The forums will follow as I create a variation of the current space theme.

UPDATE:

Yes indeed, I don’t usually make an April Fools gag, but this year I thought I’d give it a try… with the main punchline being the Team Play Episode 1 I uploaded.

I tried my best to make my actions fairly transparent.  I didn’t want anyone thinking I really had decided to drop our standard of quality, but simply to have some fun with the day itself.

Included in this bit was the change of skins on the homepage, on the forums [seriously... Naruto?], and the giving up on my map in favor of a largely incomplete map Radu had once been working on.

I also posted on my DA account a bunch of “new” pictures in keeping with the idea that I was adding content more quickly.  Of course, in reality, most of those pictures were 10 to 15 years old… back when I was in High School and college.

I’ll leave those up, but will probably move most of them to scraps… I saved the last three because they are some of my better works and I decided to actually offer prints of them.

I’m also going to keep Radu’s Beta3 map on the server if we want to play on it some time, but we’ll go back to flatgrass and other normal maps for our defaults until I finish the real gm_bwl map set I’m working on.

Yes, I decided to split the one gigantic map into a couple of large maps.  It should play a little better when finished.

Happy April Fools day everyone!

Oh and yes, if you somehow didn’t figure it out.. and I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t… Ncevy Sbbyf! is April Fools! in rot13.

We have had this site online since 2001 and seen marginal activity at best.  I’m tired of this lack of interest.  If we can’t be recognized as a classy, quality content site… then fine.  I’d rather churn out the “popular” content then continue to put so much effort into projects.

My plan is basically to start putting just a little less effort into projects and get then out sooner.  Expect a considerable increase in activity over the next few weeks.

Hopefully, this will attract a little more interest.

And yes, This includes our mod projects.  As far as I am concerned the original CL is now finished.  We’re going to focus on CLS now and get that done quickly so we can start work on CL2 and the other mods I have planed.

Videos will also be ramped up a bit more quickly.  Expect one within the next few days… by the end of the day tomorrow if I can edit it that quickly.

UPDATE:

Ncevy Sbbyf!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNOvmoZCCg

Edit: Wow, auto-embedding youtube links? That’s neat. Unintentional on my part, but neat.

The first time was a guy named Gerardo Gonzalez, that wanted to apply for a job as a comic artist.  Of course, that required a simple explanation, and he was friendly about the incident.

In fact, he allowed us to post his sample comic as long as we included a link to his email address such that he would gain some additional exposure as an artist. You can still read that comic on the Comic page or by clicking here.

Anyway, this is an important point to address as once again, we seem to have been confused with a serious “Real” comic book company… again.

BWL Development is a fan site.  A fun website that hosts web comics, art, creative writing, videos, machinima, and other creativity.  We are a free site and do not sell anything at this time.  Eventually, I would love to sell some T-Shirts, printed versions of my original comics [fan comics and game comics would still be free], and even some of my planned novels.

However, at this time, we have nothing for sale and do not actually publish comic books or anything for that matter.  We are NOT a company.

Some day, we may actually be a company, but not now or any time really soon.  I’m sorry for any confusion we may cause in this regard.  We do take our projects VERY seriously and are trying to be as organized and company-like as we can.

We want to be professional as developers, but we are a creative community and fan website and not a business.  Thank you for thinking of us in such a capacity though and for visiting our site.

http://podcast17.com/transmissions/c16769

If you only want to here the Cat-Life interview, you can download that MP3.  Otherwise, if you want to here a fairly large run-down of news from the Valve community and several other mods, you can listen to the full program.

I do need to take a moment and apologize to BiGToM.  I’ve posted comments on the Podcast 17 site and our ModDB Profile about this already.  You see, for some reason I kept saying that BiGToM is Dutch.  I don’t know why.  He’s Swedish… and I’ve known that for years.

That’s what I get for doing an interview while tired I guess.

Also, I want to thank all of our team members.  Sorry I couldn’t mention all of you by name, but there wasn’t time and I’m not as familiar with all of you.

