The first episode of BWL’s Video update is finished.  It did, however, end up longer then I had anticipated originally and was thus divided into two parts.

In this episode we take a look at some project news including Cat-Life and our comics.  We also visit the steam chat room briefly with our “From the Chat Room” segments.  And our main topic of the day is machinima… what we see in other people’s works and what we hope to do with our three planned shows.

I suggest using the “Full Screen” option for watching this video.  You’ll get more out of it I think.

Part 1

Part 2

In the end, this episode was delayed for a few extra weeks due to schedule issues mainly.  And, given the subject matter’s resolutions, there is a fluctuation in the size of the letter boxing on most of the machinima topic.  Also, there are a few errors that I left in simply because it would have been more trouble then necessary to repair.

This episode ran longer then my intended 15 minute time limit with the “From the Chat Room” features cut down to a few short minutes each.  We had already realized that From the Chat Room could be a full audio program of its own and planned to release the full discussion separately.  So be sure to check out our full “From the Chat Room” mp3 as hosted by ModDB.

The mp3 has been edited to cut out our long dead air pauses and many “uhms” and “ughs” plus a few other less important or classified bits of the discussion.  The full session is around 35 minutes in length.

From The Chat Room: Episode 1 audio – BWL Development – Mod DB

In future episodes, I plan to focus more on the “From the Chat Room” segment and use that more for our main topic and news sections as it really turned into more interesting discussion.

Thanks again to Syrus Rayne, Radu Iceman, and BiGToM for helping with that.  As for why we chose to use steam instead of our Ventrilo server… well… the idea behind “From The Chat Room” is that members of our steam group can join in on the discussion at any time.  It’s not meant to be a “podcast” as much as it is a chat room segment for the show.

Of course, that does mean there are some buggy moments with the audio in the full mp3 and a somewhat lower quality to the sound as compared to something like skype or a shout-cast service of some sort.

Here is the premier episode of this new series.

UPDATE:

Ncevy Sbbyf!

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!

But he played a much more interesting role for gamers, particularly for fans of the Half-Life series.

Robert Culp, the voice of Doctor Breen, passed away yesterday at the age of 79.  He apparently fell and struck his head outside his home.

Our best wishes are with his family.  He will be missed in the computer game and 3D entertainment world as well as the television and film industry.

Here’s the idmb page with a list of his extensive roles.

Well, I’m pretty much sure all of you know about SEGA’s upcoming Aliens vs Predator game, but in case you don’t, here’s a short review about the progress, the game and the demo release. The game is being made by the Rebellion team. Their first major successes were Alien Vs Predator on the Atari Jaguar in 1995 and Aliens Vs. Predator on PC in 1999, creating game innovations years ahead of their time. And as their name suggests, Rebellion’s approach to game production is focused primarily on cross-platform innovations and product quality.

It is Rebellion’s aim to produce innovative videogame products of the highest quality, to have solid links with comic, book and movie content to ultimately ensure that the final consumer experience is as exciting as possible. The game has been in development for about 2 years, the team concentrating on creating the ultimate AvP experience.

About the story, the action takes place on the planet BG-386, where the humans have established a colony. Apparently, they find an ancient Predator temple which was forgotten by the Predators and that’s what triggers the whole story. The humans find the aliens and capture them for tests, the predators find out about the temple and the marines are sent on the planet to clean up the mess. You can experience a distinctly new and thrilling first person gameplay as you survive, hunt and prey in the deadly jungles and swamps surrounding the damned colony of Freya’s Prospect.

• As the Marine, you’ll experience a claustrophobic and terrifying experience where light is your friend, but there’s never enough. However, the United States Marine Corps are humanity’s last line of defense, and as such they are armed to the teeth with the very latest in high explosive and automatic weaponry.
• As the Predator, you will stalk from the shadows and from above, passing athletically through the treetops to ambush your victims. Although equipped with an array of powerful, exotic weapons and tracking equipment, honor ultimately dictates that you must get in close and take your trophies face to face.
• As the most deadly species in the universe, the Alien offers you the chance to play as the very stuff of nightmares – the monster in the dark swarming forward with countless others, jaws like a steel trap and claws like blades.
• Play all sides off against each other in a series of unique 3-way online modes and go tooth-to-claw-to-pulse rifle in the reinvention of one of multiplayer gaming’s defining moments

Last week, on Thursday, February 04, the demo was released for AvP. So far, the demo supports a multiplayer deathmatch mode with 8 players. The code presented in the demo is not the final release and all the DirectX 11 features will be available in the full release.

The first time I launched the demo and already I had problems, but wait! I wasn’t the only one who had them. The full game features the ability to browse for and create games but for the purposes of simplicity the demo was limited to matchmaking, so you had to wait from 5 minutes to even 10 minutes to manage to play online. Shortly after the demo was released Rebellion updated the demo and managed to fix that issue. They even apologized about it “We’re really sorry that this issue tainted a day in which we saw many people get hands on with AvP for the first time and we’re hugely gratified by the positive feedback to the game.”.

