New Marvel Adventures Update!

Howdy folks!  I’m still hard at work on the DCUG (look for another Developer’s Journal soon, with lots of really cool developments), but my friend, the mighty Marvelite, Jimaras8 has been hard at work as well, continuing his work updating and expanding Marvel Adventures.  He’s added a few new characters, but he’s mainly been focused on balance tweaks and FX udpates. I also completed a set of bug fixes, replacing missing textures and objects that were causing problems in some of the missions.

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Check it out HERE!

New Characters:

• Thena
• Vampire Servant
• Vampire Enforcer
• Vampire Berserker
• Captain Britain
• Nitro

New Powers and FX

Bug Fixes:

• Added missing hammer texture to X-Men Palace mission
• Added missing Minotaur_statue object from same
• Added bounding boxes to weapons in that mission
• Added rubble textures and objects to various missions

Marvel Adventures Update!

Howdy folks!  I know it’s been quite a while since I posted, but I am indeed still alive and modding!  However, my post today is not about my own latest project, as I am still plugging away at the DCUG, but about an update to one of my previous projects, Marvel Adventures, by my friend, the mightly Marvelite, Jimaras8.  This dedicated fan of both Marvel Comics and my mods has been working away at adding new characters, tweaking old ones, and generally expanding the mod’s scope significantly.  He’s tried to match my design style and has done a great job.  He’s added lots of more modern characters that I’d have never gotten around to, and he has brought a love and knowledge of the Marvel Universe to the project that has been great to see.

Check it out HERE!

New Characters:

Heroes:

• Alexander Pierce (shield agent)
• Blade
• Bling! (Member of the new Mutants)
• Blink (X-men)
• Boom-Boom
• Cardiac (anti-hero)
• Cecilia Reyes (mutant doctor)
• Doctor Druid (Avenger)
• Defensor (Argentian Hero)
• Dust (New X-men)
• Firestar (New Warriors)
• Night thrasher (New Warriors)
• Namorita (New Warriors)
• Turbo (New Warriors)
• Gentle (New X-men)
• Havok (X-men)
• Hope Summers (Mutant Messiah)
• Icarus (Hellions and Young X-men)
• Jessica Jones
• Johnny Blaze (Ghost Rider)
• Miles Morales
• Nova (Sam Alexander, the newest one)
• Orson Randall (previous Iron Fist)
• Patriot (Young Avengers)
• Phobos (Secret Warriors and Olympian God)
• Photon (Avengers)
• Red Hulk
• Red Shift (Herald of Galactus)
• Rictor (X-force)
• Rockslide (New X-men)
• Scott Lang (Ant-man)
• Sersi (Eternals and Avenger)
• Silver Sable (anti-hero)
• Siryn (X-force)
• Solo (anti-hero)
• Songbird (Thunderbolts)
• Spitfire (Invaders)
• Starfox (eternals and Avenger)
• Vormund (German Hero)
• Wallflower (Young X-men)
• White Tiger (Hero)
• Wind Dancer (Young X-men)
• Wolfcub (Young X-men)
• X-23 (New X-men)
• Killraven (Alternate Earth Warrior)
• Clea (Defenders)

Villains:

• Ammo (Daredevil villain)
• Basilisk (spider-man villain)
• Bride of Nine Spiders (Iron Fist foe)
• Bushwacker (Daredevil villain)
• Carnage (spider-man)
• Comanche (Luke Cage)
• Constrictor (Serpent Society)
• Desak (Thor Foe)
• Ebony Maw (Thanos Black Order)
• Graviton (Avengers and spider-man)
• Guild King (a new villain meant to be leader of the Assassin’s Guild)
• Darkstar (member of the soviet super-soldiers)
• Red Guardian (Soviet Super-soldiers)
• Ursa Major (Soviet Super-soldiers)
• Hand Brute (member of the hand but tougher and more resilient)
• Hand Commander (their field commander, more agile and well-trained)
• Hammerhead (Spider-man)
• Hellrazor
• Hobgoblin (spider-man)
• Lockjaw (Inhumans)
• Mercurio
• Midnight (Spider-man)
• Morg the Executioner (Herald of Galactus)
• Nazi Flamethrower (member of the axis army)
• Razor-fist (assassin and Cap villain)
• Reaper
• Puma (spider-man)
• Shadow Slasher (Shang-chi foe)
• Steel Serpent (Iron Fist)
• Warhawk (Assassin)
• Lady Deathstrike (Reavers)
• Perun (Soviet Super-soldiers)

Marvel Adventures Textures Patch

Howdy folks!  I have a minor Marvel Adventures patch today that fixes issues with some missing textures.  There’s a map that should display correctly now, and all FFX items, like the utility belt, cages, icewalls, etc., should now display correctly on all maps.  Let me know if you run into any issues!

Just download the patch and drop it into your FFvTTR directory, overwriting your MA folder.  That’s it!

Download the Patch!

Marvel Adventures 2.2 Update!

