The G-Man from Half-Life series has long been one of the spookiest figures in gaming for me. His mysterious motives and menacing disposition were the cause of many a nightmare while I was playing through the first game. Welcome to my new nightmare. Byron Mallett was screwing around with implementing some motion capture data in Source when something went horribly, horribly wrong. I'm not sure if this alleviates my fear of the G-Man or raises it to an all new level. Either way, thanks for sharing Byron!

While the press release for Ukraine developer Black Wing Foundation's new 3rd person shooter is a bit muddled, the website for the game paints a very interesting back story.

Year 2026. The World government resorted to stem cells and gene engineering to stage the Judgment Day. They created genetic replications of Christ and Antichrist and destroyed them right away in the course of events to set forth severe fundamentalism on Earth, propped by the idea of communicating with God via machines as well as by the army of cloned creatures, called Angels...

Talk about your high concept! The game, in development for the Xbox 360 and PC using Valve's Source Engine, puts you in the role of three heroes fighting against a New Government run by technocrats watching over a sever linked-up to heaven, where crime can have you sentenced to virtual cybernetic hells designed to provide constant torment. As far as gameplay goes it's a mix of stealth and action with RPG elements wrapped around what promises to be a highly dramatic storyline. Hell, I'm sold on the concept alone. Check out the gallery for screens and concept arts from what promises to be a very interesting game indeed.

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In this week's Steam update, Valve has revealed they have updated the Source SDK for games included in The Orange Box. This means modders will now be able to easily create new maps and content for their favourite games including Half-Life 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. You can access the SDK through the "Tools" tab in your friendly neighbourhood Steam client. If they like your mod enough, you may even find it featured on the Steam site. Good luck and happy modding!

Aside from keeping tabs on the industry by refreshing Kotaku at least 150 times a day (or recommendation), there are other ways to prepare for the wide world of game design and break into a career promising endless hours for lesser pay. And Bethesda's Matt Grandstaff is here to tell you how!

Get your hands on the Source SDK, The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, the Neverwinter Nights toolset (either game, 1 or 2 or both!). Make lots of mods. When the time is right and you have a chance to interview for a design job, show them all your kick arse mods.

Of course, the same would apply for modding the software of pretty much any company you'd like to work for. But when you make it and publish your first title, we ask that you send us one of your two complimentary copies out of gratitude.

Breaking into Games: I want to be a Designer! [via gamingtoday]

The latest edition of the Source software developers kit adds support for the three most recent releases from Valve in Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode Two. You may know them collectively better as The Orange Box. That means we should be on the receiving end of a slew of new Portal and Team Fortress 2 user created maps courtesy of the Hammer World Editor and fabulous machinima nearing the levels of Valve's internally created TF2 character class clips courtesy of the Faceposer tool.

Details on the Source SDK are available at the Valve Developer Community wiki and should give budding map designers a good place to start. Quick, someone remake a working de_dust2 in Portal before the next guy does.

It looks more like a 3D Jagged Alliance than a real-time strategy, going by the screenshot above. But the official website for Half-Life 2 Wars makes it clear the Source-based modification is most definitely an RTS.

The first public release, 0.1, is available for download, and it's easy to see a decent amount of work has gone into the mod. Except there's no base building, though I think we can cut them a bit of slack on this point.

Most of the work seems to have gone into getting the camera and user interface right. I suppose once these are perfected, the team will be able to focus on AI and actual gameplay. Download mirrors are available on the Wars site, so you can try out what they've done so far.

Support the modding community. It gives so much and asks for little in return.

Half-Life 2 Wars [Official site]