I've uploaded a new screen shot of the Brenodi Empire's medium tank in the media section under "Vehicles". This incredible model was created by Duke who continues to claim the responsibility of designing the imperial side. As you can see, it looks more advanced than the Northern Faction's technology. Its turret is angled to minimize the impact of projectiles and deflect their momentum away. The twin fan exhaust vents in the rear are necessary to fully maintain its engines' air requirements. Planned upgrades for the tank are cannon sizes, engine power output, armor strength, and multiple choices of smaller support weapons which attach to the top hatch's lip.

Much work has been accomplished in the past month, and I have several more shots of our work that I will be uploading throughout the week. I'm excited to say several more vehicles are completed as well as the Northern Faction's player model. He exemplifies the freedom fighter type idea that we're striving for with a stance more towards a battered but determined military soldier than a civilian who's taken up arms, but I should keep quiet about him until I post his picture up later.

Those close to the project know I was away for the past month and had a lot of time to brainstorm. In that time I managed to organize all of our thoughts and designs into our official bible which has been long overdue, but we now have our crystal clear vision marked down in a concrete document. It's been something that needed to get done for awhile. The only obstacle to its completion was the sheer amount of our collected ideas and information that needed to be included due to the grand scale of our mod. I also started reading deeper into the subject of nanotechnology to get a greater understanding of one of the main influences of our mod. I feel strongly about attempting to give a more realistic and interesting take on the subject compared to the standard gloss over by previous games. Previous games such as Total Annihilation merely used it as a method to explain how one unit was able to construct entire bases, but it is one of the most important elements of our story as hinted at by the write up in the info section as well as the driving force behind many of the elements in the mod. It will definitely add a great deal of depth to the mod while we still attempt to include the subject in a realistic and thoughtful manner.

I also want to mention how exciting it is that Counterstrike: Source has been released, and we can all get a glimpse of the Half-Life 2 engine up close. Everything about it is incredible looking, and I've been finding myself playing more as a spectator to take its graphical splendor in. On one level today, I ended up staring off into the sloping hills of the background scenery of a level, wishing that the SDK was available so that I could pull it into the playing field instead of being confined to the level's predefined boundaries. Here's wishing the SDK is released soon so that we can all begin sculpting our ideas into a reality.