Jaws123DRevenge

@@Tompa9 @

 

Do you remember when Movie Duels 2 was released back in 2009?

 

It was this magnificent culmination of community effort to bring new life in the form of a new campaign to an aging game.

What this small team of Modders managed to do back then just seems incredible nowadays – they have not only assembled and extended a fantastic collection of the best assets the community has made up to that point in time but also made a whole campaign worth of new single player missions, including all the layouting work and other gameplay related aspects when it comes to leveldesign.

 

And while I may be wearing nostalgia tinted glasses here – I remember that as being fairly solid, especially for a small team of passionate modders without any professional level of education on this matter.

These guys have really done an amazing job, even more so if you consider the fate of many other SP Total Conversion mod projects that we have seen come and go over the years. And now, allmost a decade after this mod has been released you guys decided to dig up Movie duels 2 and fuck around with it.

 

Considering how much I liked the originalI have been watching this thread with interest for a while and have made my thoughts about this.  Now I feel that the time has come where I really need to speak out about my honest opinion on this project.

 

So, let’s shed some light on what you have been doing over the past year:

 

You have replaced a few level textures from what I have seen and some of them are actually quite an improvement, mainly talking the Mural in Palpatines office here, the others don’t stand out as much to me, which might be because you did not provide comparison shots to what has been there previously – which would greatly increase the quality of your progress presentations on here. The way you present your work here could actually be improved a lot but I’ll get to that later.

 

You have made a few code edits and while I am not sure about the full extent of what you have done: I really dig that saberblade blob fix!

You have replaced a lot of originally included character skins and models with newer, „enhanced“ versions as you may call them. Let’s recap what you have done here….

You replaced parts of models with pieces that have been shamefully ripped from other games, mixed in a few parts from models created by other Modders and passed the textures through a bunch of image adjustments in Gimp, Photoshop or whatever else you may be using.

 

Now tell me: Which pieces on these have you actually created and not just taken and remixed? Which part of that process qualifies those frankenstein monsters as creative, original work? I don’t see any of that. And yet you cheekily dare to call them "your" models.

 

To me this seems straight up disrespectful to what the original creators of these models did or more precisely: I think it's major kick in the nuts to what MD2 stood for – even while you are providing credits to the original authors most of the time, you still refer to them as "your" models which is a habit that is bothering me all over this community.

I’m fine with you calling them your kitbashes or your frankensteins but please stay away from referring to them as "your" models. And just to make this perfectly clear: allthough I think it's wasted potential I really don't give a shit about your choice to use ported models, I'm just annoyed by your attitude in presenting them.

 

Which leads us onto the topic of presentation:

 

Just take a look at this post for example.

 

This post seems very sloppy and rushed – which in turn makes your work appear sloppy and rushed, something that is not helped by things like that broken skybox in the video. You could have greatly improved the appeareance iof that post and thereby the quality of your presentation by simply adding one more linebreak after the first sentence. And onto what @@SomaZ said about fixing that faulty skybox prior to releasing the Video:

I would never release a video presentation that clearly shows such a fault. To me the only valid options would be to fix that immediatly and rerecord the scene, or cut the scene from the Teaser.

 Or as a third option you could have rerecorded that sequence and just turned the camera away but I suppose that may not be the best approach to a video that is supposed to show gameplay sequences from a mission.  

So in short: think about the way you present yourselves and what you are doing here and work on that. You have put things like "Lead Designer“ and "Mod Developer“ for Movie Duels 2 remastered in your signatures, I’ll let the mod developer pass but I really don’t think that anyone of you is justified to call yourself "Lead Designer“ of this! Keep in mind that most of what you have here is recycled designwork from other authors.

 

As it stands now I would greatly prefer not to see any traces of my models as a part of the beta release.

I am not going to explicitely forbid you to use them but if you have any respect for this community and me personally, I trust that you will decide to leave them out.

If you actually stop and think about the way you present this whole deal on here, change something about that and thereby gain my respect, I will gladly let you include my work in a later release.

OK, lets take a look at this....

