Several years ago, we developed the tradition of releasing a "Christmas Special" each year on our website. In this year's news release, we would like to give you some insights into the progress of our map development by showing you some fly-through videos. Click on the preview image to see the respective video:

#1 Fallen City	#2 Maceria	#3 Roswell 47	#4 Abydos

It is that time again. Holiday season is almost upon us bringing joy, presents and food for all... who celebrate it. If you don't: fear not - just like previous years you'll get something special from us. Everyone will for that matter. You'll have to wait a couple more day though, but the time is nigh.
Of course we're not just posting this news to tease you we also have something to sweeten your wait and it's quite the thing actually. Oh scratch that it's super awesome in its own right! See for yourself...

Today we're going to present to you our FN-P90 - the flagship weapon of the Stargate series. Small, lightweight and with a high firing rate this "PDW" (Personal Defense Weapon) is the weapon of choice for SG-1 and can be spotted in almost every episode.


That and the high standard of quality we're going for with our game means we can't just throw in some laxly crafted P90 model all willy-nilly. Reason enough to add some crazy features such as a realistically simulated magazine - it being transparent and all:


This way the player not only gets ammo feedback from the HUD but can also see it right there on the weapon itself.

The quality of the model itself is important as well. To that end our creation process - much like AAA studios - had the P90 built as a high-poly and a low-poly model which then allowed us with the use of todays technology to transfer fine detail (round corners, scratches, screws, etc.) from the high-poly model to a 'normal map' texture. Put on the low-poly model this normalmap produces the illusion of a highly detailed weapon.

Left selection	Wireframe	Right selection
Drag the cursor over the image to blend between the selected images.

We did not stint on textures either. Next to the diffuse map (color information) and the normal map (surface detail) we have specular and gloss maps. The former controls how much each part of the weapon reflects light while the latter dictates the softness of the reflection. That way we can better define the materials that make up our P90.

We hope you've enjoyed this news and would welcome it if you'd vote us into the ModDB Top 100!
Stay tuned for more updates this month. See you soon!

We have shown you a lot of maps that we have created for our mod so far but most of them are merely inspired by and not taken directly from the series. This time however we'd like to introduce you to our version of Abydos, one of the most well known locations in the Stargate universe which we have been working on for quite some time now.


These screenshots show the current progress of the map our now lead mapper Redline is taking care of. One of the main game modes you will be playing on it - Assault, more on this another day - has the Goa'uld Anubis attacking the planet, sending his Jaffa on a quest to find the Eye of Ra. It is the Tau'ri's job to prevent them from steeling the Eye and getting it back on Anubis' ship.


Those pictures have been added to our gallery - there you can view them again along with a short desciption.
We'll keep you posted as we update major things such as the sand texture or the skybox!