CaesarInvictus

The white thing its attached to is colour coded. It looks better on different tints. As for the orange, is it the colour or... what?

The orange glowy thing?

Care to go into more detail about the shiny metallic texture? It could be a normal map issue, which is easy to fix, but I dont know which armor your talking about. Carapace armor? Perhaps point to the screenshot your talking about, that'd help a lot.

By the way I'm also making those helmets look like they are inhabited by humans. Cause you know, I'm awesome: http://i.imgur.com/XPfpLhk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9ZEvrPn.jpg http://i.imgur.com/4PmF0sd.jpg Still needs heavy tweaking though. The first few attempts with mr Chikachev were less than successful, and you know im going to add some awesome gasmask details onto some of the still coloured areas immediately. Edit: Update, male carapace is really coming together: http://i.imgur.com/R79ZNFV.jpg

Progress shots and previews, incoming! Hit the deck maggots! Remember how the heavy deco texture was bulky and neat but textured about as interestingly as a plastic toy? http://i.imgur.com/BrvN21y.jpg http://i.imgur.com/dbRkedo.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0Vjl5uQ.jpg Huh. Funny, neither do I. Hey or remember that time Slingshot added the neat kevlar over armor thing but then we all realized it was over-coloured and dull? http://i.imgur.com/kK0EHVa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Mow7Gp8.jpg Hmm, I vaguely remember that I suppose. (WIP) What about the carapa- http://i.imgur.com/IyrQXzR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aZh662s.jpg http://i.imgur.com/cKpZQMB.jpg http://i.imgur.com/m9Tvt9n.jpg "...oh." So, Carapace is about 50% done. Bear in mind this is only the male suit, the female one will come along after I feel satisfied with this, not because of sexism or anything but I need to settle on a design aesthetic. Lots of hexagons! I like to think the alien material was hexagonal in form, or was cut into hexagonal pieces to be fitted onto the armor as a kind of modern day scale mail. Whatever, it looks futuristic and cool, and it adds definition to the otherwise bare metal. So far, my infamous detail work has kind of taken over the legs. I may revise those substantially to keep the design simple: I made a few bad calls with the mapping, assuming where pads and such would be on the leg until, surprise! I was totally off by a mile. The boots are awesome, but I need to add in a metal plate that was there originally. the mapping that covers it looks off and I need to compensate for that. Also, the hands are off to a good start. I'll be adding more detail to give them an awesome exoskeleton sort of look with reinforced metal bits and spindly fibers. We're back in operation. Booyeah!

Really excited by the new XCOM expansion DLC! That new mech thing, the MEC or whatever. I am totally going to make that look badass and sexy as hell. Just you wait.

Going to hit Carapace tonight. Will post updated pix once work is well underway. Very happy and inspired atm. Just need to hit this out of the park. the theme for the carapace is going to be big bulky and awesome. Im going to keep the general style I had for Tier One but make it look cleaner, more futuristic, but with that hard line military edge. *cracks knuckles* "Let's do this." PS: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a TON of high res beautiful face textures that we can legally use thanks to G.S.C. being awesome (Ive used bits from their guns in Pack 1) so if you want we can slap a bunch of them on and see what happens. Nothing for females or non caucasian races sadly.

Work has recommenced. Some tentative work done on the heavy's default 'deco' armor plate things, but nothing to write home about. Rocket Launcher given minor texture change: its now sort of a desert sand colour. Should hopefully blend in better (?) Carapace soonish. Lasers... who knows? I'm feeling tired... a lot of RL stuff has come up. Still shooting for an end of august release though. Edit: Good news though, I got access to some new great resources and inspirations to help me along. So whenever progress really picks itself up again things will get very interesting.

I think in the future to avoid that I'll split those sorts of textures into separate distinct downloads. They are very much meant to be optional work. regarding any enemy unknown expansion, as long as its not a whole new sequel my texture work, (infact anyones texture work) is preety much safe and sound. At worst what will happen is our old texture paths will get broken, so what we'd do is rip the textures from the game again, change a few file names on our old source textures, and voila, good as new. So that means I get to keep working :D I did the skull motif on that armor because frankly you saw what it looked like without it. The helmet really needed personality, humanity. Comic book or no the motif achieves that. Though I wasn't actually shooting for any direct resemblance to a comic book armor. That's actually kind of neat :P I think I'll put that headgear aside for the moment as I cant think of what else to add for it. There are a few other helmets that bother me but those will have to wait as well. For now, release is being delayed by the carapace armor, rocket launcher, and lasers, essentially.

