Thanks to FPS-fan Claire, from pokerlistings.com, the world's largest online poker guide, for helping sponsor BASHandSlash. At pokerlistings.com you will find in-depth
reviews of all major poker rooms, breaking poker news, poker strategy,
vids and the best live coverage of tourneys from around the globe.
German modder Xiao (aka Chris) from the formidable community modding group blackMonkeys.de, alerted me this evening of the upcoming total conversion mod his group has been working on.
The mod is called Star Wars Mod-Galactic Warfare für CoD4:MW (for CoD4).
There have been Star Wars mods in the past, but this looks to be very impressive.
Note that this is a "total conversion" mod - that means it's not just a skin job.
Total conversions take hundreds and hundreds of hours to produce and for this reason they are very rare in community modding. Therefore, it speaks to the dedication and professionalism exhibited by the blackMonkeys that they have been able to get their mod to this point.
Here it is, the first look at Galactic Warfare gameplay...it looks like it will be a knockout. Check out the video:
The gameplay certainly has my attention. Did you see the action at 1:53
of the vid? The "BASH" is back baby. The slashing knife melee in CoD4
has been replaced by the good old fashioned riflebutt to the head -
CoD2 style!
I had the opportunity to speak to Xiao and here's what he had to say:
BS:
Nice to meet you Chris. First off...I've seen your group around the
modding forums - but don't know much about you guys. Firstly, why have
you called yourselves the "blackMonkeys?
Xiao: We were
brainstorming names over beer a while back. "black" was mysterious and
dangerous and "monkeys"? I guess that's because we behave like stupid
apes sometimes.
Storm Troopers posin' for the ladies.
BS: I can see the influence of the beer in that name. lol. Who do you have working on this total conversion?
Xiao: It’s a joint project of blackMonkeys.de. That’s a German roundtable (we call it stammtisch) where a lot of mappers, modders are active.
Our first project was mp_apesgorod . When the map was released we started to play around with some ideas.
The Star Wars idea all began with a blaster and soon the idea to
extend this theme was born. In the meantime, our project is taking
shape and we have found a couple of new comrades in addition to the
team involved in the development of Apesgorod.
So far, the core team consists of Mapicted, Novemberdobby, OLD MAN WITH GUN, Xfckup (wern), Xiao (Chris), Rollercoaster and ZeroY and we also have a lot of help from other modders in the CoD-Community.
We
are always searching for dedicated Modders, mappers,
programmers/scripters, skinners etc. who would like to aid us with our
Star Wars modification. If anyone is Interested, please constact me
Xiao (xfire: xiaomayer)!
Thermal detonator takes out a Storm Trooper in this screenshot
BS: Why did you want to do a Star Wars total conversion?
Xiao: Well, that’s easy to answer. We are addicted to Modern
Warfare and the COD-franchise and we love Star Wars (the old trilogy). It is of course a lot of work to realize a total conversion
but because COD:WW was such a big disappointment to all of us we
decided to stick on Modern Warfare being optimistic that MW2 will be
great. We hope that the mod can be converted if there are mod tools for
MW2.
BS: What is the current status of the total conversion?
Xiao: Our plan is to release a first version of the mod in
October. It's planned to integrate three player models on each side
(Rebels vs Stormtroopers). The "playground" will be Tatooine, with
Endor and Bespin following on a bit later.
Actually we are still working on some models. The Endor Rebel Blaster (BlasTech A280) and Imperial DLT-20a
Xiao told me that Storm Troopers will carry the assault class E-11 Blaster Rifle and the
Rebel's too will have their own blasters. The spec-ops class will carry
a somewhat smaller blaster. Right now ACOG sights are fitted to the
assault blasters - but that might change as the mod progresses.
Find out more Saturday, August 30th as we have invited Xiao to talk to us live on BASH (Saturday 10:00am EST).
