We've been hearing a lot of things circulate throughout the community recently, so, to clarify: we're NOT dead. We're working behind the scenes and Black Mesa is really starting to shape up. Our weapons are in-game, skinned and undergoing the animating process. Our levels are filling up with custom textures and world props. Instead of ERROR signs, we now have houndeyes and bullsquids to play with. Instead of Kleiners everywhere, we actually have some of our own scientists standing about: sadly, not yelling profanity at Gordon just yet.

We're really proud of the progress we've made since January and a lot of that work has been made possible by a fresh batch of development talent and overall team dedication. In the Character Modeling department we're welcoming cman2k & CGJeff: both of whom model and skin their creations. In 2D Art we're welcoming Piks3y and Redmotion, both well experienced in their areas of talent. In Level Design we're introducing kol, already working on his respective chapter. For Prop Modeling & Skinning we're welcoming grudge, Kobi, vertthrasher, Evolution, and tremulant. Finally in the Animation department we have Damian, already working on a small assortment of weapons. On top of all this we have several individuals on the applicant list showing great promise.

With all of the new faces, we're still looking to secure some more developers. Our biggest need is in the prop modeling, prop skinning, texture art and character animator areas, but as always we are willing to look at applicants to other departments. For anyone interested, make sure you send an e-mail to jobs@blackmesasource.com with a bit about you, your past experience and some examples of your work.

Also worth noting is the work on the Black Mesa script. It has been going on for little over two months now and we are beginning to prepare for positions in voice acting and experienced FacePoser users. We do not want to see any voice acting applicants just yet, but we will make a public announcement when we are as well as how to apply.

For anyone who missed the notice in the January update, we are in a development crunch. During this period no new media will be released and we will be turning down any interviews/previews with Black Mesa. This allows us to focus directly on everything as a whole, rather than on a few areas to bring them up for public-release quality. In this development crunch we are moving to secure our custom textures, models, weapons, characters, levels, code, sound and other such assets into Black Mesa.

Hopefully this stops the rumours for a while so we can focus more on our work and less on the "Oh no, Black Mesa is dead!" messages we're seeing. As always, our official forum community at http://forums.blackmesasource.com is the place to chat with developers and to get the latest on what's happening with Black Mesa.

In a closing note, we would like to thank GamerNode & HLGamer, our webhosts, for their continuing support of the mod project. They have provided us with bandwidth, webspace and any service or assistance they can provide. We hope that you will stop by their websites at http://www.gamernode.com and http://www.hlgamer.com and check them out.