Update, I did some things: http://i.imgur.com/frPIP84.jpg http://i.imgur.com/t5edCFw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/TcWQe5w.jpg Neat right? Now we can really punish those Aliens eh? eh? Cause you know, the punisher logo on the... and the... *sigh* I tried :(

New WIP, something for those silly looking super-glowy gold visor things that I dont see anyone use: (Highly beta preview, I threw these together in around an hour, heavily influenced by Blacklight) http://i.imgur.com/6so09X4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lH0OsJg.jpg http://i.imgur.com/y1S2vLS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/6DRjklu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oMNQLvM.jpg Neat, right? But it needs work. The blue on the last two needs to go obviously, but there's something else that's just not here yet... Maybe a skull motif? I dont know. Something, anyway.

WELL JEEZ AREN'T YOU ALL CHATTY! :tongue: I finished the pistol. I wont release until 2.0 though, because I feel like releasing in bundles will have greater impact. But it looks preety darn good! http://i.imgur.com/jNEZSol.jpg http://i.imgur.com/qbpmU4j.jpg You should really speak up, I swear I'm actually listening to what you guys are requesting. Man skyrimnexus gets flooded with people, and the military retexture project still has people crawling over it. Come on, send me some action! Raah! Edit: I think I might try to do some kind of honeycomb patern for the carapace armor. Give it that futuristic feel instead of just 'alien' steel frame. With human junk jerry rigged or welded on.

How would you all like me to go about making Carapace look? I'm thinking of going through a bunch of classic power armor archtypes for inspiration. I was wondering if anyone had any specific ideas? No previews or progress so far, sorry. Real life came knocking at my door.

By the way, a word of warning: This is unlikely to happen soon since I'm not screwing with overall texture resolution at all, but back over in Mass Effect land, Texmod has a problematic history with its users. It doesnt cause bugs or anything, but eventually if you load too many textures, your game gets increasingly clunky and awkward. Right now its fine, but at some point we will reach a maximum overhead for how much memory xcom will be allowed or capable of juggling. Symptoms of this include really long load times, memory-related lag, and occasionally random crashes when the cieling gets hit and windows kills the program for being too large. My combined textures equal around 30 MB, so its no problem; it was an issue over for that game because the retexture community kept looking for HD textures, which exacerbated the problem immensely. XCOM is a smoother game overall, much less demanding resource wise, so we should be fine. But its something you all should know about. If its any consolation this is true for any kind of modding, games always have their limits. We dont know what those are for X-Com, but they're out there.

The pistol is actually from the military retexture pack. I do plan to do my own pistol, and I have a WIP rocket launcher, but they were in no state for release and I figured it would be better just to release what I had now. I'm thinking I'll write the text "Last Rites" on it, in honor of all the failed last stands I've had with the pea-shooter. I'm not even really sure what to do about the rocket launcher. Its texture is surprisingly sophisticated A simple colour swap would be simple enough, but the problem with the rocket launcher was it had a simple one-tone colour to begin with. If I just turned the green black it would be pushing the problem away. It's also fairly true to real world rocket launchers, so I cant think of many models to emulate for it. As always I'm open to suggestions. The Launcher is in fact on the menu for version 2. Version 2's planned scope: -The laser weapons! -The basic pistol and Rocket launcher -All of the slingshot DLC Helmets -Optional Green Berets, because I'd wager someone somewhere is really itching to pull a SSgt Barry Sadler. -Various bonus gear retextures, potentially something similar to the russian spetsnaz bonus (I have some ideas in mind for a US SFOD-D or Navy Seals gear set, as well as a SAS gear pack. The good news is that I'm not opposed to incremental releases. When Im happy with the state of a weapon or armor I might add it onto that nexus file page I've set up. Keeps the file visible, makes people excited. Remember this is just phase one of the XCOM retexture project. I've already ripped the files for the Skyranger and Raven interceptors. I'm of the opinion that the UI itself can and should be changed via texmod, or the icons at the very least. Depending how moddable the UI really is I -might- be able to do some brilliant things. Even if its just buttons and so on though, there's magic to be had. And, once I feel this iteration of the XCOM group is wrapped up nicely, I might start working on more themed X-Com projects. There's been this niggling desire in the back of my head to try an eastern europe themed take on XCOM, a what-if scenario where Russia/the Ukraine front most of X-Com's materials. For example, I would model the raven on the Su-37: http://www.military-today.com/aircraft/sukhoi_s37_berkut_l2.jpg But, since that's all ephemera, it exists as starstuff until the serious pack gets done. Assuming it gets done.

