First thoughts on Soulstorm

[IBBoard]

Just a few first thoughts on Soulstorm now that my copy has arrived, I've got it installed and I've tested the UberPainter mod.

Firstly, why do they have such terrible copy protection? I know they removed it on DC with one of the early patches, but I run Linux and while I can play the previous games/expansions and the demo fine, I can't play Soulstorm because it crashes in Wine. For now I've had to resort to a cracked No-CD EXE* and it all works fine.

Secondly, the Sisters of Battle could do with better texturing and banners. I know the banners are never as good as Hangar-8's, but the Sisters of Battle ones look like someone has taken a GW photo, compressed it as a 64 colour image and then converted it to a TGA. Various bits of low-quality texturing on the models aren't much better. They could do with having had a better shade of gold as well, as the yellow they've gone for is terrible.

Thirdly, the manual is terrible. I know they have the "en-veee-dia" advert for nVidia at the start of DoW anyway, but the sections basically advertising nVidia and Soundblaster in the manual just feel like they're trying to make some extra money. If I want the best experience I'll make my own rig, and if I don't know what the best parts are then I'll find out from people. I don't want a game to say "best played on an nVidia", "best heard on a Soundblaster XFM", "best played while drinking Pokey Cola(TM)", etc.

On the plus side then some of the units do look great. Checking them out in the UberPainter then I can imagine some of the Sisters' units looking spectacular, especially the Avenging Angel!

At some point I'll actually give the game a play and see what that side of it is like as well! Maybe by the weekend


* Note: We don't condone piracy, but in this case it is another example of "getting a legitimately purchased product working through methods of dubious legality because some corporate decided they wanted pointless copy protection that is easily bypassed but causes hassle for legitimate users".

[Radulykan]

I agree whole heartedly IBB,They should not have made it necessary to have your disc inserted,I would have liked it to be like DC,I also agree the Sisters could do with better badge,banners and textures,The chainsword RSH's on the Seraphim Superior,Veteran Superior and Celestian Veteran Superior are also missing alpha transparency,So the blade's do not look right ,I already fixed that in my copy though thanks to the use of your awesome WTP tool ,I did that the first day I had it installed and checked out the units I added in the painter view via Corsix, Over all though the models and animations are awesome ,The Dark Eldar Archon and Haemonculus are wicked ,And so is the Penitent Engine, Any way just my 2cent's ,Later guy's and have a good one .

[lasman2]

I didnt find too much wrong with soulstorm, but thats probably bcos i play games for the quality of playing, and i don't care too much about how it looks

[IBBoard]

Radulykan: Punctuation and paragraphs would be helpful in your posts

Also, I made the Texture Tool. The WTP Tool is the name of the Visual Basic app that Beroc wrote for the release of the original DoW and then forgot about. It's that old that it doesn't even have support for non-square textures (e.g. scouts) or banner images.

It is a shame with some of the texturing. Yes the game quality might be good, but if you notice something wrong with a texture then it just lets it down. The main one I noticed while testing the UberPainter mod was the Dais of Destruction. If you have it on the top DE colour scheme and look on the floor by the slave on the Archon's right-hand side there's a bit of colour collision (turns it green) and the same on some of his trim. It makes you wonder what level of QA they have on the textures when something so obvious on the first colour scheme in the list can be missed.

I'm sure Relic would have done a better job of it

[Seaglen]

I agree IBB. the textures for the SoB are a little poor. im working on more updates for several units, and am trying to do something about the yellow gold. will get it right soon!

also, would it be ok to grab the yellow/black chevrons on this forum's page? ive just noticed them, and thought they would be perfect for some iron warrior skins!

[Radulykan]

Sorry IBB,I meant that I have used your Texture tool to fix the sisters chainsword textures not Beroc's,I have never used Beroc's,I have always used yours from the very beggining for doing skins in Dow,Without your tool none of the stuff we do would be possible ,Later guy's have a good one and I will talk to you soon .

[stfas]

i think its great

[IBBoard]

Seaglen: Thanks for all of the textures - I wasn't expecting so many textures from people quite so soon.

As for the chevrons, if they're the right size then please use them. Just put a quick little note in your readme that you took them from my forum with permission They're rather old stripes now and all I did was tinkered around with making them look a bit grungy.

Radulykan: I don't know if anyone has used Beroc's tool for a while. I think one or two people who couldn't manage to get the Texture Tool working (and never gave me a straight answer that would help me work out what the problem was) might have done, but after its early release then it definitely dropped in users.

[IBBoard]

From a texturer's point of view, I've just found another thing that Iron Lore did a bad job of (ignoring the bad quality of textures).

One thing we (the main core of texturers and me as a 'file hacker') learned early on was that if you don't have anything on a texture layer then you can delete the layer, not include it in the WTP and save 0.25MB per layer. If you use a single layer for colour that means you have a 1.5MB file instead of a 2.5MB file (1MB _default, 0.25MB _dirt and 0.25MB for one colour layer). Across a number of textures that should give a bit of a memory and processing saving as the game doesn't have to load or process those pointless layers.

Iron Lore don't seem to have known this. All of their Sisters textures and the majority of the Dark Eldar textures are 2.5MB even though a good chunk of them don't need to be and include what appear to be completely black layers.

Add that on top of a huge number of textures for each main character (Hangar-8 has ten for the Marines FC now!) and while the overall impression is good, it seems the detail is lacking a bit.

[stfas]

i say the texturing was the worst in all of dows history

[Seaglen]

i'm with stfas on this one.
the skinning seems poor for most sisters skins, and the force commander seems like a quick bodge job.
but, hey, if they were perfect, we'd have nothing to correct!

[Radulykan]

The land speeder Tempest is like that also,Two black layers with nothing on them,I removed them in my version after adding a badge layer where the Imperial Eagle was in my version,And a few more things too ,Later guys and have a good one .