Before I mention the main topic of today's update, I'd like to talk a little about the progress of the game. I just got finished playing a three-hour, 14-man testing session through Juarez, Durandal, Asylum, Mine and Rubble. Updated versions of a few of those maps went out over the past week and we expect this to continue as we look at ways of polishing up the final product. Our mappers have been working hard on doing their final lighting passes, adding HDR and color correction. As I've told those who have asked me recently, FAS has come a long way since the beginning of this year. And with recent developments, our rate of progress in many areas is only getting better.

Which brings me to the main topic: new team members. We recently tapped long-time community activist TheUltra4sshole (aka "U4") to serve as both our Public Relations director and military advisor. It's in the PR role, however, that we feel we needed him the most. Many of you know we haven't had a real PR type position on the team and it's been suggested for a long time that we add one. We agreed. His job is going to be all about assisting us in talking with the community and getting the word out about Firearms: Source. I've given him great authority to do this job more or less how he sees fit, which means you can expect more from him than just a talking head. In fact, he's already taken the lead on starting an Alpha Tester's Journal, which allows our talented testing crew to make posts about their experiences playing the game. If you have a question, concerns about the game, want to interview a team member, etc - U4 is your guy.

We also brought on board the supremely talented weapons modeler Schmung. Since accepting our invitation, he's completed three models and is working on several more as we speak. As you'll see from the coming news updates on his work, the guy is extremely talented, and we're very lucky to have someone of his caliber on the team with us. The more detail-oriented among you may recall that some of his work has shown up in places like the Insurgency mod.

In addition to Schmung, we've also hired four new modelers and skinners to serve on our affiliated development crew. They've been hard at work replacing some of our older and less aesthetically pleasing weapons. All of this is being slated for inclusion in future news updates, which I hope you can see by now, we are committed to bringing you on a (more or less) regular basis. It's my firm belief that we should be building our mod around the FA community, and I invite everyone out there from FA past and present to take part in helping us.

Speaking of the community, there's a few interesting community events I'd like to share. First up is FAS's first-ever news website, the FAS Report, run by forum member Grunt. He painstakingly goes through seemingly every post the team and testers make on our forums to scrape up every bit of information he can. In other words, if you're looking for more information on FAS, that's probably a good site to check. (Even the team reads it, and we know what's going on!)

Next up are a few topics on the aforementioned Alpha Tester's Journal forum. From Our Sabbath, Pork Fried Squirrel tells us a little about the game from last Sunday. Here's a preview:

"Juarez came up next, and with a small redesign, things flowed perfectly. The latin flavor came with just enough spice and a nice blend of machineguns and sniper fire to keep things interesting. There was no clear cut winning side in this one. Although it was still nice to have a loud, fully automatic, long-barreled MG to sit on a rooftop with, it was hard to dodge the quicker assault rifles, peppering the nearby shingles with the varmint rounds. Although it was insanely fun to follow 2 steps behind StandingCow, only to have him stop in front of me so I could knife him. Nice fellow."

Those damn lunatics and their knives...

There's also the What do you expect? thread, which is a discussion on what the community expects out of Firearms: Source. Feel free to make a reply and let us know; believe it or not, most of the team reads the forums on a daily basis. In addition, be sure to check out Back in the day, where we reminisce about "the good old days" - like the massive chokepoint wars on ps_sand and ps_dangerzone, the dual-wielding M11s, the pathetically weak silenced MP5K, the laser dot on the MP5A4, the Beta-C mag M4A1, the full-auto M16, the original cti maps, tp_boat, and many others... if you're an old-timer, let us know what you remember and what you hope FAS will bring back for you.

We're still looking for new team members if you happen to be interested. There's still a lot of work to be done before release, and if you happen to be good at modeling, skinning, animating, mapping, 2D skyboxes, sounds, whatever the case may be, don't hesitate to drop us a line. My e-mail is hitman@firearms-source.com.

