Rooxon

Or at least special saber properties, like a light saber would be able to do return damage, a little bit faster but, like, 80% of damage output. Or certain things like that would be cool and I'm sure these are possible.

Moving on, the work has just about started to be fun. Now that I've released the first versions of my saber packs, it's time to change my priorities a little bit - I'll start working on the weapons for The Dark Pastime mod, which will require a lot of concept working and talk with the team, so I'm practicing a little bit drawing the weapons. First off, I'll show you two hilts (to the left) which are somewhat my own hilts, if I were a jedi and use any. To the right, it's a concept of The Laser Sword from Castlevania, which is a mod request by Angel Soul.

I will be updating these released packs more as side-work now for a brief amount of time. There's tons of work I promised to do for others and it's time I live up to my word.

@@Circa, I was thinking about adding holster rings to all my weapons, equiped with the tag_holsterorigin. I'll be working on new models for the first two packs and I've got the finished Dual pack already in max, so it's not a lot of additional work. I just need to hear that I schould go on and do it.

@@Serenity937 that's pretty much what I wanted to see and it looks great. But maybe it could be a little bit smaller.. like 75% of it's size right now. Or possibly 70%.

The Vanquisher finished more or less, just some dust layers remain and a few light levels touch-ups:

I schould have the whole pack up and working in a few hours and I'll upload it then. I just need to make sure I didn't leave anything important out on the previous models.

And I simply love PNG files. I mean, look at the texture! CRISPY AS POSSIBLE! Why I did not use it before, I don't know.

I'm quite proud of myself, actually. I created the last hilts, making my pack now somewhat complete at last. Here's a group picture of them:

The Guardian, The Avenger, The Vindicator, The Champion, The Vanquisher staff hilts and their single hilt counterparts:

The Guardian and the Avenger have .jpg textures, while the other three have .png, just for your information. The difference is incredible!
 

@@AshuraDX haha I had it without these lips and went through the extra trouble to make them well but you're right I suppose. Give me your oppinion on the png thing please; schould I use pngs to get nicer textures and have big filesizes or rather the highest quality jpegs like before? Oh and I'm thinking I'm gonna remodel the center part of the Vanquisher, I don't like it being a cylinder like before. I think I could actually make a model out of the thing that's supposed to be underneath.

Well I'll share my part of experience with AC:Unity, if nothing else, to bring this topic back on.. well, topic.

I'm a huge fan of the series and I agree with eezstreet and zefilus actually. AC 1 and 2 were great, revelations and brotherhood were allright but basically AC2 nevertheless, even most of the user interface. I still played and loved the story of all it's followers and needless to say, it's the same with Unity, though I miss sailing and some other things previously availible, but hey, it's not my decision how to create the game. I criticize it like it is, not as what I'd want it to be and in light of that, it's a great game, concerning the story and graphics. Possibly it could be longer, but I've done mostly just the main story quests. If I went for 100% save, I'd need 2 months to do everything, probably. Dunno right now, will do once the game is finished patching.

So, let's go to some facts about the game itself. The Skidrow release was nuked, Reloaded is until today the only working/patchable version you can download through torrent sites, I also haven't yet bought the game as I'm waiting for all the patches and DLCs to arrive first.
I used the Reloaded, unpatched version. Got pretty low FPS on my new computer beast with a 980 GTX 4gb graphics card, around 15-20. With patch 1.2 this got a little bit fixed, but still there was lag at times and I was actually very surprised by that, as I'm able to run pretty much any other game at max fps (with a good port, of course) including all previous AC games, Crysis and so on, no need for a long list. 

Now I'm about to install it once again and try out the new 1.4 patch, but this time around, you need to apply the patches in order. You can't apply 1.4 and hope you'll get all it's benefits, maybe the game won't even start at all. So after I've done that, I schould have max fps. We'll see but to be honest, I don't even try setting the graphic settings of games to anything lower than it's max possible settings since I got my new computer, everything except TFU and AC:U worked fine. But these two games bring my computer on it's knees like little....beaches. if you know what I mean

So the main things I'd like to point out once more are:
1. use the reloaded release, if you wish to play it since it's the most stable one and is getting patch updates.
2. to make the game less buggy, make sure to apply all the patches for it but DON'T FORGET YOU NEED TO APPLY PATCH AFTER PATCH IN THE CORRECT ORDER! So, first patch 1.1, then 1.2, then 1.3 and last but not least, patch 1.4 which finally brings performance fixes.

I've also had some saving trouble with the initial release from Reloaded. It saved just fine up to the part just before you jump from the roof at the start and then the Logo movie appears, at the moment when there's a riot in front of the prison. After that I played up to sequence 4 memory 2 I think and the game crashed, and even though the game seemed to save before, when I fired up the game once again, the game was saved at 2%, I was at the part at prison again just before you jump. Stupid, right? Luckily, not many people had this issue. Well, patched the game with 1.1 and 1.2 from RELOADED and it saved fine, the game was finally playable fully and I play everything on max graphics, even TXAA, vsynch and everything else you can use, with patch 1.2 at more than 20fps. I'll edit this post this evening or tomorrow, to report what experience changes the 1.4 patch brings!

