Ever wanted to make history? - Now you can news - Battle Grounds mod for Half-Life

We tantalised you, we tricked you, we left little hints, we left red herrings and now we will reveal all. Some of you have been wild with your guesses on the forums; others have suggested normal, run of the mill ideas about what our announcement is. We have had people suggesting BG is dieing, BG is going to move to HL2, new models, the surprise release of 1.2.1 or 1.3, new armies, the list goes on. Some of you have guessed correctly to some degree, others were completely off the ball. No-one however, guessed everything.

There are really three things getting announced today. However the overall message is that BG HL1 lives and in all likelihood development will now be quicker.

Firstly we are happy to announce that we are making the source code to BG HL1 freely available under a modified Open Source Mod License. You are now free to contribute additions or modifications to BG HL1. For those of you who think open source means we are dead, I can categorically state, this is not the case. Active development of BG HL1 will still continue. Myristate, I and others will still be working on future enhancements, additions and fixes to BG HL1, as we have in the past. You may ask why we have taken this action. In response I say: Why not? With no (or relatively few) new Half-Life 1 mods being started, by going open source now, there is little risk of widespread plagiarism. We also wanted to try something, which has the potential of increasing progress on BG HL1, with little to no risk of decreasing its speed of development.

The second announcement is that BG is becoming a mod for two engines. After the HL2 announcement we came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to survive as a HL1 only mod. Most people would move onto HL2 and finding new members to work on a five year old engine will be more difficult than it already is. We also knew that we couldn’t abandon or simply drop BG HL1, a project that many of us have poured years of work into. It is obvious now, that at some point we would have to move onto a new engine, if we wish to keep BG alive. While HL2 is as yet unreleased we are confident that this will be our second engine. So we are now starting the planning stages for BG HL2.

The third and final announcement relates back to the first one. With the source code for BG HL1 now freely available, we have decided to open up the testing process to anyone and everyone. This means in effect, that you all can be beta testers for the next BG HL1 versions if you so wish. All details relating to testing and the source code for BG HL1 can be found in the open source BG forum.

If you have questions regarding any of the above announcements, feel free to talk to us on the forums. We are not dieing, we see this as a new beginning and an opportunity to involve the community yet more, in mod development.