Darmo

So I guess this one's done then, if nobody had any further comment.

moreover, it would make tons of work for the devs in coding all these task-specific objects and interfaces. I don't see any benefit to having a special object for crafting stones into cobble, putting a head on a tool, making a firestarter, making a flint and steel, etc. I'd say save special interfaces for interesting processes, tech gating, or producing special items.

Unless there's going to be siege warfare in TFC2, I have a hard time imagining how a cannon would be useful, aside from some sort of fortress defense killing-hallway scenario. But that's getting into some pretty specific tactical situations, with extremely tough mobs. Not saying it's not possible, but it'd be taking the mod to another level. if they were in game, they should most definitely be a foundry process, if casting makes it. But I'd suggest sand casting. Drilling of gun barrels, I believe is a relatively recent invention. From everything I've read handgun barrels were formed of metal strips hammered and welded together around a mandrel, then reamed for smoothness, up until the late 18th or early 19th centuries. Not saying the game can't take liberties, but that's relatively recent tech from what i understand. If drilling barrels did make it into the game, it should be an extremely slow process (also good for game balance perhaps). Because they could in no way whatsoever match the speeds of modern machinery back then, on such a long drill.

I like the warmer texture.

Konlii has submitted a very nice Ibex model in application to join the team. The very first model he sent me already had proper parent-child relationships and gizmos, and I think he has picked up the mechanics and the aesthetics of what we're going for very well, very fast. He has gone above and beyond to submit not only a compound model with 3 textures - male, female, and juvenile, but also a an ibex skull and texture, just because. NOTE that the idea with the horns of the male is that Bioxx can shrink just the horns, to get them to the right size (pretty sure you said you could do this?). They have a nice taper from 3x3 to 1x1 diameters, and I didn't want to lose that by downsizing them to 2x2 bases, so there's a NOBOX that contains both horns, and hopefully that will allow them to be easily shrunk to correct size, while the rest remains as it is. Konlii is mainly submitting as a modeler if I'm understanding correctly, though the textures he has done are very good. It seemed to me like most photos had a black tail, and some black areas on the underbelly margins, and backs of legs. But maybe not all, and that can be worked on if necessary. I think Konlii has done an excellent job and would be a great addition to the team. Ibex.MCModel

As an alternative to paper cartridge, if one wants it to be more involved, hence perhaps allowing more power vs much slower reload, the player has to carry a powder flask full of powder, a stack of shot, and a stack of wadding. Reloading involves: 1-put the 'empty rifle' in the crafting grid with the powder flask - product powdered rifle 2-powdered rifle goes in the grid with the wadding - product wadded rifle 3-wadded rifle goes in grid alone - product ramrod 4-ramrod goes in the grid with the wadded rifle. Product tamped rifle 5-tamped rifle goes in grid with shot - product packed rifle 6-packed rifle goes in grid with ramrod - product rammed rifle 7-rammed rifle goes in grid with ramrod, and the final product, is a 'loaded rifle'. So a seven-step inventory process to load. If any step is with the wrong combo, the product is a 'fouled rifle', which has to be disassembled at a gunshop workbench. The ramrod may or may not be a thing. If it is, and missing it can cause a fouled rifle, you might get some grousing about how a ramrod not being in place won't prevent you from firing irl. The main idea is to have several steps, so that guns could perhaps be powerful, yet balanced by making reloading complicated and time consuming. The shot tower idea seems a bit excessive - I think they're more for making ammo on a commercial scale. Requiring the player to carry a lead pot and a shot mold, both made of cast iron or steel, would I think be more in line with a single person's needs. Lead pot sits above a fire pit or forge, like a crucible. Player right-clicks on it with mold to fill mold. Since iron and above can't be easily whipped up in the field, the player has to carry two extra items around if they want to make shot in the field. That in addition to the other four items - gun, powder flask, shot stack, wadding stack - that they have to carry just to reload the gun. As for production, I'm hoping mechanisms will eventually be a thing in TFC2 (maybe even two grades - fine and heavy) And guns could require one in their recipe. Guns could have a hidden lifetime durability, based on the tier of their barrel. This is a number picked within a random range when the gun is made, and is the number of uses it's good for - it's 'life'. This number is increased by good smithing skill, and higher tier metals. Separately the actual uses is tracked. Once actual uses exceeds the life, every shot thereafter has a chance to explode in the player's face, damaging and blinding them. This percent could also be based on tier and/or skill - something 10% for steel, down to 1% for top tier. If there is a rifle skill or something, the player might be able to see a tooltip showing the times the rifle has been used so far. A master smith might be able to see the life. And of course, a player needs to be able to use a pistol in their off hand, so they can come in dual-wielding pistols >:-D

Updated thinner body style, texture now has noise and tail stripes. I attempted black feet but thought they looked too much like hooves. It didn't seem like racoons have a lot of different shades on their underbelly or anything, so aside from the lighter face, the fur is fairly uniform. Thoughts? MCMCRacoonV4.MCModel

I would definitely prefer to never have a 'natural' meteorite strike. Magically summoned, maybe, at the right alignment of moon and stars. But meteorites that make it to earth are pretty rare. I think it would be better if all natural meteorites are already generated in the world. It'd be interesting if they did not respond to 'normal' prospecting methods, making them very hard to find without their own special methods.

