Source: Black Dragon

Hey guys. I am really sorry about the late post this week. Things have been busy around here. Who would have ever thought that other responsibilities would creep up eventually?

On the Black Dragon side of the news, things are continuing to move forward with each new day. Another Black Dragon interview will appear on fpscentral.com some time soon. This one is very different from the one we did with HL2Grounds.net, so I suggest all of you take a look.

Additionally, our new website is getting closer and closer to completion. This week saw the beginning of the music production for the site. Our contract composer is Jeff Simmons, owner of Chasing the Sun Productions. You probably heard some of his work in a recent Valandil Mod update. We are all sure that the work he will do for Black Dragon will be equally impressive.

Thank you all for your time and hope you all have a great weekend.

Source: Psycho Hill

The team of Psycho Hill has been hard at work, creating a deep going and complex story, as well as deciding on new gameplay ideas for First-Person-Shooters, such as that the players will not be able to follow a given red-line, but instead will have to make use of their own wits, solving the mystery around Psycho Hill.

Here is a quote from the updated Story,

-Begin Quote-
CHAPTER I – Mysterious Beginnings

Prologue:

It was a cold thursday night when David Rubbler, a truck driver for Texas Chemical Industries, was heading down the road, in order to drop of the chemical cargo at the TCI facilities near a town called Little Creek. The visibility was horrible, eventhough the truck’s headlights were on, the fog made it impossible to see more than a couple of feet ahead. While the road wasn’t used a lot at night, the fog still made it a fairly dangerous road to be on, as there were trees all around, making up parts of Breighton forest. Not too far from the road was a quiet and peaceful stream, which lead right into the drinking water reservoir of the neighboring towns.
“Where the hell is this damned place anyway? I am sure I was supposed to take a right back there. Maybe HQ will be able to get me some info.”, David mumbled under his breath and slowly grabbed for the transmitter of the radio. Just as he got a hold of it, it tumbled out of his hands and somewhere under the seat.
-End Quote-

On other news, our sponsor, Zodiac Inc. (www.zodiacinc.com) has also created a new logo for us, giving a sneek peak at the character from our comming Concept Art. Two versions of the logo can be seen below.
http://www.zodiacinc.net/pyschohill.jpg and http://www.zodiacinc.net/pyschohill2.jpg

Feel free to visit us on our webpage at www.electronic-labs.com/psychohill or you could optionally also visit us on our modDB profile at www.mods.moddb.com/3532 !

Source: Friendly Garg

While you guys wait for the stories to return, I have some new stuff added to the comics section. Three comics made by Praetorian have been uploaded and are listed on the comics page. Not sure if we do a rating on images and comics anymore though, so for now it's "not rated".

This also means that you can submit your comics again. Submit your stuff to submissions@friendlygarg.hlgaming.com.

---

I've added a template for creating characters for Half Park to the downloads section, in both MX and MX 2004 versions. With this template you can create characters the same sizes we do, so we can add them to our flash program once submitted and approved.

Have fun drawing

Submit your drawings to: here! (submissions@friendlygarg.hlgaming.com)

Source: Vampire Slayer

Here are a few quick renders of Nina on the motorbike that will be featured in the soon to be released update, Chapter VI.

Source: AMX Mod X

AMX Mod X 0.20 Technology Preview 4 is now immediately available for download.

This is mainly a bug fix and finalization release and 0.20 should be nearly ready for production use. Worthy of noting is that since AMX Mod X is nearly feature complete, we'll now start concentrating on hardening the code for optimization and security.

The two most noticeable changes are that "amxx_mm" and "addons/amxx" are now "amxmodx_mm" and "addons/amxmodx". This change is really something for professionality as "amxx" doesn't really mean anything. The other change is, we've heard everyone's feedback about how the 2.6.0 compiler is so bad, and we've reverted to 2.5.1. See the full changelog below.

Please note that because of the name change, you will need to update your addons/metamod/plugins.ini and add in the new core.ini.

Update Guide: http://www.amxmodx.org/updateguide.htm
Downloads: Click Here
Metamod 1.17.2 binaries: Click Here
TP4 Discussion: Click here

Changelog:

• Changed amxx_mm.* to amxmodx_mm.*


• Changed "amxx" to "amxmodx" for addons folder.


• Switched from 2.6.0 compiler to 2.5.1 (2.6.0 is much too buggy).


• Enabled the JIT on Linux (sorry - Makefile bug showed we hadn't been doing this).


• Rewrote task system to use Forward API.


• Added CVAR to multilingual plugin to disable client side options - "amx_client_languages".


• Fixed a bug in forward API where parameters would be garbage.


• Fixed crash bugs in Forward API.


• Fixed many string format crash bugs in amxmodx core.


• Fixed other string formatting issues such as %% and % being parsed improperly. (reported by Gonzo)


• Fixed a memory leak on loading amxx plugins.


• Fixed a bug in the Module SDK header file where structs could be misaligned. (reported by fsfod)


• Fixed many crash bugs in the MySQL module. (reported by Gonzo)


• Fixed memory leaks in both Engine and MySQL.


• Fixed bugs in Engine that caused crashes in DoD and prevented optimization.