Hope you enjoy the interview.

EDIT:

The Mod DB Version is up.

http://www.moddb.com/groups/podcast17/features/transmission-16769

In fact, it was finished in April.  Written by SquirrelKing, the original Full Life Consequences was epically scrambled.  According to SquirrelKing’s profile and forum posts when it first appeared at FanFiction.net he was learning English and used the writing to help.  He also demonstrated some more simple concepts in writing and imagination, which would lead some of us to the conclusion that he was also very young.

Originally, topics about the series were posted in forums such as the fan fiction forum on PHL.  The story was ridiculed and people such as myself often defended him by pointing out the likely age and ESL issues.  The story was also picked up for a rather famous YTMND “epic reading of an epic fan-fiction”.

This story was amusing and the reading made it great.  A second story appeared as well and then the story remained “to be continued?” for years.

But in the past couple of years, YouTube has brought even more attention to SquirrelKing and his fictions.  There have been several flash animations, gmod videos, and even hand drawn animations depicting the first two stories and some of the other works including Halo: Halos in Space, and Metal Gear Solid: Fight of Metal Gears.

Most notably, Icton Entertainment (creators of the Idiots of Garry’s Mod videos) made an adaptation of both stories.  These adaptations were fairly amusing and worked quite well.

Now, by this time SquirrelKing had been inactive for years.  Halo: Halos in Space 2: Aliens attack was his last story which was published in August of 2007.   Suddenly, a new chapter in the Full Life Consequences saga appeared in February of this year (2009).  Do the math.

Most notable about the later 2 chapters of Full Life Consequences is the recognizably deliberate effort to make them “so bad its funny”.  It is possible that someone may have obtained the account and finished the story.  But I think it is more likely that SquirrelKing was responding to his internet fame.

Basically, there are too possibilities.  Either SquirrelKing was a less successful artificial character, like Peter Chimera, or he was legitimately a kid trying to write and practice his writing that has since turned into a “sock puppet” or fake writer due to internet fame.

I happen to think that he falls into that second possibility.  Why?  Mainly because if this was always a fake writer, he did a terrible job setting up the character.  Using Peter Chimaera as an example, the author created a character that could not grasp the English language and didn’t know much about his subject matter.  Sounds a lot like SquirrelKing right?  The difference is that Chimaera is supposed to speak English as a primary language and not have spent much time reading or understanding the plot of his subject matter.  In short, he’s a newbie, a llama, and a childish writer all rolled into one.

Conversely, SquirrelKing started out as a kid who was learning the English language and seemed to have at least some understanding of his subject matter.  He was believable as an author.  That is, believable at first.  With his latter stories, such as the Halos in Space tales, he seemed to be trying to make bad stories.  And since he suddenly reappeared his two latest stories feel even more forced.

Irregardless, the stories of John Freeman, and eventually his son Henry, are funny.  And the Icton videos are fairly popular, well made adaptations that have undoubtedly been the reason for SquirrelKing’s reappearance.

In fact, these are popular enough that many YouTube patrons have been trying to beat them to the cliched punch by making adaptations as soon as a new chapters are ready.

I won’t bother you with these wannabe-Icton videos… instead I’ll just link you to the real thing.

The complete saga:
Half-Life: Full Life Consequences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxyZaZlaOs

Half-Life: Full Life Consequences 2 – What has to be Done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8yHguvYYyQ

Half-Life: Hero Begining
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NiCYPrAoB8

Half-Life Full Life Consequences: Free Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULWgEnnmcv4

Have a Happy One!

Indeed… welcome to bwldevelopment.com

Now, our transition to the new host was a hasty one since we had only a few days notice.  That being the case, I had to foot the full set-up bill here on our new paid host service provided by justhost.com.  Normally, that set-up would have been free… but I had no time to come up with more then a month-by-month payment plan.

I certainly seek your help in covering our expenses with the new site.  My PayPal link in the left column is here to help accept donations for the cost of server expenses.

