Sol Sanctum- Daily Updates- M:OM Samus FINAL Powersuit Preview

[Aafyre]

Sadly, I think you're right about a lot of things. It seems like downloads have a lot more to do with the character being popular than the actual quality of the hack. A lot of the hacks I make of more obscure games like Rogue Galaxy (Zegram) get barely any downloads despite taking a lot longer to make than something like Gengar or Hitmonlee. The whole Shadow thing bugs me just as much as everybody else too.

Surprisingly enough, I've noticed that my Final Fantasy and Anime hacks have been getting largely neglected compared to my Pokemon hacks. Even when I spend several days making something like Seymour Guado, Lelouch, or Orochimaru, they never even come close to any random Pokemon I decide to make.

On another note, Final Fantasy 9 is actually by far my favorite in the whole series; but at the same time, I love Nomura's art style so I tend to lean towards making his characters. I would really love to make Freya over Lucario someday though.

[Albafika]

FF4 and 6 are the masterpieces, yet so few realize it.

I can't agree more on this one. FFIV's just my favorite of all times, I even repeated it less than a month ago... (I took off FF 9 'cause I don't think it's that good)

Also, Pokemons' fanbase is being ignored, but it's bigger than DBZ/FF in here.

[Mochtroid127]

I've never really liked Final Fantasy or Sonic at all. I don't have a problem with there being some hacks for them, but there's too damn many. Aside from Nintendo games, I play Resident Evil, Metal Gear, Dead Space, God of War, and Gears of War in particular. Most of these (Someone should make Isaac from Dead Space. ) have amazing hacks of some kind (Albert Wesker, Marcus Fenix, Gray Fox, etc.), but there are still very few hacks for them and even when there are, something else Sonic/Final Fantasy/Anime is released and everyone downloads them a million times, then port them over half of the other characters because they already have Cloud over Ike, so they need Ike on like ten other characters for the twenty other FF characters, and Sonic is so badass *sarcasm* that they have to port not only Shadow (this was okay around the first fifty times, then it got to be WAAAAAAY too much.), or even other sonic characters, but then made-up Sonic characters start showing up everywhere. WTF. Never really been into anime either, the only one I ever watched was the F-Zero Falcon Densetsu anime, just because I love F-Zero. (I even have an F-Zero X cover album on iTunes.) It just has always amazed me that these games (and animes) get soooooo much attention. It's ridiculous.

[Aafyre]

I really think people are overestimating how many Final Fantasy hacks there actually are. I've only made 3-4 out of my 40 or so hacks (where I have 13 Pokemon). Beyond's made 4 Final Fantasy characters I believe and he has even more hacks than I do.

There hasn't really been a Sephiroth vertex made since I made mine (and that was way back when I was just starting out).

[Velen]

"Sveta won the last poll. "

Did I read that right? (°_O )

[Beyond]

Don't be so hard on yourself Weyard, I'd hate to see another good vertex hacker go.

Just keep at it man. If you really care about downloads or just recognition for your hacks may I recommend making 1 or 2 "overhyped" characters? That way you'll draw the attention of a wider audience and once you have that quick boost in popularity going you can then take the liberty to make whatever you want. That's how I started, making sh*t like Sasuke and Roy just to get my name out there and now I can make whatever I want and people get hyped.

No matter what you do, stay true to yourself. Best of luck in your future hacks.

[Aafyre]

Yeah I agree with everything Beyond is saying. If you really want downloads and recognition, that's the way to go. The only difference between me and him are that I actually like everything I've made on my own. I'm just lucky that a lot of other people seem to share my interests.

Personally, I wouldn't ever make something just because it's popular. Just look at my first hacks. Nobody around here gives a crap about wrestling or kiddy grade but that didn't stop me. I think it's better to just stick to what you like and not worry so much about the download count. I hack because it's fun and I don't really care if my stuff got no downloads (which is why I make characters like Zegram that nobody's ever heard of).

I think that you're a great vertexer and a lot of my favorite hacks on characters are made by you. I especially love your Nidorans over Ivysaur and Darmanitan over Donkey Kong.

If you decide to make other outfits for Sub-Zero, I would go with his Deception outfit or his maskless Mortal Kombat 3 outfit. JohnLCB already made this version (not quite sure what game it's from though):

http://media.photobucket.com/image/sub-zero/jonascash/Sub-Zero.jpg?o=35

[Weyard]

"Sveta won the last poll. "

Did I read that right? (°_O )

Ya. Not sure how, but she did. I didn't like Dark Dawn but apparently some people did.

I had a Sveta texture almost finished on Sheik a while ago that I didn't release. Unfortunately I lost it when rebooting a year or so ago.
I would have to start over from scratch with it now.


I will not make an overhyped character. I don't like any of them.  They've been done to death and I don't feel the need to get my hand into it.

I make hacks based on game series that I like or have some respect for. I have no respect whatsoever for the Sonic series, I have little for FF7, and DBZ is being handled by everyone else on the board.
For example, I don't really like Mortal Kombat, but I have played enough of them to have respect for the series. I like most of the characters from it, so I felt pretty good about accepting that request and making Sub-Zero.

