Frontline Force: Classic mod for Half-Life 2

..good work of yours, can't wait for the first release! \o/ Any media updates coming in near future? :)

Sunspot our Team Lead had an appointment/tour of VALVe last week. He did this write-up of his trip for FLF community...I figured I'd share it with the Mod db community because this is not only about "FLF:C".
As you will read VALVe has formed a new team with the sole purposed of helping the hl2 community and SDK users. They are aware that is been 2yr since the release of HL2 and there are hardly any mods. Well defenity not even close to HL1 and how many mods they had at this stage of the game.
I'm pointing this out because not only did it motivate our Dev team I believe after reading this any HL2 Dev team may be more motivated as well...VALVe wants the HL2 community producing mods, after all that's what keeps us playing.
Also, if you are or know of someone thats a skilled player/weapon modeler that can "dedicate" sometime to helping us out please conctact me with some previews of your work.

Last week I took a trip to Seattle, WA and dropped in to VALVe. One helluva fun place I must say.
Working your way through the parking garage, one can almost expect a zombie to jump out from between the parked cars. It was easy to see where ideas come from!

On the 10th floor in the front office, You are greeted by a smiling Katie who's desk is under a nest of head crabs hidden in the rafters, ready to pounce. Quite the decor all over too, raw concrete floors with occasional colorful patches of carpet, walls of metal and such with steel beams and raw plywood desks. City 17 office complex for sure.

Loads of cool stuff to look at in the lobby while waiting for my appointment. From the huge Iron Valve in the center floor, to the famous Golden Crowbar, and a rough 1/4" thick steel table looking thing holding a PC system that is acid etched, rust stained, and styled like the Citadel in HL2. GI Joe's dressed in Counterstrike Gear posed in one area, Shelves of retail game boxes, autographed posters of HL and HL2 and so on.

My appointment was with Mike Durand, who heads up the newly formed SDK/Mod team group at Valve. He explained they recently formed this new department soley to help the community and SDK users, by dealing with developers, Mod teams directly or by daily reading the forums and wiki to solve any SDK issues that may come up. He said the prior SDK problems with model viewer and hammer in July was what set this in motion. Mike explained that prior to this new department, the SDK would get attention when they had free time to work on it between releases, and obviously this wasnt doing the trick.

We then went to a conference room where we had a great hour and half discussion about issues our team have faced, what we thought of the SDK, what ideas we had that may improve it and so on. I proudly showed off a bit of our content which was well recieved and complimented, and then discussed a few of FLF specific features and ideas including areas where we may need help. Mike took notes and asked more in depth questions about FLF. All in all it was a great meeting and I got alot of good info. One of the things I got from this was Valve's concern that MODs are slow coming out of the gates, and they really depend on MODs to keep things rolling. Their concern for the Modding community is certainly a very real one.

After our meeting we took a tour of the 10th floor offices. (all the Steam peeps are on the 9th floor) I was able to look in on work in all departments for the most part, saw some interesting animations in work for TF2, some level work for EP 2 and TF2, special effects and so on. These guys have some SWEET computers.. LOL everyone has like 24" plasma/flatscreens and some with dual 21" flatscreens. One of the offices where a large team of about 10-12 peeps were assembling some stuff and working on Episode 2 had several large 36" (approx) monitors (along with all the desktop monitors). This was mostly playtesting / QC work. The rest of the gang are in offices of 2-3 people. Everyone has bad ass machines (of course). Loads and loads of concept art and models of characters and stuff I haven't seen before plus a good sized model of the new strider for EP2. Can't tell you any more, or they may have to kill me.

I was then led to an office where I was introduced to Adrian Finol and his office roomie Scott Dalton. Of course Adrian had a screen full of code, Scott was working on some really cool particle effects stuff. I hung out there for quite while talking to Adrian about FLF and gave him a few FLF souvenirs (Clock and bumper sticker from our store y'all will see soon). After seeing "the VALVE Man himself" stroll down the hall, (and us not wanting to get Adrian fired), Mike led me on to "the laundry room" which was a guest office of sorts. Nice dual core 3.8ghz with xt1900xtx all loaded up, ready to play. heh.

After getting some free refreshments from a large breakroom (once again all decorated up like city 17), I got comfy and played 20+ levels of "Portal" for the rest of the afternoon, (unfortunately TF2's test game had been taken down to add new content and wasnt back up yet) Yeah Portal was great fun. It reminded me of "Lemmings" in how the levels get progressively more difficult, learning how to get around more and more hazzards you would recognise from HL2 episode 1. The computer animated voice that guides you through the game is quite funny at times. I enjoyed it.

All in all it was a great / productive visit. Was glad to finally meet up in person with Adrian who is directly responsible for my FLF addiction (and lack of a real life) Plus they know FLF is still kicking and will gladly help us with development stuff anyway they can. One other thing.... I noticed everyone was working hard... AND smiling as they did it. Wish I had a job like that........
:hl: :flf: <3
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As for Frontline Force Classic we are still planning a media release within the next week or so.
Cheers!
SpArKs

I should have screens of afghan soon enough. :paranoid:

Jesus, I hated Earth's Special Forces. There was a DBZ mod for Quake 3 called Bid For Power, which kicked ESF's ass, especially with the cruddy energy blasts.

I had forgotten to try FLF while freaking WON was still up. Dag nabbit. Oh well, I hope I can get some of this soon.

My friends and I played FLF when it first came out, back when I was in 8th grade. It was and still is an awesome mod, however I stopped playing it around 2001ish for mods like Sven Coop, Holy Wars, Global Warfare, The Specialists, Earth's Special Forces and Dragon Mod Z.

I never stopped liking FLF and a few days ago I was excited to see news on ModDB about "FLF:C" -- So here I am, watchin' the mod :)

good to see u guys movin to hl2 :)

what a neat logo

how can you forget this game humm?

Used to play frontline force for HL but since I lost HL .....

yeah but their customer service kinda of blows cock. I swear vavle holds a grudge against me, the've ripped me off so much money and the customer service never tries to help. Even when I ask