Overall, the demo was pretty good. It gives us a great example of every race’s abilities to kill it’s prey. The marine for example, his motion tracker can give the alien’s position very easily making the vicious xenomorph an easy prey. The marine’s weapons are pretty much basic, he can equip himself with a pulse rifle, the smart gun, pistol, sniper rifle or a flame thrower. If you’re impressed by those then wait till you hear the Predator’s arsenal! Trip mines, pulse cannon, spear, “ninja disks”, deadly claws and vicious look; all of those are bound to give you a chill down your spine. But what about the alien? It’s quite simple and deadly, you are the weapon.

While you play as each race you see the game through different perspectives and you also have to come up with a completely new strategy. The Predator is based on stealth, he uses a cloaking device to become invisible which gives him the element of surprise. The marine is like a beeping radar with a gun, while the alien is like a deadly sword waiting in the dark.

The demo really convinced me to buy the game and test all the multiplayer modes and the single player campaign and of course, to try the game with all it’s features which are guaranteed to bring a one of a kind AvP experience!

I also took the liberty to record a multiplayer match. Enjoy!

Though the team has worked hard to develop this project, the planned beta has been scaled back to a short demo. This demo consists of a three map training course and five of the original maps that BiGToM developed when he first started work alone back in 2007.

There are several additional bonus maps that can give the player a good idea of what the final project should look like. I recommend cat_introbeta1.bsp and cat_living.bsp for a better idea of the project’s actual map and story line introduction.

I want to discuss some of our chat and then make a few comments of my own here.

Download the Demo

First, this is indeed a DEMO and not a beta. Second, it is a short demo with more limitations then I would have preferred. The main game maps are the same ones we have shown in the screen shots and videos to date. And feel a bit thrown together rather then tied together by the story.

This is largely due to the fact that the actual game story changed when DS began writing for the project. BiGToM’s original story idea was basically as follows:

The cat begins inside of a pet carrier on a transport train. As it progresses, a crane transfers the carrier to a conveyor belt that delivers the cat into the bowels of Black Mesa. Near the end of the line, and after a number of transfers, the cat is one of several crates on the brink of delivery into a test facility when a robotic arm transfers it instead to a waiting scientist.

From that point, the cat experiences the Resonance Cascade from inside a lab and then must escape.

Portions of that story can still be seen in this demo, but not in its entirety. Unless I am gravely mistaken, the story was changed to a scientist’s pet cat and this idea is reflected in the cat_intro and cat_introbeta1 maps which allow you to see a part of a different introduction sequence, one that even pre-dates Newton’s name. Keep an eye out in the living area bonus map for Easter Eggs, which reflect the gags of the final project’s secrets.

BiGToM made the decision to switch over to a demo largely due to bugs. He explained that there are simply too many bugs to fix at this time. I think BiGToM would like some help in debugging maps and sounds. It’s my understanding that part of the reason the demo has so few custom sounds is because of a problem with his sound editing software.

I have already explained the bugs with my source code, but there are apparently a number of additional problems. For example, BiGToM points out a bug on the cat4.bsp map in the demo in which the player must duck to enter a tram even though he raised the door height. The cat source code only gives the illusion of shrunk height and so the player hull is still full sized, but this is a human sized door and should not be a problem.

He also tells me there is a problem with the elevator near the end of the actual full game in which the elevator walls injure the player.

This seems to be unrelated to the code as he elected not to use the modified hull file and scaled hull idea. Instead, we are using the Half-Life friendly version of the dlls. Which does indeed mean that players can play in regular HL and enjoy the game. You’ll want to use the console to enter map c0a0 for the HL Campaign and map t0a0 for the HL training course.

Keep in mind that you will need noclip to get passed the HEV checkpoint in the HL campaign since you can’t pick the suit up anymore [player spawns with a suit].

I think players will have a little fun with this, especially playing the original HL, but they may be disappointed by the very short nature of the demo and a lack of action or changes. Most of the monsters and/or items have not been added yet.

I myself was disappointed as much of the custom content is absent and I feel that the project has hit a bigger problem then just source code or map bugs. I do recommend that you download the demo and enjoy it. BiGToM has explained that his plan is to release a “map pack” once he has more of the bugs defeated.

In fact he said, “all the maps are basically done so all I have to do is tweak them some, add monsters and sounds, etc.

I asked BiGToM if he had any plans for the cheap clones I made for the eventual extra monsters… three headcrab clones and a zombie clone that could have been further refined to “friendly cats”, “juvenile headcrabs”, “zombie cats”, and “military dogs”. He said that if we can find a new modeler, we could possibly create a sort of pet laboritory with an outbreak of the headcrabs and the resulting zombies. He hopes this idea will be usable in the future but is not in the project as it stands.

Keep an eye out for bugs while you play and report them to sayrken[AT]hotmail.com And if you have something to contribute such as :SysOp: has offered to work on a custom HUD, please contact BiGToM via that same address. I’d love to see this project finished and in far greater quality.

