Source: modDB
Related: Crisis 51

Crisis 51 is back, again. After a long period of uncertainty around the release of HL2 and weather to go ahead we decided to stick around... And with good reason.
We have had our team striped away from us. Now with only 5 main members we are small but we are a dedicated bunch. In the last 2 months we have been doing countless experiments. I am pleased to say we have made some excellent progress and things are going smoothly.
Here's a quick fire round of images accumulated over the past month or so from our progress in the HL2 engine:


All of our maps use custom textures and models. This map also features a custom sky box. This is the opening map of Crisis 51, set in Basra, Iraq. Don't be confused about this, but Crisis 51s opening chapter is set in the past as it plays an important role in the story later on. Which you will know more about soon.
We are currently concentrating on getting the first chapter out for you all to play. Its a huge chapter in itself and will take us along time to make it. Currently have about 50mb of Crisis 51 made, mostly textures, models etc all for chapter one. Its going to be huge, and hopefully with the release it will bring further talent to our ranks.
Enjoy the site, the new content and other images you may find. Watch this space for a very exciting model update soon.

Source: The CPL

Due to the postponement of the first World Tour Stop, the CPL announced the new dates for the $50,000 Stop in Istanbul, Turkey and the $50,000 Stop in Barcelona, Spain.
The first Stop of the World Tour will take place in Istanbul, Turkey commencing with a Cultural Tour on Thursday, March 24, 2005 followed by the official Painkiller tournament from Friday, March 25 to Sunday, March 27, 2005.

The second Stop of the World Tour in Barcelona, Spain has been rescheduled. A Cultural Tour will take place Thursday, April 28, 2005 followed by the official Painkiller tournament from Friday, April 29 to Sunday, May 1, 2005.

The CPL would like to express its gratitude to its Strategic Partner in Spain for making this change on a short notice, and therefore preserving the integrity of the World Tour.

Source: Hostile Intent

With the completion 1.4 drawing ever nearer, talk about Hostile Intent: Pheonix Rising is becoming louder and louder. As soon as HI 1.4 is released, the team will shift its talent and focus to realizing the vision that is HI:PR, and building it into the beast it deserves to be.

The HI development team intends to do to Hostile Intent what Half-Life 2 did to Half-Life. In Pheonix Rising, everyones' favorite aspects of HI will be retained, improved, and added to.

Hostile Intent was the first and only Half-Life mod where teamwork, communication and patience were vital skills. HI:PR will bring all the unique and enjoyable features of its predecessor to the Source engine. Present in PR will be all the features that we could only dream of before.

Players will enjoy a huge amount of freedom in selecting insertion and extraction points across huge and intricately detailed environments.

Warriors will exercise more options in selecting their load-out including spotter scopes, gas masks, binoculars, weapon modifications and after market parts.

Pheonix Rising will feature a driving storyline that ties together all of its missions and engagements.

HI:PR will not simply focus on small engagements as Hostile Intent did. While the game will still revolve around small groups of special soldiers, players will occasionally find themselves in the middle of large and incredible shoot-outs.

Hostile Intent: Pheonix Rising will innovate the genre of realistic squad-based combat by giving players freedom. The freedom to choose, the freedom to move, the freedom to think. Communication, teamwork and cunning will be even more precious than ever, in this most brilliant of mods.

When the time comes, what will you do? The choice is yours.

Choose wisely.

Source: Sven Co-Op

Guess this is a little late :), but: The results of the 2004 Golden Spanner Mod of the Year Awards, a "People's Choice" contest encompassing mods for games of genres, have been announced on ModDB.com. Sven Co-op came in second for the coveted Mod of the Year award (just below Red Orchestra for UT2004), and won first place in the Best Action Mod category!

In addition to this, Sven Co-op for Half-Life 2 was selected as Best Upcoming Mod, winning the team a number of games and two T-shirts from Electronic Arts! We're currently considering using these (or proceeds from their sale) for SC competition prizes sometime in the future.

A huge thank you to everyone who gave us a nomination in any category! Remember to head over to the Golden Spanner Awards results page and check out the other great mods which received awards.
New screenshots from Sven Co-op 2 were released along with the award results, by the way (Valve even e-mailed to let us know that they'd be showing some of them during a talk Jess Cliffe and Mike Dussault were doing at a local game development school!) -- Here they are, along with some extras. Please note that these show work in progress, not completed work.



We're calling the map you see in the shots (being made by MarGon), "Depot", for the moment. The Gordon Freeman player model was created from scratch by DoktorAce... skin by DoktorAce and TeddyBear. Thanks to all three of them for their brilliant work, and to Nev and IchII3D for arranging the screenshots!

Hopefully we'll have more SC2 content for you over the coming weeks -- a lot has been done, but we're not ready to show some things just yet. We should also have a couple of new missions for Sven Co-op 1 available for download sometime soon, by the way, so keep an eye on the site. Also, if you have experience with UV unwrapping/3D art in general, make sure to check Sniper's news post below.

P.S. - Due to having been busy over the holidays, afraid I'm even further behind with my e-mail at the moment :(. Heartfelt apologies to everyone still waiting for a reply from me.