Allright, I'll throw it in my pack as an additional PK3 option, then  I've been thinking about this myself too. This way I come around the problem for people who don't like the shape, as everyone can decide which one to use by themselves. Hm and maybe changing the bend modifier to 15 would be nice to see, right now It's at 25.

At this point, I would like to ask if anyone knows how to put together an installer and could help me or either teach me how to do it myself. I plan on throwing in some extras for other mods too, using an installer where someone could choose their options and then only the selected PK3s get copied would be great. I might not use it for the releases on JKHub if there's a problem with it, but I sure would love to once I've finished the whole hilt weapons pack and uploaded it to ModDB.

Well, or Yoda. There is some truth to that... And it's actually quite a grippy surface, so yeah, why not. Let's make it leather, then.

A little showcase of my progress on the last, the Vanquisher hilt model:

This time, I started modelling the other way around. First the dual saber and out of this one, I'm gonna make 2 different single sabers. Why? Just for fun and because the dual hilt isn't symetrical like the others in original in the first place. So this calls to create single_15 and single_16 saber hilts. Possibly I'm gonna have to rename these hilts to single_15-single_21, as I'm gonna add 6 additional single hilts to the updated Single Saber pack. I thought I might share also some progress on the concepts with you, as I was simply stunned when I looked at zefilus's designs yesterday:

Alora's Saber hilts (unchanged):

 
Tavion's hilt (quite a daring design, but it's something I did not yet see before, that's why it's interesting to me):

Stinger (unchanged, zefilus version):

And now, the first two hilts I've decided to use as additional options featured in my packs (I'll come up with some names myself also):
Rooxon's Dual_6, The Fighter:

Rooxon's Single_10, The Veteran (classically designed hilt with handguards):

Now, I need to state just one thing. I believe @ has the most talent designing saber hilts I've ever seen. Honestly, I haven't met anyone who could come up with such great original Ideas! I was stunned when he sent me his pictures yesterday and I can't wait to start creating these! I'm honored that I can model these concepts into real weapons. There's no other way of saying it, really.

@@Circa, you're great at reviewing my hilts, wanna take a shot with these 3 made until now? I might go around fixing them before the release or keep things in mind for these two I'm doing right now.

About the vindicator, I could go with leather actually. I'll make something similiar I used on the Retaliator for the Single sabers pack, fitted onto the hilt with some metal circular parts. Might look great, actually. Ooh I can't wait to finish this and fix the previous packs with better quality models and textures

Actually there's only the top of the emitter and bottom of the hilt left to finish on the Champion, also I decided to make a bit of a modification to the original model. Perhaps it will be nice to bring a bit of change:

Champion new design change:

Some might notice, the texture is a lot crispier than it is on previous sabers. Well, it's a shame I don't have all the previous .psd files... the crispness comes from the fact I simply used .png format and a 1024res map. Now, this results in two things, first the look really is 10 times better, but secondly, so does the file size get bigger also. Before I went with around 200kb for the textures, this png has a little more than 4mb. 4MB just one texture file! So I need help deciding whether I schould go with these big files or the standard .jpeg ones. @@AshuraDX  you said you use png files, right? isn't filesize a bit of a problem?

It's quite hard to tell what it is meant to be on the base hilt. Perhaps varnished wood that has got dirty?

indeed it seems that's what it is. Hm let's just imagine it's wood, okay? And now, let's imagine I'm gonna change it into something else, something that actually gives a good grip. but I still have to make it resemble the original, so... schould I texture some straps or something like that onto it? And make the bottom/top of this grip part metal, would look a bit more realistic I think.

I had something exactly like that in mind, what @@Angel Soul posted from the third episode.

@@Omicron, what does the material in question on the original look like? I had no clue, I tried to create something that resembles wood, yes, but I think that's not it. Maybe it's wood underneath and with a coat of... I dunno, straps? something like that. In that case, there's various things I could model into it. If it's wood, than I could just leave like that and meddle with the textures some more to make it look better.

Just please don't give critics about the screws on the Vindicator not being modeled into, I need to consider that I double the saber to make dual sabers out of it, so if I hit more than half of the elements/verts, I need to delete various things for the dual sabers. Though I was thinking about modeling them anyway, with small 6-sided cylinders or something like that. I have such problems with the champion right now... but I guess it's okay to leave it like that, as I am probably the only one doing close-ups on these hilts and maybe some player here and there, just out of curiosity.

The Avenger (dual_2) and the Champion (dual_1):

The Vindicator:

Folowing the Vindicator, I'm texturing the Champion, later off I'm starting the last model, just want to finish the base texture for the Dual 4 saber hilt, which looks about now something like this: (don't mind the hideous screws at the bottom, gotta fix the UV mapping that's why it looks funny. This didn't show until I had a texture to lay on it)

The Champion (base texture WIP):

So what do you think? I got practically none oppinions about these from you guys, well to be exact, except from @@AshuraDX who's been teaching me a lot of usefull stuff and helping me get the models into the right shape and UV maps! I hope that at least it can be seen I'm trying much harder than I did before and that's also how I want to make the other 2 packs look like.

