Aug. 29: Visual Upgrades

I'm currently working on what's turning out to be a rather large custom content update. When it's ready to go online, it will include:

- updated dragon models and animations (thanks to creator Hardpoints work)
- several new, original small shield models
- several new, original magical staff parts
- all-new, original magical staff inventory icons (that look like the actual staves)
- updated troll models (regular troll from Project Q, cinder troll and scrag reskins and minor model changes by me)
- updated basic shield models (adapted from Project Q to fit with existing shields)
- updated ioun stone visuals and icons (more D&D-style, rather than all brightly glowing geometric shapes)
- the results of the Living Sky Project I've been working on

Not sure of a date for these changes. I start student teaching on Monday, but the majority of this stuff is 90% completed.

Neat!

That dragon looks amazing.

oh this is gonna be nice! Great work !

Holy crap! Wowza, that's gonna be cool!

...


Awesome.

The cinders look dang nice.

MannyJabrielle wrote:The cinders look dang nice.

And they show up in the dark, since their skin actually glows with inner heat. Those picks are from in-game (for me, anyway). Everyone will start seeing them after I finish with this upcoming update.

Status of the update:

Doing good. I just finished remaking all the magical staff inventory icons. Trolls are done. New shields are done. Ioun visuals are done.

All that remains is reworking a bunch of the Project Q shields (mostly file renaming), importing the dragons (I'm not adding all of them, since I have no plans on them all showing up in the game (such as the tarteran dragon and rust dragon)), and fine tuning the Living Sky stuff. Oh, and I need to remake the inventory icons for the ioun stones. I've got a new heavy flail design in the works, but it's not animating properly and may not make it into this update.

A few people mentioned a desire for more containers to better sort things in inventory, so how about these?

Yes, these icons are made already. The belt of vials one will replace the current belt image automatically, while the others are all new large container images. The portable hole will be added to the game sometime after the update as a unique item.

Now those are -really- nice looking

Wow... those look awesome... !!

Ooooooooh! Love love love them!

I'm speechless... awestruck... HOLY CRAP that's awesome and REALLY GOOD work there.

So what do you plan on having this "Portable Hole" do exactly?

evilkittenofdoom wrote:I'm speechless... awestruck... HOLY CRAP that's awesome and REALLY GOOD work there.

So what do you plan on having this "Portable Hole" do exactly?

Either a basic container that acts like a bag of holding (100% nullification of all weight inside it) or else a (limited use/day) version (or replacement) of the Ethereal Chest (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling). I haven't decided yet.

Ooooh, I can't wait to start orginizing all me stuffs!!!

ve evil cackle!

While Alex doesn't have Dragonshape in game at the moment (recently ascended), I played around with leveling him up in the build module to check out the dragonshape looks. Every time I shift, I either crash to desktop on shifting to dragonform, or if I manage to get into dragonform, I crash on shifting out.

Can anyone else muck around with a dragonshape druid or shifter build in the build module and see if they get the same?

I tried out the dragon shapes on my druid/monk/shifter in the build mod and was able to use all three shapes with no trouble, shifted in and out with no crashes. Hope that can help some.

Did a complete reinstall, not really any imrpovements.

In-game, dragons work alright, but certain animations from them (particuarlly those in their being knocked down, falling down dead) cause a crash to desktop for me.

I don't get this with the small baby dragons, just the larger ones, which is odd since it's the same model, just a different scale?

Very strange. I wonder if it's because the same models aren't loaded onto the server yet. I'll update the hak on the server tomorrow afternoon/evening with the new models to see if that fixes things.

I did a little testing with an epic shifter and ran into the crash when returning to normal form from the ancient green and the ancient red forms.

On a positive note, I think I've now finished with all the models and the scripts for the Living Sky.

The red and greens are the ones giving me the most trouble too, both in the build module testing out dragonshape, and on the server. Blues and blacks so far haven't crashed me or caused even a hiccup yet though

Did a fresh reinstall (actually, whole system, needed a reformat anyhow).

The green dragons haven't given me any trouble (yet) in the build module. The red's still giving me crashes on shifting into that form, even after a 2nd download of the updated files however.

Compressing and uploading 2 hak files for a AENEA_PLAYERPACK_PATCH_AUG_09 file (which needs to be decompressed after the JUL_09 patch). This will include a new aeneahak_s.hak file and a nice nearly-empty aeneahak_updates.hak file.

The server should be fully switched to the new hak files Saturday or Sunday.

I'll also be uploading the WorldGate package I put together to the Vault page for easy download by players that want to go that route for keeping updated.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:

evilkittenofdoom wrote:I'm speechless... awestruck... HOLY CRAP that's awesome and REALLY GOOD work there.

So what do you plan on having this "Portable Hole" do exactly?

Either a basic container that acts like a bag of holding (100% nullification of all weight inside it) or else a (limited use/day) version (or replacement) of the Ethereal Chest (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling). I haven't decided yet.

I'm all in favor of replacing the chests! be nice to have access to your loot 24/7!

The new visual on the three ice-troll's cestus...

Just... simply... yum!

Holy crap! A portable hole!

Can I put a bag of holding within my portable hole? I've always wanted to see the Astral Plane :-)

MannyJabrielle wrote:The new visual on the three ice-troll's cestus...

Just... simply... yum!

How about a screenie on that, for those of us who don't have one? Please!

Svair wrote:Holy crap! A portable hole!

Can I put a bag of holding within my portable hole? I've always wanted to see the Astral Plane :-)

Lemme know when you do, I wanna watch the fireworks!

It loses a lot as a screenshot... the blue around Alastair's hand is animated, it's like blue fire.

...I want one of these.
Can you use them on both hands? That would be amazing.

Main hand only.

DerusTal wrote:...I want one of these.
Can you use them on both hands? That would be amazing.

This post might give you some useful information about the cesti.