Thu

14

Feb

2019

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS. I am SO sorry :(

Man... I could totally understand if you hated me. I have not really been in a modding mood for a long time. My video card is getting worse by the minute and playing the game at 15 FPS is just awful. But! 

I have not abandoned modding! I am currently learning how to unpack Unity based game files (mobile games etc) and have a lot of stuff lying around in WIP stage. So there WILL be new stuff soon. 

 

Again, I am sorry :(

hugs

chak

Thu

19

May

2016

Regarding WIPs, requests, asks for unreleased stuff

*peaks head into website*

Hi there ...>_<

 

Regarding WIPs:

I knoooow. I know I am a terrible person. Work is eating my modding time and when I do have time to mod,  I start new WIPs instead of finishing and releasing the old ones. Sadly, that is how my modding mind works - its like a pinball. I see something shiny/interesting and my modding muse goes all "Oooh look, I could use this" and I experiment with it.

 

Anyway!! Here's a list of my current WIPs:

 

  • Two different types of amulets with 30+ gemstone textures each
  • Another amulet which is a request fill ;)
  • a set of "lore friendly" female wigs (which includes long hairs, some with braids in them, mostly converted from the sims3
  • Wisteria trees (a weeping willow tree port from Skyrim which I am retexturing)
  • the project that I like to call the "giant goddess temple" - a port of a Tera online Temple-ish building, which I put on a floating island. Sadly, all of the scaling is out of whack, so that the building, the stairs, etc. are more suitable for giants than normal Oblivion characters XD
  • my ancient, ever growing weapon set, which will include weapon meshes from games like Tera, Bless, SMITE, Hyrule Warriors etc etc. Sigh. Even thinking about making an esp for this hoard of weapons is giving me nightmares.

 

WIPs in general don't get released, because I am a victim of severve modding OCD and releasing unfinished stuff makes me all twitchy. But I am thinking about adding a "quick release" section which will include random meshes I ported without esps - so basically resources. Y/N?

 

 

Regarding requests:

Eeehhh. So. This is a fickle thing for me. I think that is a topic every modder has to deal with. For me, its like this:

I am not stopping you from requesting stuff. The problem is: I am not the fastest modder in the world and making you wait for stuff seems unfair from my point of view. Also: My modding muse is not very reliable, so sometimes I just sit there and stare at the computer screen and NOTHING happens.

The general problem with requests for me is: if something catches my interest, I am all on board.

But as a modder, I tend to put my attention on stuff that I genuinely like. If for example an armor form another game looks hideous to me, I am not inclined to port it. Same goes for some sims3 hairs which I think are terrible. I rarely bow to the general oppinion and go all "Yeah, many people will like this, so imma port it." Nnnnope. Modding eats a lot of time, so I prefer to spend it with stuff I WOULD USE MYSELF IN MY OWN GAME. The rest... eh. Gets shoved to the end of the WIP list.

Bottom line?

I rarely say NO to a request. But I can not promise when and how requests are fulfilled xD I am terribly sorry about that.

 

 

Regarding asks for unreleased stuff and me sharing my stuff in general:

So. There is one thing I need to adress I guess. Before Oblivion, I have modded for several other games, including the sims2. And maybe this sims2-modder time in general has turned me into the kind of modder I am now, because my motto is:

SHARING IS EVERYTHING!

To me, there is nothing cooler than seeing my mods in other people's games via screenshots or videos. It's this "LOOK MA I AM ON TV!" kind of feeling that makes me giddy like a noob and fills my little modder heart with happyness.

So creating tons of stuff and sitting on it without sharing is not my kind of thing, if you have ever asked for any of my mods via PM or email, you might already know this. In 99 % of those cases my answer was "Yeah sure here you go xD"

 

But. And yeah, there is always a but XD

There are 2 exceptions to this rule.

 

1.) Experimental garbage

A lot of my modding time is wasted by me trying stuff out and experimenting. I want to find out if some things can be done, specifically if I CAN DO THEM. Sadly, the results of those experiments may look good in screenshots, but are unusable in "everyday" gaming situations. And since I have serious modding OCD, I refuse to release stuff that is not 100 % tested and working. Hence, garbage pile.

 

2.) Stuff I made for my own characters

Yeeees, I am one of THOSE PEOPLE. Just look at my character page/list/chart whatever you call it. My characters are riddled with custom content I made especially for them because the word customize is my favorite word in the English language. Still, a lot of my characters are available as companions, so I am not all "GRRR, mine!"

Alas, there are a selected few of my characters which have not been shared as of yet and probably never will be. That includes Alba, Ljus and a few others. And their custom content. I am not saying its never gonna happen, but at the moment all my characters are "works in progress" and nnnng... mine XDD There it is. Sorry >_<

 

 

Hugs

chak

Read More 6 Comments

Fri

17

Jul

2015

MMO Rant - a modder's texture woes

Yeah, this is a little rant about MMOs - from a modders view of corse XD

 

I have "worked" with meshes and textures from a lot of MMOs/Games in general and what you see is not always what you get. Some of the meshwork is just lazy (the FF13 triology anyone? Mesh recycling ftw!), others still use bland, detail-less mesh shapes which only work with alpha maps/transparency (seriously? Its 2015, not 2000!) and some (and I hate those the most) can't seem to get the balance between nice meshes and nice textures right.