These guys have done a lot to improve this mod, depending on who you ask apparently. And a lot of the stuff they have done wasn't specifically mentioned in your post. It's a hell of a lot more than just texture replacements. They've improved the cutscenes by having the the audio from the movies play throughout the whole thing instead of cutting in and out so the whole scene will flow better, and gives the overall feel of the mod a one more accurate to the movies, and part of that is.... yes, replacing models. I don't think anyone wants to get into the whole ported, kitbashing models debate again, but come on, it's inevitable, so I'll just say this...... If the model these guys kitbash, regardless of where it came from, looks more accurate to it's real life counterpart, then why shouldn't they use it? In your post, you said "I think it's major kick in the nuts to what MD2 stood for," What exactly did MD2 stand for? MD2 is a mod that recreates the Star Wars prequel trilogy, so why wouldn't you want the most accurate models in your mod? Because it's disrespectful to the original creators? Half of them, hell, most of them aren't even around anymore. So, personally, I dont think it's a good idea to discourage new members to the community  who arent as experienced from doing stuff like this. Now, referring to them are YOUR models, maybe I wouldn't say "models," I would probably say "kitbashes" instead. And back to what else they have added to the mod, the new saber system! It'll definitely make the saber duel missions a hell of a lot more fun than they originally were. Now, presenting work, yes, 100% agree with everything you said. Originally, this mod was supposed to be released, like, May 4th of last year, then it was Christmas of 2017, now it's May 4th of this year. And ya, showing us a video of an ugly Tatooine skybox maybe wasn't the best course of action. Needless to say, there is room for improvement in that regard. But to conclude, it's not 2009 anymore. This mod will not only improve upon the original, but get more people into the community as well.

Not this again....

Key for saber throw - C, and ctrl for crouching

And what about some of the stuff in the missions that isn't canon. Such as Ventress being on Geonosis and Mustafar.

I agree that this community is slowly dying, before I used to be excited to sign on in to JKHUB a lot to see what was new because people were making all kinds of things whether it was from scratch or ported. Now some of the people on here just seem to be going down hill with negative attitude causing people like me to not go on JKHUB as much as I used to because of what this community is turning into over requests and peoples work. I mean lets face it, Lucasarts is gone because of Disney. Most requests/ports are from the Lucasarts days, I mean it blows my mind when people make a big deal about porting something from a game that came out in the early 2000's. I believe everyone has the right to create whatever they want whether it's from scratch or ported or even a frankenstein. That goes for requests, I think people just need to stop bashing requested ports I mean someone requesting for example Revan from KOTOR was a huge request back then and I'm sure people today are against it because they will say it's not original or Revan is overrated or I don't feel like doing it. People like this should just leave the community, because this is what is going to bring JKHUB to its end is because of negative people. We need people full of hope and happy to be part of JKHUB willing to help out with stuff whether it's porting something, fixing something, sending a file you can't find anymore or anything really. The people speaking the truth on this topic about the reality of what's happening to JKHUB are the people we need, those who will stand up and continue doing what they do best for JKHUB.

I agree with that ports need to be allowed on the main files page, and not just the forums. You cant try to limit a "dying" community. A newcomer might go straight to the files page, and they might not care if its a port or if its from scratch. They just want something that looks really good, or something that has been ported by not fully modeled yet. But at the same time, like I said above, we gotta respect the people who make the models from scratch too, because those are people who ARE passionate about the game and are apart of the community. And by choosing a port over a REALLY good model made by one of us, we are killing the community ourselves. Like what I said above, ports should be reserved, and allowed on the files page, for models that we don't have yet, until someone makes a good one, or if we don't have an updated version of that model.

I agree on that cause even modelers like scerendo started off small such as making their own kitbashes and frankensteins.

 

My hope is that MD2R and KOTF 2.1 cause a renaissance and respark interest in the game for new comers.

Movie Battles 2 has gotten some recognition on Youtube recently, in response to the criticism of EA's Battlefront 2, and it got a ton of views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRatNEMQKbE&t=11s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMeUOcV6lmg&t=16s

And whenever I join into any MB2 server there's always new players and we always gotta explain how to play and equip your saber. Lol. So I think that Last Jedi and the response to Battlefront 2 has already sparked an interest in the game. But yes, more recognition would be nice. I think we should advertise more outside of JkHub, like on youtube, reddit, and other sites. Most people probably have no clue about this game, so theyre probably not gonna come across this site by themselves, we gotta spread the word more. If they see a cool Star Wars game from 2003 on Steam, they're probably gonna think "This came out over ten years ago. No one probably plays this anymore."

Personally.. Going back to what you said, @@The Punisher.. I think the JKHub staff have made a bad decision in disallowing "ported content". I can sort of understand their stance on it, because it doesn't showcase anything 'original'. However.. We as a community, are here to help each other out. That was what makes (or made) this community so engaging and a joy to be a part of. The fact that everyone was willing to assist others with respective content (requested or otherwise). I don't know about anybody else, but I feel this community is slowly dying now, which is a real shame. I've been a part of the community since the JK2Files and JK3Files' days and it's always been a very welcoming place.