However… I have some personal feelings about this and as I said before, I am now disappointed. You do not want Mr Wildcat to be disappointed.

During my discussion with BiGToM we spoke about the “addon map pack” and his hope for the sequel project. I share his enthusiasm for a successful project, but I also am not satisfied with the current project.

For all that has been discussed previously, :SysOp: had some valid points regarding the project as it stands. Despite all of the customization, we won’t be able to see that in the demo. And I’m worried that the final release will not have everything we would like either. And I need to admit that I really do agree with his point that the source code should come first. Maybe its because of my programmer background, but I think any truly good project needs the source code to really develop a proper game.

Truthfully, I feel that the project is no longer what I personally had hoped it would be. So, with BiGToM’s agreement, I am now actively seeking a Source coder.

If you have been by our site recently, then you know I am in the process of changing the site into something more then just a Half-Life fan site. BWL Development is growing and improving, so too should our projects.

It is my intention to write a more serious and dark story for Cat-Life. If you want to know more about my type of story telling, then here are some options for you. Be WARNED, these stories are all rated M for Mature and contain violence and graphic descriptions.

Conundrum – around half-finished, this is my HL fan-fic in epic novel form. It was based on a forum RP thread and is basically a crossover story for HL, D00M, and my own characters and features many character creations by our forum members from years ago.

Mod-Fiction – this is a set of two mod fan-fictions. One is a fan-fic for Cat-Life and the other is for GargArena.

Delivery – this is a short 1-shot HL2 fan-fic that began as a forum rp-thread on the old Concerned forums.

Even though I will be writing a simple story line for team development, we WILL NOT proceed until we have source code in hand. I need someone that can edit the Source SDK to make the player hulls smaller, no taller then knee height compared to a human. I need someone that can code new monsters for juvenile headcrabs, zombie cats, military dogs, and friendly cats. I need someone that can add a limited wall climb and wall jumping. I need someone that can code DarkVision night-vision and ideally also catnip enhanced vision which basically offers a brief highlight of the monsters near the player. And I need someone that can make a bite attack that adds health in addition to standard claws. Basically, all of the stuff I was trying to begin in the original HL.

This code would then be used in the source alternate Cat-Life and it’s sequel Cat-Life 2.

I also want someone that isn’t afraid to write extra code on their own. Feel free to create for this mod project. Chainsaws and grappling hooks have no part in the main story, but they would make a great bonus for finding secret worlds and secret areas as a sort of gag or comical reward.

If you can map for source, make models, sprites, sound, music, etc… start thinking about this project. Can you make a cat player model? Go ahead, we could use it. Can you make Half-Life style music? Get started, we’ll either use it in Cat-Life: Source or we’ll use it in one of our upcoming machinima projects. We WILL FIND A WAY to use your work and of course credit you for your contributions.

And, by all means, ask anyone you know that may be able to contribute to the new source code. We WILL NOT proceed beyond my story development [which I have not yet started] until we have working code.

I welcome existing Team Cat-Life members to offer their aid as well. I know that some of them including BiGToM are anxious to work on this newer incarnation too.

So, in closing, expect a Cat-Life “map pack” and we welcome any help on said project. But also be on the look out for a Source coder. Cat-Life: Source will be a completely different game and we hope it will live up to the BWL tagline of Epically Awesome in Every Way. And we certainly welcome wishes of luck and showes of support.

However, I have also added commenting to the individual pages, so you can leave comments in a number of new places.  Also, I’ve changed a number of pages to a more uniform look and link structure.  And I’ve simplified some of the navigation factors.

Beyond that… I’ve basically extinguished the small changes.  So now, it’s time to start tearing down the current site theme in favor of something a little more professional and a little less HL-centric.

I’m also recruiting some team members in a thread in the Resource Depot forum.  Welcome Syrus Rayne as he has moved from just a member of the BWL Film Crew to the full Creativity Team as a news poster and Game Reviewer.

Expect some big things from BWL Development in the future.

But with that said, the appearance changes I am about to make on this site will affect some of the content for temporary periods of time.  Specifically, you may find the site looking drastically different for a few hours once in a while and you may also find links or features missing for those same periods of time.

Please, bare with us as this has been needed for a while and I want to really step up the site’s appearance.

The Left 4 Dead DLC including the new “Crash Course” campaign has landed today.

This new two map campaign fills in the gap between No Mercy’s helicopter rescue and Death Toll’s… standing in the middle of the road.

In addition to the new update, Valve is offering a discount on Left 4 Dead until the 2nd of October.  Get the game this week with a 50% discount.

Also, 10 more achievements.

http://www.l4d.com/crashcourse/

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

Well, last week our news item was reported by Podcast 17 during their weekly show.  They also contacted me for an interview.

Check out the Live feed at a new time today… 3:00 EST.  Use a time zone converter such as Time and Date.com.  Also, you can skip the Live feed (which has considerably lower quality) and instead check out the Podcast 17 ModDB profile or their website in a day or two for the higher quality download.