So, as it turns out, doing tintmapping takes around about an hour for a male/female armor set. Interesting: http://i.imgur.com/YGaVmIr.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bAp0AxA.jpg http://i.imgur.com/AWfP0b1.jpg http://i.imgur.com/KZVPqSU.jpg "Thank god, the XCOM hello kitty commandoes are on the scene!" http://i.imgur.com/blt6iUu.jpg "...And their friend: horrifying russian death tank of sin and doom." Weirdly the chest armor pieces adamantly refuse to be coloured, even though I intended them to be. Is that okay with everyone or should I try to fix it more for the release? I'll need to do testing and close study to make sure my tints aren't taking any details away from the armor. Less is more with these things after all, but so far I actually like the look.

Thanks Neonin, I love your Icon work. I think Im currently running your USMC and flag mods :D Edit: and yeah, I feel ya on the balaclava front. Unless there's some serious demand for it I think I'll cut it from the pack. It was always going to be optional but ive tried 9 revisions and none of them are looking good. I think nows the time to concede defeat. I'm tempted to try for full face camouflage though. Call me crazy but the way the texture works that might actually end up working better. Release is IMMINENT by the way. I'm waiting on getting the new body armor tints done. My logic is that I can always release patches for the guns or whatever later. They are all usable right now. NOW is the time if any of you have any suggestions to give.

You guys can't even imagine how god awful the facemaps for textures are. Just, you have no idea, alright? Its bad. Real bad. http://i.imgur.com/XR7Ggch.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OnIIrjO.jpg Would anyone even want this crap? The balaclava is a bloody pain to try and map properly. Literally making a cyborg face would be easier.

Testing head textures. Its...really weird, but I think if I just added a hole around his mouth it'd be fine. http://i.imgur.com/TpgqM7Z.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mLvzlMm.jpg Also, sadly as there is only one eye texture per face I cannot make a one eyed cyborg with ocular implants. I know I know, greek tragedy level stuff right here. Overall this is a great first step. This could lead to serious HD face retextures later if we got a good artist for it. Our jobs are made easier by virtue of each skin tone being a 'tint' ostensibly, rather than a complete separate texture. Not sure how skin tinting works with something like this, but I THINK that the tinting is just a light overlay on top of the texture, so it wouldnt have much effect on pitch black. The fact that we can do this actually opens up some cool new options: Face camo textures! :D Cyborgs Tactical gear like baclavas (what im doing now) HD face retextures

