Dear community,

Since so much is going on at present with many members of the team putting in ungodly hours into this project over the last few months alone, we decided we needed some R ’n R in the form of short weekend break.

This idea sold itself not only as a great opportunity to have some fun collectively, but to let our hair down and get to know one another socially.

You’re probably thinking, “but why do we care about this...” and yes, some people think that way in kind!
Well, the reason this is in a news post is; the Tactical Assault team are extending this meeting as an open invitation for our fans to join us and get to know us in person.

It will be a shame that many members of the TA team can not join us due to the vast nations our staffs are spread across, from distant European Countries to New Zealand, USA and India; however we hope to hold a great weekender that they will all be proud of us for... with your help!

We decided that a central EU Country such as HOLLAND would be most suited for our purpose as a central hub the majority of us could get in and out of within a short space of time and at a reasonable cost.

LOCATION: Zandvoort Camp Site, Holland

DATES & TIMES: Friday 20th August till Sunday 22nd August

INFO: Camp site is 25km from Amsterdam Airport and is literally a stone throw away from the beach, see the pictures below.
Most of us will be a arriving on the Friday morning and be looking to “check in” to our tents... (haha) and get the weekend started. We plan on spending a lot of time at the beach (weather permitting of course) playing beach volleyball, football, general chilling out, making a BBQ by our very own PRO-CHEF Rangarid (he doesn’t know yet) and of course drinking....  and more!

PICTURES:

COST: The whole weekend will cost about 21€ (based on two people sharing a tent. Food, drink and activities not included).

TA members coming:
TOP-Proto (Project Lead & Coder) - UK
Spin (Coder & Lead Level Designer) - UK
Deeps (Technical Artist & Level Designer) - UK
MacFrog (Web Developer & Coder) - GER
Rangarid (PR) - GER
Arny (PR) - UK
Azziej (PR) - NL
Teifi (Level Designer) - UK
Sickmind (Support Team) - NL
Major_Tom (Support Team) - NL
Angry Penguin - UK

Fans coming:
Sssswing
rAte

We very much welcome anyone to join us, we may even get some TA Team vs FAN football matches going or other fun stuff like this... which we’ll later put up online to show how good we are at everything!! (That’s what Photoshop is for, manipulating images of course!). It should be worth noting, no TA footage or material will be shown or released.. no PC's shall be present.

We understand many won’t be able to stay or camp the night(s), but even if you show your face for the Friday evening or Saturday that would be much appreciated and we’ll be glad to meet you.

In general, we’d love to know what the public think about our idea by involving the community and ask that those interested to join us, reply back in this thread and let us know so we have a rough idea of numbers.

Your TA Team

Dear Community,

NGZ have been very supportive in our development of a First Person Shooter stand alone game, following patiently on the side lines for approximately 1 year to date, having full faith that we will deliver!

We would like to take this moment to express our sincere appreciation for their continued help in offering us a FREE dedicated root server so far, which has allowed this project to run smoothly and coherently with our SVN systems...
TA team can now announce after some small discussions, NGZ have openly agreed to extend their sponsorship and provide us (in addition to our existing services) a much needed webserver and FTP for FREE!

This comes with significant relief as our current host was due to expire at the end of May. We now have the benefit of having all of our services under one roof, from a reliable, professional and well established company, NGZ! -  TA teams official German Game Server Sponsor.
We wanted to take this opportunity to interview NGZ, which you can read below:

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Matt: Hi Ravage, FIRSTLY... A big thanks for your extended support, you don't realise how much this means to us.
Cheers for taking time out to answer a few questions... Please can you introduce yourself briefly?

Ravage: Hi. My name is Nils Baechner, 28 years old and I work at NGZ  (United Colo) in Coburg, Germany as a System Administrator.

Matt: So how did you become involved in the TA team, are you an avid gamer, what is your history?

Ravage: Personally I'm not the biggest gamer. I play some strategy games and adventures. Kind of a Linux nerd I think. I am the server guy so I setup the server, but my colleagues from the gaming department got an e-mail from Rangarid, member of the TA Team, as you were looking for a server for the development of Tactical Assault.
We have been offering UT-based game servers from the very beginning. The original Tactical Ops was very popular so we liked the idea of a new UDK-based version.

Matt: Ahh.. Well a big up to the gaming department too! Good to hear there are people out there that even know what "Tactical Ops" is!! So, as the server-boffin... what sort of gear do you deal with on a day to day basis? Come on.. Show us the goods and drop us some specs... (The fans love that techno talk!!)

