Ok...
Figured I would get this started since I have focused ALL of my attention to doing the much anticipated MEGA-MOD which will be a first for the community as well as something that will give the game a lot of replay value.
Atm I am focusing on creating a safe enviroment for texture creation/testing in order to speed up the process instead of the grueling task of testing in-game as most modders do.
I have spent the past three days so far FULLY recreating the entire bully world map in 3ds max and have some pics to share of this rather large task due to what I have had to go through in order to get this to a usable stage.
As most of you know the game has a LOT of individual models from the exterior stuff to all of the interiors and their props and this makes for a LOT of work for anyone wanting to attempt modding on this sort of scale. This mini project of recreating the bully world map in 3ds serves me TWO purposes. First is to use as a development platform for texture testing and the secondary purpose is to use with my renders that I will be creating at the same time that go with a zombie apocalypse story series I will be writing based off of a continuing dream I have had of which I have already wrote a small bit about in the weird dreams thread which some of you will likely remember.
For the renders part I will be redoing EVERYTHING in the map in ultra HD as far as the models go and there is a lot of merging and new textures that will have to be made due to merging various objects....as well as injecting every single interior directly INTO all of the building structures on the map with workable doors...etc as well as jumping up their poly counts to a higher level and adding things that happen to be missing.
I have most of the world map reconstructed at this stage but still need to add other things back to this such as doors for the exterior stuff....some of the landscape is still missing and around 140 textures are missing from the final shot I will be linking in this post. While I do have every texture used in the game it is a pain figuring out which textures are for which item since as everyone knows, nothing is named as it should be in the game and one object can have 4 different names...but still referencing the same thing...which leads to a lot of confusion specially with texture and model modding.
I also will release this as a texture development system for those that use 3ds max and wish to use this for their own textures as this method makes for a great way to mod textures without the time hassle of constantly messing with the .img archives in order to test a single texture or several at a time.
At a later date when I have enough of these compiled...I will release also a full set of texture templates for every game texture that also will aid in scratch made textures along with seam guides as well which I will explain another time....since texturing is a VERY exact process and for a texture to look good without any visible seams...you have to know exactly where the seams start and end.
I will update this topic periodically on the status of this project and I will state NOT to expect a x-mas release even though I am shooting for a pre-release of just the textures only for the MEGA-MOD and then add the rest in installments as this will be a rather large mod...and hosting for this will be a problem since I still have to talk to AJ about seeing if he will grant permission to host it here due to its size that is projected to be around 5+ gb when I get finished with it.
Think of this as MY version of the fakefactory mod for hl2...only for BULLY instead.
Please keep in mind that I did NOT merge any of the individual models into one giant mesh. I have kept them seperate since I intend fully on modifying every single one of them and hope to turn all of this into full HD...no idea if the game will support that yet or not but I can only try.
EDITCurrent Mod status for the MEGA-MOD:
- HD Textures -in progress
- HD Models - in progress
- Scripting - planning stages
- New Map Additions - planning stages
- Beta Boys Dorm rebuild - planning stages
Anyways...here are the screenshots of my recreation of the BULLY world map:
and here is that giant mess with most of the textures applied (stock ones)