I support this. I think it would be good to have metals that were in short supply. So you don' t have to have them to tier up, but if you add a little bit (5-10%) to other alloys, maybe it reduces enchanting cost, or increases durability, or increases damage against certain creature types. Things like that. It'd also be pretty neat if the meteor site had subtle hints sometimes, in the form of a crater in the landscape. Not too obvious though.

This post goes hand-in-hand with the MCMC Tutorial I posted in the MCMC forum. That post gives the basics of using MCMC, regardless of what mod you're making models for. This post is specifically for those who are interested in doing models for TFC2. Applicants for TFC2 modeling will be expected to have read both of these posts. Submissions which do not conform to the basic technical requirements of the tutorial, or the guidelines laid out in this post, will be referred to the appropriate post(s) and asked to re-submit. If you want to join the modeling team, please contact Darmo first. If you just pick a random animal, there's a good chance we'll have already made it. And while we can judge your skill from your model, it's not going to be put in the game unless you have ALSO made a texture for it, and BOTH the model AND texture are better than the one we already have made. If you mention in your initial message that you have read both the Tutorial and Guidelines posts, we can get right down to other business. Otherwise my first response back will be to question if you have read them or not. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS These are guidelines necessary just to have a usable model for TFC2. GUIDELINES Keep these guidelines in mind while designing your model for TFC2. If your model departs wildly from these guidelines, we'll ask you to read this post and re-submit. If it departs only a little we may give you specifics and ask you to re-submit.

Loving the 1.06 changes. However, with regards to the TEX window. With the buttons below, when I pop up the zoom menu and it's near the bottom so the window pops up instead of down, it seems that the shape maps in the map window actually override the popup menu, or maybe the menu is translucent or something, but it makes it hard to read. I think a hierarchy needs to be changed there or mabe the background and/or text of the popup changed to read better against the map field?

Thanks for the interest Jalden, but the fact of the matter is, we can't satisfy everyone. Some people like complex models, some people like simple stuff. Bioxx has an aesthetic in mind, and it is what it is. It is not up for debate. Take comfort in the fact that we have rejected far more complex models than what you have seen - we actually are going for a simple, blocky aesthetic.

Personally I'd rather use actual gemstones for magic, and this has been suggested in the magic thread. Alchemy definitely can have all kinds of things still - very up in the air. We don't even know if it'll make it into the game. Those are good suggestions for small glass items, though magnification is less about glass blowing and more about grinding, I'd argue. Though I suppose for TFC purposes we could just use the blowing for lenses. My main point is, as much as people like building, and they always like to do it early on, I'm not sure that putting window glass behind a tech wall is going to be that popular. Other tech items, fine. Windows, not so sure about.

For those that want to help, it's worth pointing out that we already have done many animals (including fox). If you contact us first we can give you an animal to try that hasn't been done yet, and your first model might make it into the game. Otherwise you risk it not being used. We can still use it to judge your skill, but it's not going to make it into the game unless it's better than the one we have already.

Love it! Looking real good Alpha! I really like how you're doing the spots, with a main central spot, and then a more faded border. I don't know if you have your spots on a separate layer in whatever editor you're using, but if so, I might suggest making the base light layer a bit more warm and yellow. Maybe it's just me but it seems like it has a faint hint of green to it.

For it to be worthwhile from a production standpoint, there'd need to be new uses for silk, new game mechanics maybe. Spider mounts could have a variety of other disadvantages, including the aforementioned never-stays-tamed thing, and they may also be permanently hostile to animal mobs, so the player would have to be careful around their own animals. They could also move slower in daylight, faster at night. They may or may not be breedable, but if so, the female always kills the male >:D

Ya, the glass for windows thing, that was definitely one of the more recent inventions of man, at least doing it well and transparent. But in game terms it's probably the least useful. So if you put nice transparent glass behind a big tech wall, well, a lot of people are going to find that frustrating I think. I don't really have a problem with window glass being low tech in game terms, since it's just decorative. Glass for potions and alchemy seems to me like the game-mechanically rewarding end of things. I do think leaded glass would be fun, and give a use to lead. It's pretty counter-intuitive really, because large panes of clear glass are a technological masterwork, while leaded glass panes and the like were simply the best they could do at the time with their more limited glass technology. But in the game, I'm guessing people would desire leaded glass more, for the decorative effect. So in terms of game desire, leaded glass should maybe be the higher tech? I think it'd be very difficult to do mosaic panes. But there could possibly be lead panes that have a central diamond or square that is colored, with the surrounding ones being clear. Players could make somewhat of an accent in their windows then.

