The Litterbox site update thread

[SickAlice]

That's the actual reason I'm making it detachable. Visualize this, the glider detaches and moves of it's own accord while the in air blimp remains stationary thus it moves from off under the blimp and then can see it and the Turtles flying it. Well, exactly like it moves in the cartoon. And ty for the link, rainy day so I'll probably be able to take a look by tonight.

[SickAlice]

"How was your summer, Stevens?"
"Oh you know, made some low poly 3d models of a starfish and a barnacle."
"Whut?"

[BentonGrey]

Haha, like you do.  What are those for?

[SickAlice]

Variant nif for Mike The Sewer Surfer. I already completed his surfboard, those went to his nunchaku with seaweed.

[BentonGrey]

I'm going to be a little tempted to make some type of surfboard/hoverboard level, a-la the classic arcade game...

[SickAlice]

I made the boards from the arcade game as well the Sewer Surfin' level jet boards from Turtles In Time as well. Actually I made any deck you can think of. I also made the tubes and animations for all the above (ground level for surf, higher for skate and midground for tubes with swimming leg movements). I'm also holding thoughts about 2003 versions where they all had different rides. Most of this just to provide those animations for skopers and modders.

The plan is basically I'm making different era version nifs with different sculpts. Then I want at least two texture choices, that's pretty easy to come up with of course. I have B&W and color for the Mirage Turtles, Archies you already know, 1987 has palette and detail changes by season to select from. Live action between the first and second film. So on. With Playmates I'm doing the original 1988 look and the more detailed Ultimates look. With that I thought about other things though. Playmates provides a large amount of options. They gave their figures a lot of weapons to choose from which I always liked. Then with every version they include different weapons and variations, a lot took on a weird Garbage Pail Kids/Rat Fink style as you know. So I thought that would be fun to play with and since I'm doing the weapons in advance, this makes it easier to place them in the long run I went ahead. Lastly I decided to do at least one if not two separate nifs based on those oddball figure variants. I'm not decided on which yet other than I'm certain on Mike's Sewer Surfer variant since I loved that toy as a kid. But whatever I end up thinking will look good in game is going to be the deal.

[BentonGrey]

I love all of this, SA!  Haha, the Playmates toys were amazing, and it's really fun that you're bringing them to life this way.  I was always a big fan of the variants.  I had lots of 'em. 

[SickAlice]

They're neat ideas. Like I always liked the concepts for Madballs and such. On paper. And in plastic then with limited molds they often came out rather ugly and you had to look at the illustration on the box and use your imagination. But I also see reviews these days of them that are unfair. The authors don't consider that the designs were really genius, just the production was difficult. Which comes around to what I'm doing is looking at those designs, and the concept art for some and then thinking what they can look like in game. I think I'm going to get some pretty results with some of these. Kind of a thing other game makers have done like how in MIM they translated the Rock N Roll Playmates Turtles to 3d models and put them on the IDW Turtles no less. And they just look stunning, even that weird Rappin' Mike does in that game.

[SickAlice]

Haha, the rabbit trails we chase! 

Did you see that there is a pretty great map of the Turtle Lair in the TMNT mod?  I think it was CmdrKoenig that made it for me, but I'm not 100% sure.

What is the name of the stage? I got your mod and tried looking in the Rumble Room but wasn't sure what to select.

[BentonGrey]

It's the base for a few of the levels.  I think it's the base for mission 4.  If you copy that mission, delete the mission.dat, and rename the base.dat as mission.dat, you should be able to get it in the RR.  If not, let me know, and I'll whip up an RR version of it.

[SickAlice]

If you wouldn't mind? I'm sure you've noticed this happens be an area where I get something wrong and end creating a thing I can't use. I can totally see myself mucking this one up already.

