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We really need to get another campaign or specific event going again. Will see what can be done on that front.

But yeah, you voyeuristic 1077, always more fun to join in rather than to just watch.

; )

Heading on now.

Not had a chance to play for a few weeks as have been really busy, but should be around this Sunday night. Hope to see a lot of players out there as I'm in the mood for a solid night of intergalactic fragging. Who's with me?

They always get the best toys don't they?

Oh, and don't forget to check out Twitter for some exclusive higher res pictures of the Imperial Troop Transport.

@FirstStrikeMod

Enjoy

Had to think about that for a moment, 6 troops and 2 crew (driver and gunner). Should be quite obvious if you know the original design it is based on. The pods on the side on that toy are now the hatches on the side of the hull utilised for rapid deployment, a hatch for each trooper.

We have considered this in the past, but there are no other engines that can really deal with the scope and complexity of what we need to achieve within First Strike. The Frostbite engine might have been a possibility, but without mod tools that is unlikely to happen.

Nice, just needs slightly subtler bump/normal mapping on that world, but looks great.

Looking good. Maybe the night time lighting of the heavily populated areas could be a little subtler, but still a great overall effect, very moody and atmospheric. Grand job.

There should be at least 2, Rebel Defiance & Black Intel. If you're not seeing them then there maybe an issue at your end.

Bobbing on now for a few games, come and join the fun.

Will be up for a few games this evening if anyone is up for it, from around 8:30pm GMT, so join me on either the BI or Rebel Defiance server for some good Star Wars flavoured fragging.

See you there.

It does, if you check it out in game you'll find considerable damage to the static Sandcrawler, including properly screwed up treads.

No bots in this one, all that fail aiming is from good old crap flesh and blood.

;)

Heading on for a few games now, see you out there Troopers.

RIP Ralph McQuarrie

His art will be with us always.

It goes without saying that the guy was a great inspiration to myself and was one of the key factors in my choosing to pursue a career in art from an early age, having grown up with his work and the cinematic results of that art. I still have stacks and stacks of books featuring his art and reproductions of my favourite pieces of his work hanging on my office wall. His concept work was key in getting the movie executives to sign off on George Lucas's crazy idea and helped get Star Wars made.

A hugely influential talent and a sad loss to the world of art and fantastical movie making.

Below is a link to a few words from George Lucas:

Starwars.com

Heh, very nice effect, I can see many many possible applications for that. A cool shockwave to Incorperate into major cap ship explosion effects springs instantly to mind.

The development of this mod never fails to surprise me with the cool new content they're implementing. Great work.

Bobbing on now for a few games if anyone is interested in joining me.

There'll also be the usual gathering for a few games on Sunday at 8pm GMT, so make sure you don't miss out on that action.

"As you wish."

Nice work SinKing, great concept art and storyboard style, also quite interested in that beach terrain you have in game, looking at mapping as well as 3D are ya?

Good well rounded body of work.

Cheers. I'm kinda like where you came from, a traditional artist first, and then got into 3D modelling. Can be a fairly natural transition if you can get your head around it. In fact I firmly believe that having a good foundation in traditional art is essential to being a good and innovative modeller/texture artist.

Well we are always on the look out for talent, you should head over to our forums and check out the recruitment board.

Forums.fsmod.com

Thanks.

This is at the moment a relatively high poly model, it is yet to be optimised for in game use. I've yet to decide whether I'll drop the level of detail down that much yet, will depend on how the optimisation goes. At the moment all the detail you see there is geometry as the texture maps have yet to be applied.

With the power of PCs nowadays compared with where we were at when BF2142 came out a few years ago, we can throw a lot more polys at assets such as this weapon, so though this would have been considered a little too high poly for BF2142, I may not need to shave that much off of this to make it a viable in game weapon.

I have no other pictures of this weapon, such as wireframes published at the moment, but once I've optimised it I'll post a wireframe version for you.

An interesting question, I guess an in universe explanation is that most of the people using these weapons are well suited up and have gloves on which would protect their hands. The behind the scenes explanation is just that the prop builders had to put lots of bits and bobs on the old WW2 weapons to make the look futuristic and cool. We don't know if these details are heat sinks as we know them, or if they perhaps serve some other function.

I think you'll find most Star Wars games these days are more focused on the prequel era, mod wise a lot of them are prequel era conversions of GCW era games, and then there is the space in between the two trilogies which is getting a lot of action, especially with The Clone Wars series being the most prominent face of Star Wars at the moment, and games such as The Force Unleashed. Nowadays I'd say GCW era games are in the minority.

As far as what else there is to cover in the GCW era as far as First Strike is concerned there is still plenty we have yet to touch. Hoth (currently in development), the space battle of Endor, other GCW era locations such as Bespin Cloud City, boarding maps or space installation interior based maps such as the Death Star or a map based within a Star Destroyer or other capital ship. So much to look at so little time. I doubt we'll get the chance to do all of these, but these are just the ideas set in the GCW period that spring to mind off the top of my head.

Heading on now.

Hi Natocommander, our mod is based around the Galactic Civil War, as such it only deals with the Empire and Rebel Alliance, we have no plans to work on prequel era factions, still plenty to cover with the original trilogy era yet.

And yeah we'll be playing tonight in a few hours, see you then.

Well there'll be a load of us on tomorrow night at 8pm GMT, so try and be there and we'll get some games in.

It is far from dead, but yeah, we definitely need to look at ways of getting more people playing regularly.

What we need is for community members to look at organising events that will help to gather people all in one place at one time. The recent campaign events were a good way of doing this, but even just an arranged date and time for a gathering for a few games would be a good thing. You just need an FS server and enough people dedicated to the night to help populate the thing to get it started. Once a few people gather more will come. Anyone planning on doing an event will get the First Strike team's full official support with regards to promoting it.

I believe BI have something in the works soon, so will keep you informed of developments with that.

Still a while off, but we are working on it.