I'm actually fairly happy seeing this show up here as this is one of the places I've spend a lot of time back in the day and it being a gigantic influence for myself and Responding
Sadly it has been quite the shit show with this genre of gaming, with the big studios not having financial interest in what is currently a fairly small market we won't be seeing any AAA titles any time soon.
To start of, a friend of mine formerly known as AdamB910 and I were the development team for EmergeNYC, after some events happening behind the scenes and us not agreeing to the direction the game was heading we split to start Responding, to develop the game we both dreamed of. Unfortunately fairly soon in the journey Adam had to leave myself behind to focus on his busy school schedule.
With that said I've been working day in day out on Responding and like @WillUnderscore stated, I've had to run past my expertise many times (originally being a 3d modeler) but was able to learn fairly quickly due to the incredible documents of Unreal Engine 4 and the vast information the internet holds.
Now it has never been the plan to finish this project alone as this would take me several years to complete while maintaining a GTA quality world and with myself wanting to play a game like this for several years this was not a solution, I'm currently working towards getting the content that resembles the essence of Responding while also negotiating with publishers for help so i can ultimately create the experience I envision in a timely fashion
This is an extremely ambitious project which i'm honestly never willing to let go, I've also been debating to reach out to some of the extremely talented people that are actively creating mods for the GTA series but I've been wanting to get more content out before reaching out.
Thank you @Westcoaster for your support and spreading the word, it means a lot!
There have been a lot of incredible Indie games and I want to prove this can be part of this list!
- Sander