The Ballmen team have released Beta 1.5 of their total conversion cartoon deathmatch FPS. According to their website, 1.5 includes new maps and sounds on top of a slew of bugfixes and balancing changes. The main gameplay mechanic of Ballmen is that you can walk on any surface, whether it's a floor, wall, or ceiling, and it makes for some pretty intense firefights.
You can check out more media, gameplay videos, a comprehensive player's manual, a helpful forum community, and of course the new Beta 1.5 download at the Ballmen site.
My entire team was ambushed just outside our HQ, dragged off to this damp heavily fortified jail. There has been rumors circulating of an execution for the current prisoners - we don’t have much time. Given the circumstances, our only option is to escape and the only possible exit is a small air vent just big enough for one. I take it upon myself to free my teammates from the Combine. I was not ready for the challenge ahead of me, looks like they thought that we would try escape. The entire exit is obstructed by a laser grid; I will have to tread carefully. One false step and I’ll lose my life and those of my teammates. The countdown begins for the execution - can I make it out in time?
Version 0.4 of the mighty impressive Jailbreak mod is scheduled for release later this month, and boy does it look good judging from the ModDB Preview and those new images.
Keep your eyes on the Jailbreak home page for all the latest and a trailer for the new version of the mod.
The Firearms 2 team have just released a big media update with six new weapons fully modeled, textured and in-game. They have also revealed that the mod has been upgraded to the Orange Box SDK. A small selection of the new media can be seen below.
The Pirates, Vikings and Knights team are well on the way with development of version 2.1 of their brilliant mod. Currently planned for release with 2.1 are two new maps, pvk_cathedral and pvk_frostbite. Also slated for 2.1 are three new game modes, Last Team Standing, Holy Grail and a new 'push' game mode. I'll let Crazytalk explain that one better.
The next game mode is a bit more complicated to explain but it's a push game mode. This game mode will be very customizable and essentially the mapper will be able to set a timer for a team and can call upon a win for the other teams when an objective is completed (Example: Destroying a specific object in the map, etc). As I said this mode will be very customizable to the mapper and I'm very excited to see it in action in some custom maps.
The future is looking very bright for Pirates, Vikings and Knights, so keep an eye on their web page for all the latest.
International Online Soccer (that's football to you UK chaps) Source has just released their first beta version. Beta 1.0 is available from various mirrors on their website.
Nuclear Dawn, one of the most high-profile of unreleased Source mods, has a few fresh pieces of media for us today, after several quiet months. The following shots show a beautiful render of a structure called a resource station and a few guns that are fully in-game.
Nuclear Dawn is also on the hunt for a couple of capable level designers. To check out more about the mod, visit their website.
Team Dystopia are back with a new update, including new screenshots of redone maps Silo and Undermine.
The newest addition to Undermine is the ability to use the deep chasms to your advantage. This particular area serves as an escape hatch for excess dust in the cavern, although, the Punks don't know that. When the infiltration has begun, the Corporate defenders cycle harmful gasses and open up the hatch. Down goes the scum!
The Source SDK has just been updated, you know the drill by now, restart Steam for the updates to be automatically applied. There are some new features, bug fixes and some know issues.
Enhancements * Added a drop-down list in the SDK Launcher that allows the user to switch between The Orange Box engine and the Half-Life 2: Episode One engine * Two new lighting preview modes are available in Hammer * Models are automatically centered when loaded in Faceposer
Team Chivalry is eager to announce that the highly anticipated 1.1 update is not far off, and they got a little sneak peak and a few goodies just to hold us over. Let's see the brief feature list for this new update, shall we?
3 NEW MAPS
New weapons (including the warhammer!)
Several new and redone animations
All 1.0 maps were revamped and fixed.
Objective rushing issues fixed.
Better weapon balance.
Some new audio.
Various further bug fixes and tweaks
Oh and we almost forgot to mention... DECAPITATIONS!
If you still can't get enough, you can watch the Cinematic 1.1 Promotion Trailer in both high and low resolution.
Tide's Reach is an ambitious new space based mod which is currently in production by our very own Pi Mu Rho (Neale) along with a back room staff which includes Samon (Ross). I have recently had the pleasure of holding a Q&A session with these two which can be read here.
