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CE-Rap lays it out in his own UPDATE.
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I'd like to start this news post by addressing a common misconception that is going around with VGE3. There have been a number of people who seem to believe that VGE3 took two years to make. Some have taken that false observation and speculated that VGE4 will take just as long, if not longer.

I'd like to say that view is incorrect.

It did not take two years to produce VGE3. The two-year figure combines production time with the downtime and delays caused by not having the required artwork early in production. Here's the timeline:
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September 2009: First sprites imported, library building, and fight animation begins.

April - June 2010: Fight pretty much finished (after some substantial gaming delays on my part), most voice actors recruited and lines submitted.

> Almost a full year waiting on artwork with no other measurable production <

April - May 2011: CE-RAP joins the team. He doesn't get heavily into production until May due to prior obligations.

September 2011: VGE3 finished and submitted.
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The actual hands-on production time was closer to one year than two. The fight was eight months in the making, and much of that was done at a very leisurely pace with me taking ample time for lots of productivity-killing gaming. The art was five months of frantic work. The rest was delay.

CE-Rap and I spent so many hours on Skype coordinating this that I could not give you an accurate accounting of the time. During those months of working together, we developed new techniques that will continue to serve us in the episodes to come. To give you a better idea of the production times we were looking at, the jungle scenes took up the majority of that five-month production time. By the time we got to producing the Panoptichron and Shower scenes, we had reached a point of strong proficiency and those last two scenes were hammered out and animated at about 1-2 weeks apiece. Those five months also saw numerous problems that delayed production. Hurricane Irene struck and knocked Rap out for a week. My computer died. RAM issues. Sickness. Family and life obligations. All that and we STILL managed to get it all done in five months.

I guess the point of all this rambling is that VGE4 will not take two years to complete. Not even close. All of you guys who may be worrying about a 2013-2014 release for VGE4 can relax. It's going to be out a LOT sooner than you might think.

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As for the VGE3 release, I am very pleased with the results, especially considering the many factors we had working against us. As I have said before, the fight was outdated. The only thing in it I would consider choreographically "new" is the fatality. The fight itself long predated FAILtality and is not a true indicator of my current choreographic skill level. I've got a whole new bag of tricks now.

VGE3 was mostly old work from well over a year ago. Couldn't be helped. It was necessarily released as an old car with a sweet new paint job. Pretty and functional, yes, but still far from new. As CE-Rap stated, though, it is the GENESIS of a new era in Flash. I stand by that statement. The transition may have been a little hard for some people to digest, but this was only the beginning. As much as I love it, it was our practice run. It was VGE0 all over again.

VGE4 will be ALL-NEW. New fight, new voices, new art techniques, everything modern from the ground up. No year-long delays.

...and I already have ninety seconds of the fight animated.

(Oh, and as an answer to Mini-Dude on my last news post: If I waited until the peak of my skills to animate my "dream match", then that match would never happen. I am CONSTANTLY learning new tricks and techniques and there will always be something better around the corner.)

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R1665