Ever wondered what it would be like to see 10 developers of Dystopia all in one castle, pushing, shoving, drinking beer and generally being weird?
Now's your chance! 10 Developers (including two from Australia) have all flown to meet up here in the USA and will be hanging out for one week. Get a chance to see our triple camera stream on Stickam!
As I'm sure you know, at the end of last month we had an incident regarding release of rather private information by a mythical character. Given the circumstances of the situation we decided to get on with it and just tell you more about what we have. In fact, we will even be announcing a contest with really nice prizes including a free edition of Half-Life2 regarding it! so make sure to read the whole news
However, let this not mislead you into thinking that we will tolerate any similar events in the future, even if you happen to be a fictious imaginary character from a different video game. So be warned.
But we shall deal with stats a little later, because returning to our regular news program we have something from our 3D artist Noodles. If you happen to be in mood where you enjoy to be told what everything is- than below is a WIP (Work In Progress) render of our Serpent guard helmet animation:
Moving along we'd like to share with you a very nicely looking shader effect made by one of our coders klusark. It is still WIP but looking good, don't you think?
And now we have slowly returned to the matter with which we began. Statistics.
We indeed already have our very own Statistic system operational. Of course it is not fully finished yet, but many of the planned features have already been added.
What you saw in our previous Moddb post was the personal profile page. Now you can view the front page of the stats (at it's current stage) :
As I said it is not fully finished, so if there are any features you would love to see in the stats this is the time to make suggestions
And now the question that might have bothered some of you trough these last few days. Will SGL have achievements? Well, I can proudly say yes!
Of course due to Stargate being trademarked and all SGL being featured on steam is very unlikely, meaning that we can't really hope for steam achievements even in the future. So instead, to allow our community the joy and happiness such things can bring, we have created our own achievement system.
And this leads to the promised contest (with prizes!):
SGL Achievement Contest
The contest will be held in 2 categories:
Best achievement
Best achievement Icons.
Best Achievement is rather simple. Think of the most awesome, fun, Stargate related achievement you would like to have in SGL and send it to us! Of course the achievments must be reasonable and should represent capabilities of the game, so e.g. destroy a fleet of Ori motherships with a drone chair wouldn't work out here (simply because we wont have these things. at least not in the Beta2 ).
Once you have made up your mind send your idea to
Your e-mail title should be "[SGL Achievement Contest] entry" and it should contain:
Your Name:
Your SteamID (in case you win this account will get the free copy of HL2):
Achievement Name (should be short- no more than 4 words):
Achievement Description (should be precise):
Best Achievement Icons is a little more complicated and requires Image creation/editing skills. If you have seen Steam achievements for other games, such as HL, TF2, UT3 etc, then you know that they all have a unique style in them. Here you have the chance to design SGL achievement Icons.
Once you have created something that pleases you send your work to
Your e-mail title should be "[SGL Achievement Icon Contest] entry" and it should contain:
Your Name:
Your SteamID (in case we decide to use your icons this account will get the free copy of HL2):
Achievement Icons (A minimum of 3 images, 128x128 pixels):
The contest will end November 1st, 2009. After that the best entries will be gathered and posted to the public. Then everyone will have a chance to vote and decide the winner.
Even though only the winners have the chance to receive a free Half-Life 2 game, other worthy contestants may receive bonuses, such as mentioning in our next news release or even a guaranteed spot in out next internal Beta tests (these awards will depend on how many participants we will get), so don't waste your opportunity ;D
If you have any questions or you are unclear about something don't hesitate to ask
Well then, I suppose that will be all for this month. Hope you enjoyed it and we're looking forward to your achievement ideas Have fun
So far, I've gotten a few of the weapons working again, all pickups are working, movement is working(Better then before!) and more maps are being made, teamplay may be closer then I had previously thought. All in all, things are going fairly well. We've also been adding more members to the team, including Shmitz(Creator of the TF2 map tc_meridian) and Eulogy(Poster on Planet Halflife).
Theres an interesting article on Blizzard development strategy on gamasutra. They use a process of endless iteration & playtesting to get their games just right. Sometimes they throw in features, let them percolate for a few months, see what they like and what they dont, and keep only what fits the picture.
There is a striking resemblence with what we are doing for Off Limits. Its the true when its done game development mentality, that has been all but lost in the now adolescent game industry. Development time is no constraint to us, wed rather get the details right, and make a game that we are proud of, where each piece has earned its role in the game, or has been discarded in the playtesting process. A part from a utopian perfect design, it is the only way to have a game that is feature-rich, true to the core game idea, and consistent end-to-end.
