The NS Team is starting to explore new gameplay modes for NS, especially ones to work with small numbers of inexperienced players. So it's our pleasure to announce that we're starting development on "Natural Selection: Combat"!

Natural Selection: Combat is a fast and furious alternate NS gameplay mode, where waves of marines and aliens fight each other in a short timed game. Players are rewarded for kills by gaining access to better equipment, upgrades, abilities or lifeforms. A team wins if it has a higher combined level when the time elapses, or manages to kill the entire team at once. This gameplay mode should excel with small numbers of players, even ones with no experience with NS' commander mode, tech tree or resource model. The team is just starting development on this mode, and we hope to include it in NS v2.1. Got comments?

If you would like to create a map for this game type, or if you want to get more information on this upcoming mode, the Mapping Guidelines have been updated to v2.1.2 with more information (see Appendix C). We are looking for a map or two to test this gameplay as soon as possible, so be sure to send your work to the team.

In v2.01 news, there is one remaining issue with bile bomb, that is about to start testing. Once we see that the problem has been resolved, we will announce the release of 2.01 everyone. NS v2.01 definitely represents the best NS yet.

In Steam news, there is still a lot of confusion in regards to NS and WON ids. We are working with VALVe to get NS officially on Steam as soon as possible. Look for an announcement shortly.

Working on the Mad Project is going fine. All of you who haven't been present during mapper - meeting can read the chatlog here. And now two new renderpics:

The Sven Co-op site has been updated with news that, while there is a bug in Steam that causes Sven Co-op to crash, Erik Johnson has told us that Valve will get this problem fixed. There's also information on a previously unannounced feature in version 3.0 -- the ability to ride about on monsters' backs.

http://www.svencoop.com/

Sierra has released a trailer for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Its just over 1 minute long and is mostly ingame footage.

you can get it here
cz_trailer_1300k.zip (10.59MB)

Theres a big update on the Steam news page thats says

New Installers to be Released Today

Well, the release process last week and over the weekend was pretty rocky. The community managed to get 500,000 accounts created and are currently seeing about 15,000 people playing Counter-Strike 1.6 at any given time. We know that the conversion process has been anything but smooth for many of our users. We're going to get this fixed. We've done our best to support the Half-Life community over the past 5 years, and we're still committed to doing whatever it takes to make the community happy. We've listened to the response, and we'll be repairing the problems with Steam until it performs the way we all want it to.

Tomorrow we will release new installers which include the cache files for all of the games available via Steam (Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, the dedicated server, etc). If you haven't already done so, please use the installer that includes Counter-Strike and Half-Life.

Here's what's going on at Steam HQ:

• - We ran into some pretty serious bandwidth and server limitations after the release last week, which has caused several other problems like long wait times and UI unresponsiveness. The load is starting to die down now and we're getting a more content servers lined up, so these problems are becoming less frequent. As more people begin using the new installers which include the game caches, their experience using Steam will improve greatly. If you're having problems connecting to Steam or launching Counter-Strike, please download the latest version of the installer and give it a try.


• - Some other Steam problems -- "JIT" error messages, expired ticket errors, etc -- will be fixed with a Steam update this week.

Other stuff:

Other stuff:

• - Counter-Strike 1.5 is still available, and will be for a couple of weeks. After we're confident that the Steam authentication servers are functioning as they should (and not before), we'll be turning off the WON servers and migrating everyone over to the new system.


• - There have been some reports of the Conversion Wizard failing during account creation. If this happens for you, please try downloading and installing the most recent version of the Steam client from one of the mirrors listed on this site.


• - We're preparing a new installer on CD for cyber-cafe owners. Contact biz@steampowered.com if you're interested in receiving this.


• - We've heard from several people who are having trouble getting their MODs working with Steam. We've updated our FAQ with new information about this. Check it out and then email us if you're still having trouble.

Feel free to get in touch with us you're having difficulty, or for whatever reason. Thanks for hanging in there with us through these first few days.

Today The Stargate SGC Team is releasing three videos of the Stargate in action. Video one is the wire frame of the iris opening and closing. Video two, is the textured iris opening and closing, and last but not least is the rotating Stargate. They hope everyone enjoys it, and don’t forget to tell them what you think in the forums. You must haveDivx to view to videos.

http://sgmod.hl2central.net/
Download Here

This is from the press release about Citizen-132 today:

Read More here

Crackerjack: Today we will be discussing the Promo-Movie, info on the HL2 version and Future press releases and then on to questions from the public.
The news site REPS. will be invited to press release channel to get exclusive pics and interviews.
Daan will now tell you about the movie and what we plan to do. Other team members will then tell you what they are doing to complete this movie
DaanO: ok conscript reporting!
Well, the basic idea was that we would make it as some kind of teaser, but after i wrote the script, stephen and i agreed we could use it as a prequel movie. It's basically about the whole history of whatever is going on in our pretty little Austrian village.
Crackerjack: Anyways the movie will be using scripted sequences in be released as an AVI file. Currently we believe that releasing the movie in HL1 will give us an idea of what we are doing and how the official product will turn out
DaanO: Well i did write the script, including camera work, descriptions of environments, some concept art, facial expressions, everything for it, but i don't want to tell too much about the actual content of it. The main storyline can be found in a previous interview we had with Timmay. Besides that we can't tell too much about it

More will be released later

We released our brand new Page take a look @ http://www.pandora-forces.de . Now with more Info’s and Media ( Screenshots, … ) about the Mod. The second News is the release of 3 new AK 103 Render

The Citizen-132 to forums are up and running, they can be found here:
Citizen-132 forums. We encourage people to join the forums and begin posting. We also like to remind everyone once again of the Citizen-132 Public Design meeting on irc.gamesnetwork in channel #citizen-132. The times for the meeting are as follows:

New York Time: 2:00pm-5:00pm
London Time: 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Berlin time: 9:00 pm - 11:00 pm


Citizen-132

Things are progressing very fast here in OSP I’d like to welcome our newest member johhny to the team he will be doing aniamtions and skinning and modeling for us. Our new site is alive a kicking swing by if you can www.shadow-phoenix.com also here are some renders of our new Skinned M16 and Our Socom Pistol.