Big news update no. 8

It has been a while since the last news update, but now it is time to give you some fresh information about the World of Padman! I know that we have only a small news update this time and I do not like to write news. 😉 Unfortunately not all is progressing as we want it to, so I have to begin this news update with some important information.

PadMod crisis!!!

We have been working on this mod for more than 14 months now and we have managed to get a lot of stuff together. But we have to say, that since the last time, we are not progressing well. 🙁 The big problem is, that we need some crucial members and that the ones we have, do not have enough time to work on the mod as often, only every 3 or 4 months a bit. Do not misunderstand us, these guys have a lot of other stuff that is more important and the rest of the members can/must live with this situation. But it is very frustrating for the team and so it’s not surprising that some members quit or freeze working on the mod for a longer time.

As we started working on the mod, we planned to finish it within eight months, we never planned to do the DUKE 4ever-thing! We need some cool guys with a lot of time and the will to work on a cool mod at a more intensive and longer rate than normal. 😉 We really need someone for the weapon code, the gfx effects and the model animations (the animations are important, but we would also be happy if someone can apply the id-bips to our models and just refit these a bit). It would also be cool if a coder could do the hands that Rastaman started. Rastaman himself has not much time and he does not know when he can continue working on the hand for the mod. 🙁

The fact is, that we cannot finish the mod without your help. If we do not get the help, a lot of work would be done for nothing, only wasted time. 🙁 Therefore our assistance call: if you have time, want to help us and are good in coding, or animations, or something else, than MAIL US!! Let’s finish this damn great mod! But now, let’s actually proceed with the news update.

Models and skins for the weapons and ammo items are finished

Finally ENTE has finished the weapon skins. We found nobody who could do the skins, so it was ENTEs turn to try his luck, and let me tell you, it was not easy for him. 😉 Now, after he has finished the work, it is SloB’s task to do some last few changes, such as adding a slight gloss effect to all the weapons and (maybe) to do some animations etc. Besides the weapons, we finished off all the ammo items and the corresponding icons!

 

Who has stolen my cartridges?

Some time ago raute had time to work a bit on the code and especially on the game mode Spray Your Color. Now your maximum amount of cartridges is limited to 8 and you have a timelimit in the spray room, after a short period of time you are told to leave the room, if you don’t do this you will die! 😉 He also worked on the weapons and on the health stations, these are working fine and the mappers have already implemented the new stuff into their maps for the new code. At the moment ENTE is working on some shaders for the cartridges and finishing off the skins. The screenshots below show the green FFA cardriges. I team play they appear blue and red. 😉

 

Spray rooms

As some of you may have noticed, every of our maps have a sprayroom. This room is designed in a free way by every level designer and it is used by the player to empty the cartridges. This works like this (if you still do not know): you have to frag an enemy, who will drop a cardrige that you have to collect. After collecting one or more of them, you should try to reach the teleporter to enter the spray room. Here you have to spray a symbol at a wall and to receive one point per logo. Easy, hmm!?

The logo you want to spray is selectable at the beginning of a game. On the first pic you can see a little selection of the logos that are implemented so far. In the final version of the mod, you should be able integrate your own logos! This could be a cool feature, not only for clans.

 

FadPad – first movement

Rastaman has put a bit of time into FatPad and tried to teach him to walk, FEzzz was very happy about this, because he did the model. 😉 It is not perfect and FatPad still is a bit clumsy at walking around, but we think that the fat guy will run around in a smoother way through the maps in time. 🙂 By the way, we would like to see some creative alternative skins for our characters, but we have no skin artist yet. 🙁 If you are good at skinning than mail us! Calling you polycount skinners! 😉

 

BALLOONY in action

A long time ago Herby coded a nice effect for the BALLOONY. The water filled balloons, which is the ammo of this weapon, now bounce around in a very cool way and explode with a nice splash effect. 😉 Herby actually wanted to do the other weapons too, but up to now, he has had no time to do this. We are still hoping that he’ll come back soon! 🙂

 

New map screenshots

The situation regarding our leve designers is not too good, many of them have quit their work. Maverick will not finish his Flintstones map, Fiesling left us a long time ago, GreenThumB has quit because of the lack of time. We have his map file, so maybe his map will be finished by another designer. And SLoB will not finish his western map (or will you? *g). (Edit SLoB yes at some point. 😉 ) If you would like to try your luck on making a liliput map for the mod then let us know!! We will gladly accept your application as a level designer, providing you can come up with the goods. 🙂 We still have a lot of ideas.

The level designers that are still here are working on their maps. Harmonieman has finished his Harm’s Hütte now and presents new shots of his Diner. GlowStar has new screenshots of his Anteroom and surprises us with a new map. It is a little backyard with a lot of old stuff, let us call it waste for the now. 😉 On the other hand ENTE was a bit lazy. OK, he worked on many other stuff, but he has not pulled out his finger on his maps much. PadKitchen is finished, PadAttic will be tweaked later and PadRevenge, much work on this map has to be done. 😉

Update: Last but not least, theKINGofRING’s send in the first two screenshots of the King’s Kneipe (Kneipe is German for pub).

 

In the making – the menu

QuarterPounder is back and he started coding the menu. MightyPete and ENTE worked on the background textures, buttons, icons, etc. You can see a first in game shot of the menu on the first picture. There you can also see the new mouse pointer! The other two pics show menu pages, that QuarterPounder is implementing at the moment. We have much more pages done, but we do not want to show them all now. 😉 Basically we used the similar structure as the original Q3 menu, but the map and player selection is nearly totally done from scratch.

 

Punchy is here

One of our most interesting weapons is our hand puppet Punchy. Punchy will help you, if you have no ammo left in your pockets. 🙂 Then Punchy will bite your opponent to death, but you have to stand near the opponent. Works the same like the gauntlet, you know. 😉 The model was done by SLoB a long time ago, but the skin was unfinished for a long time. That is why we had to wait with the presentation until now. Once the skin is finalised, Punchy will undergo some snapping animations for that fatal bite. 😉

What about Elite Force 2?

As some of you know, we planned to convert the mod to Elite Force 2 as soon as the mod is finished for Q3. This is something that ENTE really wanted, because he also hopes that he will be able to convert some PadMaps, such as PadStation for JK2 to EF2. But now the developers of EF2 announced that they use a new map file format and that they have changed a lot other things too. It seems that it is not so easy to convert all the stuff. The result may be, that we would have to recreate the whole mod instead of just converting it.

That is why we do not know if the PadMod will be released for EF2 in the future. We have to confess that we are not up to recreating it all again! We will be happy to finish it for Q3, if we can handle this 😉 But to recreate it is NOT our goal. We’ll wait for more info about EF2 before a final decision will be made.

Best wishes, the PadMod Team.

(Translation by Harmonieman and fixed by SLoB )