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            <h1>The History of Sonic: Lock & Load v1.4's Development</h1>
            <p>I don't really feel like talking about v1.4's minor development hell, but I'm going to anyway.</p>

            <h2>Before SAGE</h2>
            <p>In the year of our lord 2022, before I knew of SAGE and SFGHQ, Sonic: Lock & Load was a small-time mod that was just hosted on GitHub. (still is nowadays, just not exclusively!)</p>
            <p>By the time I decided to enter the project into SAGE 2022, I had just finished the v1.3.3 update.</p>
            <p>Back then, Sonic: Lock & Load wasn't much of a fan game - it was more of a DOOM mod about Sonic, and an experimental one at that.</p>
            <p>It was only when I decided to enter it into SAGE that I realised how much of a headache I was in for.</p>

            <h2>SAGE 2022</h2>
            <p>So, you remember SAGE 2022? How Sonic: Lock & Load was a part of that?</p>

            <img src="sage2022.png" class="framed" alt="SFGHQ website screenshot, showing v1.4 'Horizons' at SAGE 2022">
            <sub>Holy crap, the Final Final Demo has over a thousand downloads.</sub>

            <p>Yeah, that brought more interest into this project, but also it gave me an insight on what I was doing wrong.</p>
            <p>Unfortunately, instead of just let them have the broken and unpolished demo, I made three demos for Horizons. THREE.</p>

            <h2>The Three Demos</h2>
            <p>
                The SAGE 2022 demo was literally just the unfinished v1.4 update with some stuff removed from it to make it feel more demo-y. <br>
                There really wasn't much to it - it was just v1.3.3 with some much-needed polishes and a shiny new level. <br>
                I pretty much only made the SAGE 2022 demo because I panicked and uploaded v1.3.3 to SAGE 2022 like an idiot. <br>
                I really didn't put any thought into it.
            </p>
            <p>
                The Final Demo was only slightly better than the SAGE 2022 demo. <br>
                And by that I mean, it used a slightly less unfinished but still unfinished version of v1.4. <br>
                Literally, it was the same thing - just updated, and based on a newer version of the update.
            </p>
            <p>
                The Final Final Demo is where I actually started listening to feedback. <br>
                This demo actually took steps to make sure that the game was more polished and ready for all those YouTubers to play and review. <br>
                Which really helped - the alternative would be giving them the Final Demo or SAGE 2022 demo! <br>
                Additionally, the Final Final Demo included a more new-to-DOOM-mods-user friendly package, that included a Sonic-LockandLoad.exe file, which was just gzdoom.exe renamed. <br>
                <em>It was still hard getting people to realise you need DOOM2.wad or freedoom2.wad, though.</em>
            </p>
            <p>God, I'm glad I stopped at Final Final.</p>

            <h2>After All That</h2>
            <p>After the hype from SAGE had died down a bit, I decided I would actually make this update good, like, REALLY good.</p>
            <p>I took feedback from people who enjoyed and didn't enjoy Sonic: Lock &amp; Load - and I put those polishes and gameplay additions and tweaks into what would become v1.4 "Horizons".</p>
            <p>No longer bound by a deadline once more, I took my time with this update. The Chaos Update (v1.0) had taken long enough in its own right to come out, but Horizons was looking up to take even longer.</p>
            <p>And during that, I decided to promote Sonic: Lock & Load a bit more by creating pages on itch.io and Mod DB. The Mod DB stuff definitely helped to boost interest, especially with people used to DOOM mods.</p>
            <p>I also ended up making a Discord server, which is currently rather quiet, but that's okay.</p>

            <h2>Missing SAGE 2023</h2>
            <p>Even more unfortunately, I got so involved in these changes that I forgot SAGE 2023 happened and completely missed it, which is why Horizons is slated for a November release, not September like I originally planned.</p>
            <p>I just hope v1.5 will be a bit less chaotic.</p>
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