MoonBase Mod by Sol666 + Ra Mod by Stromek

Voting is closed, results at the end of the article !
I have been waiting a little longer than originally planned for the presentation of the first mods that were submitted for the RPG community mod contest and unfortunately, due to seemingly very little interest in this contest, the following two mods from Sol666 and Stromek will be the last ones I'm going to present. Thanks a lot you two for putting the effort into participating in this contest!






Author: Sol666
Mod download: http://www.vinummusik.de/Trackmania/MoonBase.zip(28.4mb)

There are 149 modified textures, the following are taken from Lunar Cross:
StadiumDirt1.dds
StadiumDirt2.dds
StadiumDirtRoad.dds
StadiumDirtRoadBorder.dds
StadiumGrass1.dds
StadiumGrass2.dds

Furthermore, I modified StadiumRoadGrid.dds from the original Nadeo textures to create my StadiumRoad and StadiumFabric textures.


Author's description:

As I am a science-fiction fan, I like to build sci-fi themed mods. In this case, I updated one of my old mods (Lunar Cross) which originally contained only dirt textures.
This mod is meant to simulate a moon base, so I used a lot of (rusty) metal textures, basically with the colors grey and yellow. I changed the light settings to very bright light and a dark sky, as the moon has no atmosphere. In night and sunset mood, there is a decent mip map effect on the StadiumFabricL: light is white in the distance, yellow when you get closer. I'd recommend sunset or night mood to make use of the changed lightmaps.
As I also wanted to use this mod for dirt tracks, which are usually very open, it is designed for closed rooms as well as for open scenery. There should be a lot of possibilities to use it in sci-fi based RPG maps, especially the outside atmosphere is very authentic I think.

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Author: Stromek
Mod download: http://www.vinummusik.de/Trackmania/Ramod.zip(14.7mb)
Textures modified: 131
Special texture: the dirt texture is real sand from the river Sázava

Author's description:

As you can see I tried to create a mod that it's atmosphere reminds forgotten Egyptian times, so you can find a lot of Egyptian symbols and letters. The mod is very colorful, containing also some transparent parts, which are a bit stained so you can see through them.
I also tried to apply more spectatulars maps for some textures, but the result is only visible with PC3 setting.
There is also different color of the sky and clouds in the Day mood.
Mod is primary designated for all temple-styled tracks, with many tombs, big rooms etc.

Voting:

So at this point I would like to encourage you readers to examine the mod and then rate it based on your experience. Look at the description of the mod, watch the videos and maybe even try to build an RPG with it ingame.
Some things you could base the vote on: Uniqueness of the theme, quality of the textures, generated atmosphere, implementation in RPG tracks, integrity of the mod etc.
Voting is open till thursday (13.05.10). You can vote by leaving a comment on this acticle or sending a message to HawkGer. I only require your rating (from 0-10 points), your trackmania login (to prevent spam) and maybe a small personal comment if you like.
Thanks to everyone who participates :-)

Results:

• MoonBase Mod (5 ratings): 9.1 points average
• Ra Mod (8 ratings): 8.7 points average

Congrats to both for such high scores! Sol666 will receive 9.1k sooppers and Stromek 8.7k :-)

Modding Video Tutorials

When announcing the RPG community mod contest I wrote that I would be posting 80 minutes of video tutorials soon. It has taken a while to finish them up but here they are finally:


This 10min long video shows on which surfaces the textures are being displayed ingame:



The following video shows some examples of already existing textures (2 parts):



Part 2:



This video is the first part of a 44min long video tutorial showing basically all the steps necessary in order to properly edit textures and create a good-looking mod.
Make sure to have annotations activated, else you won't see my explanations.

Part 1: Acquiring textures and images, Preperations, Editing StadiumPlatformD.dds, Seamless Tiling



Part 2: Seamless Tiling, Blending Images, MIP map effect, Normal and Specular maps, Avoiding Shadow Bugs, Creating the zip-file



Part 3: Editing StadiumCircuitD, StadiumFabricD and FabricFloorD, Creating Alpha Channels



Part 4: Editing StadiumPlatformFloorD, StadiumRoadD and StadiumWarpAuvent2D, Advanced Alpha Channel editing



Part 5: Packing the mod, Testing



The following two videos show how to create batch-jobs with which you will only need to make a few mouseclicks to edit 100's of textures:



Part 2:




I hope I was able to provide you guys with a bit of insight and knowledge into environment modifications. I'm not really an expert on this field either - I only have created one proper mod so far - so in case there are errors I have made in those videos feel free to correct me =)

Introducing the RPG community mod contest

Here at the RPG Blog we like to provide resources which make the building-process for authors easier and more efficient; specifically we regard mods as one of the most important ones, giving authors a good variety of themes to choose from. Noticing that recently the rate of newly released mods has dropped, we decided to start a contest with which we will hopefully be able to showcase a new series of mods!

