Took a bit of effort from both me and Nican (he handled the inventory part), however the profile viewer has gotten to a point where I feel it's safe to publicly release.

What this does is display all the readable information we have on GMT users based on their Steam ID. You'll be able to get their GMC, hours spent, and even graphically view their current inventory items.

I also implemented Steam's XML community feed. Thanks to Valve (and VoiDeD for asking them) for <inGameServerIP>, I was able to make a simple check to see which gamemode the user is in if they are playing GMT.

To view your profile you can either visit http://www.gmodtower.org/index.php?p=profile and we'll try to get your Steam ID from your IP.

If that doesn't seem to work for you - just simply place your Steam ID (or any Steam ID, for that matter) into the "si" field. Example: http://www.gmodtower.org/index.php?p=profile&si=STEAM_0:1:18712009

I'm still developing this feature so let me know if you find any errors. And please feel free to leave suggestions to help improve this.

Example Profile:

I'm changing the way the website news are handled. I've developed a system where the news will now feed from the forums. I'm going to be reposting only the most recent news articles. The rest will remain gone forever (they are old anyways). If you have any links to our news articles, you need to update them to match the forum post now and for future reference.

The BBCode part of the system is still being developed, so expect some odd tags to appear on the forums, but work perfectly on the website.

All comments on the news will now be handled within the forum.

As for the forums themselves, expect to see some changes. I'm going to be hiding forums, moving threads, and generally cleaning up things.

I'll keep you posted on any more progress through our Twitter.

A brand new year, a fresh news post. Hard to believe that the last news post was quite a while ago in '09, but fear not, as work continues on the tower.

We'll start with the hard truth: development has been slow. Excruciatingly slow. Behind the scenes, the remainder of our current development team has become less and less committed to the tower due to other personal commitments.

This realization has left the rest of us caught in a hard spot. With less technical manpower available, our remaining members have been forced to make due with learning skills outside their area of expertise.

Due to this, we are now looking for more team applicants than before. Primarily, we are looking for proficient Lua developers who are skilled at writing clean, efficient, and well documented gamemodes in a team oriented environment. Regular communication is a must. If you're interested, please post in the Job Applications forum.

But despite the setbacks, work continues. We have made promises, and we will come through with them. We have announced multiple gamemodes, and we will complete them.

In our last post, we announced the upcoming Stealth gamemode. But this is where another hard reality comes in. Due to pressing manpower constraints, we have temporarily put the development on hold. This isn't to say it will never be finished, but it just isn't our main priority for the time being.

Our development team has been spread thin, and it would be unrealistic to be able to develop two gamemodes at once.

The other upcoming gamemode, Source Karts, is slowly but steadily progressing forward. This gamemode is currently our top priority at this time. The gamemode base itself is very close to completion, with only a few features left to finish. The content side is also progressing, but has a considerable distance to go before release.

As far as the tower is concerned, updates are far more frequent. While the change log hasn't been updated in quite a while, there are still changes. New features and additions are being added, and even more are being planned.

To end this update on a good note, we're going to be making an effort to update more often. To this end, we'll be making more use of our Twitter feed, and we will update our change log on a regular basis.

As one last note, back in late August, our servers were sponsored by XenonServers. They have been generous enough to pay for them since then, so we invite you to check out their dedicated server packages.

It's been awhile since I've been able to post on our website. Sorry for the delay in getting the site back up in running. We moved the web server to a private server to help with resources. Took a bit longer than expected. I'm still moving things around a bit.

Sunabouzu, one of our core team members, has decided to leave the project. He's busy working on a Source mod of his own and has decided to focus all his effort on that alone.

Unreal has added a few new features to the tower and continues to work on the project. His most recent feature is the voice group talk. If you start a group - anyone in that group can voice chat to each other in-game. This allows for a better handling of voice and can connect many friends together. Of course voice is still enabled across the entire server for gamemodes.

Nican and Unreal got Source Karts to a good standing point. The kart controls are setup and the lap system works just as it should. We've also polished two maps and have been getting the rest to a playable state. I'll update you more on Source Karts later on.

Unreal and I have been working on getting the Stealth gamemode together. We recently decided on the gameplay mechanics. Stealth is based on both team work and cleverness. There's two teams, MERCs and Stealth. MERCs are equipped with plenty of firepower, communication devices, and other types of tracking units. Stealth are equipped with a few gadgets (nothing entirely lethal) and can climb into vents, boxes, and hide in the darkness. Stealth also can snap players' necks from behind to get rid of MERCs without being spotted or heard.

