The team behind the Goldeneye mod for Valve’s Source engine had been a little quiet of late and there were concerns that the team had stopped working on the popular N64 title. It turns out that they haven’t, they’ve just been too busy working on the mod to let anyone know of their progress.

For an outline of what’s been happening with the Goldeneye Source, some shiny new screens, an animated clip and a beefed up cradle track.

Those of you whose hopes were dashed by the denial of the XBLA version of Goldeneye (or even a VC version) can still find refuge in the Source version, or even the N64 original. The only draw back with the source is that it’s still in beta and as such is prone to the occasional bug; fortunately the Goldeneye team are just as frustrated with the buggy releases as everyone else.

To try and resolve the frustrations the GES team have with buggy releases they have decided to update all the code to Orange Box SDK, which for anyone worried about longer delays will be pleased to hear it’s already under way and while we are on the subject anyone who doesn’t own the Orange Box can still play GES, so long as they download the Orange Box SDK from the tools tab in Steam.

The GES team hope that starting the coding from scratch will produce a more stable backbone to the mod, on top of this the artists are redoing all the props, weapons and character and giving a graphical overhaul to the entire levels. In addition to the art, the animation is getting a revamp, of which you can see an example here.

Granted all this extra work is going to take time to complete, but rest assured the team is working hard to release beta 3 (from the current beta 1.5). Next on the GES agenda is to release higher quality code at regular intervals, to do this the GES team have decided to update in smaller batches to ensure the quality will be up to their standards.

The facility map has already been recompiled and is currently going through private beta testing to remove all the major bugs and hopefully we will see the finished work soon, in the mean time we’ll just have to settle for these screen shoots and an awesome reworking of the Cradle (below).

Cradle Track

Keep up to date with the Goldeneye Source at the GES forum