Force Mod III Classic Edition v1.5

Description
***Please note that due to the size of this file, we could not upload it to JKFiles directly. Please download it from here! The main download link at the bottom of the page contains a dummy file with the download link only!***

It has been almost an entire year since I reviewed the last version of the famous Force Mod III Classic Edition. That was v1.3A, somewhere along the line we must have missed out on 1.4, but now Venomous^Heart and Pitchest^Heart bring is v1.5, which includes lots of new features!

Firstly, I will paste in my previous review, as that covers most of the main features, and then we shall proceed on to the updates!

[quote]For those of you unfamiliar with the mod, it is a massive and far reaching project which changes many aspects of gameplay, from saber selection and combat, character classes and some fantastic little features available via the ingame menu, which I will come to later.

All you need to do is look at the saber selection menu and the incredible amount of detail which has gone into it, with melee damage charts for the various types of weapons. Add to that new saber colours and a whole new saber selection interface and it makes for an amazing change, though the complicated looking damage tables will not appeal to everyone. Check out the screenies below for an example. There have also been some changes to the force power menu, with several force powers now having a \'level 4\', or turning the force up to 11 you could say. Force jump in particular on power level 4 now allows you to jump huge distances. These level 4 powers obviously cost a large amount of points to purchase however!

As for character selection, as in Movie Battles II there is a wide variety of different characters to choose from ranging across several different classes, such as Jedi, Sith, Mercenary, Droid and more, with models and skins made by top notch modders.

Now onto the features that I was the most impressed with; take a look at the ingame menu and you will see a variety of new options, one of my favourites being the Music menu, which allows you to choose from a variety of Star Wars music, depending on your mood or what you may be doing; using something more dramatic if you are having a duel for example, or perhaps if you don�"�t like the music used on a particular map you are on, you can pick from this list something which you would prefer to listen to whilst exploring or playing, or maybe just as a bit of ambience. Other features include a bonus button menu, which allows you to hide or show things like your FPS, the HUD, whether or not you want to render the weapon models, etc. which is great for taking good screenshots. I wish there was a mod like this for base JKA, it would save a load of faffing around using the /cg_draw2d and /cg_drawgun commands all the time to get good screenies! XD

Another cool feature which is great for both taking screenshots and adjusting your view ingame is the aptly named Views menu, which lets you adjust things like your field of view, and also rotating the camera around your player using slider bars, another cool feature for taking screenshots, especially of skins, like the bonus button menu, this would actually be a great feature for helping the process of taking screenshots of skins for when I am reviewing them. Rather than having to use the modelview.cfg method, which although it works fine, it would still be nice to have a graphical user interface to change the camera position.

Then there�"�s the Optimization menu, which allows you to either choose from a selection of pre-sets, or adjust settings via slider bars to help you optimize your connection and squeeze better ping, and thus less lag out of the game whilst playing online.

These are some absolutely fantastic features, and I would love to see these made into separate mods for base JKA, if they haven�"�t been already, and if they have, please tell me where to get them!

There are of course many more features to discover and much more depth to this mod than I have been able to cover here, but I hoped I have managed to touch on some of the most interesting and unique ones. This mod is definitely worth a download for those of you interested in a fantastic Multiplayer mod with loads of great features and a distinguished history, keep up the good work Venomous^Heart!

~Nozyspy~[/quote]

As with last time, there are some great features here that I only wish someone would make as separate mods for Base JKA as well! I particularly liked the saber blades, very crisp and sharp, just like a blade of pure energy should look like, rather than the softer, less dangerous looking base JKA saber blades. The saber trails also looked much better; while not quite movie accurate like the OJP saber trails (some fancy coding/texture magic used there perhaps?) they looked much better than the default smudge that JKA uses! And that was just the default blade style... you can actually pick from various different blade effects, including the styles used in each of the movies along with various colours and even a colour changing blade!

I also noticed that there are a huge amount of new models and skins included which really adds some variation to choose from in the different classes and alignments, not to mention some of the unique weapons they can use. I was thrilled to see the inclusion of Exar Kun and especially a [i]proper[/i] Marka Ragnos skin, one that actually has legs, not the \'Sith Spirit\' version as seen in the game! I love to see characters that usually only appear in 2D in comics and pictures made into proper, usable 3D characters, though I think Ragnos could have done with slightly darker red skin, he seems a little pale for a member of the [url=http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_(species)]Sith Species[/url]. Whoever made these skins, please release them for Base JKA too, I would desperately love to review Ragnos and Exar Kun individually!

I do have a few grumbles though. I found the lightsaber type and style selection menu to be a little confusing. Apparently most of the Jedi/Sith classes can only use the basic Blue, Yellow and Red forms as already found in Base JKA, but certain classes can put force points in a 4th box in the lightsaber section of the force powers menu, this allows them to use Dual and Staff sabers, as well as the ability to choose between different lightsaber forms, such as Juyo, Shii-Cho and Soresu among others. This may be my fault, down to the fact that I did not have time to properly read through the readme. However I think a help menu in game that explains the basics of how to choose a class and also how to spend force points would be a great help!

Overall this is a big and very impressive update to Force Mod III Classic Edition, I would recommend giving it a try if you haven�"�t already! :)

~Nozyspy~

And now, for a full list of the updates, straight from the author:

[quote][u]New Additions and Model Changes[/u]

- Juyo Form improved with completely new updated animations.

- Two new Saber Styles added; Luminara Unduli (Soresu) and Marka Ragnos (Shii-Cho).

- �"Wookie Pike” weapon added to staff selection. This weapon will kill an enraged Wookie in a few strikes but makes for an extremely poor melee weapon.

- Models re-organized to fit the classes.



- Additional models added (see readme folder for credits).

- Added the Xtra small (XS) model size and assigned some models to this catagory.

- Ancient Sith skin now comes in 2 versions; the standard medium size for Sith saber classes and Extra Tiny (XT) for the Dark Sage class to compete with Jedi Ancient\'s shapeshifting ability.

[u]Combat Balances: Adjustments and Improvements[/u]

- Melee modifications throughout for improved balance (see ingame Melee charts for reference).

- Red/Purple forms given shortened duration JKA base yellow kata.

- Blue Lunging kata removed, replaced with fast forward slash attack.

- Butterfly kata returned to staff.

- Vong defense vs guns increased.


[u]Bug Fixes [/u]

- NPC\'s fixed with modified models (players using only default fm3 will be crashed by them).

- Twin saber flying kata replaced with tornado saber kata due to animation glitch with the first one.

- Bots edited to move better, use abilities better and fix bugs.

- Vong, Tusken, Noghri and Royal Guards no longer make saber sounds.

- Vong, Tusken, Noghri no longer have force adept taunts and have been given bonus martial arts moves.

- Royal Guards weapon glitch fixed and now have 2 forms with bonus martial arts, weapon sounds and a force adept taunt.

-Movement speed bonuses on melee weapons removed due to glitches.

-Power restrict removed from Grievous sabers and electro staff due to glitch.[/quote]
***Please note that due to the size of this file, we could not upload it to JKFiles directly. Please download it from here! The main download link at the bottom of the page contains a dummy file with the download link only!***