How did Shaw's Nightmare came to be what it is today?
Let's start from the beginning. My sister had an idea for a family series. It was called Yogus. I got an idea to make a game from it. Of course the series didn't pan out but the game continued. Originally it was supposed to be a Bart's Nightmare clone but I made it a Doom clone instead.
Anyway production started in 2007, I made many textures and even thought out some of the levels. The plan was a Doom-like game. But I didn't have an executable because I didn't know how to program a 3D engine so I cancelled it. I revived the project in 2008, after having found out about the Build engine. It had satisfied the features the game was supposed to have and some more. Then I thought the game should be more like Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior but I still needed an executable. So I asked for some programmers at JonoF's Build engine forums. Nuno Martinez came to help and he even got the basic rendering to work.
Now then the game was to be sold. When I tried to contact Ken Silverman on the forum, Nuno got annoyed and left the project. So I was left without a programmer. In 2009, I tried to program it myself but I couldn't get it to work. In May, I tried the Allegro forums. But they weren't willing to work for a DOS game. I tried (and failed) to convince them that they should work for it. Finally in June, I got it to work. From there I was adding features here and there. Eventually I was getting tired of the project and began to lose interest.
In early 2011, I revived the project but the same happened again. In October, I started the project again. I was actually getting close to a beta but unfortunately in January, my dad reformatted the computer so I lost the entire project. I tried to recover it but to no avail. At the end of August I restarted the project again. Now I did almost exactly the same steps I employed in the earlier incarnation. A guy named Eduardo Sanchez Barrios came and I sent him the latest work. He said he was working on the textures. But unfortunately he stopped responding. I tried several times to talk to him but to no avail.
I struggled to complete the game. In March 2013, I made a demo version for people to try out. But there were few responses. I tried to get Eduardo back, even joining Twitter to contact him but to no avail (He wouldn't get back to me until a year later). Eventually, by the end of December the game was finally complete. I made subsequent releases to mostly fix bugs.
That's pretty much the end of the story. If you have completely read through this history, I thank you. I also hope you will also download the game if you haven't already. I know it isn't a "state of the art" game but most have found it enjoyable.
Shaw's Nightmare II
I started Shaw's Nightmare II shortly after releasing Shaw's Nightmare v1.2. I first started out by modifying the game engine so that it can run the sequel. By the end of 2014, I was done with implementing the monsters and other stuff, but I needed a level designer. I eventually got one and he helped to contribute some maps and I eventually released the game in 2016.
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