(We're not getting paid for this or anything, it's just a good deal, and a chance to support some other indie developers)
Pay any price you like for five DRM-free, ultra-high-quality indie games -- or donate to charity and get them for free. Sale ends 6 days from now. World of Goo in particular is something you should try if you haven't already.
UPDATE: The above-mentioned offer has been extended, plus they've added an additional game to it. They're also going to take the games open-source, so you can probably expect a few mods or unofficial updates sometime in the future. If you haven't already already picked up the bundle, keep in mind that even paying a very low price would be better for the developers than not buying it at all.
In other news, Valve's Portal is free (to own permanently) providing you grab it before the 24th of May(!) If you don't have it already, there's no reason not to get it now. It even works on the Mac.
Meet&Greet Contest cancelled. 2 April, 2010 | by Hezus
We regret to inform you that the Meet&Greet contest we've announced earlier, has been cancelled. Once careful readers of the terms and agreements realised they had to pay for the team's plane tickets and hotel, the SvenCo-op HQ was stormed by an angry mob of Sven Co-op players. We managed to calm them down with exclusive information on the new features of the upcoming version of the mod. The players were so amazed that they instantly forgot what they were there for and went home babbling about all the awesome things they could do in the new version.
Even though the the contest is cancelled, we wouldn't want to hold back the nice entries we got over the last 24 hours:
Stay tuned for the upcoming Sven Co-op Cooking Contest! The secret ingredient is a Chumtoad. Happy April Fools everyone!
Sven Co-op Meet & Greet Contest! 1 April, 2010 | by Hezus
In our last post, we've concluded the Mapping Contest and handed out prizes to the best Sven Co-op mappers out there. To be fair, we want to start another contest where everyone is able compete and be creative! We present to you:
The Sven Co-op Meet&Greet™ Contest!
That's right. This is your chance to meet up with the infamous development team of your favourite mod!* What would you ask Sven if you saw him in real-life, which features would you request from Sniper and wouldn't you love to share a beer with the forum admins Hezus and Nih? Well, this is your chance! All you need to do is be creative!*
For our Meet&Greet™ contest, we've chosen the following theme:
"Bring Half-Life to Real-Life!"
How does it work? Your task is to bring an element of Half-Life/Sven Co-op's universe to real life. Take a picture of your toilet and edit a headcrab in there, let a voltigore run through your back garden, release a pack of houndeyes in your school, hold a crowbar, dress up like one of your favorite characters or create a medkit out of cardbord. You can also turn the contest around and put yourself in the Half-life universe! Photoshop yourself into a Sven Co-op map, let yourself rappel down from an osprey, dance with the gonomes... in other words: Take a picture of yourself or your area and start editing!
The best, funniest and most clever entry will win the awesome Meet & Greet with the Sven Co-op Team at an as-yet unknown location!*
To sign up read THIS PAGE and from us all at Sven Co-op: good luck and we'll hope to meet you soon in Real-Life!
* Conditions apply.
Contest Map Pack Finally Released! 13 March, 2010 | by Sven Viking
It took a while, but the Sven Co-op Contest Map Pack is finally here! Click here for screenshots of all maps.
Please note that Propanic is not included in this pack, and will be released separately at a later date. There are two reasons for this: 1. The map and its custom files are 325MB in size! (Even compressed, it would more than double the size of the map pack) 2. It pushes the limits of the engine so much that a crash bug in 4.07 prevents it from being played to the end. For this reason, we will probably release an updated version of the map at the same time as Sven Co-op 4.1.
2nd place: sc_propanic - by TrEmPlEr (not included in map pack)
3rd place: deadsimpleneo2 - by Nih
Runners up:
Mystic Radar - by RNG
Shanghai Harbour - by MysticMDT
sc_Inbound - by Moaby
Man's Answer - by Naigel
Gears of War 2 - by Cyberdaemon
sc_S28 - by The fox
sc_Castle - by generic
4Ways - by agrs700
Many thanks to: All entrants; CryoKeen, JPolito, and all contest judges; and Noesis Interactive, for providing additional contest prizes! Full details on the contest, and prizes received by the winners, can be found here.
Sven Co-op in Mod of the Year awards 12 February, 2010 | by Sven Viking
Thanks to all the people who apparently voted for us in ModDB's Mod of the Year 2009 awards -- even though we'd made no mention of it this year! We were ineligible to place in the top ten due to winning in a previous year, but thanks to you, ModDB gave us this nice write-up under Honorable Mentions (don't know if being second in the list means anything?)
Featured in every single MOTY since we first started, Sven Coop is one of the oldest mods on the ModDB database yet still being developed and still popular as ever. Its no surprise that its an honorable mention again.
We were also one of only two Half-Life mods listed in the Top 100 Mods & Indie Games category. Here's a little Golden Spanner Retrospective to mark the occasion:
In 2004 we won 1st place in the Best Action Mod category, and 2nd place in the Best Mod category! (Just under what is now a commercial game). Sven Co-op for HL2 was also voted the #1 most anticipated mod (unfortunately, real-life issues have since left the project stalled indefinitely).
In 2005 we ranked 5th in the Best Mod category, beating out most HL2 mods. :)
From 2006 onwards, previous winners were ineligible to win again -- but we did get an Honorable Mention, as we did this year. -- Thanks again for your support!
Update: Just remembered that in 2008 we were also nominated in the Editor's Choice: Best Multiplayer Mod category, and named the #2 Best Non-commercial Mod in the 10 Years of Half-Life feature. As usual, development of the next release is dragging on for longer than we'd like. We do have some interesting and highly unexpected features in the works, though, so it's not all bad news. A deadline has also been set for final contest map bugfixes, so hopefully those will be released sometime soon. Stay tuned.