The past, The present and the future news - Guard Duty mod for Half-Life 2

Hello! Hello and welcome future Guard Duty fans! I am pleased to launch the Guard Duty's very first media update.

I say future fans because you would have to be pretty committed to be a fan based on our meagre offerings so far. This was a cruel charade to get you into the spirit and hide our mistakes that were abundant in the images by making it small. Still there? Good. Those days are behind us. We having

Those days all far gone now, however, this is history to us and news to you. We have been anti-social gits in the past year of mod development. Yes, it has been a year of development. What a year it’s been, there was exponential growth in the team, from just a few members to our task force of game creation that he have now, yes, that task force has had a few casualties but what good action game doesn’t have a few heroic or not-so heroic deaths along the way. Upon questioning the projects founder; Mr Sugar it went as follows...

"ReX: How did the mod start?
MR.sugar: it was a year ago when I got a message from guy called Enraged. He was one of the many people, who tried to persuade me to make a remake of Blue shift. The difference and reason he convinced me after some time was the fact, he wanted to contribute on the project and also offered me some very basic description of the project, including even facts why is the right time to start the project right now and he had exact idea how the development should take it's course.

With that we started to putting together some basic ideas and started working on the content itself + looking for members. We were successful and we got about 20 people in the very first weeks and we renamed to Mad World studios. It wasn't the right way anyway and we lost most of the members later and even the name "Mad world studios""

This was the lighter past. However not everything was as peachy as those first few weeks, the rest of the mini-interview entailed the rest:

"MR.sugar CZe: Well, mod was really slowing down and it looked like the mod won't succeed at all.
ReX: Bastards.
MR.sugar CZe: Indeed . However, after the series of small updates (2 teaser pictures + concept), it turns out better and some people become interested about the project and that was our salvation"

THE PRESENT

It is heart-breaking to hear about a failing mod, it is something that happens all too regularly. So we will cut it off there so none of you slit your wrists. We have newer and better members; we have a new co-leader and progress! Yes Progress. Out greatest activity is in the last few weeks, many of our team members have alienated themselves from their families for your entertainment, their holidays break was spent working on this mod to satisfy your need for quality mod updates.

You may also turn to notice some of the concept art of the alien controller that was released a few month back, we have more of that from even more concept artists who are equally talented. Our secret weapon pinkbandit1 has rustled up some beautiful images of a man who needs help about to be shot. Enjoy our very first design of zombies .
Now to models,

No not Kate Moss, a bullsquid something almost as sexy... Ahem. Depending on your preference this bullsquid is the pinnacle of our modeling prowess as a team made by our modeler Cuse, who is pushing out brilliant model after model of exceptional quality. No doubt as you are reading this the man is creating yet another spawn of the border world.

Now that's where the talent stops and I get to tell you about what I do, I effectively just made textures up till a week ago. Until I got off my ass for the second time to learn how to compile and make normal maps for my textures in response to Mr. Sugars well meaning comment last week

" I should also mention "Rex", who is our texture artist. It was a pleasure to see how the very inexperienced texture artist started to improve his skills, and today he can deliver some pretty nice textures for us."

THE FUTURE:

Uhuh. Thanks, now we turn to the future and back on track with this first media update. The future awaits, we will have regular words from team members (like me, but hopefully more normal), we will have maps, screenshots, NPC's created, voices acted, guns shot and guns shot in-game. All that for your entertainment people, first update and the Guard duty team is spoiling you, I hope you are as excited as I am for this year and for the whole development process.

Aside of that, we are planning to keep you updated and release more updates. You can expect dev.blogs to check out, how's the development coming along and reveal you all the obstacles we have to fight with to deliver the content into game.
We are preparing some community events, which will let all of you to contribute on the project itself and possibly get some nice bonuses from us.

Before we close the update, I should mention the help wanted section, which is constantly updated with current open positions and overall status. It's located on our forum, we just launched with this update. Check it out and see, if you are the one we are looking for or just join the forum and become a part of our community!

Josh "Rex" Archer