Ravage: Our current UT hardware is Intel Core 2 Quad with 4GB RAM, ASUS boards and 100Mbit connection.
We can dynamically switch the game servers from hardware to hardware in case a server is overloaded or damaged. Our current bandwidth for the game servers is 20 gigabit on 3 separate lines for redundancy. We are directly connected to the DECIX in Frankfurt


In total, NGZ host over 6000 game servers on approximately 2000 servers (hardware)!!


Matt: Mother of... that is alot, I'd hate to think what the insurance premiums are... and if I owned that sort of equipment I'd want to be tucked away in some atomic-bomb proof bunker!
So, as we start to migrate all our current services over to NGZ provided hosts, have you been following TA much, what are your thoughts so far?

Ravage: I really like what I saw so far. The engine offers a lot of potential and you guys know how to get the most out of it. Like all your fans I would love to see some in game videos. But I read that we can expect something in the nearer future.

Matt: Ah... Not you as well! Ha! Well the good news is, we have 3 very experienced guys working on the Teaser Trailer... that will showcase our in-game footage to the public and once revealed, you'll know exactly why we have been keeping our in-game content under wraps.. or where's the surprise element?

Ravage: Screenshots and models are always nice but you need some moving stuff and action to really get the idea what's going on

Matt: Yup, we agree! But at the same time, we don't want to release material that we know is not to standard as a "next gen" game. We have principles and no matter what, they will not be changed - we have to protect the future of this game, so we feel strongly passionate about this subject.
Rest assured, after numerous setbacks.. We are on track and steaming ahead like you would not believe. Our team, unpaid, with real life jobs/families are working flat out in their spare time pushing and exceeding our current milestones.

Ravage: I think everyone sees that you really are into this idea and the game. And the work so far looks really incredible. We really can't wait to see more.

Matt: That is music to our ears, it's what keeps us going, listening and working with our community.  Well I'd just like to once again thank you personally for NGZ's continued support, your time and we look forward to catching up with you all on pre-release ;-)

Ravage: Keep up the good work on TA

For more information on NGZ servers feel free to join them on irc.quakenet.org #ngz or alternatively follow the link below.


We Hope you all enjoyed this update, please stay tuned for more news coming soon!

Your TA Team

"We invite the community in for a sneak peek behind the scenes to explore our new characters in development, plus other stunning assets in motion. Enjoy!"

Dear Community,

As our NEW character concepts are all complete, we would like to take this opportunity to showcase them. This is just a rare treat seeing as they are very interesting and give you an idea of what is going on behind the scenes, once again!

Take all the latest media screenshots and slowly start to piece it together, then hopefully... you should have a good idea of how the game will look and the high level of detail we are trying to achieve.

If not, the below should help you visualise...


While our level, modelling and sound teams working flat out, the rest of us have been busy... yes, really!

In the last week alone, we can confirm all 1st person weapon models are done!! Only some need a few tweaks here and there, but in all - the majority are good to go.

Dandy has started to skin and rig the 1st person player arms for animating, which will then lead us on to animating all the weapons... a slow and tedious task, but one that is critical!
This is a long drawn out task, one which shall certainly put Dandy's skills to the test. Having someone on board with his ability is certainly priceless in pushing production and keeping up motivation within the team. Tarrick together with Autopsy and GuyB are working towards stripping our weapons to provide additional 3rd person and pickup model versions.

Since our modelers and artists have been racking up libraries worth of assets in recent months, we have an overflow of beauty just itching to be shown to the community, so here are more images for your big-bold eyes to take pleasure upon.


Before we continue, may we just say a big thanks to the community for being understanding and supportive, your comments, feedback and constructive criticism helps us to continue doing what we do for the love of it and ensures that we do our utmost to tailor our game around your wishes!! Yes yours!
We cannot implement and action every idea suggested, but rest assured all comments are read and discussed since our PR team are here to bridge the gap between you and the TA staff ensuring all ideas are passed on and you have a transparent view of what we are doing and what stage we are up to.

For your info, we reached #2 on moddb last week from 1,649 mods/games which we feel is a testament to you, our fans!
If you haven't already, please drop by and get "following" and rack up the support even more so


Alongside this, Spin has been working flat out, nearly full time tweaking code, fixing some bugs, getting some assets in-game and giving direction to our weapons team combined with creating some great internal video tutorials to help in all departments. Top stuff.

Anyhow... back on track, here's some more media material for you to feast over.


That's it for now, on our next update we hope to show you more media, some in-game map screenshots and further news on our animations, character models.. and oh yea.. our teaser trailer as well which is still being developed!!

We hope you enjoyed the read and welcome you all to our forums to provide us with your feedback.

TA Team
www.tactical-assault.com