Black Sand Studios

Heavy Armor approaching

wolfi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:36:13 +0000

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

Insurgent Strike .12 Status Update

Guedoe — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:08:22 +0000

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

BGF Update #74 – High-Explosive!

Wasper — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:45:37 +0000

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.

Thats all we have for you today, but stay tuned to our forums, our YouTube Channel and our Main Website for future updates!

YouTube Channel – Subscribe Now!
Get the latest info – Visit our forums!

BSS to expand to Company of Heroes

wolfi — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:50:04 +0000

Hello everyone. Today we would like to inform you about our latest additions to the BSS community. We are happy to introduce the first of a new bunch of modifications for the THQ game “Company of Heroes”. That’s right guys, the Black Sand Studios hereby officially works in cooperation with the Company of Heroes modding crews.

The Mod Teams are the teams of “Modern Combat”, “Normandy 44 – European Theater”, “Pacific Thunder”, “Zombie Mod”, and “The Great War” with more to come in the near future. Both are part of BSS now and we hope they will have a great time over here. You can find corresponding forums in the official BSS forums and gain additional Info from the CoH subpage which can be found here.

Small Arms – christmas special

admin — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:40:58 +0000

Hello CoH – Modern Combat fans

Some of you may have wondered why there has been such a small amount of information pouring out of our gates recently. Let me tell you, this is not because of problems with our modding progress. We have a lot of great material waiting for you.
The reason behind the delay is, that we are working on a new homepage, which should make it much easier for you to track our progress, get an idea of the mod itself and communicate with us. This takes a bit more time though, so please be patient.

But, since christmas is around the corner, we don’t want to let you down completely, of course. So from all the material, that’s waiting for you, we have packed together a little small arms special. The following pictures showcase some of the weapons, which will be used by our new US and Chinese factions.

If you can add one and one together, you already know what will follow this small arms special in the future. So stay tuned!