

I just wish there some kind of release date to look forward to (even if it turns out to be delayed even further) or some more information on what's actually going on, anything!

Maybe we don't want to give a deadline because we know we won't meet it and we want to figure it out on our own time. Instead of re-explaining here is what I shared before:

We've done this before but after several delays it's making the community lose faith and our team lose faith. We'd rather release it when we're ready, which if I'm being honest should be within the end of the year. We're trying, it's a lot of work and we're stressed.

Regarding the fact an entire game studio was able to create a bigger project than a small group of inexperienced developers

Assuming that the development of Hit & Run started a couple of months after Road Rage's release, it averages out at around 1 and a half years of development. That includes all the game's code, missions, art assets, dialogue recording, and 7 levels of content. Donut Mod 4 has been in development for almost double that. While I myself think that it's better for them to take their time, it's an insane amount of time for a small mod like this to take, and it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to know why it's taking so long. 'It isn't ready' isn't a response, we want to know why it isn't ready. Otherwise it makes you look like a bunch of procrastinators that can't be bothered to actually work on this thing.

I actually am struggling to reply to this in a way that hasn't already been stated because you clearly don't understand the basic concept of reading one of our replies. Excluding Special Thanks, 80 people worked on this entire game. Want to know how many people work on Donut Mod? ONE C++ programmer, ONE 3D World Artist, ONE 3D Modeller, ONE Mission Scripter, ONE musician, ONE artist, ONE Quality Assurance person, ONE Marketing person.

We have a total of 8 people working on this with all very specialised tasks. This also doesn't account for the fact that only half of these people are active participants and the others are more contributors. We're NOT experienced in this and we never claimed to be. We're learning as we go and we're trying to make the best product we can without half-assing it. We would never intentionally release something broken, and if a situation arises where we have, we stay up as long as it takes to fix the issue.

This doesn't even include the fact that NONE OF US are paid for this. We work upwards of 40 hours a week at minimum wage jobs, doing this in our spare-time. We have families, friends, some of us have (or had) partners during this project. We have other projects, we have other things we want to do and we have other aspirations.

A lot has happened in our lives over the last few years and you expect us to make this our primary focus. If we were able to support our families doing this, I'm sure that we'd have it out by now. However this is a free, passion project that we're working on constantly, so no, it's not ready.

Also while we're at it, Radical had tools and code that they used over the course of their entire existence. Did you know that Pure3D is still used in their last game, Prototype 2? None of us have access to these tools, so we're forced to reinvent the wheel by creating these tools so that we can actually do the things we set out to do.

It's pretty low to say we're procrastinators when we're literally giving you things for free. You act as if you've invested a lot into this when in reality all you have is your time. And we thank you for being excited for our work, but at the same time when are you going to realise that we have other things going on. This isn't a 9-5 job where we go in, work on this thing, go home and get paid doing it.

Sorry, but this takes a backseat to my sanity. We work when we can and sometimes it's absurdly long hours. If you'd like to learn more about this process, you can read my many other replies explaining the process or wait for our status update coming soon which will explain it again.

Regarding the hype, community and "mass-downvoting"

I also don't understand how this is supposed to be 'worth the wait' You mean that this is going to be good enough that it will justify over 2 years of knowing absolutely nothing? You've got to be kidding me, if you think that your mod is honestly that good then you're either delusional, or really self-centred.

Call us whatever you want and think what you want. We haven't promoted anything because we don't have anything to say. It's similar to how a video game studio such as CD Projekt Red is just now promoting their game that they announced in 2015, because they're ready to. We're obviously nowhere near as large as they are, nor knowledgable, but the statement they recently shared rings true to the issues we're experiencing now. Here's a news article on it: wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-secret-message-delay/

We've stated several times when we have something to say, we'll say it.

Interaction with the community is also dreadful. As well as the frequent lack of information and vague statements that are supposed to suffice as an answer, if your reaction to a post pointing out your flaws in failing to communicate and actually make the mod something too look forward to, is to get mad and immediately start pointing out their flaws, by saying that they're misinformed and exaggerating things, you're basically dismissing it and at the same time insulting the user. Imagine if a big company like Microsoft responded to a long post about how the Kinect was a dumb idea saying "Well you're a moron because you got one of your facts wrong" then there'd be huge backlash, because that's not a professional way to respond, neither is it fair.

You've got to understand that 2 years is a lot of time, and you've made no effort at all to communicate to the community what is actually going on at all. And then you get people mass-downvoting posts like Danny's, where in all honestly he was just mad at you all for not bothering to actually communicate things like this. And rightfully so.

Originally, I explained what was wrong with your post and you responded saying it was wrong of you to assume that part. End of story. We have explained everything you've asked for in this thread and you continually come back time after time with the same monologue, different mood.

I've said several times that I understand your concern and we've actively said we allow an open discussion. When a user attacked you, we told them we want things to remain calm and to have an open discussion. You act as if we are just up against you, when we're actually trying to talk to you as adults. You're the one slinging crap at us and to be brutally honest I think we're all done trying to beat around the bush regarding this situation. Whether we come off abrasive or rude, that is all in the context of the situation and the frustration expressed throughout this all.