I am a huge fan of the FF series in general. I would support the creation of any FF character really.....except FF7 characters. It's popularity is misplaced in the first place.  

The most hyped thing I've ever wanted to do was Robo (Samus), but I never got around to finishing it. One would think that anything Chrono Trigger related would get attention and people would show interest in it, but after seeing where the community is going, I really doubt that even it would. It would be a great deal of work and would probably get 50 downloads tops at this rate.

I don't seek popularity. I don't want to be one of the top hackers. People put far to much pressure on you to get out your hacks quickly. They expect a certain degree of quality automatically and swarm you with stupid requests. Constantly sucking up and giving empty compliments, so they can grin when *insert top hacker* replied to their comment.
Your Zegram is one of your best as far as I'm concerned. You really have to look close to tell which character it was made on.

I just don't like the idea of spending weeks on a hack only to have 20 or so people enjoy it. I enjoyed making them and I use them in-game, but my most time consuming hacks aren't getting enough attention to even warrant the uploading of them. Right now, I'm only continuing because of 10-15 followers (gammaridley for example). I don't want to disappoint these followers by quitting or releasing a poor quality hack. Although I had to do so with the Zebesian pirate.
I plan to more time on the MP2 Pirate than I normally would because I really need it to turn out dramatically better than the Zebesian Pirate.
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Good hacks are going un-noticed. It isn't just me, alot of the middle-ground hackers are experiencing this. There are complaints all over the boards.

The Best hacks are getting the attention they deserve of course, but the absolute most horrid pieces of trash are getting unnecessary and unwarranted attention.

I can't comprehend how a Sonic recolor gets more downloads than Pico for example.
My DeathDede, which I would consider one of my "bad" hacks, got quite a few more downloads than Pico. It's as though the mindset is in the wrong place. People can't see the work put into something. They would download a Marth recolored like Sephiroth before they'd download a fully vertexed character from a slightly less popular series. They download solely based on Name recognition......sometimes. While something like my Red Phazon Dark Samus, a jumbled mess gets a huge amount of downloads. I just made it up on the spot. Made some wild changes to her vertices then let it patch incorrectly so it would be even more random and spiky. It is a mess, yet people download it because it has Dark Samus in the name.
They only downloaded Deathdede because it made a reference to Death from the Castlevania series. It looks nothing like him, but it carries the idea and name of him, so it got some downloads.
I would bet that if I made a black Marth recolor and named it "Sephiroth Costume" it would get 50-100 downloads within the first week.

There's nothing that can fix the community.

I'm apparently interested in the wrong series and my rule about only making characters that I like has a great deal to do with the attention my hacks are getting.

The only options are:
*to make an overhyped character from a series I like
*continue making hacks I like, which will only be enjoyed by my select group of followers

I don't want to have to quit, but it just feels like I'm wasting my time by uploading things that no one really cares about.

Even if I was to "quit", I don't think I would truly stop hacking. I would probably still make some hacks, but unless they were something I knew that people wanted/liked, I wouldn't upload them.


The MK:Deception Sub-Zero would be the one that I would make.  I would prefer to do one where he has white eyes because I love the effect that gave my current one.

[SiLeNtDo0m]

I don't seek popularity. I don't want to be one of the top hackers. People put far to much pressure on you to get out your hacks quickly. They expect a certain degree of quality automatically and swarm you with stupid requests. Constantly sucking up and giving empty compliments, so they can grin when *insert top hacker* replied to their comment.
Your Zegram is one of your best as far as I'm concerned. You really have to look close to tell which character it was made on.

A thousand restecps respects dude.  It's about time somebody had the balls to flat out say this.  Funny thing is though, Beyond and Aafyre (Beyond mainly) don't reply to comments as much as, say, Mewtwo2000 or I.  And yes it's true that "top" hackers are expected more than others to keep a level of quality.  Though the strange thing is, depending on what type of hack you do, people will respond differently.  Beyond and Aafyre for example do vertexes and as you said, their threads largely consist of empty compliments with a couple of sad attempts to give some constructive advice from people like myself.  However, look at my topic and people nitpick on pretty much every PSA I do and always find something to criticise about it.  But this is mainly because there's so much more to take into consideration with a PSA than a vertex.  But the thing I find is that literally no other PSA or PSAer (for the exception of DO's Sephiroth) gets this kind of reception.

Oh and I definitely agree about the Zegram comment.  I absolutely love him and always have and is my most played Marth hack when I play Marth in Brawl-.  He's just so well made.

Good hacks are going un-noticed. It isn't just me, alot of the middle-ground hackers are experiencing this. There are complaints all over the boards.

The Best hacks are getting the attention they deserve of course, but the absolute most horrid pieces of trash are getting unnecessary and unwarranted attention.

Problem is there's nothing anyone can really do about this.  The large majority of this attention though is from noobs, Stalker Kitties and outsiders from sites like Youtube.  In this case, there's nothing anyone can do.  Until these people actually come to properly integrate themselves into the community and actually learn of good quality hacks (which for the most part doesn't happen because a lot of these people are braindead fanboys) hacks like yours and a number of other peoples won't get the attention they deserve.