Update: LMG sort-of 'done' I really want feedback on it, I dont really feel confident its quite 'there' yet: http://i.imgur.com/sd9tbw7.jpg http://i.imgur.com/HziBRLQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Jfjy8tb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bSrjtoN.jpg "The Type 109 'Lancer' LMG first originated in China, thanks to comprehensive efforts by the Chinese to create an effective answer and improvement on American M249 squad support weapons. To that end the Lancer was created to have the utility of an assault rifle, built out of lighter materials than its American equivalent, and equipped with state of the line coolant systems. The result was a surprisingly mobile weapon, capable of being reliably fired 'from the hip' by skilled gunners. The Council picked up the Type 109 for this very flexibility, as prolonged engagements with the alien menace would be too risky, despite some anger from the American camp over their guns being shunned for what amounted to a 'cheap knockoff' by their accounting. Be that as it may, XCOM tactical division made several changes to the weapons in order to maximize their usefulness. In place of its previously huge ammo reserve, the tactical team opted to rechamber their Type 109s with large, heavy hitting AP rounds capable of breaching tank armor. A number of other improvements followed: inspired by the relative success of the M.99 sniper rifle's deployment, holo-round technology was added to the gun. In theory it gave soldiers the incredible power to ostensibly never miss a shot again, even when firing the Type 109 from the hip. However, this 'Smart Gun' tech failed its trial runs: rounds could still miss as targetting triangulation was too much of a burden on the holo rounds to accurately analyze and relay during their short flight to the target. They did, however, provide a unique side-effect: Saved holo-target information was stored aboard the Type 109's onboard computers. With a few tweaks, this information could be relayed to other weapon systems, giving them partial triangulation and guidance for aiming systems, even for the comparatively rudimentary shotgun and assault rifle models fielded by Xcom. In time, HEAT rounds, built similarly to the tank shells of similar name, but miniaturized to fit the type 109, were developed and distributed among limited numbers of Gunners, so as to better ensure they would not be wasted. The Type 109's legacy was well earned. It received universal acclaim as an excellent support weapon, and came to be a new model for modern machine guns to be built upon. In 2020 when several weapons corporations and contractors launched an official lawsuit against the design of the Type 109 (which they lost), it was a moot effort; the majority of council nations were equipped with lookalike Type 109's, and several Chinese weapons firms had become superpowers in the firearms industry. Bonus: The Great Invasion War left many scars and permanent changes to humankind. One of these was a growing addiction to technology as an enabler to strike back against the aggressors. The model IK-2000 insulated combat helmet is a symptom of this slow technocratic shift. Developed by US and Russian special operations units working in tandem to create a true all environment alien killing system, the IK-2000 emerged as the only permanent result of the joint project. Little is known about how X-Com came into possession of these ultra high-tech devices, but they came to be renown for striking fear (allegedly) into the hearts of alien menace and civilian population alike. The operatives utilizing the system, 'Ghosts' as they came to be known, often came to be seen as impersonal loners: remaining detached from the environment and their own humanity, they nonetheless proved highly effective soldiers for humanity. The US and Russian units (Third Echelon and Voron, respectively) which came to use this equipment reported that despite high success rates, user psychology gradually degraded at a faster rate than its plainclothes operatives. Eventually, in 2045 when X-Com launched its first extra-terrestrial invasion of Alien holdings on mars, the heroic team which carried out the operation fitted themselves with these helmets. Rumor has it the skull-like appearance of the helmets looked suspiciously like they were smiling as they observed what we believe the first 'civilian' (or rather, noncombatant) aliens die in the fires of their mars base.

Amineri, I was planning on a shiv texture actually. I can do it, but not for this release. The shiv is actually like 4 or 5 textures, and that's just the tracked guy. Plus im not sure what direction to take it in. It looks really cool already. Mostly right now what im going is looking at my options with the "hat" textures (berets, beret+sunglasses, hat + headphones and goggles are all one texture)

Textures can't really be neatly packed away into an installer unfortunately. Since XCOM is already hard to mod and we have no way of injecting new textures into the game at this time, a program called "Texmod" has to be used instead, which is actually fairly simple to use and load up, but wouldnt really be condusive to what you would want. In particular it makes the installation of Long war take about three or four extra steps. With this setup I feel it makes more sense to keep this work divorced from the larger XCOM projects. I feel like this is a gift to the whole community, and the fact that it is 100% mod compatible is something I would like to leave no confusion about. In the future, I'd gladly do some work for Long War specifically, though I'm not sure what I could really do. Amineri has proposed some interesting things with aliens and custom tinting, to help distinguish the many new kinds of alien Long War uses. After pack one is released, I intend to help him with this. If we are successful, then by all means you could use those textures, since they would have to be long war exclusive by nature. I'm not opposed to you linking or mirroring my work on Long War's modpage though! Just as long as credit is given where credit's due :D EDIT: Assuming Amineri is onto something, if you could create a way to create new 'DLC' armor deco textures, I would definitely work with you to add texture content to them. On the drop of a hat, even. That kind of capability would open up a LOT of doors that are currently closed to me.

