Hey guys, this is –swatman- here and I’m just filling in for Super while he’s off enjoying himself on spring break. So, I get the fun and exciting job of letting all you HI fans know what has been up with the HI dev and tester team. To sum it up in one word, work.

Everyone on the team is pulling together to tighten down the hatches on HI 1.4. The greatest news is the builds are steadily coming out from MasterMind, animation fixes are pouring out of Rifter, and our all-purpose guy, MarmaladeMan, has been crafting full installs of our 1.4 tests, as well as touching up and finalizing most maps. 1.4 is near, and the testers have their hands full with nightly tests. Tracking down the bugs, and in the case of a gentle prodding produce some good images. Like these for example:

Well its time again for another update from the Storm of Steel. Today we have 3 new pieces to show off, The Mk. IV british tank, The british Vickers Mk. I .303, And the German Rifleman, Two of which are done by our modeler Jumbo Pie.

I have also done some major changes to the About page, Along with 2 new entries, Classes & Vehicles. I hope it helps to explain the mod a bit more, And i am working on getting detailed pages about each entry on the about page.

As always i would like to mention that we are still in need of new team members, So head down to the Contact page for more information on joining.

You can now visit us at the Moddb, TSS Moddb Profile

Now what you have all been waiting for, The renders. Here we have the british Mk. IV:

The british Vickers .303:

And the German Rifleman, Sporting his Feldgrau M15/16 Bluse:

Thats about it for now, Keep your eyes peeled for more updates soon.

The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), a worldwide leader in computer game competitions and NVIDIA Corporation, a worldwide leader in graphics & digital media processors, jointly announced the offering of three thousand (3,000) free day passes to the Cyberathlete® Extreme Summer Championships 2005, taking place July 6 to July 10 at the lavish Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas.

The Devils Reef Promotional Video has just been released showing exclusive in-game footage of ‘The Devils Reef’ and showing off the true power of the Source/Halflife II engine! There is two links where you can obtain this Promotional Video....Our Friends at Halflife-Spain and a mega fast download is available at FileFront!

So what are you waiting for? Go download it!

The Video is in super high quality BINK format and weighs in at 54 megs (sorry 56k’rs)

Bink format video’s require the Bink player and this can be downloaded from The Bink Link on this page! (free of charge of course)

We are still seeking New Team Members , so If you have any Mapping skills with Hammer, Modeling Skills, 2D art Skills or Coding Skills or Voice Acting Skills I would love to hear from you, just drop me an email to me to Katncraig86@hotmail.com

Thats right, the ever so popular Q2DM1 is almsot complete. Oh, if your not keen on what this map translates too, it'll probably make more sense to call it "The Edge". In this case "Edge Source" - qs_q2dm1.

John has been working for a week and a half straight relentlessly to capture and recreate every subtle detail, and nothing but true beauty has emitted from his hard work.

Heres some pictures to wet your whistle. While viewing them, if youve played Q2, try remembering your first frag in this room, and all those glorious moments. To all those who know nothing about this map, just check out its massive potential for awsome rocket wars and rail battles.

Alright, I know we haven't said much for a while, so here's a little bit to keep you guys interested.

First off: The Plains of Daragoth are nearing completion! This map lies beyond Helena.

If you recall, you've pushed those pesky orcs out of the city, however, they haven't fully retreated.

Regular patrols keep an eye on the area, seeing that noone gets any further.

If you manage to hack and slash your way through the area, you'll come upon the gates to the city of Deralia "Jewel of the Human World"

Not enough for ya? We got more.

I'm sure you've noticed those two little icons at the bottom of your screen. They tell you what's in your hands, right? But why can't you see them? That's all changed now! Now, you can hold two items at once.
Sword and shield..

How about a dagger and a potion?

Why not go the whole nine yards and dual wield!

Still not enough? How about one or two more things?

Dogg has created a weather system to bring more life to various areas of the game...

...or just cold days in Edana.

How about this? Tired of the same old direct damage magic spells? How about one with a little more kick to it?

A bit of overkill there...

How that keeps you statisfied for a while

Dead6: Are You Dead Yet
Week 2 (3/13/05 to 3/19/05)

Old Business:
I'd like to start off by saying that our alpha test RC 1.0.0 went out today successfully. This is why this Are You Dead Yet update was delayed until today. I had to get the darn thing ready.

As for progress from what we were working on last week: Dreamwraith is continuing his work on producing our textures for our WIPs. Dan, being pressed for time this week, still has his Hummvee on the burner. Kon_v2.0 is nearing completion of his current concept works; the whole team is looking forward to seeing these. Maimer, Exdeath7, and Permagrin are continuing their work on their assigned weapon models. Kirby098 and Cypher have begun work on one of the missing chapters in our story line. From what I've seen, this chapter promises to be good, but don't expect any details from me. Agent_Gibson is finalizing his B09 Standard Trooper and Rifle Soldier character models. Peanutt, MaliCE, and Slash0x are also continuing their work on their assigned level designs.

New Business:
There's not a whole lot of new business to contend with this week. Basically, everyone has been working on their assigned projects. Our main goal for this week was to finish up our Alpha RC 1.0.0 and get it out to our alpha testers, which we accomplished. These individuals will ensure that when you, the fan, gets the final product, you will not be disappointed.

Oh yeah, forgot about that contest thing... Basically, Cypher has put forth a Tattoo Design Contest. We're working on the rules for this contest right now, but the main goal is to have our fans design a tattoo that may appear on a few mercenaries in singleplayer. If you're interested, stay tuned to our news center. We'll release the details of the contest there soon.

Staff Member Inputs:
vloktboky - I got 'er done... [Alpha RC 1.0.0]

That's all that has happened this week. No, we are not dead yet.

I would like to Welcome Cold_Steel to the team. He's going to be doing a little mapping for ESF. A few exclusive shots of his new esf_earth_wastes map are being pimped in ESF-World's latest post. If you haven seen it already head over to ESF-World and check them out.

The EL (Earth League) has been renamed to the ESF-League and is now going to be run by ESF-World. They have for an ESF League banner competition posted on their site. So if your interested be sure to stop by their site and check it out. The competition is being run from a thread in the artwork section of the forums. You can view it here.

You may have noticed our site had a little hickup since sunday. Our hosts managed to magically lose our database. We are now running off a server which Iced Eagle's friend generously gave us access to. The database has been reverted to February 10th, I managed to get the update back, but the rest was lost. I'm terribly sorry for the inconveniance, and I will make sure this never happens again. The main reason for the delay was because I was waiting for HL2files to revert to a backup so we can get a more recent database image, but it looks like it's not going to happen, so I gave up, and here we are.

First off, this patch does NOT address the following things:

1. It does NOT fix the consta-spawn problem, which obviously then does NOT fix the gren-spawning, C4-spawning, etc.


2. It does NOT fix player balance - we tweaked some settings a bit but we need more testing and time to really fix those up proper. keep the community feedback coming, every little bit helps!

Here are some things it DOES address:

1. Crash bugs. We have fixed at least 4 separate server and client crash bugs.


2. Network and local latency problems - fixed as much as was possible from the code. We have to scale back our maps a little in the update to really get the wailing net perf we want.


3. Fixed outrageously huge blood effect.


4. Spectator mode! Type to each other, keep an eye on your deployment timer, use the chase cam, etc.

There is probably some other stuff in there too, these are just the things that I tested tonight with Cardinal. Once we have tested the Release server the patch will be in your hands! Thanks again for all the community support and feedback, even from the cranky 12 yr olds on the PHL forums! Harsh criticism is the best criticism, even if we have to sort through the grammar atrocities to find the real problem!