The Stealth's main goal is to complete the mission given to you. However, there's a catch. In order to know what mission you are on, you must complete the sub-mission. The sub-missions are randomly chosen and require you to either get intel, disable security systems, hack computers, etc.. Missions can vary from assassinating a VIP, stealing an item, or even taking pictures of secret MERC equipment.

For MERCs, your main goal is to protect the mission from the Stealth team. You can also complete a sub-mission to get more info on the Stealth's position on their missions.

Within Stealth you can also find all sorts of pickups around such as a radar device (for MERCs), silenced pistols (for Stealth).

We'll have more info as we work on the Stealth gamemode in the up coming weeks.

As for the tower, I have a few updates planned. Modern furniture pack, a few new hats, workable suite items (such as lamps, clocks, etc.), a few suite changes, and of course the outside server (with the pool). I'll be working on those updates along with build003 this month.

We also do have an update planned for this holiday. We'll be redecorating the tower map and be offering a few new hats and items such as presents and trees. We'll keep you posted on the update as we continue to develop them.

After about a month of planning and a few weeks of work - we're ready to release the details on our upcoming gamemode. You may recall the older news post concerning the Hover Kart gamemode which was going pretty well. However, we've found out that the hover kart controls among other major things (such as lack of originality and enjoyment) was not what we hoped for. We scrapped Hover Kart and started designing a new gamemode with a similar feel. What we came up with is Source Karts.

Source Karts is a mix between the old school Mario Kart and all the Source universes. Now if you know about Mario Kart you'll know that there's plenty of characters to choose from. There's also tons of levels designed based on a single character or multiple characters.

We got to thinking ... "Hey wait aren't there tons of characters that Valve created? Wouldn't be pretty freaking awesome if you're racing alongside Source characters?" At the time we thought it was a pretty sick idea. Now after working on the project and creating three levels and pretty much the majority of the kart code - we know it's an incredibly awesome idea.

So we started choosing the games/universes to pick from. We chose CS:S, L4D, HL2, TF2, GMod, and Portal. We did toss around the idea of picking up other source games like Zeno Clash but decided to cut the indie out for this. Too much content anyways.

Then the characters were carefully cherry picked from the games. We took Alyx (HL2), Gordon (HL2), Dr. Kleiner (HL2), Metrocop (HL2), Bill (L4D), Zoey (L4D), Louis (L4D), Francis (L4D), Heavy (TF2), Pyro (TF2), Scout (TF2), Chell + GLaDOS (Portal), and Counter-Terrorist (CSS). We're still in a debate on if we should include a GMod character (ie. Mingebag or John Freeman).

After we finalized our character decisions I went through literally 7,000 voice samples from each game. I picked out clips that fit events like boosting, getting a power up, losing, winning, taunting, etc. It was a rough night that ended with 380 hand picked and edited voice files. Including the voices I went through and organized music bits for winning and losing per universe.

We decided on the levels we'd create for the first release. Sunabouzu chose to create a dustbowl-themed open desert map to fit the TF2 universe. He also designed a hybrid No Mercy and part of the forest from Blood Harvest. Sniper wanted to cover CS:S and he created a de_dust themed level. I wanted to cover Portal, but I've yet to get anything done for it as I've been polishing everyone's levels and managing the content and sound delivery. Maps also have environmental things such as traps and the cow.

Power ups and other things were also designed around each universe. We've got four power ups that are global and each universe has one or two of their own power ups (like Pills).

That's just for content. We're completely recoding the gamemode. The kart currently has smooth controls, an awesome "action" camera (as I would put it), laps, checkpoints, and hopping. Drifting will be included as well and is in development.

Progress, as you probably can tell, is going great. The maps are a good state and only require a few stages of polishing before they are finished. Code is at an early stage, but is progressing very quickly.

The gamemode will not require you to mount from each of these games. We'll be packing up the materials and models we use for each levels. Player models and such will also be included.

When is the gamemode coming out? When we're finished. It's the only gamemode we're focusing on and all our assets are pulling into it.

Bayside Drive (HL2)

Spy Circuit (TF2)

Left 4 Race (L4D)