Howdy folks!  I’ve been hard at work since my return from distant shores, and here are the first fruits of those efforts.  I’m releasing a new update for my Marvel Adventures mod that fixes a ton of problems and provides a lot of tweaks and improvements.  I’m also including something that has been requested from time to time, and which I’ll try to make a standard from here on out, save game files for each mission for each campaign, so if you do run into problems or just want to skip around, you can keep playing as you like.  So, without further ado, you can get the new version of the mod here:

Download Marvel Adventures!

(I’m having trouble getting the file uploaded to my server at the moment, so you’ll have to get it from my ModDB page until I fix the issue)

Installation:

FIRST DELETE ANY PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF THE MOD!

Then, simply run the installer and point it to the proper directory, where FFvTTR is installed.  The default data path points to the Steam installation of the game, so you’ll need to change it if you have it installed in a different location.  This is the default directory:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich\MA

Note the “MA” at the end.  That is the mod folder.  Don’t forget to add that if you change the directory!  Do NOT install the mod directly into your FF directory, as it won’t work and it will likely mess up your game installation.

Version 2.2 Release Notes:

• Fixed problems with several campaigns, including Iron Man, X-Men 1, Avengers, Thor, and others
• Fixed a ton of graphical glitches
• Replaced some of the .exes to fix some errors
• Fixed numerous typos and missing dialog
• Fixed balance and AI issues
• Included save files for each campaign to allow players to skip around and so they don’t have to play back through everything to see the fixes

Known Issues:

• Some anti-virus programs will find false positives on the .exes of this mod. These are nothing but batch files I compiled myself, but because they copy and replace the campaign files in the background in order to switch campaigns out, AV programs tend to freak out about them. If this makes you uncomfortable, feel free to use the included shortcut instead and switch the campaigns manually as outlined below.
• Saves during missions will load, but the mission will not work properly once loaded. This is the nature of EZScript, and I’m afraid I can’t do anything about it.  It is best to save between or after missions.
• You won’t see balance and other fixes unless you start new campaigns. That’s just the nature of FF’s saves; they carry a snapshot of everything, so no changes will show up in old campaigns unless you restart them. That’s one of the reasons I’m including saves.
• If you’ve got certain video card and driver combinations, certain characters, like Iron Man, may have helmets/hats/hair that bob up and down on their heads when you have full video settings. Just turn off character shadows and that will stop.
• The game suffers rare CTDs in Windows 8 and 10. I have no idea what’s causing these, and they are likely just a result of the game not playing entirely nicely with new versions of Windows.  The crashes aren’t reliably recreatable, so I don’t have much information. They don’t seem to harm anything, but be aware and don’t panic if it happens.
• The dreaded pink texture issue seems to have reared its head again. This is when part or all of a character’s textures show up bright pink. It is apparently being caused by the number of similar meshes/skins that the mod contains. With the help of Cyber Burn, I’ve fixed some of the biggest offenders, but this may still occur. Restarting the game or your computer tends to help for a time. Extended play sessions tend to be the culprit. This should be much less common now, however.
• The last mission in the Iron Man campaign is bugged and won’t end properly. I can’t figure out the issue, but as it is the last mission, you can still play the entire campaign.

Campaigns:

This is not your average mod. It has a total of 10 campaigns, 7 full length and 3 mini-campaigns (which might get expanded in the future)! Playing them used to be a bit complicated, but thanks to Abenavides, it’s now just a matter of clicking on the appropriately named .exe included in the mod folder. Each of these launches the game with the appropriate campaign loaded. The rest of the game is the same, so you can play in the RR with the full cast of characters with any and all of the game modes. This just changes the campaign missions available to you.

If for some reasons the .exes don’t work for you, you can still access all of the campaigns manually.

Simply choose the campaign you want out of the ‘Campaigns’ folder, copy it, rename the copy to campdef, and drop it in your main MA folder, rewriting the exiting one. Don’t forget to copy these, or you’ll lose campaigns!

Marvel Adventures Vol. 2 Released!

Well, it is finally here, only half a year after I told y’all it was almost done.  I wasn’t too far off, was I?  The sad truth is that this mod has languished almost entirely finished on my hard drive since the end of the summer, with very little left to do.  Unfortunately, a PhD is no easy matter, and my work rather swallowed my free time in those intervening months.  Nonetheless, finish it I did at long last, and now y’all can explore all the awesome new content that I’ve stuffed into this release!

Welcome to Marvel Adventures Vol. 2! 

This update massively expands both the hero and villain rosters of the original release, adding in tons and tons of characters, including almost every major player that didn’t make the cut the first time, as well as a great variety of lesser characters.  It includes everyone from Spider-Man, Hulk, and Galactus to the various venomous members of the Serpent Society, and just about everyone in between!  Even the illustrious Squadron Supreme put in an appearance in the intro to the next Avengers campaign!

The final total for the mod is somewhere around THREE HUNDRED characters!

