Bionicle Heroes: Myths of Voya Nui 2.1 Release!
Hey everyone! 2.0's release was about 6 weeks ago and despite being such a landmark release, there's always more to do - especially with the release of another awesome character mod! MOVN has come a long way but this release proves the bar can always be raised - so let's get into it!
Visuals
Today's visual improvements are mostly consistency based, but a new workaround was also found for higher-quality icons which may lead to further improvements in future!
-Updated Rahkshi unlock enemy icons: In the last update, MOVN updated the Rahkshi to be more accurate. Unlock archive Rahkshi have their own images, so those needed to be updated as well.
-Updated Rahkshi splash screens: Ditto as above, but the splash screens required quite a few more photoshops to get right.
-Updated Rahkshi HUD icons: The boss HUD icons were the last ones that needed doing and these were also the easiest. Across these three, the Rahkshi are now totally consistent.
-Fixed black space on Level 1 Jaller's weapon: Continuing to wrap up some small things here and there, some black space on Jaller's Level 1 weapon was revised to make the improvements consistent with other weapons.
-Updated all modified weapon models so far with low-res equivalents: Although Heroes isn't super intensive as a game and in 2022 it's unlikely anyone's playing this in low-res, this change is actually for two purposes. Firstly, some people actually prefer the style of the originals, so this will facilitate those people; and secondly, some platforms only use low res equivalents. I'm currently considering the future of a lot of mods being going cross-platform to facilitate individuals who play via emulator, so these changes are a bit of future-proofing
-Updated Toa HUD icons with less-compressed variants for slight improvements: Although upscaling the actual HUD icons creates issues with how they appear in-game, it's also possible to re-save the icons without compression which results in improvements over the previously lossy formatting. The Toa icons are the first of these to be done as the original-resolution save icons make it easier to downscale and save without compression. Other Toa icons like gold-mode and changetoa were also done. Other HUD concepts can be done, but will need to be repaired by hand.
Examples:
Misc
The misc section is a great way to talk about stuff I don't know where to put elsewhere, so a good spread of three different but interesting changes this time.
-Changed mask references on death to use the canonical Kanohi names and type: On death, it usually just says "mask of fire lost" if Jaller's character is lost; however, these messages have now been edited to give the correct Kanohi name (and the next character compatibility patch added has this functionality built in). I'm not sure what road to take for compatibility patches for characters that don't have mask names specifically (e.g. Voriki), but when I think of one, those will be updated as well.
-Added compatibility for Classic Tahu: Excitingly, another character mod has released since MOVN 2.0, that being Classic Tahu, and so in an effort to keep up compatibility for other mods on the market, MOVN 2.1 is also launching with another addon that patches in Classic Tahu. Credit to Miss_Plagued for the original mod, which can be found here.
-New .exe included that removes bloom: A user requested a version of MOVN that removes bloom, similar to other mods currently available. Whilst I believe MOVN shouldn't default to remove a core graphical feature as it's intended to preserve the atmosphere of the original game whilst providing many overall improvements, I have also included a separate .exe with 2.1 that disables bloom. Running this exe instead will make the game appear darker.
Examples:
Conclusion
And that's all for this newest update! My attention now turns to updating Double Vision to 1.2, as some critical issues were found in 1.1 (which is why that download and article were both archived), and some other improvements will be made with 1.2 as well as updating it to the latest version of MOVN. To see more progress on modding, check out the modding Discord here. Thanks and see you soon!