That's it for today. I leave you with this demented quote from escaped psychopath and FAS enthusiast Naota:

"Remember, enough games of FAS and no longer will you have a conscience. Where once sat an angel, divine and pure to guide you, or a devil, canny and heartless to allow you to deceive yourself, there we will repose in their absence. The vermilion-drenched crucifix upon one shoulder, the psychotic rodent clutching imploringly at the other... The knife or the grenade? His spine or his heart? Whatever should we make of this kindly fellow's body? Should we eat it? If fire is really so friendly, how come nobody wants to meet it? Should we be friends with the inferno? Decisions, DECISIONS.

(And remember, don't feed the squirrels!)

What do you think of our update today? Do you have any ideas on how we can better communicate with the the community? Would you like to see the marriage license between U4 and Teedy? Please post a comment and share your thoughts!

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This weekend's update is on the Beretta 92FS. Clocking in at 3 credits and firing 15+1 rounds of 9mm, with an optional silencer, the Beretta makes a wonderful choice as a backup weapon. In testing, it's proven to be one of the most-used and well-liked pistols.

The silencer can be attached and detached using the alt-fire key. You do not need stealth to obtain a silencer; we don't believe in tying weapons to abilities, as the divide between those concepts is what helps to separate Firearms from most other class-based shooters. Instead, attaching the silencer makes small changes to how the weapon handles, and anyone with the Stealth skill will have their kills "hidden" from enemy players if they execute such kills with the silencer attached. Thus, the Beretta 92FS makes a great infiltration weapon. If you're trying to sneak into an enemy base or flag area, you can do so without alerting the enemy team, as all your kills with it will be shrouded. The weapon is deathly quiet, too, and can only be heard from a foot or so away.

The video above shows a few seconds of a player using the 92FS to infiltrate an enemy-held parking garage on tc_asylum. The other players in the video are dev team members Shinobi, DysPatch and Airwolf, and testing crew member TheUltra4sshole.

What about using it without the silencer? With the silencer detached, the 92FS still stacks up very well against the other handguns. With a 15 round magazine it can fire much longer than the 1911, Desert Eagle and Anaconda, and it's cheap too, at only 3 credits. Despite firing the "weak" 9mm, we've given it a (relatively) hefty damage output and thus it competes quite nicely at short range and makes a suitable backup weapon no matter what the circumstances. I regularly use the 92FS in my own testing setups and find it well balanced versus my other favorite handgun, the Colt M1911A1.

And now for tester quotes! FAS Military advisor and OIF veteran TheUltra4sshole:

"I can't possibly say enough about the M9. I pick it with every load-out I can. It's worth every credit you pay, but you have to work for it. By itself, it's an OK-ish weapon, since it's only strength is it's mag capacity, but as a backup weapon it's absolutely perfect.

Since I'm one of those players that run around as much as possible in an effort to not get shot, I often don't hit crap with my primary weapon. Sure, with my primary I get a few good hits that might take my opponent down below 50 hp, but when my primary's dry, out comes the trusty M9...with the unsuppressed sound we have for it right now, it's immensely satisfying to pump out as many rounds as you can--as fast as you can--through it.

Seriously, I get a maniacal smile on my face every time I dump an entire mag of a FAMAS and get the timing of my clicks right to do the same with the M9...I don't even care if I win or lose, the other guy HAD to be thinking "That sounded awesome."

The M9 definitely is a fun multiplier for me. And that's what this mod is all about. Having fun."

Alpha tester Mirsky says:

"There's no finer experience than sneaking up behind a clueless sniper, whipping out the silenced M9 and planting two shots in his cranium. Sure, some people might consider using a knife but the phut phut noise and the blood splatter evict a more visceral response."

Psychopathic asylum inmate Naota says:

"You. Why? Why won't you speak to me? I pull the trigger, and you do naught but deceive, lie to the world. What sort of beast of slaughter are you that DOES NOT ROAR?! ...You pretend that you're one of those... deaf-mutes, don't you? That way you don't have to have any 'goddam stupid useless conversations' with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell you something they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to you. You would be nothing but a killer hidden amidst the rye. But that is where you're mistaken, that is where you erred.

Even if you bite off your own metal tongue, even if your pathetic stinging can be drowned out by a man's dying breath, ultimately you can only fail. You can't silence everything, least of all me. Would you deafen me with silence? Impossible, the screams will guide me onwards. Would you blot out the sun with your lightless skin of blackened steel? Better still, I would find my way home with the keenest of all inks. I would paint myself a crimson road to walk, and tread gleefuly upon the skulls of men piled high beneath my boots."

