(Update written in haste -- sorry for any mistakes)

ModDB.com's Golden Spanner Awards results are in, and Sven Co-op came in at 5th place for Mod of the Year - Pretty nice!

"What the hell is Sven still doing here? When you've made something good you last for a while - like the latest pop hit from an American Idol winner. When you are great, people enjoy hearing your song 20 years later - long live the eighties!!! ..."

Click here to check out all the different categories/winners!

Sorry to everyone waiting for e-mail from me, I've been behind lately :/. I'm moving soon, and my main PC was actually sent off to my new address a while ago. There were storms over here just under a fortnight ago, causing power outages which, in turn, messed up my computer (despite my surge protector)... Spent almost a week running about trying to get it fixed (roads being closed due to flooding didn't help any), all while I should have been packing.

Finally got it sorted out (thanks Brent!), but I've been flat out preparing for the move since then... only about 24 hours before I have to leave, now, and it may take a while for me to get an Internet connection working once I arrive :/. Trying to get what e-mails I can answered now, but I'm afraid that anyone I don't manage to get to may end up having to wait even longer for a reply... apologies to anyone affected by this :(.

Just to let everyone know what's going on:

Sniper, Sven Co-op's lead programmer, was recently involved in a serious car crash. Another vehicle ran a red light, colliding with Sniper's vehicle and causing it to careen headfirst into a telephone pole. Sniper's mother was in the car at the time, and was hospitalised after the accident -- it sounds as if she should be released soon, though, so hopefully it wasn't for anything life-threatening.

Sniper's knees were smashed into the glove compartment when the car hit the telephone pole, and one of his kneecaps were broken... thankfully, he suffered no other serious injury. He mentioned on the Team forums: "It scared the hell out of me, and if I didn't wear my seatbelt or if we didn't have airbags, I would be dead right now". He's currently unable to stand without crutches, and will be stuck in a leg immobilizer for the next two months.

As far as I know, the other driver was uninjured.

In any case, if anyone feels like offering a prayer or faith-neutral "thinking of you"-type gesture for their swift and complete recovery, it really wouldn't go amiss, in my opinion.

We'll probably post some more information once we have it, by the way... Sniper's intending to get a picture of what remains of his car, for one thing.

Edit: Here are the photos mentioned earlier.

Before (not Snipers car, but looks identical):

After:

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Hopefully everyone didn't get too drunk.

Sven Co-op for Half-Life 1: v3.5 Bronze is getting really close to beta testing. I'm trying to finish up all of the new mapping and gameplay-related entities for the release. There will be a lot of new functionality brought to the table.

Also, we didn't forget about you Neil Manke. With a lot of hard work from Commando, They Hunger Co-op is finished. Unfortunately, it will depend on the new v3.5 entities so that we can deliver the experience properly. I'm talking about the weapon scripting of course, and if all goes well it just might make it into v3.5 Bronze.

As far as Sven Co-op II goes, we've come into some hurdles with the SDK. We're waiting for some sort of SDK update apparently. I believe this was a similar problem that the Dystopia Mod Team had encountered.

Nev, our main programmer for Sven Co-op II, has made a lot of progress though. Single player works excellently over multiplayer, and we also have seamless map transitions working perfectly. For instance, you will be able to carry over your weapons, ammo, health, and everything else from the previous map when you go into a transition. Anyhow, it's going well so far, we've had a good number of full-team tests about a month or so ago.

One major thing that's holding us back though, is our current lack of team members to complete new artwork. We have a lot of things finished in the program code, but new animations and models to complement them aren't done yet. We're still looking for talented and dedicated people to join.