Early Access, Release Postponement, Roadmap news - Battle Grounds 2 and 3 mod for Half-Life 2

Attention, soldiers! We have some good news, bad news, and good news about The Battle Grounds III. Read on to learn about our latest battle plans.Attention, soldiers! We have some good news, bad news, and good news about The Battle Grounds III. Read on to learn about our latest battle plans.

Battle Grounds III and Early Access

We, The Battle Grounds Game Development Team, have submitted our request to Valve for The Battle Grounds III to be placed onto Early Access. This would allow for more soldiers to easily play The Battle Grounds III. For our veteran soldiers who have beta tested and beta tested with us for more than a year, an Early Access release would mean several things:

• The Steam Overlay will now work in-game.
• Game updates and fixes will be downloaded automatically.
• Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer will not be required to play.
• Server administrators will have easy access to the server software, which will be included with all Battle Grounds III downloads.

We hope that Valve will work with us on getting this through, and we'll keep you soldiers updated as the exciting news develops! In the best case scenario, BG3 will be available as Early Access on June 26th.

Release Date Postponement

The Battle Grounds III will not release on the initially planned release date of June 21st, 2019. As the saying goes, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy", and that was the case for us. This was our first time on Steam, and we underestimated the time we would need to finish our game while also going through the logistics of releasing a game.We members of The Battle Grounds Game Development Team are all part-time volunteers with many other full-time responsibilities. We also lost a team member during these past few weeks.We may have lost this battle, but we will win the war—we have developed a roadmap that will lead us toward success.

Roadmap Toward Release

Instead of marking any individual date as a release date, we will be taking an incremental approach. This plan assumes that we will be on Early Access. Every two weeks, The Battle Grounds III will receive a content-rich update. And here is a list of "features" that will be included with these updates. Once 8 of these 11+ features have been completed, we will consider The Battle Grounds III to be fully released:

• A training level to teach new soldiers how to play;
• An improved user interface, especially with the in-game HUD;
• Official servers located around the world, allowing soldiers everywhere to have a comfortable experience;
• Translations of the UI and closed captions into about 10 other languages;
• A colorblind mode to support soldiers who are colorblind and soldiers who are new to the game;
• Fully licensed music to be acquired for playing during gameplay events;
• Comprehensive documentation and guides to allow players to create their own Battle Grounds III content and run their own servers;
• Cosmetic-only, non-tradable extras for veteran players who supported us during earlier alpha and beta testing;
• Additional gamemode mechanics for streamlining the experience in other gamemodes (ex. automated linebattle officer rotation);
• Increased bot support for Capture-The-Flag, Siege, and/or Linebattle gamemodes;
• Integration with Steam achievements and the Steam workshop;
• And any other features yet to be discovered or suggested by players.

We are counting on all you soldiers to communicate with us and tell us which features you would like to see most! Open discussions on Steam, contact us on our social media pages, submit bug reports on our website, and email us at community@battlegrounds3.com !
"We fight, get beat, rise and fight again!" - General Nathanael Greene, 1781