There's nothing that can fix the community.

More truthful words of wisdom

I can't comprehend how a Sonic recolor gets more downloads than Pico for example.
My DeathDede, which I would consider one of my "bad" hacks, got quite a few more downloads than Pico. It's as though the mindset is in the wrong place. People can't see the work put into something. They would download a Marth recolored like Sephiroth before they'd download a fully vertexed character from a slightly less popular series. They download solely based on Name recognition......sometimes. While something like my Red Phazon Dark Samus, a jumbled mess gets a huge amount of downloads. I just made it up on the spot. Made some wild changes to her vertices then let it patch incorrectly so it would be even more random and spiky. It is a mess, yet people download it because it has Dark Samus in the name.
They only downloaded Deathdede because it made a reference to Death from the Castlevania series. It looks nothing like him, but it carries the idea and name of him, so it got some downloads.
I would bet that if I made a black Marth recolor and named it "Sephiroth Costume" it would get 50-100 downloads within the first week.

This statement above even applies to the best of hackers (as you even said with Aafyre and his Zegram Ghart).  I've said this many times all over the place but my Viewtiful Joe PSA is still one of my proudest creations.  The overall development process of him (from the first V1) was roughly 5 or 6 months.  I started V1 in September 2010, released that in December 2010.  Then I restarted him up again for a revamp at around January/February and finished him on April 18th to celebrate my 1 year KC-MM anniversary.  However, out of my PSAs (barring Spidey, and even he will exceed Joe fairly soon) he has the least downloads.

Then there's my Burst Sonic mod.  It's not even bad, but comparative to pretty much everything else I've done I put little effort into it and it was easy enough for me to complete in around a week.  This Sonic mod, somehow, has more downloads than my Viewtiful Joe PSA (gosh you'd think everyone wanted to replace Sonic with Shadow considering how many downloads he has).

Like you said, some people can't see effort if it slapped them across the face with a wet fish.


As for you leaving or staying, there's really nothing I can say.  You're opinion's been set in concrete.  Nothing I say will sway it.   Heck anything I would say would just sound cliché anyway.  So it's really down to you.

Oh and on a random note, that Daffyroth request I made was nothing more than a joke.  I don't give a damn about FF.  Just thought it would be funny to do XD

[LookItsLink]

+ Respect for you, sir.

And agree with pretty much what everyone's saying regarding fan boys and whatnot. The amount of attention Cloud and Shadow get here is ridiculous.
I've only made Squall because FF8 was the first Final Fantasy game I ever played and I enjoyed it very much. And... gunblades. >.>

Anyway, I actually love your Pico hack and downloaded it when I first saw it.

And similar to your situation, my Lizardman got [censored] for downloads, even though it was one of my more difficult hacks, even being on the blog. If people don't know the character, they won't be interested sadly.

[Weyard]

The topic is over as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for the advice and opinions on the issue.

-

Space Pirate's legs are now finished. Gonna test it in-game tonight to make sure the bending of the shin worked out right.

I'm really not sure how the blade is going to look in-game. It's made out of her arm from the elbow down, so the animation and bones are going to make a mess of it. I'm definitely going to have to disable the bones on that arm, and if it's bad enough, I'll have to make a minor psa to straighten it up.

[Gamma Ridley]

Personally, I like your Dededeath simply because it was unique. Not because it was a reference to Castlevania. Heck, I've never even played the game.

Which may be my problem. But still.

What I like about your vertexes are that they are unique, and you go about solving vertex problems and making things out of other things in unique ways. For example, I loved how you made Dedede's gloves into boney fingers. Those details are what capture my attention, not the name.

Anyway, I'm excited to see how the MP2 Pirate turns out. Despite what you may think, the Zebesian turned out amazing, as usual. Hopefully, it won't give you so much trouble that you have to resort to PSA...

[Weyard]

I figured out the problem and fixed it. Brawlbox didn't compress the .pcs for some reason. It's working now and I have some previews.

The model is mostly finished, except for the shoulders, which haven't been edited at all yet.

These are from before I disabled the bones on the blade.



And here are two showing the blade after I disabled the bones:



It still needs some shaping, but it is retaining it's shape. So no psa will be needed .

-



I'm amazed at how well the legs turned out. They're already pretty much perfect.

STILL NEEDS:

*Elbow needs to be shaped to cover up a see-through part.
*Chest polygon needs it's type set to 2-sided so you can't see through it in the neck area.
*Blade arm needs some minor shaping.
*Pincer Gun arm needs to be slighly larger.
*Head needs a little shaping. It's supposed to be sort of ...different in the front then I have it. The back needs to be brought forward some too.
*Shoulder's haven't even been touched yet.
*Back needs lots of shaping after I do the texture.
*Texture hasn't been started.

IMO it's already better than the Zebesian, even with Samus's old texture on it lol.

[Albafika]

Wow, it's looking pretty good, Weyard.

[SiLeNtDo0m]

Copy pasta powas GO



Seriously, they look awesome!  I can't really say much at the moment without a texture, but those legs especially look fantastic.