Its also funny to read the comments on the article. Most commenters point out that this mentality is a luxury that only Blizzard and a few other big players can afford, since they have a lot of capital backing them and are relatively free of investor pressure. Id like to make the point that they are but one kind of developers that can develop this way. You do not need to have millions and millions of dollars to spare to free yourself from the industrial constraints of game development. Simply developing your project outside of the industry suffices. If you do go commercial, and are in the phase where a single project becomes your companys single point of failure, you give up the right to the when its done mentality.
Were not there yet though. This alternative model is only available to the passionates among us. It is near impossible to attract a group of hobbyists large enough to develop a serious, polished game in a timeframe that does not outdate the game on its release. I have high hopes for the near future here, where more and more techniques will become available to build scalable assets, and where the graphical improvement of games will cease to be the core focus of developers and the core desire of gamers. As for Off Limits, we hope to have made a game that is fun and timeless enough and with a visual style sufficiently detailed and coherent to compensate for our lack of next-gen textures or production-quality animations. If the fun we had in developing and have in playtesting it are any measure, we should be OK
The ZP Development team has been hard at work for the past few months, working on a major milestone in ZPS development. This update will include several new maps, new features, and a new game mode.
But first, I want to talk about a new competition that we are hosting.
That's right. In honor of Halloween and Zombie Panic's (HL1 Mod) 5 year anniversary, we will be hosting a prop modeling contest! The duration of this contest will be 2 weeks starting now and ending October 17th of this year, and the rules can be found here.
Now, with that out of the way, we can talk about ZPS 2.0, which we hope to release on October 31, 2009! That's right, we're aiming for a Halloween release! Included is a new game mode, which is currently codenamed as "ZPA". As we get closer to release, we will detail more about this game mode. But we aim to release ZPA with *two* new maps, as well as a slew of features and enhancements that are ZPA-exclusive.
ZPS 2.0 will include: zpo_shreddingfield
zps_clubzombo
zpa_town
Objective beacons
That's not all though. We've got a list of major and minor features, which you will see us post as we get closer to release. Here's our changelog with some items hidden allowing you all to ponder what else we might have going in game:
=====Zombie Panic! Source v2.0=====
Added ZPA gamemode.
*****
Added Objective list for levels.
Added Phong shader to models (All characters, hands, some guns, some props).
Grenade cooking added.
*****
*****
Added Zpo_Shreddingfield
Added Zps_Clubzombo.
*****
Added Zpa_Town
*****
Updated Policestation.
*****
Updated Asylum.
*****
*****
Updated Tanker.
*****
*****
Removed Deadblock (ZPS version).
*****
*****
Fixed Unload weapon bug.
*****
So get excited! Get in-game to see more weekly sneak peek screenshots and twitter updates! And get ready for a massive update to ZPS!
Today is the 1st of October and it certainly is a good day. Eric Murphy has lately been putting in some extra time to pester the developers into helping him out with a special plan.
Well, we have one heck of a treat for you today! The plan was being put together, but we then made a last minute change to the 1st of the month update. Through Eric's nagging, he managed to get a hold of some sneak peak screen shots from a brand new map. I can't tell it what it is, but I'm sure you can figure it out.
Stick around for the October 15th RTTF posted on the forums for more news and information on the plan.
Oct 2, 2009 - Valve, creator of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced pre-order details for its upcoming action thriller, Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2).
Starting now, those who pre-order L4D2 via Steam will receive early access to the Left 4 Dead 2 demo (currently targeted for October 27) plus an exclusive in-game item - the American baseball bat, one of the 10 new melee weapons included in the game.
In addition, Steam is offering a 10% savings to those who pre-order.
We just had a great showing at the Tokyo Game Show. One of Left 4 Dead 2's level designers, Kim Swift made the trip. You can check out her multi-language interview here.
Next public showing will be at the London Game Show where we will be showing the as of yet unannounced new game mode. We really should announce that soon... We can give you one hint, the game is 4 v 4. So get your team together and join us in London on October 29th or 30th.
Of course if you want to be the first to play the demo, pre-order from select retailers and get early access to the demo. Just in time for some zombie killing on Halloween.
