The Titanic Mod

[Mr Robville]

Sorry for the silence folks
Progress hasn't been too fast lately, although I have been doing a little bit of modelling. Something rather different, but also involved with the mod:



As for the other Titanic mod. It is actually the main reason I started this one.
A classmate of mine mentioned it at school but wasn't sure to remember where he found it. When I got home, I searched the web vigorously but to no avail unfortunately, so I started working on a Titanic mod myself.
It was until many many many years later that I found out that the mod my classmate mentioned was actually posted right here on Mafiascene. The creator however was -from what I could read- somewhat emotionally unstable and he disappeared shortly after a small rant he posted. To my knowledge, the mod was never released, and I never got to see any footage of it as all of the image links had already expired years before. When MS's forum database got wiped clean, so was the last trace of this mod, and the only thing that remains nowadays is simply a rumor.
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www.robville.net

[AMadeMan]

Looks stunning Mr. Robville! Thank you on regard with my question about the old titanic mod. Again no rush, take as much time as you need.

[huckleberrypie]

So the other Titanic mod got lost to history then.

And what's with the stick figures doing the T-pose?

[Mr Robville]

Thanks!

The stick figures are there for sizing everything since the building is made from scratch. What I think is a tall ceiling usually is way too low for a 3rd person game interior where the camera could easily bump into it. Lot of areas onboard the Titanic can only be played in "first person mode" simply because there is not enough room to distance the camera.
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www.robville.net

[linukkis]

Everytime you upload a screenshot of some of your work, I can't help but think how talented you are. I mean damn, just look at that!

Thanks for dropping in, Mr. Rob, hope everything's going great for you

[AMadeMan]

So what is the building supposed to be in the screenshot?

[Hunter]

I think someone posted this, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1AJkx3X2cM

[AMadeMan]

Any news regarding the new version of the Renault Towncar that you shown?

[flovivi]

What I like about your mod is that the models and textures are not too high quality for the original mafia graphics, but totally enough to be clear, smooth and just stunning. The work and dedication you put into this is amazing.

I am currently working on a mafia-like game on unity, and I was wondering did you make the textures from scratch? Or did you take pictures and edited them? I find texturing to be a pain in the ass that usually is very time consuming And it is also hard to find some free textures that actually suit the model.. would be great to get some texturing Tipps from such an advanced modder like you.


**sorry for the off-topic btw if it’s too off-topic you can simply leave me a private message.

Best regards
Flo

[AMadeMan]

[Mr Robville]

Sorry for the late reply! and also sorry for the lack of progress lately. Quite a few things going on in life.

I appreciate to hear that! Pretty much all of my textures' source is www.textures.com (formerly cgtextures).
While some images are more plug and play than others, they all go through Photoshop first.
Tileable textures usually only require a color correction and a resize. For prominent areas I like to keep those resolutions at 512x512. And for really complex ones even 1024x1024.
For some textures such as the floor in the reception room, I actually modelled the whole pattern in Rhino4, rendered it in Cinema 4D, and give the final touches such as dirt in Photoshop.

Unique textures take most work, such as wall paneling or specific items within areas. This is a matter of stitching together many elements from textures that I gathered from Textures.com, rendering some parts myself, and trying multiple variations of it ingame until I'm satisfied.

Objects such as furniture or machinery all have baked textures. Take a winch for example. I'd apply a tileable metal texture to it in Cinema4D, and then bake its shadows and global illumination onto it and generate a whole new texture from it. Global illumination is important for me. If a white object is in an area with a red carpeted floor, I make sure the texture has the red reflection of the light cast onto it, so that the model looks more fitting in the environment.

Tip, if you are unsure what resolution to use, start high. You could even use 2048x2048 for a simple item. If the texture is too demanding or too crisp for the game, you can always downsize. I've downsized a lot of textures for optimization purposes, which I guess contributes a lot to the consistency of the graphics.

I've yet to release the new Renault Towncar model but haven't got round to finish it yet.
I'll see if I can make some time for that in the near future.
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www.robville.net

[AMadeMan]

That's good to know. And very interesting about how you made the textures, that ought to be added to the documentary of this mod's creation once its finished.

PS: I've been thinking, as part of the story once you're on board the Titanic. Would it be possible to have 2 smaller ships (small low poly generic ships) to look like it would have a near collision with the Titanic? I say this because this could be a pretty cool nod to the real-life near collision with the SS New York and the RMS Oceanic.

[AMadeMan]

How have things been going Mr. Robville? It looks like the mod is making good progress after seeing the recent Facebook updates.

[Mr Robville]

Sorry that things have been rather quiet here. I must admit that I haven't been too productive. Though these last few weeks I really felt in the mood to continue on the mod again
So as some of you already know, I'm currently working on the most complex 3D model; the massive triple expansion engines. These will be modelled to their tiniest details. If I can get in touch with djbozkosz again, he can hopefully convert the FBX animation into a Mafia compatible animation, because yes, these models are intended to be animated once ingame. Fingers crossed on that one.

The only things left regarding the engines are the cranking engine and surrounding catwalks. Once these are done, the rest of the engine room can be made, which will require a lot of interpretation due to a very limited amount of photographs existing of the place.

For those that have seen the movie, I must warn you, the actual engine room looks a lot more cramped and less biblical than it does in the movie. In fact, there's actually no place to get a good look at them from a distance.
That doesn't distract from their massive size though.
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www.robville.net

[AMadeMan]

Glad to know development is still going strong. I hope djbozkosz can still be contacted especially since he is very skilled at Mafia modding at pushing the graphics beyond LS3D's limit. Last I heard from him was back in 2016 when he went to go work for the company that made Shadowgun Legends.