So, what can we look forward to for the next update? I think it's about time I made that news post about how badly the FAS Team kicked the testers' asses in the first ever scrimmage of a Firearms game on the Source engine. You know, that must have been a while ago, because we weren't nearly this far ahead in build numbering - and still no rematch notice. I guess they learned their lesson!

Like last time, here's the help-wanted section. :-) We still need modelers of any kind, texture artists, and animators - especially ones who can do character animation or character modeling. Mappers would be welcomed too. If you think you have anything you can contribute, don't hesitate to drop us a line.

Credits: The renders above were provided by Shinobi. The weapon was modeled by SiD, skinned by Stoke and animated by thisismyname09. Airwolf provided the screenshots and Hitman recorded the video.

What do you think of our update today? Do you have thoughts on our Beretta 92FS implementation? What do you think about our video? Please post a comment and share your thoughts!

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Before I get to the main update, I'd like to take a minute to thank our veterans and service members. While those of us in America are enjoying a 3-day weekend, there are many of us who aren't so fortunate. They are deployed throughout the world, from the middle east to hotspots in Asia, standing guard against those would threaten our way of life. Some will end up paying the ultimate sacrifice, far away from family, friends and country. Let's not forget the thousands of men and women, from the many free nations of the earth, who have paid the ultimate price on our behalf.

Alpha Testing is coming along quite well, though we recently had a setback with the servers (since corrected). We've knocked out a host of small bugs since the last update and continue to polish up the current version of the game in preparation for release. Updates to Rubble, Forest, Durandal and Juarez have been made based on observations from large-scale gameplay testing, and weapons continue to be tweaked. Speaking of weapons, we've hit a milestone; the 33rd weapon went into the game a few builds ago and we still have plenty more to throw in. Thanks to a trio of skilled weapon modelers, the addition of a skinner and of course, our expert animator thisismyname09, we're on track to make sure FAS includes more weaponry than almost any other shooter on the market.

We're also working hard on maps. A lot of our Firearms: Half-Life fans are looking forward to seeing their favorite levels ported, and we're not going to disappoint. There's actually quite a few maps, both new and old, that are in the works but haven't yet been revealed to the public. At last count, we included 14 levels in our latest alpha build and that doesn't include test maps or maps that are still under construction. You can see more screenshots on our Screenshots Page, which was recently updated with images of our latest build. (Although everything you see is still a WIP and subject to change.)

The team hopes to be presenting these updates and more in the coming weeks and months as specific news items.

Here's where I post the help-wanted section. :-) We're making great progress, but new team members are always welcomed aboard. We still need modelers of any kind, texture artists, and animators - especially ones who can do character animation or character modeling. Mappers would be welcomed too. If you think you have anything you can contribute, don't hesitate to drop us a line.

What do you think of our update today? Do you have suggestions as to what new weapons we should add beyond the 33rd weapon mentioned above? What maps would you like to see ported from the original Firearms, and what new map concepts would you like to see included? Please post a comment and share your thoughts!

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Ah, back again so soon? I told you we'd be making updates more frequently. :)

Today's post is our official showcase of Airwolf's ps_forest. But before I get into that too much, I want to post something that I've been meaning to hit on for a few months and just keep forgetting about - and that would be the interview the current Firearms: Half-Life Team Leader did with our art lead, Shinobi, and I. Actually, it's a little more than an interview; it's an interview with a lot of extra information and a few screenshots. He took a lot of time out of his day putting this together and I'd be doing his efforts a disservice if I didn't make a link for our fans to read. Firearms: Source, Anatomy of a Mod.

Alright, back to Forest. This map has come a long way since the version I first played when Airwolf and the other Incursion (formerly Firearms: Revival) team members merged with us. In fact, this is probably one of the prettiest outdoor maps I can recall playing on the Source engine, ever. And unlike most other outdoor maps in existance, Airwolf's map has actual concealment - and lots of it - without forcing major framerate hits onto people with low end computers. All of this, from the incredible aesthetics and skybox, to the over 100 different varieties of trees and bushes and even the buildings in the map, are 100% Firearms: Source - nothing is taken from anything done by Valve.

