Source: Nuclear Dreams

That I knew what I was talking about. Seriously though, internally we have been working on some big things, mostly organizing and trying to make them possible, but there has been progress.

Alot of progress has come through in our Audio department, thanks to SpinKitten who has made alot of new fantastic tracks. Maybe in a future update I will release a few tracks for everyone to enjoy.

As far as the Half-Life 2 community is concerned, Valve has sent a Release Candidate to Vivendi Universal so Half-Life 2 is even closer, YAY! That means the SDK is close, and we can get started full time.

Keep coming back, cause there are alot of new things coming that may excite you, or make you cry, whatever is your preference.

Source: Natural Selection

With NS v3.0 beta 5 out the door, the NS development team is already hard at work on beta 6. After a development meeting that laid out the foundation of what we need to include (bug fixes/balance) and what new elements we feel make sense at this time, we are beginning to feel like there is a possibility that beta 6 will bring us to our objectives and allow us to make beta 6 NS 3.0 final. We're planning a number of balance changes, specifically to improve the gameplay experience of alien players in very small and large games, a number of cosmetic improvements, and of course, more bugfixes.

Now onto some new introductions. There have been several additions to the dev team that have not been formally announced, so I’d like to take a moment and recognize who they are:

Daniel "TyrNemesis^" Polcari - Level Design overseer. Tyr just celebrated his 1 year anniversary of being in the NS community, and now gets the task of organizing maps, reviewing them, making suggestions and assigning maps for playtesting.

Dave "MaDMaXX" Monks - Sound artist. MaDMaXX is the fellow responsible for the tasty new welder sound, as well as the recent reworks to the JP and LMG noises.

Harry "puzl" Walsh - Linux support, and "secret projects" programmer. Harry has been helping with the site, mirroring and much more for many months now, but now he is officially on board to handle aspects of Linux development, perform some system administration, and to work on upcoming projects (think, "BUS").

Mark "^Zunni^" Windle - Public relations. Zunni has just recently joined the team, and has already begun informing the fans of NS about new features coming in the future.

There has also been some shuffling of roles and responsibilities to improve the efficiency, consistency and quality of our development work:

Joel "grepdashv" Rubicam has taken on the responsibility of QA Manager and is tasked with ensuring that NS remains one of the highest quality mods available for any engine.

Joe "joev" Vaughan is now responsible for managing the development process. Basically this means he's the one who gets it in the neck if things aren't done on time and up to standard.

Florian "NemesisZero" Schwarzer, in addition to all the other work that he does as the NS community lead, has also taken on the role of "Producer" for NS. In essence he is responsible for the product "Natural Selection", deciding timeframes, schedules, and giving crucial input on release contents.

Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland is still doing all design and directing the future of NS, but is no longer doing NS programming.

We continue to be committed to bringing the NS players the best possible game that we can, and strive to make each release more balanced and a better playing experience than any of the prior releases. As work continues, keep checking the front page of nautral-selection.org or the announcement forum for new news regarding specifics that are being included for B6.

In competitive news, CAL-NS just went into their fourth season, and there are two European tourneys, one organized by the folks at GamingOrb.com, and one carried out by NS-Game.com, which just extended by adding an English sister site. Check them out if you're interested in some high-quality gaming.

Lastly, the new NS website is almost ready for prime-time, expect an announcement within a week or so.

Source: GHOST Ops

Well, not hirings really, but...well, let's get on with it!

New to the G.H.O.S.T. team is Evil_Ice, Ice started in the NS and FA communities before joining us here. He has taken over the intimidating job of completing our player animations and fine-tuning it all to fit ingame. Even though he has only been with us for a few days, he has accomplished an amazing amount of work. Illogic and I owe you man! Welcome aboard!

Another NS community veteran, Crackerjack has agreed to be our new Lead Mapper! This is a lot of responsibility, and we are very glad that someone so talented and hard-working was willing to shoulder it all. Crackerjack will be working with me (Adam Atomic) to prepare mapping guides so that the community can begin to build maps as soon as the first public beta is available.

Also, Mike- has volunteered his animation assistance. Ice has taken him on to help complete the aforementioned huge task of completing the player animations. He is young, but we are hoping that he will prove himself a worthy addition to our team!