I agree with AngelSoul. Great work, but I wouldn't really pick this flare GFX to be honest... it reminds me too much of the saber clash graphics. Though if you decide to keep it, it's cool also. Just make them slightly tinted to the color of the blade, then.

Mudbox is another great choice to do small position and size fixes on the models But I'd suggest you do that when you've modeled the head entirely.

Hello there!

Well I'd like to ask the administrators to leave this topic open, as I still don't have a clue about how I could play TFU.

The guy from the local computer shop couldn't help me. I'm not surprised that Win 8 isn't stated as spec requirement, as it didn't exist at the time when the game was released but still I'm thinking as hard as I'm able and can't find any other explanation. It HAS to be a Windows fault. If I can find another version of TFU besides the RELOADED one, I'm gonna try that. I really hope there's something I could still do, though.

Wait @@ChalklYne one more thing. The RELOADED game version is EU! And still won't install the patch EVEN after I tried out that custom registry maker. So it's probably... 100% sure Windows error, I conclude.. What do you think?

What i meant was if i take my graphics card out of my pc... and plug my monitor in the onboard video that came with the motherboard, it runs fine as well... maybe try that if u think its a problem with your specific card

Aha so you did mean the integrated graphics, I was right.

But no, it's logical the problem has to lie somewhere else, probably a register error. Maybe the installer didn't register the game into my pc, because it's the Reloaded release. Maybe it really is an issue with Win 8.1 causing problems with it, so I can either hope someone here can help me come around this problem or the guy from the local shop comes up with a good idea.

Downloaded and tried TFU2; works perfectly. So now I've confirmed two things: First, TFU lags because of the initial version, it'll sure run better once I manage to update it somehow. Second, the game is installed correctly, non-cracked (the comp still at least recognizes my DVD of the game so I can run it) and the possibility of being a Win 8.1 problem combined with a register error stays possible. The graphics card has probably nothing to do with it.

@@ChalklYne what do you mean with that? Pardon me, but I'm not a native english speaker, I'm Slovenian. I do speak english for probably 15-16 years now, I just can't translate this enough to understand what exactly you mean. Possibly the integrated graphics?

Actually I also consulted with my local computer repairing shop buddy; It could very possibly be a problem with Win 8.1, as he said that from win 8 onwards, the code was again changed drastically enough to cause problems for various console-ported games. Taking this into account, I'm not really surprised that the updater doesn't find the RELOADED release of the game as the game itself was quite buggy to begin with. I gotta send him the process manager printscreen and he'll answer probably tomorrow if he's got any idea about what I could do... still, I doubt that he's gonna be able to help. If only there was another release of TFU I could try out, besides the RELOADED one... I don't really wanna go buy the game once more, in our contry an original game like that costs between 40-60€ in shops and around 10€ less over the net.

Hmm... i run both 1 and 2 at 60fps with no lags and my pc is sub par

Welcome back Chalk! I get some stupid lag, which was supposed to happen only on certain nvidia cards and at the game version 1.0. Though, I can't patch it to 1.2 anyway so it's not playable for me. The game plays at like under 30fps, whereas Crysis 3, AC:Unity and every other next-gen game, at a minimum of 60fps. I literary haven't yet come across ANY lag in those games at all, everything on ultra. I can post you the specs, I've got a completely new high-end PC, though I doubt it's got something to do with my game not wanting to patch.

I've been thinking; could it be that Win 8.1 is the problem?

Well you need to know that this is the pretty much only version of TFU for PC, the Ultimate Sith Edition one. It's a shame, really... I won't play the game because of this stupid lag, unless I can patch it to 1.2 somehow..

Can't find any.. damn.

Allright, let me see them once they're finished, please. You can post them here, so others can also see them and give their opinions, after all it's a mod for everyone.

Final tex for the Vindicator, onwards I go texturing the Champion and later only the Vanquisher remains.
 

Hm okay I'll try this out right now @@Sentra.

EDIT: Nope, no luck. Still none of the updaters finds the game, not the european one and neither does the US version.

I'm starting to think something else, could it be there's another patch version for the RELOADED version of the game?
 

I'm not a steam user, as I don't have an international bank account and I couldn't buy any games from there, at least not yet. Maybe this will change in the future sometime but I doubt it, as I rather buy a game I really like for one reason: Bought games NEVER have as many problems as the cracked, piratized ones. I bought most of the SW franchise games, GTA and Assassin's Creed and some others I really liked, but that's it. I'm not throwing money through the window now to get another new copy of TFU, as the DVD can still be used to run the game without any need to crack it. I'm a bit grown up, kinda, and it just seems pointless to me now. I can use the money for more clever reasons/things.