Gameplay-wise, Forest offers up something you won't see in any other map we have, and probably won't find in any other mod out there for the Source engine. And that's the concealment factor. With the level of undergrowth, there's enough concealment available that sneaky players can literally slip by the enemy's front lines either to hit objectives in the rear, or more commonly, to get behind enemy players and silently take them out with knives and silenced weapons. This kind of sneaky, stealthy play also lends itself to terrifying, adrenaline-rushing bouts with knife-wielding maniacs chasing you through the bushes as you desperately try to flee. Combined with over a year's worth of route and chokepoint tweaking, exploit busting, and general flow enhancements, Forest's well-refined gameplay combines with the concealment factor to offer an awesomely unique map. I suspect Forest will end up being a true classic of the FA series and my hat is off to Airwolf for all the work he has put into it.

Like last time, there's always the interesting tester commentary on the map that we just had to post for your... entertainment. With regard to this first quote, Forest features a lily pond in the middle of the map, and in the center there's a raised platform with the center flag. Evil players like to hide in the water and use knives (since guns can't fire underwater) to murder people as they make their way towards the objective. Here's what our very own Naota had to say:

"Sorry, friend. You can't scream without any air. I imagined what it must seem like to the fools up above, trading leaden death carelessly and impartially. Where was the fun in that? Like a school of dead fish floating up after some great catastrophe, one by one the bodies bobbed up around the solitary platform, spilling crimson from open necks, backs, whatever I thought would be interesting. They were probably mortified up there in the sunshine, watching comrades and friends wash up one by one like so much trash.

Not me, I have a sense of humour, and I have a knife. I couldn't stop laughing at the thought. Twelve inches of solidified death, blessed by the devil himself. The tool of the first murder, and Cain would be proud. They said that I was insane, that I was making a mistake by dropping my rifle. They were wrong.

This is my world, and your guns don't work here."

Naota also volunteered to write the majority of our About Page, which I updated a few days ago and I highly recommend everyone take a look at. Tester Bobo The Clown writes:

"It's kind of like when you were little, and your parents took you to the park and you saw that little bunny hop away under the bushes and you chased it and then got lost so you ran around terrified until someone found you. It's like that except the people who find you have guns. And there's no happy ending. It's a lot like that. With more blood."

FAS Military advisor and OIF veteran TheUltra4sshole:

"... Just as much fun as sniping is running around with a shotgun, sprinting from one bush or rock to the next, making your way to the opposing team's side of the pond so you can sneak up behind them and give them a dome full of 00 buck. After your cover's blown and the other team knows your tricks, just switch to your knife, dive in, and perforate anyone who tries to come after you or the middle point."

From the action shots you see pictured above, take note of the Beretta 92FS and G36C. Both are top notch models with awesome animation jobs. Special thanks to Thisismyname09 for the 92FS animations. We hope to be bringing you more of that real soon.

If you happen to be a talented developer and are interested in being a part of the team, please don't hesitate to contact me. We are especially interested in character modelers and character animators, but if you don't happen to have those skills, don't let that turn you away. We have plenty of room for anyone who thinks they can positively contribute.

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Today's update is our official showcase of the Colt M16A2. Modeled by the supremely-talented SiD, one of the guys who helped found Firearms: Revival in 2004, this baby is truly beautiful. Stoke's skin and thisismyname's animations add the final touches, and from our use of it in-game over the past month I'd have to say it's one of our most visually appealing guns.

The M16A2 fills an interesting niche in our lineup. Our other assault rifles are all automatics, hence they're very bullet-hungry and feed into the spray-and-pray style of fighting. The M16A2, on the other hand, does not have a full-auto option. To use it effectively one must take careful, aimed shots on either semi-auto or three-round burst. This may sound like a drawback since the rate of fire is artifically limited by the burst option, but keep in mind you get accuracy boosts for using semi and burst (and that's on any weapon in our inventory, not just the M16A2). While credit cost, base accuracy and other handling data aren't fine-tuned yet, so far in testing the M16A2 has proven to be a well-liked niche weapon for those preferring a blend of precision firepower and volume at a reasonable price.