Hello Firearms: Source Followers! It has been a little over a month since our last update, however, it is a result of our immensely busy developing schedule. For the past month, we have been busy ironing out bugs in code and maps. Today we don't have any new eye candy to showcase, but we do have a quick 2 and a half minute video of last Sunday's test. Now you may be wondering, what is so special about last Sunday's test? Well we added 32 Freshmeat Alpha Testers to give them their first taste of FA:S. We have added these testers to help us get a better idea of how FA:S holds up under a full server, and so we can see how the weapon roles change. I was quite pleased to see that the game held up very well, and there was much fragging. We received a lot of positive responses from our testers, as well as quite a few bug reports (most minor). We are still working very hard on removing the most critical bugs in order to get the first RC version to you within a reasonable time line (can I be more vague). I would like to give a more solid deadline, however with modding, it is hard to gauge how much time left still needs to be put into the mod.
In the video above, taken by Hitman, you will see a recently redone tc_iwojima that is still in very raw stages (you will notice some bland areas and bugs). TC_Iwojima was redone because of performance and gameplay issues. DysPatch opened up a lot of the map and made it larger for a more diverse gameplay, allowing sniping and close quarter combat to work together. This is by no means an FA:S trailer, we feel we owe it to you. This video was taken on the first scheduled test for the new Freshmeat testers, so there was plenty of fragging. You will see how the larger tunnels on tc_iwojima promote more strategy and teamwork. This is raw, unedited, footage of FAS at its current state. There is also a short 22 second video using the M4A1 on tc_rubble.
I hope you enjoyed the videos, and we will try to make sure we get a properly edited video sometime in the not too distant future. Also in community news, Firearm's "The Capture Point," a Firearms resource site for custom content, is reopening for Firearms: Source. The founder of TCP, mp!1HP, is looking for a web developer to help him code the resource website. So if you have any spare time and want to help him out, you can contact him at pawlus.marty@gmail.com. Below is a preview of "The Capture Point" for FA:S.
We will try to get the next news post to you all a bit sooner.
Interested in hearing what the team plans on doing next? Well then you will really want to read this devblog made by Wraiyth, he touches on several aspects of how we`re planning for CR3 and a couple of the improvements that release will bring to the game. You can find the blog here:
Yes, it is over. After my resignation as Mod Leader, the interest for the mod dropped to an all time low. I felt that after the hard work and effort that had been contributed to the mod, that all of the assets produced and a working version of what we had should at least be released.
We have also added ALL of the model assets, textures and source coding files for those to use as they would like. Please give credit to those who produced them. Other than that, it would be great to see them used in a new mod, or in a Machinima project. I know there are a couple of German indie game and film developers are keen to get their hands on all of the assets and we bid them well with their projects.
I do not see this news as a failure, but as an amazing learning experience that lasted 3 years. In that time, I have learnt an amazing amount about how much work goes into producing a mod/game and have made many friends along the way. The talents of the Design Crew for the mod cannot go unsaid, as you will see in the working proof of concept release. I would to have enjoyed seeing a completed mod, but due to medical issues I personally was unable to continue with the mod, thus my resignation as Captain. I would like to personally thank all of those who contributed to the mod in the Design Crew and those who supported the mod over the past 3 years. Thanks again for the memories.
The main website for the mod will slowly transformed into a Star Trek Enterprise portal for news on movies, games etc so all of the hard work and effort will not be wasted. Unfortunately, I had a hard drive failure and lost all of the .smd files and .qc files for the mod (I would have loved to have give those away as well), which did contribute to the fast track of closing the mod down, since it meant starting from scratch in re-creating the major character versions and new asset compiles.
Two weeks ago we we posted some screen shots of the new marines in Natural Selection 2. We were really happy to hear the overwhelmingly positive response to the new marine design.
There were a lot of comments and questions about the renders we posted, so this week I put together a video to show all of the components that make up the rendering system in our engine.
Here's what you're seeing in the video:
Wireframe This shows the geometry that make up the objects visible in the scene. Here you see about 100,000 triangles. Each marine has over 13,000 triangles!
Normal Map In addition to all of the geometric detail in the models, we get even more detail by using a normal map. The normal map causes flat triangles to be lit as if they were actually more complicated surfaces. For our models, we generate the normal maps from incredibly high polygon meshes.
Texture Map The texture map is a hand painted image that specifies the color of the models.
Specular Map The specular map is also hand painted and tells the rendering engine how shiny the surface is and what color the reflected light should be. For metals this is typically similar to the surface color. For the skin, we use a blue tint to counteract the warm tones of the texture and give the result cool white highlights. The cloth parts are completely black so that they won't be shiny in the final image.
