Ham and Jam – A Commonwealth Forces World War II mod for Half Life 2

Airborne, interviews and the dev process.

September 15th, 2011 by Jed | Category: Monthly Updates

Time goes by quickly and I hadn’t realised it’s been three months since we last posted an update. Sorry about that.

I know we talked about a release delay of “weeks” but as usual I grossly under-estimated the lack of free time myself and the team would have this summer. Anyway, with this update I’m glad to say I can bring you some news of positive progress so lets start off with the good stuff!

Commonwealth Airborne Forces player models.

I mentioned in our last update that one of the things that we really needed to get done was the Commonwealth Airborne Forces models. This was a key requirement of our Pegasus Bridge map and something that was very close to my heart.

I’m pleased to say the base modelling and texturing are done and we’re already started the process of getting them in-game. Three of the team – myself, Soren and Lasse – worked on the model and it was certainly a labour of love for me.

Soren was responsible for the 3D model and high-definition sculpt for the normal map, I created the texture for the distinctive Denison smock and Lasse created the rest of the texture for the model, helmet and Bergen rucksack.

It took a lot of work, especially to capture the distinctive look of the smock and we went all out to get it right. I’m really pleased with the results. The screen shots are taken from the Source model viewer so you can exactly how it will look in game. Sadly the detail in the normal maps is hard to make out in a still image so I’ve included a render to give you some idea of the detail.
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Stand down – Operation delayed.

June 14th, 2011 by Jed | Category: Monthly Updates

It’s probably not gone un-noticed that we missed our planned release date of 6th June. I’m sorry about that and let me apologise for the shabby way I handled the news by not making an official blog post until now. The delay is somewhat indicative of the reasons we missed the deadline.

To get to the point quickly – As mentioned before we’re a very small team with a lot of real-life commitments and though we worked very hard towards the planned launch date we simply ran out of time for the few last tasks that need to be done. There was some consideration to releasing the game “as-is” but I, and certainly others, wanted to put just a little more polish on a few things and make sure that we make the best first impression we can.

So what is the situation? Well, the delay isn’t as bad as it sounds. We probably need another 3 weeks just to finish of a few small things that are important to game play and the ethos of the mod as a whole. I know some of us have a lot going on personally (heck, I’m trying to move house!) so 3 weeks should be enough to get things finished without putting to much stress on people.

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The countdown to D-Day

February 25th, 2011 by Jed | Category: Monthly Updates

Our apologies for the obvious lack of recent updates about Ham and Jam. The past three months have been very chaotic what with John leaving us to work at Crytek and myself working away from home a lot. It’s never easy when the team leads aren’t around and what little time available had has gone into production rather than the PR side of things and keeping the website up-to-date.

Ham and Jam has been a chaotic project through and through. It’s been almost four years since we started. Of those four years we lost almost a year and a half trying to use the original HL2 engine and then porting it over to HL2:EP1. We cautiously experimented with porting to the Orange Box engine too but given past experience decided to forget it and focus on getting the game finished.

We’ve also suffered from various team members coming and going due to their circumstances changing. Real-life always take a priority and over four years many of us have graduated and now need to focus on our jobs and some have had children and need to focus on their family. Ham and Jam was always meant to be a hobby and as such, it often has to take a back seat for some.

So with all this wistful retrospection, what the heck is happening with Ham and Jam?

Well brace yourselves.

We’ve set a release date.

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