[BentonGrey]

Haha, no worries, SA!  So, looking at the map, it's really too small to use as a RR map, but it is great for a base scene in a mod.  However, I think it wouldn't be too terribly hard to take the work that was done on this and combine it with CmdrKoenig's sewer map or the like, essentially get a sewer map with the Lair in one part of it.  Anyway, I've thrown this into a self-contained folder.  I think this should work in the RR, and if nothing else, this makes it easy to look at in the editor.  You'll obviously need to put this in your copy of the TMNT mod to get it to work properly, as it is dependent upon textures in that mod.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/7eq394q3ibe8vul/turtle_lair.zip/file

[SickAlice]

Of course. And I just want to look at it anyways. Also see if it jives with the ideas I was thinking of. In fact I was actually looking at Dana's sewer map speaking of. The "Lair" in the 87 cartoon wasn't limited to the one room and rather was a series of sets that took up a whole sewer system. And it happens to be a fair match to the set-up sewer stage. Things like I'm making the van and there was a garage section where Don works on that and the Cheapskates for example complete with an entrance/exit that sort of nods to the Batcave set-up. The kitchen room also occupies a lot of time in the series (the table cloth was a white and red checkerboard like my grandmother had I think?). Including scenes where Mikey would be inside the cupboards for no other reason than to be silly. Props and objects of course for me, I love making that stuff. In fact it's my favorite thing to do. I don't release much of it but I've made a lot, lost most of it when my old laptop crashed but you get the point. I'm looking at art cells for the settings like the Turtles home and Channel 6 and all the items in the scenes having thoughts about all that. It's all very specific stuff that really captivates the feel of the Ninja Turtles. The 1990 movie felt the same down to the classic rooftop they fought on. And of course every series nodded this by making a specific Lair for each.

I don't know if it helps the visual but it's something I think about a lot, capturing the essence of things I mean. I want someone looks at what I made and say to themselves "That is character X". Like I wouldn't have to say and they would know what it came from. This all came up with the recent game guest stars involving the Turtles. Injustice, SMITE and All Star Brawl. ASB are spot on recreations of the original cartoon characters, appears to be from the Europe season exactly. Right down the nuts and bolts. Even April is. Just beautiful work done there. The other two while they are fantastic looking they more did their own versions and just put the feel of the Turtles into them, I think the 1990 film for Injustice actually. But I couldn't look at them and right away say to myself "This is from that version of TMNT". And that's pretty much my aim with this project. MOTU is the same and different. I'm presenting my own Freedom Force versions with iconic versions as alts, the various animated ventures and action figures as I'm doing with TMNT.

For anyone passing through here's what I'm on about. The first image contains a map of the entire lair that's pretty accurate. Then scenes in the various rooms. Limited but most of what you see consumed a lot of screen time in the show and never changed. Not highlighted is a teleporter in Donatello's lab/shop. This would almost constantly show up again in different versions. In kind of a fun way in the IDW comic series it's introduced as a means for the Turtles to cross-over to the Ghostbusters world and remains with them in canon past that point.
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Turtle_Lair_(1987_TV_series)/Gallery

[BentonGrey]

I completely understand that.  My TMNT mod is a love letter to the classic cartoon.  The plot is HEAVILY based on the original mini-series, and it is all done for that joy of recognition and being able to 'play' in the setting I loved so much as a boy.

[SickAlice]

The plus side of the research of course, I get to watch through the movies and cartoons again for all this. I watched 1990 and Ooze twice through actually just to get a handle on how Mike's holstered weapons are supposed to look (and they change in the second film, somehow I never picked up that detail).

[BentonGrey]

Haha, yeah, I was watching the classic 'toon a lot when I made my mod.  It's a fun kind of research.

[SickAlice]

Not FF but since I was on the subject of TMNT I thought I would share this here. I typed "Ninja Turtle pizza" into an AI art generator and this what it made:

[deanjo2000]

Weirdly good. It looks like it could be mikeys dream.

[SickAlice]

His nightmare maybe? A lot of professional artists are encouraging learning how to use and incorporate AI art tools so I've dabbled a little. I feel it's a novelty but I can't say I quite like it. I find more control in typing variables to generate an object, much as in 3d modelling and animation of course than an image selected by text and algorithms as a tool proper but maybe that's just me.

