Mantic's mods and stuff

[Mantic]

Since I intend to do more editing, and other Icon/CoX related projects I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread to keep it all together. It felt like I was just hijacking Fennec's thread with this stuff before.

So first up, here's the ape face, complete with bump map now: DOWNLOAD

It looks like this:


The eye sockets are heavily shadowed because I defined the brow with such a stark angle, but with light from below that reverses. The texture is bald and has no fur on the neck, so it could be used for some other looks. The eyes have a reflection map that occasionally catches the light.

And here's another link for the male metallic chest: DOWNLOAD

More to come on that whole set, and I've already posted what it looks like.

I know it's not an issue yet, but give some consideration on how this could be deployed ala a Mod. I am also thinking standardized format for pics illustrating the costume pieces and the like. I'm raising this here because this is the first place I've seen the kind of activity that might conceivably become fodder for a community mods for Icon.

I'm thinking a self extracting zip file that loads the pieces where they need to be and either updates the costume piece list or replaces it. (updating would make the file smaller I expect)...

Yeah, probably a mod installer client could be done. Something like those front-ends for the Elder Scrolls games. TonyV might even be able to add mod installing/management functionality to his pigg viewer.

For now I will be distributing each bit in it's own rar file with the directory structure included (from "data" up). This should make installation easy enough for the moment.


(click for full res)

Something I realized by looking at all the costumes I have stored (this is only a relative handful): the real key to City of Heroes' character creator flexibility is not that there are lots of specific parts, but that so much of what is there is very simple. The best parts are the simple ones that can be combined creatively, using scaling and color to achieve unique compounds, not the highly detailed and therefore too specific bits. Although the improvements to texture sizes and detail make a lot of the later parts prettier, they just aren't as widely useful.

But, the cool thing about modding textures is that radically different things could be done with those later, highly detailed assets. It looks like a lot is defined by the texture and normal maps, and the recent files are often quite large.

[MWRuger]

You know Mantic, maybe you could get the Mod's to sticky this thread. You could use the first post like an index and store all the links to the Icon mods until something more permanent, like a web page could be made to host them.

When you add a new costume piece or mod, you could add the file link in the first post and then add post detailing the piece with an image. You could get feedback on it but people would always be able to find the file link by just going to the first page.

[Mantic]

I don't know if it needs a sticky. I'll be bumping when there's something new. There's also "stuff" in the works, in addition to the texture mods, that I plan to post here. A thread collecting links to threads like Fennec's and this one and any others to come, would make more sense as a sticky... if the fad ever takes off.

If someone wants to dedicate space on a website to CoX modding in general, though, I would be glad to contribute any information I can. Though others know the technical side of the game better, I could contribute a few tips in regard to graphics work. Or I might post up things like that here, too.