Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Need a dispenser here!

Mentlegen,
Sorry for the lack of updates, I am on a vacation to focus on my health. Turns out that having your monitor as the primary source of light and stacks of empty pizza boxes by the chair is not much good for the human body. Leaving mortal issues aside, here is the update to the skin pack. This contains skins for the engineer's buildables and a few fixes. Here is the download:
TF2 Tron v0.3
I would like to thank MugenOverlord for helping me on this one. Now, about the future of this skin pack, there are a few points I would like to talk about. First: Visibility. TF2 has a distinct art style and the lighting model that it uses makes the characters stand out in every type of environment. The Tron skin pack changes a lot of the details over the characters, and I have personally felt that it sometimes makes the characters harder to spot in a few scenarios. If the environment too is skinned as as the characters (black and dark shades of black with contrasting bright colors), depth perception takes a hit. See the video in the previous blog post for reference. Sure it looks pretty, but you can't play with that setup for long; it affects gameplay. Now this point is open for feedback, I feel that a lighter environment shade (see the snow in koth_viaduct, cp_coldfront) is ideal for characters skinned like this. Not exactly snow white, but partially desaturated and toned brighter so that the contrast between the characters and the environment is maintained. We can absolutely have the Tron style particle effects. Here, these images show what I mean:
Against dark environment

Against brighter environment
These images don't have glow on Solly's lines, but you should get the idea.

Second point: The weapons and hats. Just looking at the sheer number of hats and weapons we have in the game right now (and more are getting added day by day), skinning all of them is going to be a huge task. This, therefore, is not a priority right now. I plan to finish the maps and the HUD first, and then the weapons and hats.

Third point: I need help with all this stuff. It's a lot of work, and I can't sneak out enough time out of my job and gaming sessions. I need people who can texture stuff and are familiar with the Source SDK. I am new to the source SDK myself, and have to figure out a lot of stuff myself. It also needs to be tested for gameplay. For people willing to help, please add me on Steam, and thank you a lot.
Update: We have created a Google Group for collaborating. Turns out Steam chat isn't the most convenient way of discussing stuff. Please go to this page and request an invite : TF2 Tron Google Group

I really appreciate all the feedback received so far, and hope to get more. Stay tuned and keep pushing the carts.

Cheers!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Ahem!

Mentlegen, a dear friend of mine happens to love TF2 a lot (3000+ hours!) and has converted badlands into something that will make you weep your heart out. Here:

More updates coming soon. Stay tuned and push those carts!

Also a high five for Bolty for making the particle effects!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Because glow matters

First of all, I am overwhelmed by the response I got for this skin pack. Thank you all, for all the comments and feedback. Thank you. Here is a small update, this adds one of the most requested improvements: Glow. Yes, now the tron lines glow in the dark. Here is the download:
TF2 Tron v0.2
The installation procedure is the same, and if you are already using v0.1, just overwrite the existing files.

The next update will be big, and has a few surprises in it. Till then, enjoy this, spread the word and thank VALVe for making this awesome game. Cheers!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The worm has turned, gentlemen!

Hi there. A few days ago there was a "Tronify everything' Photoshop contest on Kotaku. TF2 has been one of my favorite games of all times, and I submitted a Tronified version of TF2 image. Surprisingly, many people liked it, and so I decided to make a Tron skin pack for TF2. So here is the first release of the TF2Tron skin pack. This contains Tronified skins for all nine classes for both the teams. Only classes, not buildings, weapons or non-stock hats. The next release will probably have them. Ok, enough talk, here is a quick video of how these look in the game:

Feel free to suggest if they can be improved any further. I personally feel that the Pryo has been a bit overdone, and the textures are blurry on a few parts on some classes. I still have a lot to figure out on the vtf compression formats and few other things. Anyways, I'll fix them in the next release.

Downloads (Installation instructions inside the download):
Rapidshare
Alternate Link