In a recent thread we asked our testers to provide some insight on the M16A2. One of them, US Army veteran and FAS military advisor U4, has this to say:

"I actually like it [the M16] because since you gotta fire all 30 rounds one click at a time, you're typically still shooting at the guy after he's reloaded twice. That's when I get killed 95% of the time...reloading. I wish REAL M16's were as awesome as ours...".

Long-time FA veteran Mirsky and current alpha tester chimed in with his own opinion:

"M16 - smoother than a cashmere codpiece".

(There were also comments on frogs, New Jersey and DysPatch... I'll spare you the pain, though).

As you may have guessed, the FAS M16A2 is based much more off the later versions of Firearms than the earlier versions. In the oldschool versions of FA, the M16 was just called the M16, no "A2" or "A1" suffixes, was full-auto capable and carried an M203. Our M16 will not have an M203, at least not right now, and being the A2 model will not have an auto option. You can see our current credit pricing for it, along with other details, on our Weapons Page.

Alright Hitman, that's all great - but just one gun in the update? How's progress coming along in general? Well, I'd love to go into a lot more detail about all of these things, but I'll save that for another time. :-) Stay tuned, as we plan on doing these showcases much more often from now on and all the way up until release. Also, be sure to thank Thisismyname for the awesome animation job - he's been working his ass off getting us these new weapons to test for the private alphas.

If you happen to be a talented developer and are interested in working for Firearms, please don't hesitate to contact me.

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the new Firearms: Source website! Alright, so technically, this isn't a new look - it's the design of our old website, which was based very heavily off the design I originally did for www.firearmsmod.com in 2001 when I was first hired by the FA Team under Berzerker. I'm proud to say this "new" site was done from scratch using only Notepad and is W3C compliant in XHTML 1.0 standard.

Some of you will recall that we were undergoing private alpha testing starting last summer, and that we closed it down in December. Well, we've revved that up again after we gave ourselves some time to re-think parts of our gameplay model. Since Issa stepped down, there have been approximately 240 entries in our build changelog, not including map changes. We've done a massive quantity of work and testing over the last two months and as our testers can attest to, it's really starting to all come together. In fact, two weeks ago we had a 16-player game on the new Durandal and an 18-player game on the new River this past Sunday. You can see screenshots from these testing sessions over at the new Screenshots section.

For those asking about a release... we're still a little ways off yet. But make no mistake, progress has been steady regardless. Even though this team is very small and overworked, we make up for our size when it comes to motivation and dedication. We have 24 guns in-game and fully skinned, animated and coded. There are "nomenclature" animations for each weapon, the bipod code is fully functional along with the associated animations and HUD art, claymores have been done for many months now, and all the skills have been working as intended since early last year. That includes mortars, and we've even thrown in a new way to call in fire. Without giving too much away, it's actually a rewarding job to be a forward observer now.

We've also thrown in some unique maps to truly evolve the FA series beyond just remakes and ports. While many of us love River, Durandal and Coldwar and want to see them on the beauty that is Source, we aren't really evolving the game if we're just rehashing the same maps over and over. So to help mix things up a bit and give you guys some truly new and original content, we've added in ps_juarez, ps_forest and tc_asylum. You can read about and see more of those on our Maps Page. We've also have two more unique maps done by expert level designers undertone and DysPatch that we'll hopefully be showing to you very soon, along with several remakes of classic maps that are as-of-yet unannounced. We're also working hard on getting a lot of new art assets in the game that not even our testing crew happens to know exists - believe me, there's a lot going on behind the scenes!

In the coming weeks you're going to be seeing more site updates as we keep beating the drums of war on our road to RC-1.0. We're all very excited to have gotten this far, and while we're still a ways off from releasing, things have truly started to come together since December. I'd like to thank all of you for your support of FAS over the last few months, and be sure to stop by our forums and say hello while you're here. We appreciate any feedback, suggestions and input you may have about the game, from FA vets and newcomers alike.

We're still looking for team members! We have a small but highly-motivated crew put together and a ton of completed work, but we can still use your help. If you're a weapons modeler, skinner, character animator, texture artist or level designer, and like what we're offering as a mod and think you have a talent that'll help us make it even better, please don't hesitate to contact me.

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