Leon_Kilean

0 comments by Leon_Kilean on Jul 9th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Well, Pirates of the Empire is cancelled. Instead of any big announcements, the webpage will just stop updating and it´ll eventually fade away from people´s minds.

..Its a big shame, I really liked that mod, and we made some really fast progress with it. What killed it then? Lack of interest, not from us, but from contributors. Creating a big total conversation is really risky, because if you lack one asset, it can stop the whole production... for us it was the player models. We just cant do anything without them. Or actually, we could´ve. We could´ve spent months into creating content that wont eventually ship it, because we´re missing an crucial asset. Oh well, this is the way mods are. Finishing one off is just a strike of luck. Pirates opened my eyes for how crucial it is for me to know 3dsMax inside out. I´ve made some progress with my skills lately, and now I can rig models, bake hi-def normal maps for them, animate them and skin them. I just need to practise and practise and get better with it! But yeah, instead of worrying about Pirates too much, I´ll just make the best of it now. I have the jungle foliage props and all that, and now I´ll be looking for a project where I can give them as a gift. The galleon ship is a bit different problem, since its afterall very crude and blocky, since it was ment to be mobile too. Atleast the initial plans were like that. Maybe The Hidden mod would like the jungle props for a predator-esque map? I´ll have to check out.

Well, yeah, whats done is done. Dead of Night is coming along pretty nice. 2 out of 3 weapons are done, the vampire needs the claw models for first person view, which I might do sometimes, but not now. And the vampire model is fully skinned and animation has begun. Mmm, yeah. Fistful of Frags, well my map has proven to be a bit too far away from the FoF concept, so I need to revise it a little and really polish the shit out of it. Figures, its still pretty early and I wouldnt release anything unfinished.
I might post some new screenshots soon, since I´ve done some work on an asylum map by Katasdf, in Dead of Night. I´ve added custom props and new textures into it. He´s responsible for the brushwork and lighting, well, I tweaked it a little, pompous bastard that I am.