Firstly we are happy to announce that we are making the source code to BG HL1 freely available under a modified Open Source Mod License. You are now free to contribute additions or modifications to BG HL1. For those of you who think open source means we are dead, I can categorically state, this is not the case. Active development of BG HL1 will still continue. Myristate, I and others will still be working on future enhancements, additions and fixes to BG HL1, as we have in the past. You may ask why we have taken this action. In response I say: Why not? With no (or relatively few) new Half-Life 1 mods being started, by going open source now, there is little risk of widespread plagiarism. We also wanted to try something, which has the potential of increasing progress on BG HL1, with little to no risk of decreasing its speed of development.

The second announcement is that BG is becoming a mod for two engines. After the HL2 announcement we came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to survive as a HL1 only mod. Most people would move onto HL2 and finding new members to work on a five year old engine will be more difficult than it already is. We also knew that we couldn’t abandon or simply drop BG HL1, a project that many of us have poured years of work into. It is obvious now, that at some point we would have to move onto a new engine, if we wish to keep BG alive. While HL2 is as yet unreleased we are confident that this will be our second engine. So we are now starting the planning stages for BG HL2.

The third and final announcement relates back to the first one. With the source code for BG HL1 now freely available, we have decided to open up the testing process to anyone and everyone. This means in effect, that you all can be beta testers for the next BG HL1 versions if you so wish. All details relating to testing and the source code for BG HL1 can be found in the open source BG forum.