As many of you may have noticed, Missing Information has made it to ModDB’s Mod of the Year top 100. It’s come a long way, and we would like to thank everyone who has voted so far, we greatly appreciate your support and we hope that with your help, we can make it even further! Please vote for Missing Information as mod of the year if you haven’t already done so!

Now, many of you are probably wondering what’s up with 1.5.2. We are not being lazy, and we certainly are not procrastinating. The Missing Information team is a rather small team and we all have lives (well, sort of) and because of these lives, mod work has unfortunately suffered. We’re currently working on fixing up any bugs that exist in 1.5.1 and getting together both a full and patch release that should hopefully fix most of the problems reported by our fans. A release date is currently unknown, due to the sporadic nature of mod work, so we cannot give you a specific date or time frame, but what we can tell you is there is not much left to do.

We would like to take this time to remind all of you that 1.4 and 1.5 are all DEMO releases. The first version, 1.4 was released way back when in 2006 as a playable alpha, 1.5 is simply an updated version of that release and we’re currently working on something much bigger, and that brings us to our next official announcement.

Episodic releases
Missing Information is being released in Episodic form. We’ve been focusing on this for a while now, but the recent patch has kind of set us off the track. 1.5.2 will be the last patch of 1.5, we’re abandoning all work on it and you should know that nothing seen in 1.5.2 is representative of what will be in Episode 1. Episode 1 will be a complete overhaul of the storyline shown in Raising the Bar, taking the player through City 17, through the grimy sewers to the outer reaches of the city. Episode 2 will pick up right where Episode 1 left off. Our previous media release minus a few screens shows off some of what we have planned for Episode 1, and certainly there will be more to come.

Last but not least you may have noticed we put up a new render of the Cremator model remade by Mugofdoom. We’ve decided to, in addition to our media releases, release a screenshot of WIP or completed work every so often, just to show that we’re actually hard at work and not slacking off.

The Cremator
The Cremator is a Combine janitor of sorts, based off concepts from the book Raising the Bar, he is a transhuman, cyborg type being with a stomach that produces a corrosive acid. This acid is pumped through a hole in his stomach, through a hose connected to his gun, known as an Immolator. His job, is basically to go in after a major fight or outbreak of Xen wildlife in the cities and spew his stomach acid on the bodies and aliens, and basically clean up the mess left by Civil Protection.

This creature paints a grizly picture of the state humanity is in, the Combine have transformed them into slaves, janitors and many other forms to suit them. Expect these hulking monstrosities to patrol the ruined streets of City 17 once Missing Information: Episode 1 is released, and expect more media from us as we complete it.

Many of you are probably wondering where our 1.5.2. patch for Missing Information is. Right now some of our members are dealing with personal stuff which made it hard to work on the patch. This time we won’t give any dates for our 1.5.2 release but we promise it isn’t too far away, so please be patient!

Thanks for understanding!

Seems the date September 30th is cursed. As you might have noticed 1.5.2 isn’t released. We decided to delay it for an unknown amount of time (two weeks tops, but think one week)! The reason why we’re delaying it is as simple as we aren’t satisfied with the current 1.5 release, and we think we are able to make something better. Another reason for the delay is we want to make it as bug free as possible. This is possibly the last patch you’ll see for Missing Information 1.5 in a while (Missing Information 1.6 isn’t going to be released).

Next big release from Gabe’s Love Tub will be an episodic release, more specifically Missing Information: Episode One. More on this later, along with more media so stay tuned! Meanwhile you can follow us on Moddb.

Well we’ve been rather quiet on the media front as of late, and it has been rather bland, we all admit. We’ve been working hard on getting as much content into Missing Information as possible in our brief moment of silence.

First off we’ve got a couple new NPC models to show off, Mugofdoom’s (me) new Headcrab model, a revisioning of the headhumper we all know and love, Isotope’s new Prowler model, a stealthy new Combine NPC that will hunt down the player and use such weapons as trip mines and knives to kill the player. The Headcrab is being completely redone from scratch to look like the original, cut version, with hopes to add much more detail.