I very much like the idea of bringing more believably to glass in TFC. I like the notion of quartzite sand being necessary. You could allow the player to 'distill' quartzite sand from other types of sand, over time. I don't know how this would be done irl, but for TFC purposes, maybe a use for cloth - to make sieves. Better cloth is more efficient. So burlap maybe you get a 1/10 return - 1 quartzite sand for every ten blocks of normal sand. Wool cloth 1/5, and silk 1/2. If you're lucky enough to find a quartzite zone, then you just pick the stuff up off the beach! It would probably be a bit tedious for the player to have to sit there and sift the stuff, so maybe make it automatic over time. Kind of like pressing olive oil. As for glass blowing itself I have a sort of rough outline of a start. It's not necessarily complete, but it gives an idea of one direction things could go: THE GUI THE PROCESS Of course the question still remains of the usefulness of such a complicated trade, vs rewards. I'm hopeful that magic and/or alchemy can make use of a variety of glass containers, enough to justify a glass trade, and maybe a skill. The benefits of the skill would be to make the juggling more manageable, and perhaps to increase durability, if some of the items have durability. Probably a lot of refining could be done for this, but I hope I've given a good explanation of the general idea.

I have a couple issues that could use improvement. Using right click to pan, seems like sometimes it doesn't do anything. It seems that I have to be one the animal or the turf block, or something else, for it to work well or sometimes at all. I'd really like it if the pan was not dependent on being over objects. Second, when I select a new box, I'd like for the program to NOT re-center the screen. Sometimes I like the view I'm in. Could we get a 'center on box' button or something, and not have the window re-center when selecting a new box? Of course if you guys prefer it the way it is, say so. these are just my opinions. Oh, and also, the texture box. I think it'd be better if the zoom/render/load buttons were postioned on any other side *except* the left side. When I have the texture window fully zoomed at 4x, it's the same width as the left menu column - I keep it below all the other stuff, in that empty grey area. But I have to hang it into the model window because the buttons are on the left side. If the buttons were on the right, they'd cover less model window. Or if they were above or below the texture window, they'd wouldn't have to hang over at all.

Still feel like it could use more differentiation. Lighter 'silver' hindquarters. Maybe some highlights on the arms. It's just very uniform right now, and then when it's in a dark shadowy forest, I think it's basically going to look like a moving shadow. I can give that a shot if you don't mind Alpha.

What we (Alpha, Phineas, and I) do involves no coding at all. Bioxx handles the coding part of inserting the animals. What we do: there's modeling the animal, and there's making the texture. Modeling requires getting good with MCMC, the program Bioxx has made, which is I think pretty easy to learn. Texturing just requires you be able to use an image editing program. If you want to help in either or both capacities, shoot me a pm, we'll go from there.

You'll have to beg Bioxx for that. I'm not authorized to speak to the media Plus then where would be the surprise and wonder of discovery when it is finally released? Don't forget Alpha and Phineas are also helping in this department. It's a team effort. Personally I've probably had an easier time than most would, as I have a bit of background in 3d modeling and drafting. It's actually fairly simple compared to the stuff I used to do. Just takes time, which is often in short supply. It's been said before in other posts, but if anyone else is interested in helping with this stuff, they can contact me - I do the vetting of new 'recruits' to see what they're capable of. It does have eyes, actually. They're just kind of obscured by the shadow in the screenshot. Beady little black eyes.

What animals are for is up to the devs. Basically those of use doing the models and textures aren't coders, but we can do this. So we're just kind of making whatever animals we feel like making. The details to be sorted later. Suffice to say, I made a pretty thorough list, and so far I don't recall anybody making any animal suggestion that was not already on that list. We'll just have to see what we have time to get to. But the process has been greatly aided by Bioxx creating a new modeling program, superior to any other available. Some of the things we've done, probably would take 10x as long, or would not be possible without that.

Yep, all good. I do like the lighting improvements a lot btw.

Ok, that's definitely better. Guess I should have opened the model, not just relied on the screenshot.