Task Force 341 Review!

Model Pack 53 aka Task Force 341 is newly available in TGC shop. It brings a lot to the lot!
TF341 offers 39 new character models and 10 new weapons. Well, it would be worth the price for those weapons alone!

The characters are fully scripted, and are pretty good just out of the box. The modelling and texturing is brilliant. Only critique would be insuficient idle animations, however you may not notice it at all in the heat of the battle. Actually with default scripts there is not much idlesness even in test game! Also, no character blinks (next update?), but maybe its deliberate because they are so hardboiled...

Weapons mods offer alt fires (check video). Modeling and texturing are professional, animations (putting silencer on the gun, melee attack) are great (walking with knife anim would require more scripting though). There seems to be some problem building the game in beta7 in certain entity constellation, but i hope its more likely engine problem (there were "forgotten" assets in previous beta builds before).

If you are looking for a character pack to use in your prototype game, look no further. Well, it would be great even for the final game actually!

Task Force 341 were developed for 2 years and shows huge amount of effort and talent put into one pack. Go buy it!

Modelling: 4.5 stars
Texturing: 4.5 stars
Animations: 4.5 stars
Value/Price: 5 stars
Overal rating: Pure awesomeness!

TIP: When placing character entities, drop them a little higher above ground level (in corridor segments), or else the entity will stuck in given segment.

Installationl: As standalone pack or for FPSC9/10.
Testing in FPSC 1.18beta7.
(continued?)

Viral Outbreak Review

Viral Outbreak (model pack 52) delivers several fully scripted and animated horror characters. New shader feature, "planar projected shadows" gives another bit of realism to fpsc characters. The high point of this pack are shaders, although modeling, animating and texturing are fantastic.
The best character regards overall performance is Grendel, by my opinion. The other characters are good too, but I think that are not very generic by nature (which may be problem if you want to customize the content of your game at max level, and still using stock entities).
The demo of advanced shader techniques in darkbasic-fpsc, Medusa character, is also very intense, and not before seen in any fpsc related product (although its name could be rather Mr. Hankey, buy the pack to see what I mean).

Considering price of Viral Outbreak pack, it would be very good even if there was only one character in it.
Conclusion: Must to have.

Overall Rating: Super Cool

Zombie Apocalypse Review

Zombie Apocalypse (model pack 39) includes 21 zombie characters. The modeling, texturing and animation is excellent and the characters are really creepy.
Scripting is very good and usable just out of the box. However, when there are many characters in one level there seems to be some confusion in entity behaviour (but, they are fraggin zombies anyway, so its not much a problem).
Entities are ok to place even in segments with no problem. They are following you even up the stars by default.
The characters are complete with nice default sounds for your game prototyping.

Overall rating: Best zombie pack for fpsc ever!

Metro Theater Review

Model Pack 38 aka Metro Theater brought power of PS 2.0 shaders into fpsc game prototyping. The pack contains nice segments and entities, but the main theme are shader scripts.
Fpsc always included some basic shaders, which were mostly source of constant frustration. Metro Theater finally brings some kind of order into increasing entropia.

Both static and dynamic entity shaders are here for your learning and customization ("mirror" scripts are specifically designed to work with demo level/rooms, so you need to change textures to use it in your game).

Provided showcase level compiles surprisingly quick and presents the best features of the pack. You may see video walktrough on TGC shop pages. Many segments in the pack are actually usable in any project.

Metro Theater  was first official "water" pack, with quite convincing effect for the engine. Interesting note: the water scripts work surprisigly well with new fpsc 1.18 water shader!

Models included are mostly good or above fpsc average quality (except for terrible piping and couple of similar unimportant items).


Overall rating: Go get it!