City of Cera news - Orion: Source mod for Half-Life 2

Before we get started with this update I just want to say we are still hammering away at the hotfix for the servers as well as the rest of the changes coming with Patch 2.0. So stay tuned. We are hoping to release on Friday ( Christmas ), but this year I am going pretty out of my way for a family party on Christmas Eve.. so this may ( and probably will ) be pushed back to the following Monday. We'll keep you guys posted about this as the week goes on.

We want to start talking about a very important element of the game. The last human city that remains on Earth, the key city that remains standing while the story of Orion takes place. It is called the City of Cera. It is a huge walled city located off the coast of Africa.

This city was formed by the three world powers of the time. Earth had previously been divided into three distinct factions, which the territories were primarily North America,, Europe and most of the Mediterranean, and East Asia.

Due to an extreme limited amount of resources, and out of near complete desperation, the three powers had formed an agreement and created the last great city on Earth. They re-located all major corporations and military and science facilities within the structure and invited all smaller corporations to move as well. Those that didn't eventually died due to starvation or cannibalism.

Cera Lab Facilities. Artificial Parks.

The Government had built appropriately large skyscrapers that would single-handedly house the poor. This area of Cera was simply called the slums. They were just stacks and stacks of apartments built up all the way into the sky. The Government had done this in order to easily ration and distribute supplies and food.

Cera Home Stations (Slums). Indoor art of the Slums / Home Stations.

However, this had inevitably had unforeseen consequences. One of the largest rebel groups in the history of war had formed within the walls of Cera. These rebel groups were not necessarily bad people, just people bombing government buildings in order to obtain food to feed a dying family.

Cera Rebel Soldier. 7 Year Civil War.

These outbreaks later lead into war as well as the Carrier and Phoenix projects that the Military had started developing. They started pumping out new technology and suits. The citizens of Cera were originally outraged by this, thinking the finances were strictly to win against the Rebels. The Civil War had lasted for 7 years.

Fast forward 7 years. We find out why the Military started developing these pieces of Armor. They had discovered a planet. They had code-named it Orion. The state of the planet was on par with an infant Earth. It even housed creatures we had previously believed to be extinct.

First Sightings on Orion. Prehistoric Life.

Over time and many years of research the Government started unleashing a huge propaganda event. It basically stated that if we go to Orion, if we are successful, then there is hope. There is hope that the human race won't go extinct and from here the Government had the next 11 years in peace on Earth.

The government sends out the first batch of Scientists, Engineers and Marines. The goal was to start building foundations and communications center to start aligning with Earth and to start building a new beginning. After 2 years of building a large portion of citizens on Orion started seeing blue streaks fill the entire sky. 48 hours the Altair landed. For the next 20 years and 42 days there was war.

I want to thank all of our artists that helped make this news post a read worthy one due to all the fine art that helps explain the elaborate back story about the game. This thanks goes out to our long time artist, Blindshooter, our brand new talented artists who we call c0ffee kid, as well as a pat on my own back.

Another thing, I want to welcome back Amogan ( Ben ). He was our Lead Programmer for quite some time in the past and he has more time available and is coming back to assist with Orion. He will be working alongside our other programmers, Jack and Chris. Also, I want you onlookers to be aware! We are seeking more programmers. If you are interested, please contact us! ( email: david@prassel.com )

One last thing I want to touch on. Earlier this week it was brought to my attention that we featured some tree models from Resistance and Liberation. This was not intentional and we do apologize to the developers at RnL.

I accidentally included some Dino D-Day files as well. I had moved over the dinosaur files to see how they did some of there animations in order to get an idea for some dinosaur tests we will be doing soon. They understand this and are aware, as we actually have been in contacts previously to sort of ‘collaborate' on Dinosaur related content and code. However, these files are being removed from the new full install, and were only there by accident of me not removing them before creating the public install file.

We've also noticed a resolution file from Situation Outbreak that was uploaded as a ‘personal fix' by one of our Beta Testers, ‘MitchellSheetz'. We have contacted Situation Outbreak and they are aware of this and have given us permission to use this custom .res file. We will of course be removing Situation Outbreaks title from our .res menu, but a great big thanks for them allowing this!

We have contacted all of these developers and have handled all situations on good terms. We apologize to our fans and want to make you aware of the true authors of these pieces of content

These are being removed in our next public update. They will not be featured in the new Full Install and this news post officially announces the removal of the content as well as the level ctf_quagmire. This is for performance related reasons and we are rebuilding the entire level from scratch and hoping to include it in Beta 2 ( otherwise Beta 3 ). Everyone that is currently suffering FPS loss on this map, rest assured, this is being addressed as well!

We also heavily encourage all of you fans to vote for us on ModDB's Mod Of The Year nominations!
Please visit this web page and nominate your vote for Orion here:
Moddb.com

Until next time!