It has been quite a while since out last update, but rest assured- despite the occasional periods of unproductivity, we have been hard at work. The amount of changes we have gone though since our last update has been enormous, and this post is my attempt to give a brief overview of what has been happening with us over the past few months.

First of all, I am sure you are all wondering the big question- when is PVK II going to be released? The news is good or bad depending on how you look at it. We members of the team have dicussed this, and have come to the conclusion that out original plan of having 9 different classes and player models implented in the first release is just a slight to ambitious. After all, when Counter-Strike:Source was first released, they only had two models for each team, and it's a commercial game! The fact is that it takes an immense amount of time and effort to make a single unique character, and that's time and effort we don't have. Instead, we are going with three classes- One for each team. The good news here is that we can release PVK II relatively soon, and while it may not play as well as we imagine, we hope that it's status as a "released" mod will fuel our own personal motivations and attract additional talented developers as well.

Did I mention that we already have these three classes more or less implemented? The Heavy Knight, Skimisher, and Berserker models are all "in-game" and complete minus a weapon and a few animations. To demonstate this, here are some screenshots from a recent playtest.

Notice the functional HUD with health and armor bar, skinned by the talented texture artist Xealous, in the upper left hand corner of the screenshots.(It looks small because the screenshots were originally taken at 1600x1200) Also of note is the skirmisher's pistol and the Heavy Knight model, complete with two-handed sword of doom. You will also see our most prolific mapper, YeeHaa, with his latest creation, pvk_crossroads, as well as updated versions of pvk_saints and pvk_temple. Skjalg has also allowed us to show a pic of the early development of his map, pvk_fort. Looking good!

Also in development is pvk_piratehaven by new team member EvilTaxi. You may remember him from his work on Brawl and The Specialist mods. We're happy to have have him lending us his talents.

And while we may be concentrating on a smaller release for now, don't think that we are not planning ahead for the future. Hengishammer has made a new concept of what will become the second Viking model- The Huscarl.

So you have something to look forward to, I am going to be putting together a trailor of some gameplay footage featuring the music of Rejenorst. For those of you anxious to see more updates, I apologize for the lack of them. I will be posting more frequently.