We will be giving out a total of 100k coppers in prizes; read the voting section for details.


How it works in a nutshell:

1. Create a mod
2. The mod gets presented in a post
3. Our readers will rate the mod

1. Create a mod:
This is a very open contest. No specific guideline or theme needs to be followed, giving your creativity free space. Make sure that there exists a certain consistency in your choice of textures though; mods with completely random textures which do not follow any theme will be disqualified.
There are two restrictions which need to be followed:
- More than 30 edited texture-files need to be included in your mod. There are 290 textures available for editing so this shouldn't be too much of a challenge ;)
- The following textures must be included in your mod: StadiumPlatformD.dds, StadiumPlatformFloorD.dds, StadiumCircuitD.dds, StadiumWarpAuvent2D.dds, StadiumFabricD.dds

Once your mod is finished, upload it to a webserver or filehost (for example http://drop.io/) and send me the link on my TMX Account HawkGer or by E-mail to hawkger@gmail.com
I will upload the mod then to a webserver for public use.

2. The Presentation:
Every mod will be presented in an individual post including a description and a video.

The small description I will write myself, though I (and probably the readers too) would prefer if the author of the mod would write it himself. Some topics you could be talking about:

• The theme of the mod/atmospheric intention
• Field of application on RPG tracks (i.e suited for open or closed tracks?, which scenery fits best?, which layout?, ideas on MT and story)
• Recommended mood-setting
• Your background as a modmaker
• Special technical info on the mod

To create the video I require you to send me a replay-file which needs to be driven on an RPG track; an already existing one or a newly made track (minimum 3min length). The replay doesn't need to have your mod assigned so you can take almost any replay of an RPG track from TMX (or drive the replay yourself) and send it to me.
The readers will base their vote hugely on this replay(video) so make sure the replay is optimal for presenting your mod.
Info: If you want to see for yourself how the mod looks on your replay, you have to delete the replay's original mod from your local folder and rename the .zip-file of your contest-mod to the name of the original mod. Ingame you will see your textures applied then.

3. The voting and prizes

As soon as the presentation is published, our readers will get the chance to rate the mod.
They can rate the mod in points ranging from 0-10. Coppers will be giving out in relation to the points, so for example a score of 8.7 will make the the author of the mod get 8700 Coppers :-)
Authors without a United-Account can participate but they won't be ably to receive any prize (coppers)
13k coppers were donated by fallen.soul, 7.5k by DasEimer and 4k coppers by Tossha, the rest I will finance myself. Thanks a lot for those donations!

The rules:

• Only Stadium mods are allowed
• The mod needs to follow some kind of theme
• It needs to contain at least 30 edited textures including the 5 mandatory textures listed above
• A replay of min. 3min length needs to be provided
• Already existing textures from other mods can be used. It needs to be mentioned in the description though.

I will start presenting mods in three weeks in a random order. The contest will end once the 100k coppers have been giving out. Happy modding everyone!

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Resources
Presentation example
80min. of video tutorials
Basic mod-tutorial
Mipmap-effect texture guide
Our mod overview page

Portal Mod [Example] - RPG community mod contest

The following mod-showcase is an example of a submission for the RPG community mod contest. As it solely functions as an example, it won't be rated by the readers and the mod creator [me] won't receive any coppers.

Mod download: http://www.vinummusik.de/Trackmania/Portal.zip(13mb)
Textures modified: 53
Textures taken from other mods: StadiumFXShadows.dds (GMU)

Author's description:

My primary motive while designing the Portal mod was to create a mod that could resemble the atmosphere of the equally named game from Valve. That means: very clean textures with few colors, a technological feeling and extreme transparency on certain textures. One could build a Portal-themed RPG with this mod but of course also other themes could fit, for example a biolab. The mod looks best in day mood and within closed rooms. StadiumPlatformD and StadiumPillarD have MipMap effects which are supposed to enhance the technological feeling.

Voting:

At this point you (the readers) would be able to vote the mod now, ranging from 0-10 points and coppers would be given out accordingly to the creator of the mod. Voting for this mod is disabled but you could still leave a comment telling if you like the mod :-)