There has FINALLY been an SDK beta released by Valve, including support for compiling Orange Box shaders. I haven't looked into this too deeply yet, but I'm hoping to update my tutorials soon for the new process and any changes.
At a first glance, the larger changes are in the way that post-process effects are, well, processed on the client. It looks to be a much simpler process than it used to be. Keep an eye out for the updated tutorials :)

EDIT:
I've written up a short doc with a brief analysis of the major changes that I've seen in the SDK. You can have a read of it here

Age of Chivalry CR1 was recently released on Steam. Known as Heroes & Legends, CR1 is a fairly big update to AOC, with 5 new maps and a bunch of other changes. Check out the patch notes, then download the mod on Steam.
CR1 represents a bit of a milestone for the team. We've finally managed to give ourselves a solid platform on which to build on. We've managed to get a well themed and well designed User Interface weapon, our Swingtrace code is pretty solid, we've got some great maps and a great core combat system to build on and Achievements and Stats for that extra bit of kick. Hopefully in the future you'll be seeing some great stuff from the team.
1.3.1 is currently in the works. Given that there don't seem to be any major issues, we're hoping that 1.3.1 will also be a bit of a content patch with additional Achievements and some new features. Keep an eye out for it in the coming months.
I'm hoping that, with the consent of the rest of the team, I can start up a bit of a development blog feature on the website, where I discuss some of the features we're looking at implementing and have players and forum users submit questions to the developers that we can discuss.

University has started again, after many months of holidays. This semester is looking really good, with Games & Interactivity (a proper modding subject YAY), Physics of Games, AI for Games and User Experience Design (blegh). Hopefully I'll be able to start throwing some of the stuff I'm playing around with up here soon. Once we start doing it, that is.

At the moment, Age of Chivalry is really my only serious project. Phoenix related stuff has slowed to a halt for me for various reasons. I've still got plenty of ideas floating around in my head that I'd like to work on, but right now its more of a time thing, especially with uni back. To me, my portfolio is still fairly disappointing, and its something I'd like to try and work on, but we'll see.

Its been a fair while since I've made a post here, but to be quite honest, not much has been happening. Been fairly busy with Age of Chivalry, and we're making good progress towards Content Release 1 (CR1), whenever that release may be.
I've personally been spending alot of my recent time working on some new particle effects for the mod, as well as implementing a new HUD and GUI. You can take a look at an interview with between our PR guy and myself here, complete with some bloody screenshots.

I passed all my subjects at university this semester, which is good. I was sweating a bit on my results for Java, but in the end, ended up passing it decently, which is what matters I guess.

Aside from that, nothing much else has been happening. I've spent a bit of time working on some new Phoenix tutorials, which you'll see around sometime soon. Still hoping to get a Tower Defense sample happening on the engine sometime soon.

Bye!

We released our first patch for Age of Chivalry yesterday on Steam! The patch includes a bunch of balance fixes, tweaks and bugfixes. Steam will automatically download the patch, so hit it up and head over to the forum and let us know what you think!
You can see the full changelog here

So I haven't had a chance to post this until just now, but five mods have been released on Steam, including Age of Chivalry!
The amount of people that have played the mod has totally overwhelmed us, and the amount of positive feedback we've heard from people both in-game and on the forums has been amazing. Hopefully this is just the start, and we'll continue to provide updates to the mod for everyone to enjoy.
To everyone who has downloaded and tried the mod, a BIG thank you from the team and me personally, it means alot to us and makes us so happy to see people out there and enjoying something that we've created.

Be EXCITED! You can now post comments on things! YAY!

So Uni started back a few weeks ago, which I somehow failed to mention. Its not like its a major part of my life or anything, dunno how I could forget
Good subjects this semester. Internet Technologies teaches us how to use the internet and write HTML/Javascript/CSS (so its easy, that makes it good). Writing for Interactive Narrative is as the name suggests. Principles of Game Design is more like 'Principles of Mapping for Unreal 3', which isn't such a bad thing. Once you actually learn what the hell ALLLL those fucking buttons do, Unreal 3 is a nice, well-rounded engine. It has its quirks, but so does everything. Finally, Programming in Java, which I'm already enjoying! Because its programming.
So, I guess, expect to see a few things in the upcoming weeks, including (but not limited to) Unreal Maps, and some random writing.

Speaking of writing, we were pointed to this link for Writing for Interactive Narrative. Have a look. You'll laugh.

