Synergy

Hello everyone!

Life has been a bit hectic for all of us, with jobs, work, sleep deprivation, temporary insanity, but we would like to inform you that the project continues!

We're starting to change our focus again; we would like to create our own campaign now, as well as add in our own new ideas. Which basically means, you will eventually see new content for the mod. However, we still will be continually fixing issues with the vanilla campaigns like Half-Life 2.
To help with this new direction, we will be in need of additional developers, but more on that will come later.

There are some other issues, mainly gameplay ones, that the team is discussing as well; the healing and ammo-sharing system (or lack of), how players will respawn and general flow of the game. We are also discussing ideas to help server administrators set up servers more easily.

Archanor has completed some updates to his syn_TakeOver map - complete with new textures and an exciting helicopter battle.

For those of you level designers, feel free to make use of the new textures as well, especially if you'll be participating in our very first official map contest! Winner will be given FPS Points and the possibility for inclusion in our next update. See this page for details.

We realize this is a small update, however we thank you all for your patience!

Hello everyone!

It has been pretty chaotic, to say the least, the past few months with real life events happening. Finally though, this new version of Synergy is ready for public use!

The most significant feature to this version, would be the nearly flawless Linux server - *provided* that you move the other shared game directories ("hl2", "episodic", "ep2", "metastasis", "minerva", "rock 24", ...) out of the "orangebox" directory and onto a partition using a case-insensitive filesystem (such as VFAT or NTFS) and then symlink to those directories from the "orangebox" directory, or alternatively if you don't have such a partition, you can use ciopfs.

Of course, that only applies to server administrators using Linux.

Players would be interested in these things:

• multiplayer auto-save points - where players are at save time, is where they will be restored to if a load occurs
• two new voice menu commands
• implemented voting system - players can vote kick, change level, reload last save point and change skill level
• updated to the new source code base - this gives us a 100% working third-person view camera, TF2 player avoidance and stability
• made it easier to donate by showing the player's Steam ID on the DONOR FEATURES window
• updates to entities: point_viewcontrol, info_player_equip, player_loadsaved
• many bug fixes and crashes have been fixed

You can view the full change log for version 14 right here.

I apologize for the long wait, please enjoy this update!

Synergy cannot be launched, since Valve's Steam ID change. If you're working on a map, just put it in Episode 2, and use the Synergy FGDs.

---UPDATE---
Well, Valve decided to change it back apparently, so Synergy is working again! For now..

Greetings,

I apologize for the longer-than-usual update, but we have been quite busy with other things. (Not to mention my motherboard was fried a while back.)
So without further delay...

Synergy version 11 is now available on Steam!
Please NOTE that Synergy REQUIRES "Half-Life 2" to function properly! If you do not have Half-Life 2 installed and fully updated, Synergy will not work

This version of Synergy addresses issues and concerns brought up by the community and fixes some bugs.
It also adds new content - you are now able to play MINERVA: Metastasis online with your friends! (BIG thanks again to gmc.jimmy for his work with the EDTs.)

Some of the issues brought up by the community that have been corrected are:

• maps restarting when all players die,
• damage scales of player weapons being reduced,
• respawn times being too long,
• players pushing other players too hard (potentially pushing them off an edge),

Check Check the Version 11 Change Log.

For the map restarting when all players are dead, we have plans of using an "auto-save" feature (using the "trigger_autosave" entity), much like the one that exists in the original Half-Life 2 game, then having the map restart to these auto-saves instead - but for now, the map restarting will be disabled.

The respawn times have been adjusted slightly, not a whole lot, but enough that you should notice a decrease in waiting time.
Also, I'd like to mention that while you're waiting to respawn, any teammates that die, will add more waiting time to your current time; some people haven't intuitively grasped that yet so I thought I would mention it.

There are plans to change the "floating avatars" as well. We're looking into some alternative options to this. The goal is to be able to find your teammates easily, without adding clutter to the screen and you can identify players somehow and see their current health. If you have any suggestions for us in this matter, please feel free to post on our forums.

In addition, there are some unmentioned features that are being worked on too. One area of this is improving the effectiveness of the player healing (healthkit distribution) - increasing amount of health each kit gives and the speed at which it is given.

I hope you all enjoy the new version, any feedback you have please let us know by sending an email to [ synergymod@gmail.com ].
Have fun.

VOSK's motherboard is fried (don't worry, a new one is on the way) so I'm doing the news announcement today. I'd being doing this sooner, but I didn't have access until last night. As some of you may have heard on the forums, Mod Database has started their annual Mod of the Year competition. You can vote for Synergy HERE!