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

A bumper Christmas post.

December 24th, 2009 by John | Category: Monthly Updates

It’s the time of the year where mod development naturally slows, team members are currently slogging it home to their parents to be fattened up with mince pies and mulled wine all over the world. This week also holds our last internal beta test of 2009. Feels weird that this year we’ve done over 100 tests and in the back of your mind you think “Have we actually gotten anywhere?”. The answer is yes! The downside of regular tests is you never really see the mod evolve if you’re active in it, however when you flip your version of the mod back a month or two via SVN, the difference is amazing.

As we plough headlong in 2010 what can we/you look forward to? A public release in some shape or form for certain. When? Who knows, but rest assured when you read a date on the site that we’ve been ready for a good while before and have been solidly testing the mod to hopefully have a smooth release *touch wood*

Back to this year though, things have been progressing quite nicely. Spine has finished all the overview maps (we’re showing two in this update, the largest and smallest) for all the levels due to be released in v1.0 and is back on texture making duties, cranking out signs and posters like a Norwegian sweatshop. Weapon textures are being finalised (you can see bits of the WIP MG34 in the images) and prop models are being churned out by Cpt. Ukulele at a rate of knots. He finished off the Horsa glider models for Pegasus in a matter of days, something that had eluded 3 other modellers for months.

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November News.

November 20th, 2009 by John | Category: General News,Monthly Updates

Last month we showed off what the new guys were making and they’ve continued making progress, with the MG34 and MP40 currently in their capable hands. Once they (they being Jenn0_Bing and Rick_D) have done those, then all that’s left is the Enfield and a few minor tweaks to the K98 and Bren’s.

Yes I did say Bren’s as in multiple…

Cpt. Ukulele has also been hard at work with the never ending requests of prop models following on from his assault on the door handles. We’ve also had some fantastic help from some voice actors so you’ll be belting out orders in British, German, Canadian and Polish! We’d love for some more German voice actors to get in touch though.

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A little bit of help goes a long way.

October 08th, 2009 by John | Category: Monthly Updates

Last month we sent out a plea for some guys to help us finish off the mod. Luckily for us at least two people were listening. We welcome aboard Jenn0_Bing and Cpt. Ukulele to help us finish off the weapon skins and map props respectively. Like a good taskmaster we threw them straight in at the deep end with Jenn0 starting work on the K98 almost immediately and Ukulele tasked with the vital job of creating an army of door handles…

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The last 10% is the hardest 10%…

September 11th, 2009 by John | Category: Monthly Updates

Sorry for the super long wait between news updates, it’s just been real hectic over here at Ham and Jam. Lots of changes with the team members lives has left precious little time to spend working on the mod, but fear not as we’re still pumping out work even if this update shows little of it unfortunately.

It’s true what they say, the final 10% of any project is the hardest 10% and we’ve certainly hit that here at Ham and Jam. There is no doubt we are in the final phase of production before releasing our first public version, it’s just taking an age to get it sorted!

Two things are certain:

1) The bulk of the work on the mod is done, what’s left is minor…but a lot of minor stuff makes a major stepping stone.
2) We have come too far to let anything stop us now.

Work on the mod toils on through the long Summer nights here at Ham and Jam and slowly but surely we’re getting there. Every day more and more bugs are quashed and more and more features are added. The stuff left to do is trivial compared to the rest, yet without it the mod feels incomplete and unreleasable.