I've finally decided a project to get down and dirty with on Phoenix. After a long, hard think of the kind of game that would A) be fun to make, B) be fun to play and C) demonstrate a bunch of different elements in the engine, I've settled on a Tower Defense style of game. It encompasses many different systems, but most of them aren't overly complex, and its a fun game to play, and all that stuff. So it makes for a nice sample. You'll see. I'll be making some regular-ish updates here once it really, properly gets underway.
Most of the stuff in regards to the importing workflow and all that stuff has drastically changed since my video tutorials, so I'll spend some time in the future remaking those so you can all see the awesome of the engine.

There was a post on the Steampowered forums recently with a Video of Head Tracking Techniques inside of Source. Its an interesting little video, and for anyone who has seen Johnny Lee's videos of head tracking with Wiimotes, and found them interesting, you should love this stuff. It gives a couple of small, basic uses of headtracking in games, but using webcam software rather than the Wiimote/IR stuff. Things like looking down sights, or peering around corners. Its definitely a glimpse as to where gaming is headed in the future.

On the non-computer front, Metallica released a new single. I've been a big Metallica fan for a few years now, but I'm undecided on this new stuff. Its a bit of a tease, really... the intro starts off pretty sweet, and sets up something that could be fairly epic. But when it comes to the vocals... they're very raw and uncut, and the lyrics themselves aren't that flash. The song has grown on me a little since I first heard it though, but it wasn't an instant 'fall in love' kind of thing thats happened with so much of their previous work.
Rise Against, my new bandlove, also released a new single, which is on their MySpace site. But I've sworn to hell and back that I'll never, ever post a MySpace link on this site. So look for it yourself.

I must provide an apology to my 2 and a half regular visitors for the recent downtime of my site. I recently got a new phone (for free), a Nokia E61, which supports all the usual SmartPhone stuff: Instant Messaging (MSN on the train makes the trip go so fast), web browsing, email etc. So Dad was trying to set up push email properly (so the exchange server at home would push it to my phone), and in the process broke IIS and had to reinstall Exchange, and I was WAY too lazy to reconfigure PHP on my site. But now its back up. So rejoice!

TIGSource (I believe I've mentioned them before) have started a new competition recently. Entitled Bootleg Demakes, the aim of the competition is to 'demake' a game without breaching anyones IP. Basically, it means taking an existing game and downgrade it to, say, a NES version.
Its a really interesting concept - one I'm not entering due to A) a lack of skillz and B) a lack of time, but theres some cool things coming out of it alread. A few personal favorites include:
Macarena of the Missing
WolfSD
flu1d
S.T.A.C.K.E.R.
SUPER 3D PORTALS 6

I recommend you check em all out.

In Mod news, it was recently revealed that a few mods had been offered Steamworks by Valve. A recent ModDB article explains it all. You'll see that Age of Chivalry, the mod I recently joined, is on that list :)

Until next time, happy modding, and if you're from any other country from Australia, I hope we smash you in the Olympics.

So those of you that know me will know I've been modding for nearly 4 years and dont REALLY have much to show for it. Experience and learning is all good, but if you don't have your name on a product...
I decided to leave the mod I was working on with ex-NF team members, CANVAS, and joined Age of Chivalry as a programmer. Needless to say, the mod has had a pretty successful release and is definitely going to do well in the near future, so as well as being able to offer the team something, I'm finally going to end up working on something that will be released. Yay!

So its gotten to 'That Time' in the University holidays where you've exhausted pretty much everything you can and want to do. The past few weeks I've been sleeping alot, not really doing much at all. So I decided to go on a bit of a movie binge for the past few weeks. Its a bit sad that I've lived 19 years and not seen classics such as Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption. But I've thoroughly enjoyed my movie binge - in fact I've seen probably 15 movies over the past 2 weeks or so. Personal favorite would HAVE to be David Finchers Se7en, a very dark, clever and truly disturbing movie. Definitely up there with my favorite movies of all time. Still got plenty to go over the next few weeks as well. Criminally I'm stil yet to see The Godfather, 2001: A Space Oddysseey, and any of the Indiana Jones movies.
That being said I DID go and see The Dark Knight last week. While I don't think it lived up to the hype at all, it was still a masterpiece of a movie. I still hate Christian Bale's Batman voice, Heath Ledger was pretty sweet, but again, if he was still alive, I'm not sure if his role as The Joker would be so highly acclaimed. Nonetheless, it was 10 bucks well spent and I'd recommend it to anyone who loves a bit of over-the-top superhero action with an insane villian.

