It's been a while. From the vast amounts of threads asking about an update, I gathered that people were concerned about the status of the mod. For the people who missed this thread, I'll give a brief explanation of the situation. Sniper hasn't been able to work on Sven Co-op because of his new job and this is also the reason why hasn't been any news updates. He hopes he can continue working on the mod as soon as the christmas holidays arrive, hopefully giving him some free time. The coding part is essential for a release in the future.

But we havn't been fully idle. Mappers and modelers are working on new content for 3.5, one of which I'm going to present to you now: The new Sandstone! I've reworked the architecture and added new places to go, including the inside of buildings. But most important is the change of gameplay. On SvenCo-op 3.0 players were often frustrated by Sandstone for it's endless respawning Grunts and clumsy Engineer. None of this remains in the new version. The map has been devided into sectors, which the players need to sweep. As soon the objective in a certain sector has been destroyed, Grunts will stop spawning there. To make sure the map is still a challenge, the Grunts will spawn faster, and also the Engineer's bomb planting sequence can be interrupted. Players must protect him while he plants the bomb.

Next to this the AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been greatly improved. In playtests Sandstone showcased the new AI and it's abilities. The Engineer are guarded by a friendly Medic and a Soldier and they will follow Engineer whereever the player leads him. This way the Medic is always around to revive the Engineer in case he dies before he was able to plant the bomb. Grunts will also be able to patrol the map and find their way around better to flank their enemies. In some cases Beta Testers experienced a positive side effect of the new AI, where the Engineer and his allies raided two sectors without any help from players. The same AI has been applied to the enemy Grunts, so expect fierce battles against a smarter and faster foe!

Ofcourse, it's hard to express my excitement about the new Sandstone with just words and pictures. That's why me and Goanna put together a gameplay video. It shows the gameplay in the current Beta stage of the mod. As you can see from the video, there are still some issues regarding models and coding we need to resolve, but the it's quite representive for the final product. It also shows some of the new features:

• New third player camera (with dynamic crosshair for better aiming)
• Revive
• New models and weapons 
• Grunts are able to shoot full auto while running

You can download a high-res version of the movie here.

In other news: the Ragemap has been released. It's a community project where each mapper could add his part to a map. The only catch: you had only 1 hour to work on your part. This resulted into an interresting map, with lots of randomness. Credits go out to all mappers who participated and especially to Lurid for the orgional idea and Jpolito for rounding up the bugs and making it work. You can find the thread here.

In the next news update, I'll show some of the new weapon model renders. They are currently all being reworked by toadie, Pete and War_nuker. And thanks to all the people who congratulated me on my birthday today! Again, no birthday map this year, but let this update be my "present" for the community.