Normally I'd like to report good news concerning Sven Co-op to you but, sadly, this is not such occasion. Last week one of our senior developers, Adam, suffered a grave injury while working on our new bug tracking system. It turned out one of our repository servers wasn't correctly installed in its bracket and came loose and hit Adam on his pinky toe. While our lives as developers are mostly fun and games, moments like these make you realise how precious life is and how important workplace safety can be.

While Adam held an icepack on his toe, we started discussing how our MOD's content doesn't reflect our newly found believes about safety in the workplace. Especially our cornerstone, the Half-Life campaign, is a terrible example of the use of safety measures and this is not how we would like to portray ourselves any longer. So, we'd like to present to you:

Half-Life: Work safe, work smart

We've worked hard to bring you a better version of Half-Life Co-op: a version where workspace safety isn't neglected and things go according to protocol. No one has to suffer any injuries or even think of the possibility of dying on the job in this improved installment! So, make sure to play our new version through the SP Portal map! We're eagerly awaiting your feedback and are already on the way to adjust our Blue Shift campaign to feature the same high standard of workplace safety. Also, we'll be cutting the complete Opposing Force campaign from the game, since (with improved safety protocols) the Black Mesa accident did not happen.

Check out our preview with some of the new high-lights of the improved campaign!

If you are running a dedicated server please use SteamCmd to update your servers.

Changes

Notable changes are as follows:

• Implemented Steam P2P (peer-to-peer) based network layer. Allows players to host listen servers without the hassle of port forwarding. (Usage: "connect STEAM_1:1:12345678")
  
• The Anomalous Materials Laboratory in Half-Life now follows proper workplace safety regulations.
  
• Our version of Hammer has been renamed to Svencraft to ensure the changes from our engine customisations are distinguished from vanilla GoldSrc map editors. (Mainly Hammer.)