Only about 2 weeks ago I made a blog post (the one below this one) about the new mod I was working on. Well, after a bit of critical thinking I've come to the tough decision of leaving the team. Its a bit disappointing that I've been modding for about 3 years now and still don't have a released product under my belt. Its much harder for coders than it is for artists and mappers - if a mod fails, artists still have all their models, textures and maps to throw into a portfolio. Us coders have very little to show from a failed product, and I think 3 years of mistakes - both leadership and coding-wise - is a long enough learning experience for anyone. I'm hoping to join an established team and end up with far less responsibilities than the other stuff I've worked on, especially given the other projects I'm persuing, plus University.

There was another ModCast recorded a few weeks back. For the first time, we had a go at recording the ModCast live. We had a decent turnout - around about 30 people - engaging the hosts and guests with questions, comments and just some generally interesting discussion in the chat room. You can have a listen to the recorded ModCast here. I'm not sure when the next live show will be, but I encourage everyone to roll up if you can, and participate in the it. We're happy to answer questions on air, and we'd love to have people call in with their own questions to us.

On the development side of things, I'm starting to get back into some stuff I've been wanting to do for a while.
Unfortunately the Orange Box SDK hasn't been updated with Shaders yet, so theres still no updates there, but it will come soon. I hope.
Myself and a few mates are looking to get together and work on a small Indie RPG that we want to enter into the IGF in a few years time. Its going to utilize the Phoenix engine, and as well as being some fun for us to develop, it'll be a great little project for some samples and documentation for the engine. Keep your eye on the site for updates on this game when it takes off.
And, as usual, some stuff I can't or don't want to talk about ;)

Until next time, ciao.

So I'm trying to update my site and blog far more often than I used to. I've said this many times and never really achieved it, but we'll try again.
I'm reading alot mew news lately than what I used to, thanks to a great little program a mate introduced me to called FeedDemon for RSS Feeds. I was never a big RSS kinda guy, but upon discovering that all my favorite sites - Gamasutra, GameDev.net, Shacknews and XKCD, amongst others - all had RSS Feeds, and that I could get notified for new stuff rather than remembering to look, I was sold. SOMEONE will say 'Wraiyth you n00b RSS has been awesome for ages', but its something that I've never needed to really think about. So, with that, hopefully I'll be able to point out some cool stuff floating around the net, present some opinions and ideas as well as talking about my own work.

I invested in a copy of Lost Winds a couple of days ago on WiiWare. Its a fun little game. For 1000 Wii points, you get around 2 hours of interesting gameplay that utilizes the Wiimote well. Seeing this game on any other platform wouldn't do it justice. Its gotten some very solid reviews, and for anyone with a Wii I recommend that you give it a go

TIGSource (The Independent Game Source) and The Indie Games blog are two of the sites that I've hit up on my RSS Feed lately too. I've never really been big on the Indie scene, but its something I'm starting to get into and keep an eye on. Some of the stuff that comes out of the indie developers is very thought provoking, unique and can really put an interesting spin on gameplay mechanics or ideas that we take for granted.
I want to point out a few titles here. Muslim Massacre is actually a hard little 2D shooter, a bit of a throwback to the days of the NES. Its pretty quick and intense, and the gameplay could easily be applied to any theme, but its one of those nice controversial ones that you'd expect the media to go up in arms about (see Super Columbine Massacre RPG). The game feature 6 levels, suicide bombers and all that kind of stuff. An interesting title that is actually a bit of fun, albeit controversial and inappropriate. Then again, what you you expect from someone from Something Awful
TeeWorlds is Soldat-cross-Worms open source 2D Shooter. The key here is Open Source. The game is fun to play, and for something that could probably be sold, its great to see the dev team make it open source. I've checked the game out and its alot of fun to play. It has rocket launchers, grapping hooks and ninja swords. How can that NOT be fun!?
Finally, there was a recent update from World of Goo. Anyone who paid attention to IGF last year would recognize that its the game that spawned from the physics-puzzle-construction game Tower of Goo. Take a look. I dare you.

From my side of things, most people will know that I'm working on a new mod now. Entitled CANVAS (http://www.canvasmod.com/ - no, thats not blood, its paint), most people don't know what its about. And thats the way its going to stay. Theres no official announecment of the mod, or any of that stuff. A few of the guys from NightFall are part of the core team, so we don't want to make the same mistake and generate alot of hype and have to meet some level of community expectation. I've been working on various things for it, but I'm always very happy to get a major tangible change in, such as a a HUD. Yes, Alyx is looking at you.

I wrote in my last post about Wiimote stuff. Well, it appears that the Wii Update 3.3 has already been cracked and the Twilight Hack used to load Homebrew stuff has been updated to work. I'm still trying to borrow a copy of Twilight Princess from someone, as I'm too poor to buy it, but I'm still looking forward to playing around with all this stuff. I'll have updates when I do! I promise.