QUICK SHOW OF HANDS, Who thinks it would be awesome for me to release optional face textures, one with a baclava and one with terminator esque cybernetics. Because I totally can do that. Really. Forget shivs you can command cyberdyne systems top of the line to murder Aliens with reckless cold steel abandon. Is that not the most awesome idea ever?

Overall status of release one XCOM Tactical Division: Tier One Pack 1: Male body textures: FINISHED (minus tint-mapping) 2: Female body textures: FINISHED (minus tint-mapping) 3: Assault Rifle: FINISHED 4: Shotgun: 99% - I need to fix a text error on the weapon 5: Sniper: 99% - I need to fix a text error on the weapon + maybe add new normal maps, idk. 6: Light Machine Gun: 20% - I found some inspiration but still needs a good days worth of effort. Release date planned: August 10th-August 15th -> only reason for the length is my studies getting in the way I have new pictures of the textures in action, but I wont show them. You have a good enough idea of what this all looks and acts like anyway. Basically I need to make it so the new body armor can be tinted, do some very minor bug fixes on the shotgun/sniper and finish the LMG http://i.imgur.com/KpNjDyL.jpg Things are looking up!

Well, the Sniper came together fast: http://i.imgur.com/2uzoX8r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/duUuhtA.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yBxyFVd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Qv7i406.jpg ((Note: the text is upside down, I'll correct that in the final version. Just says 'XCOM Tactical')) The M.99 General Purpose Scout-Sniper Rifle was released to the market originally as a civilian weapon system. Chambered to fire low caliber hunting rounds meant to take out deer, the scout-sniper rifle then dubbed 'huntsman' proved to be surprisingly effective at eliminating targets at potentially absurd ranges, thanks to the advanced computer and targetting systems which complemented what could be called the first true 'power-rifle' thanks to all of its gadgetry. Professional hunters complained that the tracking and targetting systems reduced their sport to a dull competition of 'who has enough money to buy and use a Huntsman' and so many tournament organizations banned the rifle, and outside a niche market in the United States midwest of rich part-time sport hunters the rifle gained little traction. In 2014, however, things changed. Rapidly. Rather than use a military rifle from a selection of the countries present, the council demanded that a wholistic gaze be cast for equipment and team membership, scouring the far reaches of the globe for the best tech and personnel for the initiative. The M.99 Huntsman was a late contestant, added in on the whim of a sniper consultant impressed with the targetting software the device sported. Indeed, in accuracy tests the M.99 defeated all competition by a wide margin, and was quickly sent to XCOM's Tactical and Engineering divisions to create a military alien-killing high powered rifle. The result of that work was the M.99 as XCOM operatives know it: resembling something out of science fiction, the rifle's scope has been heavily modified so that the targetting computer interfaces with user's eye movements, automatically adjusts for wind, and plots probable bullet trajectories, even identifying soft and hard cover for the user, allowing for routine astounding trick shots by senior snipers through walls, rocks, trees and more. Complementing this computer lie a number of other devices: instead of manual scope adjustors, automated dials were placed where needed to ensure near perfect aim on target. For ammo, an impressive store of depleted uranium slugs is planted into the weapon. Due to their size and weight few can be loaded at a time into the bolt action gun, making every shot count that much more. When a round does hit, it is specially designed to pierce and then explode inside its target. AP or HE rounds can be loaded depending on the targets status, making the M.99 capable of destroying main battle tanks when equipped to do so. The M.99's downfall was in its reliance on human skill, however. The computer controlling bullet flight was only so good as the shooter it interfaced with. Often, inexperienced snipers failed to properly consider all data when firing the weapon, cutting its range short drastically. Those shooters who are capable of attaining a scout sniper 'squad sight' note that the weapon's systems are still prone to error. Endless calibrating and driver updates have not resolved these desperate issues, and sniper that the council hoped could make any shooter into a crack marksman did not live up in the field. That said, it was arguably the best choice the X-COM initiative had, and while laser and later plasma weapons came to dominate in their fields, operatives have fond memories of the M.99. Indeed, many of the internal computer systems used in this weapon were incorporated directly with laser and plasma based weaponry, which required less overall ballistics calculation and environmental consideration, generally improving user-friendliness.