Gloss Map The gloss map also helps define the shininess of the surface, but in this case it's how smooth the material is. For a really smooth surface like a pool ball the highlights will be very tight, but for rough materials it will be broad. There isn't too much detail in the gloss map because this effect tends to be fairly subtle.
Lighting To determine how bright each pixel in the final image will be, the rendering engine computes a number of lighting passes. Each pass uses the normal, texture, specular and gloss maps to figure out how much light is reflecting off the surface and entering the camera's lens. Here we're just showing the lighting passes without the influence of the texture map for clarity. Shadow maps are also used to determine which parts of the scene should be in shadow, although not every light casts a shadow for efficiency.
Ambient Occlusion The rendering engine applies a screen space ambient occlusion technique to add even more shadowing detail. Ambient occlusion is a measure of how much light from the environment is blocked by nearby surfaces. We use a simple approximation to darken the crevasses that aren't handled well by the shadow mapping system. The ambient occlusion is applied as a darkening effect over the final lighting; this isn't physically based, but gives us the results we're after.
Combined Here the lighting and texture mapping are shown combined. In practice this is actually done during the lighting passes.
Atmosphere The atmosphere pass simulates the effect of light hitting tiny particles in the air (here's another example). This has become one of the "signature" effects of our rendering and you can see it put to extensive use in our other videos.
Color Grading Also called color correction, color grading is the process of adjusting the brightness, contrast, color levels, etc. of the final image. This gives a lot of control over the scene that can be difficult or impossible to achieve by tweaking the lighting and texture maps.
We hope you've enjoyed this "under-the-covers" look at our engine. You can also see our rendering engine at work (with motion blur!) in the teaser video we released on the main site
Greetings to you all I bring tidings of that which has come of our teams fruitful work. Images by Nay0r that tell a tale of a dark foreboding landscape in the heart of a cold urban metropolis. As well as a gruesome exhibition of a lifeless vagrant sans the legs to propel himself, brought to life by Sickjoe.
nmrih_broadway
You may or may not remember but back in our September 7th update we had some images of a work in progress map nmrih_broadway by Nay0r. Well nmrih_broadway is nearly finished now with some very dark and foreboding lighting. We have five images here today to showcase the atmosphere and setting of this map. Having gone though some walkthroughs my self I can say it has a great horror style atmosphere. Next on the list is gameplay tweaking through testing.
The Crawler
We have planned from the start that we want there to be crawler zombies in game. So SickJoe has jump started the process by coming up with the concept we will base it off of. Very gruesome and gory down to the last detail, quality you can always expect from SJ
Forthwith another week has come to an end, in valediction I must always implore you to be forthcoming in our humble community.
Well the time has come for the big release: Battlegrounds 2 1.5a. This game adds a variety of features. Shots and description can be in the last news post. This release has been a long time in coming, but we have some big changes to add. The new features add a whole new dimension to the game, especially ironsights and capture the flag. Over the past few days weve continued to test and fix little issues with the game. Special thanks to HairyPotter for working hard right up until release to fix bugs, and thank you to our beta testers and beta test servers who have helped iron things out: 3D clan, AP clan and SS clan.
Hosted Site: Science and Industry
posted by MJCS-gTFC- @ 12:03:38 | Category: Hosted Site
Hosted Site: Science and Industry
Started back in February 1999, Science and Industry is one of the longest running and still active modifications for Half-Life. I am pleased to welcome this lovely mod to the sphere of influence of hlgaming.com.
At the very heart of Science and Industry is team play (and not the watered down shit you see in many games today). You truly need to work as a team to accomplish your goal of stealing the enemy scientists and/or destroying their equipment.
S & I's website says it best:
Science and Industry can be summed up as "CTF with a twist". The game plays like Capture The Flag in that two teams (companies) confront each other and both have to defend their base and attack the enemy's, but instead of capturing a flag, you capture scientists.
These scientists earn money for your company. The company with the most cash at the end wins the game. Each corporation starts with 3 scientists, the objective is to capture at least one more and hold on to them as long as possible. On some maps, there are alternative ways to earn money or make the other company lose some: there can be computers that may be broken or resources such as discs or research specimens that may be stolen. However, the main source of income for your company remains the scientists.