[SickAlice]

Site update: The site will be going down as of the 20th it appears as I am part of the FreedomForceForever network. I don't know if it will be accessible through Wayback or not. I'm crammed for time right now and my internet connection is questionable but I'll be copying everything off to a thumbdrive in the meantime then work towards a new place for it. That's tentative as I want to discuss this with the other content creators and see what we come up with. I've never actually been comfortable hosting alone on my own page anyways and always wanted my stuff to be with a site like Paradox, Alex's or Heroforce where it would be easier for people to find. That and I'm no good at page layouts anyways. Add I have major health problems and can't say how long I'll be around. I had already discussed someone taking over this page not long ago but that was daglob and CB and well? Anyways I'll be working to delete my release pages as well since they link here from now to the 20th and keep this updated. I know a few hero files use my stuff so at any rate I'll have backups if people need them emailed and want to msg me directly if I don't have a site going after the 20th.

[Tomato]

Im working some stuff out with cat. It might take a few months and the url might not be as pretty, but I'll get everybody up and running. Least i can do as thanks for my own hosting.

[SickAlice]

Thanks for the heads up. Keep me in the loop please. I figure someone ought to make a go to thread for meeting on this. I can try and pitch in as well. Money would be, well what I could do. This catches me at a bad time as I'm in the process of buying a new houses and in this market but I can see what I could swing if need be. Worth it ultimately I think as I'm sure anyone else does.

Edit: I managed to have a good connection day and backed up my whole site so that's not a problem anymore. It will be ready to upload wherever then. Also I forgot to mention but the url status isn't something I really mind imo so don't worry about that. Just so there's a place where people can access the content is all I care about.

[eluvium]

awesome i'm glad you allhave a solution

[WyldFyre]

Tomato and SA, If you want, I can set up sub-sites on the museum where you (might be able/should be able) to re-up the sites, possibly as is.

I already have the hosting and can help out as needed. I will just have to set you guys up to access, I'm trying to get something similar set up for the HooYa content. PM me if interested. It may take me a few days as work keeps interfering with my free time, but I can help if you'd like.

[SickAlice]

I'm open to whatever is clever but I'll give the community some time and see what's decided on. I figure I won't make a move for a week yet, I have a lot going on too and would have to set aside a couple sessions to go through and adjust all the links by hand thereafter. To me regardless being part of a central hub is the desire, that's the solution to not losing access to content I think. Also I'm not shy about my health problems. I always kind of wanted someone else with access to take it over in the event of my sudden passing. You have FTP upload, right?

[WyldFyre]

Yes. It's what I've been using for Museum content.

[SickAlice]

Sounds good to me then. Still give me awhile if you could. I have a lot to take care of as well yet, sitewise and in real life currently. Also I'm toying at the moment of remaking my pages into something a little more accessible and easy to navigate since I have the opportunity. And thank you of course for being here.

[Tomato]

So i think what we'll do is this: i was already planning on throwing the website files on megashare and giving links to a handful of members so people had access while i fussed with things, so what I'll do is send you that link so you can throw it all up temporarily, and then i can take it over when i have time to get it on pretty urls.

Course, i still need cat to give me ftp access to the rest (>.>) but Ive been downloading whats accessable on the websites

Fyi, to my understanding, its about 20gb total.

[SickAlice]

If anything I would maybe be comfortable waiting for the ftp then and just email out anything by request in the meantime. I exceed 20gb for sure. Also the longer job is making new links on the site pages to the files, it would easier to do that with the final links. I don't think it will harm much, anyone can feel free to disagree here, to have my site offline for awhile. I'm working on new releases anyways that are going to take a few months and in the meantime on moving across the country, that will also add a couple months lapse. I'll be travelling several thousand miles and then have to set up a new internet connection when I arrive which will cause me to dark for awhile anyways. And again thank you so much for being on this. Anything you need me to do to help feel free to ask.

[WyldFyre]

How ever you guys want to handle it is fine. I know time is always interfering with me as well. Happy to work with you.