Exile Blade

Description
[quote]Here we have a kind of staff weapon that looks like a mix between a vibrolance and something from MegaMan. It\'s like a big stick with glowly yellow blade things coming off at very odd angles and, to be honest, it looks incredibly deadly. In fact someone I showed it to suggested it be renamed to \"Impractical Stick of Death\" since it looks like it would be equally deadly to both the victim and the wielder. I found myself agreeing when I went in-game to test it out and, as I held it idly, it was impaling my forearm.

However since our in-game models of choice are nothing but hollow meshes, we don\'t have to worry about bleeding to death by impaling ourselves on our own weapons, so let\'s move on. Personally, as far as the in-game presentation goes, the weapon looks unwieldly and unbalanced. The majority of the weight is on the left, however it\'s held farther right. Realistically the whole thing should tip and cause my poor character to fall over to the left (although when did reality and Jedi Academy ever meet?). I would\'ve moved the grip much closer to the larger part of the model, although that\'s just me.

As for the model\'s construction, it seems the majority was built out of a 12-sided cylinder. It\'s more sides than I would\'ve personally used, but still very reasonable, so basic construction is good without being unnecessarily too detailed. There\'s a good attempt and real texturing, although this model suffers from Multiple Skinmap Syndrome (MSS). In the future, consolidate all your skinmaps into one big map -- you don\'t need to have a separate skinmap for each model part, it\'ll make your archive smaller, and to be honest it just looks more professional.

My last suggestion is to work on the sounds a little. The electricity sound used here doesn\'t really fit (it\'s very loud, yet the electricity effect on the blades is very subtle, so they just seem to clash). Also I wouldn\'t recommend using lightsaber sounds -- there doesn\'t seem to be anything on or about this weapon that would make such a sound! Overall not a bad model! It may be an impractical stick of death, but let\'s face it -- what fun would something practical be?[/quote]We\'re now at v1.0! I had forgotten the original was v0.9, so I was really confused when I was looking at the e-mail... But me being confused is fairly normal.

Anyway, visually there\'s not much of an update, but with a tenth of an increase in version that\'s to be expected. This is probably worth grabbing over the old version, though, as it does have some more behind-the-scenes updates. The model has been cleaned up of some of the unnecessary polies and the skinmaps have also been combined, which results in a much cleaner model as well as a reduced file size. The sounds (thank god) have been modified to not be as \"obnoxious\" as the author puts it in his read-me.

Some other changes include an altered stance -- this won\'t modify any animations files so don\'t worry about it affecting any other mods -- as well as some balance tweaks in the saber file. Some folks may not like this, as it changes the stats on the weapon (8 blades means more power, but the speed is reduced and it restricts some hand-related Force powers). This\'ll be hit or miss -- some people like balance, and some people like \'fairness\', so that might make this weapon seem slightly less appealing for some folks.

However one of the neater additions here is that some extra colors have been included, so if you want the blade not to be yellow anymore you can change the color. You will need some basic modding knowledge to do this, though, so if you\'re really a dunce when it comes to that you may want to ask a fellow modder for some help in understanding the somewhat vague instructions in the read-me.

Overall a good, albeit minor, update. Definitely from a modder\'s standpoint it\'s well worth it, though!

~Inyri