Chris - So, Tide’s Reach, the name of the mod has just been announced, but as I understand it, this has been in the works for quite some time. Why the wait between starting this project and announcing the name?
Neale: It wasn't especially deliberate. There were some potential issues with there being a hotel with (nearly) the same name that I wanted to avoid. There's no particular conflict of interests - I don't intend to accomodate or feed people, and I'm pretty sure they don't intend to develop games.
Chris - Tide’s Reach, care to expand a bit on the reasoning behind the name for those who are unaware?
Neale: It's the reach of the Tide - their hegemony across the universe. In this case, the Tide are a large, heavily-armed religious group with as-yet-unknown ambitions. One of our writers actually wants to cause me physical harm for revealing even that much. He's very protective.
This mod is well worth keeping your eyes on, so check out the website and the interview.
Moddb has a new interview for D.I.P.R.I.P, a Half-Life 2 multiplayer total conversion based on based on vehicle combat.
The manic battles manage to keep their attraction thanks to a healthy arsenal that provides machine guns, missiles and mortars to dish out the pain. You can also kill opponents by ramming at high speeds; nothing feels more satisfying than softening up some poor sap with a few missiles and then pummeling him into oblivion while driving out of the resulting explosion.
You won't have to wait long for this, it's coming out tomorrow on, March 7th at 5pm GMT, in the mean time read the full preview on Moddb.
The Eternal-Silence team have released a short video of their latest 3.0 test. You can find this video on YouTube here. They also looking for more testers so if you're interested head on over to their site.
I have recently had the pleasure of conducting an interview with some of the key people behind the Half-Life Short Stories mod. Fielding questions to Samon, Yorick and Au-heppa we talked about the genesis of Half-Life Short Stories, the two mods involved in the project and their views on the modding scene itself.
Chris - "Half-Life: Short Stories - who came up with the idea for this and what was the driving factor behind setting it up?"
Yorick: It was actually Heppa who came up with the idea, and I've often kicked myself for never actually having thought of it, because it's so damn brilliant for a mod. We always wanted to tell stories, Samon and I, but they often ended up being too ambitious for mods. I was pretty close to giving up on modding and sticking with fiction, when he and Heppa got this thing rolling. The opportunity to tell a whole set of small stories was just too perfect to pass up.
Samon: His original idea was to provide small, concentrated Episodes in the Half-life universe and it happened to coincide with something Yorick and I had been discussing at the time. The idea of a series of episodes played from different perspectives and connected by an overall storyline was something we were very interested in getting into. So when he proposed to combine the two projects we jumped on it.
Au-heppa: Now that I think of it the original idea wasn't so specific. Mostly I just wanted to create a mod with several different characters with different perspectives. This is basically why I chose a Civil Protection player character.
I also wanted to create new NPCs, to have a bigger variation of NPCs to use. I really love creating new NPCs in Source, not just design them, but to create all the different parts. See the creature come alive... and then shoot them...
But there wasn't any firm story in my head at first. At one point the idea I had was a bit like Smod, but instead of new weapons and so on, I would have new NPCs. But no real story. That changed kind of quickly when I joined with Samon and Yorick.
You can read the interview in its entirety right here and check out the mod here.
This week the Eternal Silence 2 team
have released two images of their new UTF Gunship and have a little to say about
it:
Players familiar with our 2.0 release will remember this as our APC ship, which
allowed players to form attack squads and land on the enemy capital ship
together.
In addition to that functionality, we've added something new this time. Gunships
are now a mobile spawn point. Players can spawn directly inside, getting to the
front lines of the battle much faster than before. Gunship pilots no longer need
to wait for a full ship before setting out. We've mentioned this a couple of
times before, but we also fixed that annoying gunship lag that we had in 2.3.
We're pretty excited about that.
Anyway, it's been a busy week here at ES and I've got to get back to work. Our
leader, Dan Menard, is heading off to San Francisco for the Game Developers
Conference. That's where we were invited last year for
winning Best Multiplayer FPS mod, a competition which unfortunately has been
discontinued. Dan is there again, however, and he will be giving us a report of
how things go. Stay tuned to
his blog for
that, or just check back here next week, when we'll surely be linking you.
