f13.net

99%+ of mods never end up seeing a release, but I'll be damned if I can't help but watch some obsessively. I'm easily suckered in by mods when they have really good artists and modelers.

Here's some I've been keeping my eye on.

http://www.neotokyohq.com/
Kinda resurfaced out of nowhere for me. I played the original UT2k4 release back when the team and everyone else was trying to win that free engine license and cash from the Make Something Unreal contest...only to end up losing to the boring, piece of shit WWII mod that is Red Orchestra. It was okay. Pretty impressed with the media released so far (click on the right arrow to see more pictures).

Also, I really really like that background music.


http://www.hl-nightwatch.net/
This single-player mod for the original Half Life has been in development for god only knows how long. Why? Because they keep getting staff that's so good they get hired away. I think they're up to about 7-8 people who've been hired into the industry so far. I'm a sucker for single-player mods, so I still check every now and then.

Check out some of the maps and depreciated media. Impressive stuff considering it's the HL engine.


http://www.hull-breach.com/cms/news.php?3
Hull-Breach puzzles the hell out of me. They must have someone in the industry as a friend or something, because they've wrangled some amazing talent for their audio (The main composer for God of War did the mod's theme, and they just recently got a VA from the Halo series), and they have the artistic services of about the only good artist on DeviantArt, Ukitakumuki (http://ukitakumuki.deviantart.com). Of course, they haven't posted SQUAT in terms of actual in-game shots, so god only knows if they have any actual GAME coded to go with all the pretty sounds and models.


http://www.blackcatgames.com/
Makers of the vastly underplayed Thievery and Alien Swarm mods. You all should be deeply ashamed that both of those mods aren't wildly popular since they were easily the most polished mods I have ever seen, and some of the funnest. Alien Swarm deserved the Make Something Unreal Contest prize, hands down.


http://www.insurgencymod.net/
Another in the long line of "The next Counterstrike" mods. This one actually seems to have coders to go with their artists though. Their art staff is definitely damn good as well. I don't know if I can really stomach another modern combat mod, but I found myself enjoying Counterstrike Source.


http://www.returntomana.org/
I'm mostly waiting for this one to get "foxed" myself.


http://www.fortress-forever.com/
This is more likely to get released than Team Fortress 2. Good art assets too.


I never really watched U5Lazarus since I figured it'd get foxed too. That, and I never imagined Dungeon Seige to be moddable into a free-form RPG and not a rail-driven Diablo clone.

Fook me, Return to Mana looks great. It'll never get released. Awesome.

You have to blame the designers here, not the game engine.  There is no technical reason to restict players to narrow hallways.

Nothing to say here atm but I wanted to post my appreciation for throwing up this kind of thing.  Its nice to get information instead of teh hate once in a blue moon just for variety.

Some pretty cool links there.

I'm keeping an eye on the currently-being-coded Natural Selection (http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/) update for HL2 that's currently being developed. I *loved* NS for half-life and it's still got legs as you can see. I'm going back as soon as they release a new version.

What's with the RO bashing? I take it you never played it?

Best ww2 FPS yet, by far.

That is unless you like arcade gameplay. Then you can play shit like CoD 1&2, BF1942, and DoD and be perfectly happy.

I've played it, it sucks. It's a CRIME that they got a perfectly good engine license squandered on them.

Bad hitboxes (god only knows how you pull that off in the UT2k4 engine), bad models, bad animations, one theatre, bad map design, dull as dishwater. If you're THAT into "realism" then find a Call of Duty 1/2 server running custom maps and one of the 60 hojillion realism script mods that limit ammo, remove crosshairs, increase lethality, add bleeding, etc. etc.

Edit: Also, to lessen the amount of HATE in this post, I too am looking forward to the new version of Natural Selection. I was pretty blown away with what they managed to accomplish with the Half Life engine the first time. This next version should be amazing to say the least. Now if only the Specialists would be ported to source...

I've never played Freespace2 or either of these TCs but they sure look good:

The Babylon Project (http://www.hard-light.net/hosted/babylon/)
(http://n.ethz.ch/student/ebuerli/download/tbp/screenshots/B5_01.jpg)
Movie clip flying around B5 (http://n.ethz.ch/student/ebuerli/download/tbp/B5_teaser_xvid.avi)

BSG: Beyond the Red Line (http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/)
(http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/staff_images/Colonial%20Fleet.jpg)
Teaser Trailer (http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/Video/BSG_Mod_Teaser.avi)

Yes, please.

http://www.filedomain.net/downloader/details.php?file=2

Yum, big ships make big booms.