That’s right, this expansion is just crammed full of content!  It features three brand new campaigns and several expansions for the originals!  As I mentioned in my previous teaser, the X-Men benefit from a whole new story-arc that takes them from the familiar confines of the X-Mansion to the distant stars of the Shi’ar homeworld! (Plus, a short spin-off campaign featuring solo stories!)

The Fantastic Four get in on the expansion fun, completing their original campaign arc with the reveal of the dastardly Dr. Doom’s malevolent machinations and a world-threatening brawl between alien tyrants right in the heart of downtown New York!

This expansion adds a host of tweaks, fixes, and improvements to everything that came before, as well as generally expanding its boundaries in every direction.  I hope that you can all enjoy this love letter to Marvel comics as much as I enjoyed making it!

And I want to take another opportunity to boast about the incredible, exclusive, and ridiculously beautiful new skins by super-star skinner Afghan Ant!

Check out the Marvel Adventures album HERE!

So, is that enough to sell you on this little project?  If so, great:

Download Marvel Adventures Vol. 2 Now!

I left an important note of thanks out of the readme, so you can get an updated version here.

Be sure to delete any previous installations. 

You can set your data path to whatever you like, but the installer includes a number of .exes that are set to work with the Steam installation.  I’m afraid they won’t be of much use for folks with other paths, but they’re a nice little bonus feature for the rest of you.  They’ll allow you to launch the individual campaigns without having to do any file editing!  Speaking of those campaigns…

New and Expanded Campaigns:

• X-Men (major expansion)
• X-Men 2 (, mini-campaign telling solo stories)
• Avengers (small expansion)
• Fantastic Four (major expansion completing their arc)
• Spider-Man and the Marvel Knights (big, brand new adventure!)
• SHIELD (mini-campaign)

Have fun folk, and make yours Marvel!

Marvel Adventures Almost Ready!

Howdy readers and fans!  I’m sure those of you who have been following my Into the Bronze Age feature have been wondering where I’ve been.  Well, my absence has been due to two very good causes.  The first is that my wife and I celebrated our ten year anniversary with a vacation to the national parks in Washington, which was awesome all by itself, but the second probably carries more weight with y’all.  I’ve been hard at work on a HUGE update to my Marvel mod.  It doesn’t quite double the number of missions and campaigns, but it comes very close to doubling the number of characters!

That’s right, we are close to a release date for Marvel Adventures Vol. 2, which will vastly expand the roster, offer an all new campaign featuring Spider-Man and a host of other street-level Marvel characters not included in the first edition, and a whole passel of additional missions for the existing campaigns.

The X-Men benefit from a whole new story-arc that takes them from the familiar confines of the X-Mansion to the distant stars of the Shi’ar homeworld! (Plus, a short spin-off campaign featuring solo stories!)  The Avengers meet their match in the form of the Squadron Supreme!

And, to top it all off, we now get to boast several exclusive, and ridiculously beautiful new skins by super-star skinner Afghan Ant!  So, I hope that y’all will forgive me for my absence, as I have been working day and night to get this update finished.  It’s already out to my testers for balancing, and I’m working on the last few things now.  Wish me luck and smooth sailing!

Check out the Marvel Adventures album HERE!

 

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More Projects From the Ether

Marvel Universe According to Grey:

Yet another project that will never see the light of day, I had originally intended for the DCUG to be something somewhat smaller (and a great deal easier) than it has become.  At the time, I had planned on finishing it up some years ago, and moving on to Marvel for a while.  I’d love to tell stories about the Avengers (especially poor Hank Pym), the X-Men, Captain America, The Fantastic Four, and others.  I never had as clear cut an idea for these characters, though, most likely because their books from the 70’s are so excellent, and I can’t see that I would want to do too much differently.  Being more of a DC fan at heart, I’ve paid a little closer attention to the fate of that setting in the last 15 years or so than I did to Marvel.  As such, Emerald Twilight cut me deeper than Onslaught, and Identity Crisis wounded more dearly than Avengers: Disassembled.

This is not to say that those stories and choices don’t gall me, just that I thought more about matters on the DC side of the fence.  In general, I don’t have a story arc plotted out for these characters in the same way I do Batman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, or the like, which takes them from their origins to their finish.  All I really had were ideas of things NOT to do.  I would want to see Hank and Janet happily married.  I’d like to see Spider-Man grow up and be happy with Mary Jane not be retconned out of twenty years of history because Marvel seems perpetually trapped in adolescence and doesn’t seem to know what to do with marriage.  I would want to tell stories, as I have always wanted to tell stories, where maturity is a matter of complexity and depth, and not of sex and violence.

So, perhaps it isn’t so great a loss that I won’t be able to do with Marvel what I’ve done with DC, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t still like to work with their characters at some point down the line.  Don’t be surprised if you one day see something Marvel from me, but also don’t be surprised if it looks nothing like the DCUG.  Besides, Previsionary has covered the Marvel U pretty well so far, hmm?