I think PV went over the problems pretty well in the NW forums, but I'll give my perspective on it anyway:
- Interest in HL1 was clearly waning. People didn't want to mod for HL1 anymore, so it was difficult to find new members to replace the older ones. Some of the most important members had left by then: KFS, Ken, MrBen, BadMofo, TommyD, Ferret, Melkior, as well as others. Their productivity was never really matched again - I don't mean to belittle the newer members, but it just wasn't the same.
- The design was too ambitious, including a new race of NPCs and ~80 BSPs. Although we eventually cut it down to something more managable, it was still too much. We could have cut our losses and polished what we had, but we discussed it and dismissed that as a cop-out, so we didn't.
- Too elitist. Or maybe that was just me. But seriously, I think we scared away some great talented people at times. I also didn't like the somewhat bureaucratic approach of development, but I sure can't think of a better way so I'll just shut up. ![]()
Well, hindsight's 20/20, yeah? I clearly have regrets over the whole thing, as do many other members, but oh well, this is how it turned out. I'd be interested in polishing what's left of the HL1 version, but that would involve more work than people are willing to do: finishing the codebase, animating the NPC models, solving the crazy map errors, etc.
And that's why I think Nightwatch on HL1 probably will/would've never been finished. It was too much work then, and it's too much work now.