 

But I think the allowance of ported content should return, as this adds another alternative to people who want models and content done, but modelers. etc. may not have the time (understandably), to invest in new model creation. There should at least be an in-depth tutorial on the site (if there isn't already) to show how to port correctly. So, pretty much anyone can learn it for themselves and achieve their own targets or complete their own requests. Ok, you wouldn't want the 'Downloads' section over-run with ports, maybe limit the amount, by way of character/model skins or something, but to disallow ported content entirely, is just a bad move/choice, in my humble opinion.

I would stick with ports if there isn't already a model made for a certain character, or if that model is very outdated or not, like, good. So porting Rey's BF head over to replace Scerendo's, whose apart of the community and who made a damn good head may not be the best idea. But maybe for someone like Han, who we haven't seen a model from scratch since JK2, maybe a port would be an option in that case.

He just trying to make MD2R the best it can be. 

Well that escalated quickly.

I know the original MD2 was single player only, but were you guys planning on adding any multiplayer content, kinda what like KOTF 2.1 is doing? Not necassarily at launch, you guys got enough on your plate, but somewhere down the road.

Imo whats really lacking is some good classic trilogy missions/duels, but sadly the Movie Duels version of that was cancelled..... regardless, still nice that this one is still being updated I guess. Of course we also can't forget the new movies too!

We've got Darth Vader vs. Obi Wan. But yes, more down the road would be nice.

I know Peneke has a whole collection of sounds from this game. Some are used in movie battles 2, and honestly it’s a good idea for the taunts, so there’s no movie background noise like music or other sounds that can be heard while the characters are talking in the movie.

Hmm I don´t think we will remove dialogues. Taunts are really great addition to game itself. But I understand your point of view

Can you make the taunts better? Cause whenever I play the original MD2 the taunts always overlap each other. So Sidious will be saying like three things at once. Its really annoying.

With the new combat system, did u give the AI the ability to use the blocking and everything also? Like in this vid 

@@LucyTheAlien Name of this project Movie Duels is perfect because this mod is mainly about duels from movies. MB2 is movie battles because there are battles - gunners shooting not only duels. For me it fits really well.

I think he meant the "2" at the end, cause he might not know there was a Movie Duels 1. The original Movie Duels, before Movie Duels 2, came out around 2008 and you had to unlock all the levels, and there was no rise of the empire chapter, menu looked different, etc. http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-movie-duels/downloads Scroll down, 4th from the bottom.

Ok, so while everyone's out celebrating.. Here's just an end of year update from @@yeyo JK, with our skyboxes and textures. Showing off the NEW Mustafar sky, first of all:

 

 

 

Next up, we have the Tusken Camp (that Anakin goes to in Ep.II, to free his mother).. As you can see, from the first set of images (which were the original mod textures), the map looks too bright and not very authentic to the movie version, at all.

 

 

Here's the same map, with edited and improved textures to be much more accurate and immersive:

 

 

And finally, a couple of small changes to Darth Maul eyes, to try and bring out that realism in his face and capture the Sith look he had in the film (This may still need some minor tweaking):

 

And closing out with the Jedi Temple library archives.. In the original mod, the lighting was more green, where as this has been updated, to be more accurate and changed to blue:

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE! We look forward to bringing you more updates and developments of the mod in 2018.

 How come you went back to Hapslashes Anakin and Obi Wan models?

New progress

Awesome! Just a quick suggestion. I would use shorter hair than that for Anakin. His hair in seasons 1 - 2 of the show is much shorter than seasons 3 - 6 and Revenge of the Sith.

The beta has been extended until October 11. I may try to download it one more time and see if I can get it to work. Otherwise I'll have to wait for launch day.

Its so good.

And MB2 isnt? 

Call is MD3, lol.

Movie Duels 2 was what originally got me into Jedi Academy a long long time ago. Haven't been around recently, but now its once again managed to get me back into this game.

Does anyone have any lines of palpatine from the clone wars TV show?

I have a load if you want them.

Thanks!

How do you expect to make 4 arms work? Someone would have to make custom animations for him.

Not really. There's a Four Armed Grievous model that works perfectly, and there's no custom animations. What they did was make something weird with the lightsaber hilts. I can't really describe it. Heres the file http://mrwonko.de/jk3files/Jedi%20Academy/Models/Star%20Wars/63313/

 

sorry for my bad English

It's not my language

 

No I mean why do you think they are bad skins?

They are very bad skins

I think BackFlip1  can do a better job

How so?