---

Hello everyone. Just writing to say we're looking for about two additional team members to work on Sven Co-op v3.5.
If you have experience with UV unwrapping & 3d art, etc. please send applications with a portfolio of your work to sniper@svencoop.com. Previous mod experience a plus, but not required.

Major features are being worked on at the moment, while dealing with college :*(, and an internal mapping SDK will be released to a select number of people in the next week or so.

In regards to donations, those who have donated after v3.0's release will gain bonus features in the next patch.

Sven Co-op 2 is progressing and everyone on the team is working on that, hence our need for additional team members to work on v3.5.

Source: RTK Development

RTK Development is pleased to announce the opening of there Beta Testing Forums. They are now accepting applications from anyone interested in joining their Beta Test Team. This team will eventually be the primary testing group of the modification SR 2053. In addition this team will take part in testing custom community content, not just RTK Development Materials. So if you are a developer and really want to give your map the proper bug free send off, they are here to help. Within the next few weeks they will begin beta testing RTK_Éire, a map set in the burial grounds of an Irish castle. To participate in what is surely going to be a spectacular event and a testament to the quality of work done by RTK Development, and its partners in the community.

To apply to the Beta Team, please register with the RTK Development forums, then click the "RTK Beta Signup" Link at the top of their links list found on there sites homepage. Or you can be sent Directly to the Beta Sign-Up Application page found here .

RTK_Éire -Storyline-

British Terrorists have captured the Castle of Éire. The last resting place of the Irish Clan Macdonald. The Terrorist are making insane demands, as our intelligence tells us that they have no intentions of negotiation and are here to desecrate two of our most sacred burial grounds. We must act quickly, we may only have a few minutes till their charges are in place. We will insert via the mote, secure the area and proceed to the rendezvou. See you their gentleman.

Erin Go Bragh.

Source: PHL
Related: They Hunger

The "They Hunger: Source" idea is back from the grave. Valve has been in contact with us and they support the idea of TH:S. This was an important first step towards making this a viable project, but we still have to work out many other factors. We will keep you informed of any significant developments.

Source: modDB

Well... its been a chaotic, stressful and rough week for those that noticed the Mod Database hasn't been up for the past 6 days.

Before I begin my short rant, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the Mod Database visitors, many whom pledged free-hosting in our time of need. Unfortunatly resolution wasn't that simple as up until the 6th of February, all Mod Database files were and still are locked down. Fortunatly we have a backup which is a month old, so please bear with us while we recover the remaining images etc.. which you may notice are missing.

Now for an explanation, basically put the Mod Database's hosts (Oktagone) ran into a spot of bother with there hosts (EZZI). Now i'd rather not delve into the issue here, but to put a positive spin on this painful period, I do have to say both companies have been working around the clock to sort things out and well simply put.. nothing is as easy to fix as it seems.

There is still work to go, but it shall all be behind us in the next 24 ~ 48hours. Rest assured there will be no more downtime!

All that remains to be said is please PLUG the MOD DATABASE on your website, we need to let everyone know we're back, and better than evah! (well maybe not the better part, but at least we're back!) Oh and more positive news is that in a month or 2 the moddb maybe securing a permanent download server. More news on that in a couple of days.

Source: Aaron "BlueWolf72" Molloy from BRAWL via mail
Related: BRAWL

Several new weapon media pieces have been put online by the BRAWL team:

Our first 4 weapon models are up and more this week.

We are the mod that will bring hand 2 hand combat to the Half-Life2 engine. This is not a wrestling mod but a hand 2 hand combat mod with many fighters. One of the fighters will be a wrestler.

We lost our coder to school and life so if you have the time and talent please drop BlueWolf72 a email! (jobs@bluewolf72.com)

Looking great, check the BRAWL site for more.

Source: PlanetHalfLife

Half-Life 2 falls short to 1.7 million copies being sold world wide at the moment, that's what Gameshout is reporting. A bit less than expected but still a lot:

Vivendi Universal has updated its corporate news page with first official sales numbers on Half-Life 2. The company announced that Half-Life 2 sold nearly 1.7 million copies worldwide since its release less than two months ago.

That is small compared to other games such as Halo 2. Several financial people thought that Half-Life 2 would sell up to 8 million copies by now.

Check the full news post here.

Source: The Wavelength
Related: Nem's Tools

It has been two months since a compromised GameSpy machine killed my site, but today, thanks to the folks at Wavelength, its back up. Two months is a long time, and as some of you may have suspected, it has spawned several updates. So without further ado, here's what's new:

I've released a new version of Batch Compiler with some enhancements to the specification files that are its backbone. These enhancements allow for improved source tool batch generation. Tutorial updates will follow shortly but for now you can view to complete revision history here and download the latest version here.

BSP Viewer has also been updated with real time entity editing capabilities amongst other things. Once again you can view to complete revision history here and download the latest version here

Terrain Generator now sports a fancy new .vmf exportation option for all you Source mappers. This took place over several revisions and can be download here.

A new version of GCFScape that can be set to open GCF files opened in Steam (Volatile Access option) has been released along with a shinny new version of HLLib with a vamped up sample application (HLExtract). You can view GCFScape's revision history here and download the latest version here.

Old users should be able to log on without problem and only a handful of posts and other updates were lost due to the migration to the Wavelength. If you notice any invalid links please let me know. Hopefully everything will return to normal now.