Some news from the world of Science & Industry:

• Our forums are now back online after a few months of downtime. There is still a bug preventing the forum to send out e-mails: that means you'll probably get an error if you register a new account, but that account will still be created correctly and you'll be able to log in fine. This bug will be fixed shortly hopefully.


• The 9th season of the Science & Industry League came to an end last week-end, with clan IKM reaching the first place of the Premiership, and clan DC winning the First Division. Congrats to both of them! The final standings are available here.


• A new version of the Grave Bot has been released which fixes an important bug with S&I and adds support to most of the official maps.


• A new edition of the S&I World Cup will begin shortly. Sign up here before the end of the week if you are interested in playing in this fine competition.


• Another competition will also start soon: the 2 vs 2 Tournament. The 2v2 format should prove to be interesting (the traditional format is 5v5), and this tourney is open to everyone: all skill welcome from veterans to newbies. This is a good way to get into SI, sign up with a friend here.

Sorry There hasnt been very much updates lately, progress has been going very slowly. I'd like to welcome our new mapper Scarecrow. I just got settled in so im going to start working on my map again. Raulxp's zombie model is close to completion too.

We are also looking for more talented modelers and textures artists, the application is as follows:

Resistance and Liberation, one of the most anticipated Half-Life 2 mods in development is looking to expand their team. They are in search of talented static object modelers and texture artists. Here are the requirements for each open position:

All potential Modelers must meet the following criteria.

• 2 years modeling experience


• Must be proficient in UV unwrapping.


• Compile models to work with Half-Life2, or ability to learn.


• Highly motivated with a strong work ethic


• Ability to deliver on time


• Experience working with a team

Bonus qualifications include:

• Experience working with large projects


• Previous mod development experience

All potential Texture Artists must meet the following criteria.

• 1-2 years texturing experience


• Ability to create map and model textures from photo references.


• Compile textures to work in Half-Life 2, or ability to learn.


• Highly motivated with a strong work ethic


• Ability to deliver on time


• Experience working with a team

Bonus qualifications include:

• Experience working with large projects


• Previous mod development experience

We are looking for a certain quality of work and work ethic from our members. Rest assured that you will be applying for a well ran professional mod team with high expectations and goals. Please visit our webpage and look over our media. If you feel your work is of the same quality or better, please submit an application with prior work.

Also, as always we will take a serious look at applications for any of the other positions. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to reviewing the applications

For those of you who have been under a rock the past 48 hours, United Admins has released Cheating Death 4.28.1. This version contains quite a few new detections and blocks to prevent the cheats that have been released over the last month or so from working. Enjoy!

First of all, on behalf of the entire staff here at The Somme Valley, I'd like to apologize for the two and a half week downtime we suffered. This was due to our now previous host, Oktagone Publishing, seemed to think it was okay to pay their datacenter bills whenever they felt like it, therefore their datacenter shut them down. They were nice enough to put the sites online for a day or two, so Oktagone customers could retreive their sites, and for that, we thank you!

Now.. down to business. As you can probably see, we have a new site! Big thanks goes to Tarky and ForK for their graphics work, and I did the code and the content myself. Secondly, another big thanks goes to Death Octimus, he spent a good length of time giving everybody a little history lesson, as you can see below.

So let your minds rest, we're far from dead, as is our site. We're back with our first host, Half-Life Gaming, thanks to MJCS-gTFC for keeping our seat on his servers warm!

Check the Information Page out for a revised features and game play list. The Somme Valley is now more unique than ever with it's new form of game play.

If you have any questions or comments, or just want to be a part of a great community, step into our Forums and our IRC Channel, and get to know the crowd! Once again, sorry for the downtime, but welcome back to the site!

We've tracked a recent rash (ok...more like a plague) of account hijackings to the SixSteam Hack that's floating around on the Internet. We are still looking into exactly how this is being accomplished. If you are using SixSteam (BTW...a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement...just in case you are wondering) and you still have access to your account change your account password immediately, then delete SixSteam before you login again (or else you run the risk of having your new password stolen as well). If you have had your account disabled you need to create a Support Incident by clicking on the Support link above and for in your subject title it "SixSteam Hijack", we will get to these as time permits.

Also. Just a reminder. No one from Valve / Steam will EVER contact you via an Instant Messenger Client and ask you for ANY login information. Period.

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SixSteam (some version of it at least) is stealing passwords. Use it at your own risk and remember that it is a violation of both the EULA and the Steam Subscriber Agreement so please don't complain if your account gets hijacked and / or shut off in the future.

This week we have for you; some W.I.P renders of the German Medic, Sniper,Officer and Rifleman from Ryan Duffy. Along with some W.I.P screenshots of rnl_carentan from Thomas Tobin. And i'm going to finish it off with little treat, to give you a taste of what you'll see incoming weeks :)

Right, we are open for business once again! Apologies for the huge delay, here's the story:

• Our hosts Oktagone apparently didn't pay their bills and so the whole network was shutdown a couple of weeks ago. I found out about this through a forum post at Webhostingtalk after being sent an e-mail from Oktagone telling me that there "had been a power cut." If it hadn't been for this forum post, I wouldn't have found out that I could still get into my site via an alternate IP address and download a backup (which I usually do every 2 months and was due to do when this happened).


• After several days of joining in the screaming on said forums, there was at last some action: an e-mail was to be sent out offering us new hosting options, asking if we wanted to stay with Oktagone, or Ezzi (the company that owns and maintains their servers) or move to another host. I chose to stay with the current hosts until this site was back up and running, and would then consider moving.


• A few days later nothing was heard, and so some IRC camping was required. It was discovered that Oktagone were building their own datacenter, and our websites would be worked on after they finished putting in the carpet and building their own website. E-mails were sent to their support centre and people were bugged on IRC.


• Wednesday morning, I got an e-mail saying my account was ready to be set up. It took until Saturday morning until it was all configured correctly.


• And finally, although the DNS has been propagating for the last 24 hours some crazy PHP bug reared up its ugly head, which basically logged you in as other people, which I have now fixed.

So as you can see, I've been having loads of fun these last few days, and I hope you have all spent the time off to work and map! I apologise if the site seems a bit slow- it is now hosted in Australia- but suffice to say with all the problems and chasing up I've had to do over the last two weeks we are in search of a new host, and if anyone has any ideas please PM me. Also if you had a pit that needs putting back up, let me know. Thanks!

Just a reminder we are still taking applications.

We currently need people in the following positions:

Prop Modelers
2D Artists
Level Designers

Beyond this, we still can use people in other positions as well, so if you feel you have other skills to offer, by all means shoot me an email. The ones above are simply the most needed.

email me at dreamwraith@renevo.com

Our awesome track designer Luke Bronts has been hard at work on redevelopment of rc_evolution in the source engine from the original HL Rally.

Here are some shots of his fantastic work:

Stay tuned for a few in-game pictures over the next few weeks!

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Over the past month or so, we've been dropping obvious hints to the community that we will be doing HL Rally for Half-Life 2, such as - changing our banner to a logo saying "HL Rally: Source", and announcing it in the forums and IRC.

But no official statement was ever made! I figure, now with the new website, its about time! Yes! There will be HL Rally: Source!

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A skilled web designer, Yavin, has succumbed to the greatness of HL Rally, and thrown up a nice new template for our website. The site is also using a new content manager.