• Fixed message capturing in Engine so it can work with multiple plugins. (reported by fsfod)


• Fixed plmenu and get_user_team bugs in DoD package and TFC package.


• Fixed top15 display problems in DoD package.


• Fixed bug where amx_say would use the ML system.


• Fixed bug where remove_task() could cause a server crash on shutdown. (reported by Pimp_Daddy)


• Fixed bug where client_command was not a blockable forward.


• Fixed bug where radians were not converted properly. (malex)


• Fixed buffer overflow security holes in string formatting routine (legacy code from AMX Mod)


• Removed pvPrivateData functions from Engine and placed into Fakemeta_amxx.


• Added NewDLL HLAPI functions to FakeMeta. (reported by mahnsawce)


• Greatly improved error reporting for both MySQL and Engine.

I'll also note that I've seen some people trying to benchmark AMXx. This is a good idea, and we've been able to locate some functions that are rather slow - such as format() style routines. Look forward to us optimizing the bottlenecks in AMX Mod X over the future.

Don't worry if your bug wasn't listed here, it was probably fixed anyway! If not, please go to the Support forum and post in the new TP4 thread.

Anyone using 0.20-TPx should upgrade as soon as possible as TP3 and previous were not viable for stable operation. There won't be any more huge changes like the compression format or "amxx"->"amxmodx" so rest easy knowing upgrades will be simple from now on.

With all of these rumors flying around about the release date for HL2, I wanted to set something straight.

Valve will announce when Hl2 comes out. Don't worry they wont just release the game with out telling anyone. Another thing, stop guessing. All it is going to do is just make you pissed off because you thought it was coming out tomorrow or some other date.

Source: Sven Co-Op

An Official 3.0 Content Pack is currently being put together which holds a number of high quality maps and new player models. Stay tuned for the next news update, at which time the pack will be released. If you are interested in mirroring the file, please be sure to contact me.

---

v3.5 Progress

There are a large assortment of features, art, sounds, and levels that will be in v3.5. This will be a substantial release, and we hope to have it out before Half-Life 2. In the NEXT update, we are planning to provide more details on some of the new features.

---

Job Applicants

All available positions are now currently closed. Thanks to everyone that submitted an application to join the team. We'd like to welcome Brian "SoulEscape" Fieser (Sound Designer) and Teddy "TeddyBear" Bergsman Lind (2D Artist) to the team. We're very proud of their efforts.

---

Donations

A lot of people have been asking us if they can still donate and get bonus features for the next version. The answer to that is yes, you still have plenty of time.

When it gets to a point where it's too late to send us your STEAM ID, we will make an announcement. By that time, it'll probably mean we're ready to release. Even at the last minute, we make extraordinary efforts at getting everyone's STEAM ID into the mod.

Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.

Source: Natural Selection
NS v3 beta 5 Client
NS v3 beta 5 Server (windows)

NS v3.0 beta 5 has now been released! Head over to our downloads page and grab it!

Thanks for everyone's hard work in making this release a success. We'll see you online this weekend. Enjoy.

Source: moddb
Related: HiveMind

• Added support for ns_oasis, ns_metal, ns_nancy, ns_tanith, ns_eclipse, ns_veil and ns_origin.


• Onos now charge, skulks now leap, lerks now primal scream, and fades blink alot more.


• Tweaked with Gorge/Build chamber gestating and increased rate of gestating to fade or lerk.


• Restored hivemind menu (press - )


• Added so bots will now also use charge, leap, blink and primalscream a lot


• Made bots healspray structures balanced chamber-building


• Fixed up metamod intergration which caused bots to be disoriented.


• Made bots jump a bit more during combat.


• Bots will randomly choose an MC or DC upgrade at the hive (used for NS-Combat!)


• Found a linkage issue that stopped gorges healspraying


• Got bots to build RT defense (ocs)


• Fixed up stupid bug where eggs would spin around.


• Fixed ladders


• Humanized waypoint code.


• Got rid of HiveMind.cfg as it was not needed.


• on thier current location, provided they have enough res


• Fixed marine structure code so gorges stopped healspraying marine structures


• Added support for classic ns mode (ns_ maps)


• Kept all co_ waypoints for better combat support


• Support for all lifeforms in ns classic.


• Bots will build hives, resource towers, defense, offense, sensory and movement chambers.


• Bots will randomly evolve a defense upgrade if they see a DC, a movement upgrade if they see an MC, and a sensory upgrade if they see an SC.

Also, the source code is now available for download.

Source: Half-Life: Earthbound

Well, it's that time, SoulStriker has selected a bunch of testers to help HLEB:

Smith
Tom
tcairns
Razorhead
SoulTerror
Gos
Max2

Welcome guys! And in other news DragonDude has continued his coding. He has almost completed a Power Points system (just making it show on the HUD correctly and general tweaks remain). He has aloso fully completed a new entity called eb_food. The entity eb_food will be a point entity that you can use to give a player refills of Stamina, Power Points or Health. They will not respawn so items won't be camped. Not only that but he has a new Laser Gun modeled and skinned for us!



I've been tweaking animations mostly. Just fixing up skeletons and assigning new weapons so they can be used ingame. I've completed both Poo and Jeff now. Just need to tweak some animations that aren't up to par.