The Combine have also been revised to look more like the original concepts, though modified to give them a much more distinct look. Red Katana is the mastermind behind these revisionings of the classic Combine design, with Mugofdoom modeling and texturing the head for the Elite seen on the right.

If there’s anything that has been worked on the most, it’s the maps. The first three chapters of our storyline, the arrival in City 17, which takes you through the industrial section of City 17, an abandoned construction yard, and many more areas of the Combine controled city, and the escape from City 17 through the bowels of the city have all been fleshed out by our four mappers, Isotope, Mugofdoom, Scart, and our newest member, Flat Zeus. The maps have really come to life both visually and gameplay-wise, with many puzzles to keep the player interested and a realistic decaying city for the player to explore.

Expect more from us by the end of the month. You can view more media in our Media section.

It’s been almost 10 months since our last release, and almost seven months since our last post here. Good news though! Currently we’re aiming for September 30th for our next release which will be our 1.5.2 patch (six year anniversary for Gabe Newell’s original release date for Half-Life 2 ). This patch is focused on fixing bugs and adding a bit new content. The changelog looks like this (might be subject to change)

- Odell crash fixed on the Borealis
- Updated Rooftops map
- Updated animations on the Flaregun
- Updated Combine Soldier models
- Updated binocular skin
- Updated zombie model
- Tweaked the Stalker’s damage

That’s is all for now. We’ll soon be ready to talk about the future of Missing Information, so stay tuned!

The new theme for the Love Tub blog has gone up, the new forum theme should be up by the end of the day or early Monday.

This is a public announcement I wanted to make, just so everyone was aware of the new direction Bingo Mod was taking. As you are all no doubt aware, our mod has been going through a bit of a growing process, starting with the rebirth a few weeks back and maturing enough to warrant a name change.

Where, it’s recently come to our attention that people don’t actually like the concept we originally had with the mod formerly known as Half-Life 177 (or ‘Missing Information’), and wished for something a little more risqué.

After giving it a lot of thought, we’ve reached the consensus that, while the Half-Life 2 modding community has grown up and moved on, Bingo Mod has fallen behind, and has, in turn, become a relic.

I think I speak for the entire team when I say that this was not the intention of Bingo Mod, and for that, we’re sorry – our project is being revised and from now on, Bingo Mod will be a mod based on the old Half-Life 2 storyline.

Apparently people liked what we did with Borealis and would like to see more of that, rather than more of what we had in mind for Bingo Mod.

Thank you.

Sorry this took a little longer than expected but I can assure you that it was indeed worth it.

Change List,

- Fixed stalker and assassin textures and added phong.
- Phong’d the Borealis barrels.
- Fixed a few problems with the new Odell model.
- AK47 has it’s own sounds instead of using the OICW fire sounds.
- Improved AK47 accuracy and fire modes.
- Increased SMG2 rate of fire and accuracy.
- Updated SMG2 and OICW sounds.
- Added mi_buildingblocks to the chapters menu.
- Updated Borealis chapter with HDR and improved areas.
- Re added missing maps and updated a few of them.
- Added new flare item model.

http://files.filefront.com/MI+Patch1rar/;12896936;/fileinfo.html

http://www.cyborgmatt.com/download/Missing+Information+1.5.1+Patch

Special thanks to Cyborgmatt for the mirror.

I know everybody had the utmost faith that we’d actually get it out today so we’re proud to announce that Missing Information 1.5 has been released!

You can grab it from the links below.

Have fun and have a happy new year!

Mirrors

http://www.cyborgmatt.com/downloads/MissingInformation1.5.rar

http://files.filefront.com/Missing+Information+15/;12829622;/fileinfo.html

I’d just like to announce that after a discussion, it has been decided to institute a name change on the mod formerly known as MI.

It will henceforth be Bingo Mod.