We're not getting people to mass-downvote anything. Maybe people can speak for themselves. I'm not going to comment on Danny's original comment which even he has said he was out of line.

And then you get the mysterious status update, which is supposed to be 'the answer to all our problems' How is a 10 minute video supposed to do all that?

Because you asked for answers on something and rather than replying in a thread where it will get lost, we'd rather reply to our entire community in a video.

If this video is meant to explain how 2 years was able to go by with so little information and actual progress, then I have serious doubts over your sanity.

It's supposed to explain our process and how far along we are as well as showcase some new things we haven't shared before. You could have waited instead of jumping the gun by the way, we specified when we expected its release.

There's probably answers for the hundreds of questions out there, but a video can only answer a small fragment of them without getting to 2 hours long. You've effectively dug this hole yourself by repeatedly avoiding questions, and not giving information, making lame excuses that only would convince a 10 year old.

Maybe we'd like to respond to the critical issues rather than responding to every little nitpick. Also what lame excuses, that we would like to do better by the community than release or announce anything. Maybe we wanted to avoid issues such as these and were just trying to do what we think is the best.

Regarding the map builder

Oh, and the map builder should totally be out by now. If 6 months has gone by with no progress since it was 'supposed' to be almost ready, then it really shows how little you care about actually getting things done. It's clear it's just being delayed to make Donut Mod more impressive, because it's impossible for anyone to do custom maps without the tool. We're not stupid.

Colou has released a custom map before the tool; which is extremely impressive I might add! The tool isn't done because we've changed so much in it since announcing its inception and we haven't finalised documentation.

We also never stated it was almost ready, we stated its core functionality was complete and that we can begin documenting and working on extended functionality that makes making maps easier.

I said before it could have been complete by now and I have gone on record and admitted that was our fault, but we have other priorities and goals.

We do not hold back anything for Donut Mod. One of the major hurdles for the Map Builder/Model Builder is adding Blender support. This is not currently supported, meaning you have to make your maps in Sketchup.

We're considering options for it, though it may be something we just exclude from its initial release. This does not include the fact we literally have zero documentation. Loren knows how to make a map, and that's it. When there is an issue, Loren will literally look at the code base or ask Lucas about it to figure out the problem. It's not as easy as just saying "X DOESN'T WORK"; it's a complicated process of determining what caused the issue, writing a message and making it detailed so that people are able to decipher it.

It will be released when it's ready, like everything else will be.

Regarding the future

You need to seriously step up your game, Donut Team, or you aren't going to last.

5 years in, still kicking. We have a lot to learn as I've said several times, but I don't think there's anything you've covered in this that we need to "step up."

We can take however long we like, at the end of the day we're making something kick-ass. We apologise for taking so long, and we've expressed our concerns regarding it, but we'd rather take our time than make something half-assed. I know I already said this, but I already said all of this before.

If you want to say anything else, be my guest. We welcome this communication and I'd be happy to respond.

Over and out,
Jake Andreøli

Great response Jake! We should all just ignore Sammy because all he does is complain and whine about things not being finished. He calls everyone else delusional and self centered, when he is the person that displays those traits. Sammy, the Donut Team will last until the end of time. They are modding a game that came out in 2003, which is 15 years ago. They started small with texture mods, but they've ramped up the amount of work they put in that they can now create custom cars, and levels. Keep up the good work Donut Team, and take as long you need to with Donut Mod 4. Remember everyone, quality over quantity!

"We should all just ignore Sammy because all he does is complain and whine about things not being finished"
It's not helpful when you say things like about community members even if they have an opinion that most disagree with.

Exactly. I'm aware that many people don't have the same opinion as me, and I'm not bothered that people are downvoting me. Opinion is what the upvote/downvote system is made for. What I am bothered about however are comments like that. They are not helpful, nor do they contribute anything to the community. And what irks me most is that Max has effectively encouraged comments like that by saying "If anyone else in the community wants to use a tone similar to mine, more power to them." I understand what he's trying to say, but the tone makes it sound more like encouraging useless comments, such as Joro88's.

Now, regarding the original post, I wrote that while I was very busy with irl things and was very stressed out, and as such the tone came off as very aggressive, and I said things I probably wouldn't have had I been in a better and more emotionally stable state. But I do still agree with core elements of the post. It's clear that if people keep asking the same question, and receiving the same answer, then there must be something that isn't quite satisfactory here. 'It isn't ready' can be applied to almost every delayed project that DT have made, and it's a very vague response. There's nothing given to indicate why it wasn't ready on time, or how long that it's probably going to be delayed further for. I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, but whenever I make a post like this these points always seem to get overlooked, and some of the more 'controversial' comments brought up instead.

Again, I'm not begging for Donut Mod to be released, I'm not saying you're doing a bad job (I know I sort of implied that in the last post but as I explained earlier I wasn't in the best state) and I hope you continue doing great things in the future.