Welcome to the second of Games Modding’s News Roundups. It was suggested in the previous roundup that these posts would be bi-weekly but the flow of material is such that a shorter period of time was allowed to pass before this update. There’s a lot of great modding happening out there and hopefully this post will be able to direct you to something you like.
- Darren

Crysis

• Codename: Dead Bird Community Update #4
  After a two month period of running quiet the team have posted Community Update #4 showing off some nice character, weapon and environment media including an ingame video.

Half-Life 2

• Podcast 17 Transmission C:17183
  In the 12th October episode of Podcast 17 there’s the usual discussion features along with a (partly later retracted) seventeen minute rant about Randy Pitchford’s distrust of Steam and more importantly an interview with David and Michael of the Half-Life 2 mod Orion.
• Zombie Panic: Source v2.0 Information
  Zombie Panic: Source have posted a news update with screenshots of a new map, a new character, three new melee weapon models, a sneak-peak at an objective mode map, some music and a changelist for v2.0.

Red Alert 3

• Condition Red media updates
  The RA2 into 3D total conversion Condition Red has been releasing a steady stream of media for a while now, including a rather nice Soviet Battle Lab model, a few ingame screenshots showing buildings and terrain and the textured Grizzly Tank unit.

Star Wars: Jedi Academy

• Moviebattles II RC3 Patch 4 Release
  The Moviebattles II mod team have released a new update with a number of balancing tweaks and bug fixes along with some more significent changes.

Unreal Tournament 3

• Renegade-X 0.36 Patch
  The Renegade-X team have released a 0.35 > 0.36 incremental patch. Annoyingly you have to go to their ModDB news post to find out that the update includes two new maps (a straight remake of Hourglass and a modified version by the name of Horologe) as well as fifty-seven fixes, tweaks and changes.
• HyperBlast Weapon Pack Preview
  DrakeBD of the Hypergames2K8 team is showing off two of the weapon models from the HyperBlast weapons pack and has also named another five of the twenty weapons it will include. The District 9 Arc Rifle is particularly nice.
• Mapping tutorial released by HappyConscript
  HappyConscript has posted a tutorial on basic mapping for Unreal Tournament 3, aimed squarely at beginners.

Feedback on GM’s series of news roundups would be greatly appreciated.
If you’ve got news you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com

Welcome to Games Modding’s first News Roundup. This roundup covers interesting modding news from the last 2 weeks. If you like this roundup, let us know and we’ll do more of them in the future.
- David

General

• Digital Distribution Summit
  “Presenting a series of hour long talks by industry veterans who discuss how much indies are earning with their Steam, PSN, XBOX and iPhone games. And how you can get your title onto these platforms and help it become a hit.”

Public Relations

• Wolfire’s PR Tips
  Wolfire has written a great article on his public relations strategy as applied to Overgrowth.

Coding

• Be the Man: Beginning Games Programming #1
  Ambershee has written an 8 page tutorial on programming, aimed at aspiring games programmers, who have never seen code before.

Half-Life 2

• Age of Chivalry update
  The Age of Chivalry team have unveiled some new weapons and released a hotfix to correct some bugs.
• CSS SCI FI 3: Hardwired
  PlanetPhillip has an early release of ‘CSS SCI FI 3: Hardwired‘, a mod in which you play missions set in the Half-Life universe, but using Counter-Strike: Source maps.
• Podcast 17, Transmission: 17015
  Transmission Code: 17015 is up, covering L4D, mod releases, media and more.

Halo 3

• How to Make a Good Infection Map
  WikiHow has a collection of tips and hints for making Infection maps.

Infinity

• Large Update
  Indie game Infinity has posted a large update, including info on a new tool: ASEToBin, which “allows contributors and artists to export their model from 3DS Max’s .ASE file format and to visualize and prepare the 3D model for integration into the game.

Steam

• Garry’s Mod Sale Stats
  Garry has released the sales figures for his mod-turned-retail ‘Garry’s Mod‘.

Unreal Tournament 3

• Make Something Unreal Contest Finalists
  The finalists for the Make Something Unreal Contest Phase 4 have been announced.
• New Hardcore Oldskool Low-Poly Map Pack release
  HOLP3 Volume 2 has been released.

Feedback on GM’s first news roundup would be great.
If you’ve got news you want to share, post on the forums or email: david@gamesmodding.com

The Chat Show takes us inside the mind of the modder, to interview some of the top mappers, artists and coders. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the work that goes into modding.

GamesModding.com grabbed a quick Q&A with Dan Pinchbeck, the creative mind behind experimental mod developers thechineseroom who’re responsible for projects such as:

The award-winning Half-Life 2 mod Dear Esther.

And the recently released Korsakovia.

Read more »

I’ve been receiving some mail:

 
Adam:
“Just emailing you regarding a new mod that was released Sunday 20th Sept 2009 called Korsakovia (HL2). It’s the fourth instalment of projects designed by Dan Pinchbeck, creator of the award winning Dear Esther (HL2).”

 
Smurf:
“Mideast Crisis 2’s (C&C3) site has a HUGE update including a detailed postmortem on our first release, along with many screenshots and details of the new UN Peacekeepers faction.”

 
Phillip:
“I have started adding new sites [to Valve Community].”

 
Matt:
“I was wondering if you would be interested in being affiliated with my more recent project, Unconfessional Design?
Its a Starcraft 2 Modding community I’m making.”

 
Send me mail: david@gamesmodding.com

What mod are you working on at the moment? Why are you working on this mod and not another? What’s your role in development of the mod?

Post in the comments.