 

The worst example? Here you go.

 

Believe it or not: Black Desert.

I have several Black Desert models on my computer but couldn't be arsed to port a single one yet. Why? Because the game uses ridiculously high poly meshes (seriously, I tried to port a Black Desert hair but gave up because of the ridiculous polycount), while all the textures are utter crap.

Don't get me wrong - I salute Myst42 for his beautiful BD Ranger mod, excellent work! The fact remains that the Black Desert armor textures in general are totally sub-par for todays standards. I totally get that the game had to make a cut somewhere in order to be playable for more people (and not just the freaks with high end gaming rigs) and that most of the work to make the game look shiny is done by shaders, but come on.

 

Another great example is TERA.

The texture quality in TERA varies so much its (and I tend to say that a lot I know) ridiculous. While most of the High elf/Human/Castanic armor textures are nice and shiny, some Elin armor textures are 512x512 pixels?! What the hell TERA? The Sims2 used that pixel resolution, but we have 2015. 1024x1024 px is standard and the least you can do. I had to literally hand (or rather mouse-) paint over the textures of the blue Elin armor because they were so blurry after scaling them up.

 

Bless Online does this too.

Although with this game, it seems to relate to the weapons more than the armors. Bless has some of the best armor designs around, hands down. And the textures are (aside from a few duds) pretty.

But the weapons?! What were they thinking? There are a few weapons which look nice, like the staffs, but look at all those swords... the moment you zoom in they just look like crap. WHYYYYY.

 

At the moment I am working on an outfit from the game Asker for Nelke - and its so great! The mesh parts are smooth, not too high poly, they fit together nicely - and the textures are fantastic! Ok, 8mb .dds files are a bot excessive, but by GOD they are so pretty! Look at the outfit I am working on!

 

This may be the most beautiful MMO outfit I have ever worked on. I am totally in love. The Asker character models are similar to TERA polygone-wise, but the mesh quality of the armors is so much better without being Black Desert-over the top.  That's how it's done!

 

HEARTS IN MY EYES.

 

 

 

 

 

Read More 24 Comments

Fri

19

Jun

2015

CHAK IS ANGRY

 

A few days ago El Alquemista's jimdo website "The Alchemist's lab" has been "nuked" - meaning jimdo has blocked it for "violating the terms of use", never telling El Alquemista what the exact reason was. Since El is a good friend, this really made me angry.

 

From what we have gathered, someone who visited the site must have reported the site to jimdo for the few ripped mods El had uploaded.

 

To whoever you are: I congratulate you. There are only a handful of active Oblivion modders left, so you are basically digging your own grave. Way to go.

 

So. Looking at the content of my own site... It's not too far fetched that I am going to be nuked next. If that happens, I will NOT stop modding but simply move to a new site.

NO WORRIES :)

 

Still.

This entire ordeal is ridiculous and SAD. There are a gazillion of god damn Skyrim blogs which offer a shittown of ripped stuff all over the net - and nobody even cares. Even on the Nexus pages there are mods ready for download with ripped content.

You want examples?

 

- Apachii Sky hairs

Why? It contains hairs ripped from Final Fantasy 13. Yes, Jihls hair is ripped. It's the exact mesh that has been ripped from the game forever ago. And last I checked Square Enix content was not free for all?

 

- all mods containing sims hairs

By default ALL sims content is the property of EA Games, since the sims modderse need to use EA software to create it. So even if the sims modder gives the OK for their stuff to be ported to another game, it basically means SHIT.

 

- There are several armors on the Nexus which contain armor pieces from games like Soul Calibur or Dragon Age. I have been a modder for years, I spot stuff like that. And seeing stuff like that being ignored while other modders have their stuff banned from the nexus or their websites nuked MAKES ME MAD.

 

Make up your minds, game developers and Nexus staff. Either bann everything or nothing. The way it's being handled is just unfair and inconsequent.

 

RANT OVER.

 

Read More 20 Comments

Tue

12

May

2015

NOT DEAD YET xD

Yeah so.

I am sorry for not updating for... months? I was not feeling very well plus my modding muse was very much absent. But.

As I mentioned in the recent updates: I am modding again :D currently I am tinkering with a huge weapon set. This is kind of rare for me, as you might have noticed. I prefer making armors over weapons XD ALthough weapons are a LOT easier.


I am also a crazy OCD perfectionist.

Example: I have found a really nice mod with floating islands, but I am NOT going ingame to check it out until I am done with Nelke's new armor. Everything has to be PERFECT xD

See? xD

I AM A NUTCASE.


Also:

when I mentioned my Elin stuff last time I kind of got a response that said something along the lines of "GIMME!!"


Is that still the case? Do you want my measly 3 Elin armors/dresses?

Read More 9 Comments