If you all know of anyone who is interested in mapping for G.H.O.S.T. and they "got the mad talent", tell them to get in touch with Crackerjack in a week or so, he will be able to help them get started.

Source: The SnarkPit
The 2004 SnarkPit mapping contest results are now in:

Joint 3rd place: Flatshaded & Parralaxion
2nd: DM Fairytale
1st: Persian Letters

So well done to you guys, especially Campaignjunkie!

Source: The Trenches

The progress bar has been updated to the most recent values.

Here is what Hotel said: "Mapping is now finalized. We took the extra time ( that all you guys were going WTF ARE THEY DOING!!! ) to squeeze in another THREE quality maps. Sure, we could have released with the maps we had, but no one likes playing the same things over and over (unless you're one of those people that plays de_dust or 2fort only, you're an exception). Internally, Dark is now compiling the pre-release beta, sort of the "lets check it out ONE more time" version. Make your own implications."

Here is another new shot taken from latest betatesting:

---

Hi, Beta Testing is going on and with every Update major bugs are being squashed. Today I want to present you some new ingame screenshots.

Source: Halflife2.net
Source: Halflife2.net Forums

Quite an interesting discovery has been made on the HalfLife2.net forums today, when our forum member, Manook, discovered something on the Official Half-Life 2 website.

The discovery seems to be some kind of website game that is based around Half-Life 2, take a look for yourself

Source: Steam

An update to the Counter-Strike: Source beta has just been released. Steam will update itself automatically when you restart. Here is a list of the changes:

COUNTER-STRIKE: SOURCE BETA CHANGES / ADDITIONS:

• Improved DX7 graphics code path performance by up to 225%.


• Fixed key bindings for non-US layouts causing the scoreboard to be stuck on.


• Fixed barrel nudging player forever if you crouched near it.


• Made correct names appear in "attacked teammate" message.


• Made changelevel due to map timelimit happen at round end.


• Added intermission scoreboard at end of round.


• Disabled hiding viewmodel with "impulse 200" if sv_cheats is off.


• Fixed reload exploit.


• Fixed C4 sound not playing while planting.


• Stopped money icon being red on level change.


• Added C4 icon in first person spectator mode if spectated player has the bomb.


• Fixed a problem where the game would crash when run on Win98 with a ATI 5900, 5950, or 6800.


• Fixed crash due to stacking large numbers of weapons.


• Fixed muzzle flashes showing incorrectly when switching players in spectator mode.


• Fixed voice_banmgr.dt growing exponentially.

More news coming later tonight. Sorry for the delay.

Source: Half-Life Radio

To all GameSHOUT Radio listeners! Here we go again, we got another storm approaching called Hurricane Jeanne which is expected to slam into our area this weekend. This will make Hurricane #5. Here's the timeline:

1.) Originally, we were hit by Hurricane Bonnie but we suffered no damage at all.
2.) Shortly after that, we were hit by another Hurricane which turned into a Tropical Despression by the time it made landfall.
3.) Then we were hit by Hurricane Charley which leveled the building and our broadcasting studios.
4.) Then, we were hit by Hurricane Frances which destroyed the building that was used for our temporary broadcast facilities.
5.) Now we are bracing for Hurricane Jeanne which is a stronger storm than Hurricane Frances.

For the past 2 weeks we've been broadcasting from Rock Station ZZR in West Palm Beach, Florida. We now have to evacuate from the current facilities as the station is undergoing preparation for the next storm (Hurricane Jeanne).

What does all this mean to the GameSHOUT Radio Listeners? Well, it means that we might not have a show this weekend because once again, we're being hit by another hurricane. Our listener base is strong, and we do appreciate everyone pulling together. Once these storms are over, we're going to setup a bunch of game servers and have one helluva party.

We've been in contact with NBC as they are making plans to re-visit Florida again and weather the storm with us. Yes, we are staying during the hurricane. You might even see GameSHOUT on NBC again. We will bring you audio & video footage whenever possible. After this storm, we will probably rebuild our radio studios somewhere else than Florida. I am sure you can understand why (smile).

In the meantime, we would like to thank all GameSHOUT listeners for their support and once this is over, we're going to have a game server party. We will keep you up to date on our status.

I got the opportunity to talk to "Zacker", head leader over at Sands of War. Be sure to check out the full interview over at Game-Jack