Moving on… in the coming days we will be voting on our site direction.  You see, I have always expected hl2files to eventually close… though I did expect more warning.  Moving to a paid service provider was always the plan.

And since we are no longer a hosted site for an HL2 website, we don’t need to only focus on HL2 and its derivative games.

So…

I a want to recruit volunteers to cover news and events for other games.  Obviously, members should always feel welcome to post gaming news on the forum.  But I am going to start looking for writers for this blog.

Tonight, I am posting a poll concerning other games/companies we could cover in addition to Valve/ Source Engine Games.  Choose your 5 favorites.  At the end of 1 month’s time, we will decide which are the most popular five other games/developers to cover.

At that time, volunteers can come forward and we can also recruit from sites like Unconcerned.  We will need five “news/op ed” writers for these games… one each.  Their task will be to write articles for the blog when developers make news.  The writers will also be responsible for coming up with any features for the same games such as Op Ed pieces, reviews, suggestions for a new game, tips, or whatever they feel like.

Tonight, I will be recreating the site tree with new pages, but the changes will be relatively minor.  I mainly want to make the point clear that fictions and comics for other non-source games, or not even game related at all, are welcome.

Finally, once again I say welcome.  Welcome to the new website.

UPDATE:

It seems the little WP Widget for my poll isn’t going to work on the new server.  It hangs every time I try to submit.  That being the case, I’ve posted a topic in the forums.  Go there to suggest your favorites…

UPDATE:

It’s official…

I’m sorry to give you the bad news guys, but due to lack of funding, filefront and all network sites will shut down this month (march, 30). Since you are hosted on xx.hl2files.com still, back up your files right away! I’m terrible sorry guys, but even I have been restriced of access on hl2files and I am also fired. This is all suddenly. Got any questions? Email me back.

Regards,
Skyrider

I’m working on setting up a new host now.  Please click the PayPal link in the right column and donate to help with the cost.  I’ll be paying some set up fees and don’t really have the money to spare.

Even something as small as $1 would help.

__________________________________

I haven’t payed as much attention to my filefront account lately as I used to…

Tonight I realized that I forgot to set up my catch-all email in my mail client, so I prepared the needed data and… found a bunch of emails that still went to my old friendlygarg.hl2files.com address.

Among them were notices that my Disorientation 2-part video was being deleted for inactivity and that the other disorientation ziped file was also being deleted for inactivity.

I then decided to check my account and make sure that those were the only files I had lost… then I noticed a link at the top of the page.

http://farewell.filefront.com/

Filefront is shutting down.

Oh dear.

At first, I thought about March 30th being 2 days before April Fools Day… but this could just as easily be legitimate and according to some site’s I have visited… it is legitimate.

If that is the case, this could be bad news for us.

Obviously, all my downloads are hosted on FileFront.   But also… and more importantly… HL2Files is a file-front network site.  That’s right, our host might also be a part of the shut down.  Which means we may need to find a new host.

This is bad timeing as I am low on funds at the moment and would rather pay for a host then go on skipping around the web as we have so often in the past.  Cat-Life, Garg Arena, our stories and comics, forums, and even our SF Studios hosted site will be in danger.

There is a rumor that UGO may be interested in purchasing filefront… but who knows.

Stay tuned… I will be looking at hosting options and am making backups now.  Just in case.

On a side note… one point I have noticed that still makes this suspicious to me is the lack of emails.  I have received no emails regarding a shut down of the file hosting nor a webmaster email warning of a site shut down.  That seems a little odd… but the host could just be careless.

[EDIT]
As far as preparations go, I’ll try to make the transition to a new host as easy as possible.  I’ll be making use of our steam group [ http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BWL ] and our ModDB Profiles…

http://www.moddb.com/groups/bwl-development

http://www.moddb.com/mods/cat-life

http://www.moddb.com/mods/gargarena

http://www.moddb.com/groups/special-forces-source