Nazgûl

I've been away... yet again... for a very very long time.

This time however, it was more than lack of time or motivation. This time, life really hit me with the big one - the loss of life and the eternal good bye of someone you love. Someone very close to you. Someone that actually gave you life. On the 12th of february 2020, I lost my dear mother and life just pulled down a black curtain of sorrow and greif. Hobbies like this became very distant, and if it wasn't for my own family, my wife and my son, it would have taken even longer to get back on my feet. But such is life, and one day everyone has to go though this. I have before, and I will again. But it really puts things in persepective, each time. And some times it hurts more than others. Yet again, the sun rises everyday with a new dawn.

See you down the road mom.

To my modding friends, I'll be around.

/Chris

Thank you Bashkuga for rigging my Iron Hills swordsman... 

Really happy to see this poor guy, finally in game, smashing vanilla dwarves... 

Bashkuga has now rigged the Stumpy Troll with awesome result. Minimal amound of artifacts, despite the difficulty of matching my rather high poly models to the basic SKL.

Stumpy will be an expensive single late game unit with tremendeous power 

Like a millenia later... I've gotten around to start modeling the Harad fortress I've had in mind, for all these years...

The idea is that it will have a surface and texture finish like this... 

Topologizing the maces...

Ages later, with my new PC, I finally got a chance to start topology...

Looks good. Fluid transitions, natural speed, no glitches. Nice!

Just wanted to state for the record... the installation guide is foolproof and all the files download, install and work flawlessly. The only thing I didn't verify is the KeyGens as I used my disc serials. But other than that, take my word for it - this is the holy grail for BFME gamers and the community surrounding them. Good job on keeping the only Lord of the Rings RTS gaming heritage alive since the developers abandoned this franchise long ago 

I must say...

I tried this mod for the first time yesterday... Playtested several factions, looking for unique additions - and was completely drowned with them.  Blown away actually... This is truly a megalodon of a mod, a beast of burden, a monumental mile stone in modding (I could go on  ). But in short, I'm just really impressed. Suddenly my SEE mod seems a bit, narrow   If I would to pad myself on the shoulder, I'd say that I am pretty decent at modeling (even though I suck at keeping them low poly) and I have a very high attention to detail, in both models and FX where I put extra effort in "realism" for fire, smoke, dust, splashes etc. In that last aspect, I see some things that I would definitely edit in AotR. But as far as models go, I simply can't match this outstanding ability of making low poly models look high poly. You guys truly excel in this area. Also rigging and animations. Your models, their textures and animations just look like professional studio models and you put EA to shame basically. I'm especially impressed by your Erebor, Iron Hills and Misty Mountains models and factions. Those are the factions I've been working on myself the past few years (!), but my models suffer from high poly count   Your dwarves in particular is just perfect in every way, AND low poly. Also, your new structures are amazing in both design, details and texture quality. Not ot mention the sheer number of them. 

In short - well done guys! 

Let me know if you want any of my models in your mod 

After almost 12 years with a very very good, reliable and faithful laptop that never ever broke down (in hardware) but eventually reached an age where I just no longer could be bothered to reinstall failing software and lacking the possibility of even trying new games, I finally had the opportunity (through a second job) to obtain a brand new system that will most likely last me another 10 years or so    I haven't even been able to play (or mod) the game for over 2 years now due to software failure and lack of motivation due to that... 

My old laptop:

HP Pavilion dv6 @ Windows 7

CPU: Intel Core i5 Dual Core @ 2,5 GHZ

RAM: 4 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz
HDD: 640 GB SATA @ 5400 rpm
GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 @ 1 GB DDR3

My new desktop:

HP Omen X @ Windows 10

CPU: Intel Core i7X Octa Core @ 3,5 GHz

RAM: 32 GB DDR4 @ 2400 MHz

HDD: 512 GB SSD + 3 TB SATA @ 7200 rpm

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 1080Ti Founders Edition @ 11 GB DDR5

I could use zBrush without any problems on my old laptop (all my models are made on that machine) and BFME ran pretty good, being from the same era. But in really intense scenes with lots and lots of units, there were some hefty lagg. Nothing that hindered gameplay too much, but still noticable. With the new system everything flows smooth no matter how many units I have on screen, as expected. I wonder if it's the CPU, the RAM or the GPU though, or a combination of them all that makes the really big difference with the old SAGE engine. I'm curios what other modders and players of BFME-series have used and are using now and how your BFME games perform/ed on your systems.

Way way back, I tried runing on a desktop with a Pentium something processor @ 1 GHz and 512 MB RAM. That was not a pretty sight. But I wonder where  the "sweet spot" crossover is as my new system is obviously overkill for this ancient game.

And there it is... 

Kids... don't get kids. It will eat up all your energy and time for modding

Not that anyone still cares, but I'll just leave this here...

I hate how my old images are broken liks now... 

Anyways, here's some new stuff for my gallery 

During my long absence, I made these helmets for the Gundabad Orcs...

It's basically all helmets that I can distinguish from the movie