Moreover, the scientists research new technologies for your company, and each time a new technology is completed, you are asked to vote for the next one to be researched. This means that each game starts with basic weapons: a Colt and a Briefcase that is used to knock scientists out. And as the game moves on, you obtain new better weapons, special devices, more armor and implants that increase your speed and strength. So while the theme of Science & Industry is set in a semi-realistic world, the gameplay itself doesn't aim for realism: as the game advances the new technologies enable you to move faster, resist longer, perform huge jumps, and some weapons can even make you fly!
September 29, 2009 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced that Crash Course -- the second downloadable content (DLC) update for its zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead (L4D) -- is available now for Xbox 360 and PC. To celebrate, Left 4 Dead (PC) is available via Steam for 50% off its regular its regular price thru Oct 1.
Entitled "Crash Course," the latest DLC delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms. Targeted for release in September, "Crash Course" bridges the gap between the end of the "No Mercy" campaign and the beginning of "Death Toll" in the original game, expanding the game universe with new locations, new dialogue from the original cast, and an explosive finale.
While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of "Crash" is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes, resulting in a streamlined version of the game's existing Versus campaigns. A recharge timer for infected teammates has also been added, and item spawn behavior has changed for more balanced gameplay.
Left 4 Dead is an action horror game from Valve that blends the social entertainment experience of multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress with the dramatic, narrative experience made popular in single player action game classics such as the Half-Life series of games. Released in November of 2008, L4D has earned over 50 industry awards from outlets around the world and sold over 3 million copies worldwide.
Fixed shell exit and muzzle flash positions on mp5k
Fixed shell exit and muzzle flash positions on target
Fixed shell exit and muzzle flash positions on omnicol
Fixed target reload glitch (was a bitch to solve, since I had to learn animation and more for it)
Fixed target sliderelease not working correctly on reload_empty
Fixed target sliderelease being wrong in all non _empty animations
Fixed glitch in omnicol smash
Fixed hand position during omnicol smash (was floating)
Added phong lighting to omnicol instead of cubemaps (to fix the hard reflections transitions, doesnt look good in Russia yet, need to fix the map itself as well)
Added phong lighting to target instead of cubemaps (to fix the hard reflections transitions, doesnt look good in Russia yet, need to fix the map itself as well)
Added phong lighting to mp5k instead of cubemaps (to fix the hard reflections transitions, doesnt look good in Russia yet, need to fix the map itself as well)
*Russia changes*
Fixed spidertank roofsupports having a nodraw texture
Raised fusebox in armory by 8 units so you can jump on it again (like before the Orange Box port)
Updated chopper hangar attic so there is a bit more room to run around (removed shelves)
Made chopper hangar attic accessable with one doorway instead of two
Removed access to overhead crane in chopper hanger
Replaced BSP overhead cranes in chopper hangar with models (adding a bit more detail to them)
Opened up the center corridor leading into the railroad tunnel again, this hopefully will open up armory/missile silo and the tunnel a bit more to the mid spidertank room
Hello fans! We just finished a smaller playtest that occurred simply because we had 8-10 individuals all online and wanting to play Orion. So we said, why not! Lets play!
We are gearing up towards this Sunday's big beta test. We are expecting 24-32 players to participate in that playtest. We will be grabbing a lot of screen-grabs and footage from that playtest. However, today we had 4 on 4 and were able to get some nice screens as well. Nice enough for the community! We hope you enjoy!
Here are some quick screen grabs from today's playtest! *Note- please don't mind any graphical errors - these are all work in progress and is no where considered done!
Don't forget to register on our Official forums over at: http://www.orion-project.net/forum/ To get an exlusive invite to playtest our beta with us early before its public release!
We here are RNL are looking for help! We are in need of the skills of a quality texture artist! Please stop and put in an application at our site. There are many other positions available as well, so feel free to see how you can help with the Mod. Why are you still here? Go sign up today!
Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced that Crash Course -- the second downloadable content (DLC) update for its co-operative zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead (L4D) -- will be made available worldwide on September 29 on Xbox 360 and PC.
Crash Course delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms, and bridges the gap between the end of the "No Mercy" campaign and the beginning of "Death Toll" in the original game.
While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of Crash Course is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes, resulting in a streamlined version of the game's existing Versus campaigns. A recharge timer for infected teammates has also been added, and item spawn behavior has changed for more balanced gameplay.
Left 4 Dead is an action horror game from Valve that blends the social entertainment experience of multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress with the dramatic, narrative experience made popular in single player action game classics such as the Half-Life series of games. Released in November of 2008, L4D has earned over 50 industry awards from outlets around the world and sold almost 3 million copies worldwide.
