When I thought I was pushing the limits of Mafia's LS3D engine, I believed I overestimated LS3D's capabilities and several times I had to tell people the mod wasn't going to be what I originally planned to.
But that's gonna change now. I would like to introduce MTM's newest teammember: Djbozkosz!
Djbozkosz is what I believe maybe the most experienced Mafia Modder.
He is responsible for a late addition of new modding tools such as the Road.bin editor which makes it possible to set waypoints for NPC's, cars and trams. Something that couldn't be done before.
Besides that he is working on a mod himself called the Boz mod, which practically updates Mafia's overall graphics. It's not like any Enb series at all.. No, this is the real deal:
If you have ever played Mafia, you might have noticed that water should be a creme like blueish color, that sun ray effect's don't exist (not to confuse with sun glare) that there is no 3D grass at all just to name a few changes.
Also see this mission he created of a factory shooting, notice the lightmaps, animated textures, and all other advanced scripts
More info, see his website here: Djbozkosz.wz.cz
To sum up what Djbozkosz's job, he will be focusing on the mod's overall graphics/ visuals such as the lightmapping, sound placement, water animations and any advanced graphics.
But also a new feature he made possible to create: Occludders. These are sectors that will make objects appear when the player is near, or dissapear when the player get's away from them or shuts a door between them. This feature is of great essence in the Titanic mod!
Opposed to the visuals, our current programmer Asa will focus mainly on the mod's storyline so he'll be working at the missions, cutscene's etc. (see the intro cutscene video that he created: Moddb.com )
This way the ammount of work for the programming won't be put on Asa's shoulders only.
There are some bright times ahead for the Mafia Titanic Mod!
I am one of those unfortunate who haven't played Mafia, although my brother's been recommending it for ages. I intend to get the game just for this mod, so I will be a prime example of a mod leading to sale. I wish more game developers would make their games moddable, because moddability sells copies! Keep it up, gentlemen!
I heard many people say they would buy the game just to play this mod. I guess most sales of Mafia nowadays are thanks to projects like this :)
I agree with you completely about developers making games mod compatible. Only if you could take a look at how many people are still playing M2 compared to the good old GTA IV. Mafia 2 is hard to mod and thereby scaring modders away, while GTA is still being played by thousands around the world.
Fantastic news now you can realize your dream mod on LS3D with the quality it deserves, now it will look even better then the original game. :)
Yes, I like it ;) This are very good news :) Welcome in the team, Djbozkosz!
Awesome news! This mod just keeps getting better and better.
I never seen this type of quality in Mafia, if you look at my mod ( Moddb.com ) the best thing i could do to make the city more beautiful is add high quality photollistic trees, higher quality cars, and HD textures, and a modified ENB series, but i never ever thought, what you did to Mafia, can ever happen, IT LOOKS SO DAMN AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! your modding skills are some of the best i scene.
I saw your mod page a few days ago, I love what you did!
The main diffrence is that changes like these feature more sophisticated programming. The water shader for example makes use of modified and new .Dll files.
So these graphical features are way above my league. In fact, I cannot script a single working door without making the game crash. So I'm glad that I got Djbozkosz and Asa on the team. They perform an excelent job!
About the enb series. The screenshots look promising, but as in many games it is hell to run. The first thing I noticed was the over exposed bloom effect and the increddibly decreased FPS count. I much prefer visual changes like Djbozkosz makes (or watershader from Mr F) which take no toll on CPU usage and thereby only enhances the gameplay atmosphere.