Black Sand Studios - Cooperated mod team power from all over the world since 2007

Heavy Armor approaching

The development of CoH: Modern Combat is already quite advanced, but you didn’t get to see what some people would call “the face of the US Army”, yet. One of the most modern main battle tanks of the world, the M1A2 Abrams! Of course it is not missing in our Mod, and today we will show you the first renders of the basic variant, which will be available at the end of the right Armoured Warfare tree.

On the other side, the People’s Liberation Army does not hit the battlefield without a competitor. They field the ZTZ-99, the most advanced chinese main battle tank. With it’s fully-stabilised 125 mm/50-calibre ZPT98 smoothbore gun it is going to be a real threat even for the most modern western tanks.

Last but not least, we want to give you an update to the currently shown layout of the PLA tech tree. The Type 96 MBT is going to be replaced by the Type 59d. Even though it is a quite old tank, it is still fielded in very high numbers, which made us think that it may fullfill the role of the work horse in a better way than the Type 96. The Type 96 will still be available as a part of the Last Push doctrine ability.

As always, we appreciate feedback in our forums. Watch out for future releases on moderncombat.blacksandstudio.com

Tags: modern combat

Tuesday, 10. August, 2010 Company of Heroes No Comments

Insurgent Strike .12 Status Update

With the release of 0.12 looming, Insurgent Strike Developers have been hard at work getting an abundance of new features ingame. From improved kits to a ‘king’s armoury’ of brand new weapons, version 0.12 is going to be jam-packed with a plethora of new toys for you and your team to use. A picture speaks a thousand words, so here’s some shots of what you can look forward to in 0.12:

L85A2
First off is our brand new series of L85A2 assault rifles for the British Faction. Complete with new animations by [IS-DEV]Dogbox and [IS-DEV]Nick.

M16A4/M4
Next in line is the new AR-15 series of rifles for our American Factions (that’s right, factions, plural). Both the M16A4 and M4 come with separate M68 Aimpoint and ACOG variants.

UH-1Y Venom
Last of all, a big announcement! For 0.12 the USMC will be making a return, and what better way to celebrate than to share with you their newest vehicle! Presenting the UH-1Y, the latest variant of the venerable UH-1 ‘Huey’ Series of Helicopters used by the USMC. Complete with a nice new engine block and digital cockpit by [IS-DEV]Dogbox and [IS-DEV]Nick. Original model courtesy of Eve of Destruction Mod and Badscull.

Mednogorsk
And to finish this news post, we’ll leave you with a sneak peak of our latest map.
Head mapper [IS-DEV]Spyker has been working on a new map for our Russian and Chechen factions to battle it out on, Mednogorsk. Here’s a video walkthrough:

And that concludes this week’s post, thanks for reading, and be on the lookout for more news in the coming days!

-The Insurgent Strike Dev Team

Saturday, 9. January, 2010 Battlefield 2 4 Comments

BGF Update #74 – High-Explosive!

Welcome back to another update for Battlegroup Frontlines, we hope that everyone had a good holiday season this year! Naturally over the course of the holidays the release of content updates has been slowed, but we hope that in the next few weeks the speed at which we were showing off some of our works in progress will continue.

Before we get started today, we would like to welcome Bruno to our dev team. Bruno emailed the mod informing us that he had over one hundred effects he wanted to share with us. Soon after he posted an application and became a full time dev. We are very pleased to be showing off some of the work he has done for us, and hope that he can continue to aid us in this area in the future!

“My name is Bruno Gorostiaga and I would like to show you the particle effects I do for Battlefield 2 since it came out. I focus on performance and photorealism, I do my own textures and most of them are animated.” – Bruno

To show off these effects, we have a series of pictures and a video recorded in-game showing some of the effects in motion. Enjoy!

Video: BGF Bot Match – Showing the new effects

Last but not least we have our new Flak 38, modeled by Koricus, and skinned by Wasper.

By 1940 it was already apparent that the low rate of fire of the 2 cm Flak 30 was too low for the faster aircraft ariving in combat. So it was decided to increase its rate of fire in order to increase the number of projectiles in the air, and hitting the target. Along with a slow firing rate, the German Flak 30 had a history of jamming during use, Mauser received the contract to produce an update for the Flak 30.

Mauser successfully increased the firing speed of the Flak 30 from 420 rounds per minute, to 480 rounds per minute, this anti-aircraft gun became known as the Flak 38. It entered service in late 1940, and eventually replaced the Flak 30 on the production lines. The Flak 38 served along side its older brother, and even found its way onto numerous vehicles. The Gebirgsjaeger, German mountain soldiers, even had a version that could be broken down into packs and hauled up mountains.