By Lewis Denby on June 1st, 2011 at 11:50 am.
Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there’s very little for you to actually play. There’s a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That’s a lot of games! Read on to find out what’s what.
NEWS
There’s a quite interesting Half-Life 2: Ep2 mod in the works called Scintilla, which I think I’ve briefly mentioned before. Two screenshots have popped up this week, one of which looks especially spooky. This is a mod about “mystery, solving puzzles both of the gameplay and of the story, [and] also combat and horror.” I’m keeping my beady little eye on this.
Also in the world of Half-Life 2, Jurrassic Life is not dead! Which is awesome news, frankly, as it’s been away for long enough that I’d started to worry. The update itself isn’t too big, with just a few new model images and barely any new info, but still: the mod continues to be made, and I am happy about that.
Stalker: Clear Sky mod Faction Fronts is entering a closed beta for its second iteration. The new version’s set to include hundreds of reworked textures, aslong with a load of new weapons, props, and the like. The weather system’s also had an overhaul, as has… well, pretty much everything, really. You’ll want to head over and have a look at the full list of changes, probably. Faction Fronts is one of the Stalker mods I can really get behind, because it turns the calamatous runt of the Stalker family into something actually decently playable.
Meanwhile, Crysis mystery mod The Worry of Newport is nearing completion. The demo version that’s been doing the internet rounds for a while is being taken offline, and the full version will be available in the next couple of weeks. I still haven’t got round to playing this, but I really should. It sounds like Dear Esther. I like Dear Esther. You probably realised that.
Also: more In Peremptorys’ Shadow (oh bloody hell fix the apostrophe, developers) screenshots, and what appears to be – gasp – a visual style developing. Lots of crisp lines and soft hues seem to be the order of the day for this Half-Life 2 horror adventure.
Plus: the Portal 2 Aperture Enhancement mod has revealed a new testing element to do with gels. Oh my goodness!
RELEASES
I haven’t seen anything interesting come out this week. Have you? If so, lob it in the comments thread, or in an email to me, and I’ll include it in next week’s roundup. For now: onwards!
UPDATES
There’s a new patch for Company of Heroes: Opposing fronts mod Eastern Front. The 1.40 patch contains balance changes, bug fixes, new music, new models and altered units and all sorts of gumph. You can grab the update from ModDB, and you probably should.
AND THE REST
For the first time in ages, there’s something to lob in And The Rest! Hooray. Anyway, ModDB has a Dirt 3 editing guide up. It’s hardly exhaustive, and basically just tells you what different files do and what you can use to edit them, rather than actually offering anything in the way of a tutorial – but the page can be edited by anyone, so hopefully it’s grow nicely and organically.
‘Til next week…
01/06/2011 at 12:11 Donjonson says:
I’ve been following the developments (or non-developments) of Jurassic Life, it doesn’t really seem like it’ll ever get finished but this is good news all the same :)
01/06/2011 at 13:24 paterah says:
Yeah, I’ve also been following some dinosaur mods for Crysis / Crysis 2 and they are slow as hell too :/
01/06/2011 at 12:20 fitzroy_doll says:
Speaking of faction wars….
Stalker Clear Sky: The Faction War has just entered 2.9.1 beta: http://www.gsc-game.com/main.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr2&thm_page=1&thm_id=22888&sec_id=21#310320
Still the best faction wars mod for Clear Sky (last covered on RPS in beta 1.8).
01/06/2011 at 12:51 Cinek says:
Big update for Mechwarrior: Living Legends has been released: http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/ – 0.5.0
How could you miss most awesome Mech-combat game!!! :)
01/06/2011 at 12:52 Harlander says:
Is it in the shadow of Peremptory, or perhaps the slightly Greek-sounding Peremptorys? For the latter, discarding the trailing s after the apostrophe is generally considered an acceptable variation (removing the need, when speaking, to end the word with an unwieldy ‘suzz-zuss’ sound)
Also:
WOO DINOSAURS
01/06/2011 at 13:36 Lewis Denby says:
It’s the former. I checked. Hence my being very angry.
01/06/2011 at 16:22 nimnio says:
If there’s more than one “Peremptory” in the game, then maybe it’s the shadow of them all: for example, “twin towers’ shadow”.
If there is no creature or thing in the game named “Peremptory”, and it’s actually just the adjective, then it’s all bollocks. You can’t be in the shadow of an adjective, can you? Not even metaphorically.
02/06/2011 at 10:02 Lewis Denby says:
Which would make it Peremptories’.
01/06/2011 at 13:05 Monchberter says:
If Dirt 3 modding allows you to copy over tracks from Dirt 2 then i’ll be a very happy man.
01/06/2011 at 21:44 Hydrogene says:
That would be most excellent, indeed ! The stages are much too short in Dirt 3, that’s the biggest flaw in the game.
01/06/2011 at 14:23 Urael says:
Why is Minecraft never mentioned here? There’s some great mods out there, big and small, that could do with some fame?
01/06/2011 at 19:27 Dances to Podcasts says:
There are a few major mod scenes missing here. Don’t remember seeing any SC2 ones either.
01/06/2011 at 14:47 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
Speaking of mods, this old relic has actually been finished. http://project2027.com/en/#/ Don’t know when it happened, but it has to have been in recent months because I check it a couple of times a year to see if progress has been made. English language version is apparently on the way.
01/06/2011 at 15:26 evilbobthebob says:
The Star Wars: Empire at War mod Republic at War is coming up to release on the 4th June. You need the EaW expansion pack Forces of Corruption to run it. After four years in development, it should be worth it, well, if you like the Clone Wars era of Star Wars anyway. Which I doubt many of you do. Still, it’s always in the top mods list so it must be doing something right http://www.moddb.com/mods/republic-at-war
01/06/2011 at 16:34 TNG says:
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll definitely download this but would have preferred a good expanded universe one. I remember there were some promising ones but none ever reached a decent stable version as far as I know…
01/06/2011 at 19:53 FriendlyFire says:
I know it isn’t Empire at War, but Freeworlds: Tides of War is one of the few space-based mods that covers the post-Ep VI period that I know of. It’s a space sim in the vein of X-Wing Alliance based on Freelancer and really, I hope it rocks.
Disclaimer: I’m part of the mod team :)
01/06/2011 at 17:06 TNG says:
Just finished installing Eastern Front 1.4 from scratch (after uninstalling 1.3 some weeks ago). there seems to be a problem with the mod launcher that crashes every time you start it but turning the auto-update feature off in the *.ini file solved the problem.
01/06/2011 at 22:50 man-eater chimp says:
Black Mesa Source…
Not until after Episode 3.