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The Big O's 2008 Stadium Mods


The Big O

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Hello all, I'm back from my modding hiatus with some progress and some news on my projects that you can follow at my page here.

First of all I'm still semi-retired and for that reason I've decided to scale back a little bit. I'm not really setting deadlines for myself anymore and will just mod when I feel like it.

As some of you know, I have decided to no longer update Fenway. Instead I will devote my efforts to all things Orioles, namely my Oriole Park mod and also Fort Lauderdale Stadium. Although I'm no longer modding Fenway I did give a few other modders permission to use my work and have given them all the files I had. I'm sure one or two of them will step up and deliver something great for Fenway. I figured just like Ezorn before me, it was time to pass the torch.

Oriole Park is going to have a lot of changes this season, so that is going to occupy most of my efforts. I've already added the new video board and plan to make the other changes as I get better pictures. However I've also done quite a bit of work already to Fort Lauderdale Stadium. In both projects, I plan on using ZMod instead of OEdit to make some things possible that weren't before to make each mod even better and more detailed.

You can follow the Oriole Park v.5.0 progress here and Fort Lauderdale Stadium v.2.0 progress here.

I'll be posting when I update the site with progress in this thread so stay tuned...

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Welcome back big 0, Oriole park is my second favorite (next to wrigley of course). When I lived in Maryland when I was 4 or 5, my family and I went to an Orioles game on my birthday, back then it was camden yards, and I got my name up on the scoreboard for the announcing birthdays. It was an awesome feeling. I'm just getting at, I love this park and your work!

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I can't believe that place is closing in on 20 years old already. When it hits that mark in 2012, people will start calling for its replacement, you just know it. Even if it doesn't need it, somebody will start to call it old and out of touch with the current times and trends.

Still a great ballpark, though.

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Big O, I've always loved your work and how much detail you put into one of my 3 favorite ballparks.

One thing I've always wondered is why your ads always look 'washed out' in the previews? Are you using photos (thus the atmospheric effects)? If you would like, I could do some of these ads in photoshop to really make them 'pop' in the game.

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Big O, I've always loved your work and how much detail you put into one of my 3 favorite ballparks.

One thing I've always wondered is why your ads always look 'washed out' in the previews? Are you using photos (thus the atmospheric effects)? If you would like, I could do some of these ads in photoshop to really make them 'pop' in the game.

Yep, I want all my ads to be authentic, so I use the highest resolution picture I can of them, then I just manipulate them to fit in the bmp. It's hard to make them look crisp real close up just because the photos just don't get that good a quality, and the limit on the .bmp size effects the quality as well. The UV mapping grabs and enlarges part of a .bmp so there will always be some fuzziness. That can't really be avoided unless I create the ads from scratch. Also some of the washed out effect is intentional, for lighting effect purposes.

It's hard to do a balance between photos and the rendered part of the game. You don't want things to look cut out and you want them to kind of blend in to the background.

Fort Lauderdale Stadium v. 2.0 has the highest quality ads that I've ever used in a project and I'm really pleased with the results thus far, especially with the Southwest Airlines ad in LF.

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Old Baltimore Memorial is great to have as well, however, I would like to have that stadium with the crowd out option. It is unplayable because the crowd slows the play down on my graphics card. Is there a possibility of having two versions of this. I love it except for that.

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Old Baltimore Memorial is great to have as well, however, I would like to have that stadium with the crowd out option. It is unplayable because the crowd slows the play down on my graphics card. Is there a possibility of having two versions of this. I love it except for that.

Well first I wasn't the creator of that mod, Sean O was. And you can turn crowds off in the Game Options if it's slowing down your gameplay.

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All told, the crowd was one of the lesser issues with Baltimore Memorial.

- no bullpens

- no dugouts

- seating incorrect

- foul ground incorrect

- wrong dimensions

And that's just in the modern version. the '50s version is far worse. If I ever get around to create my universal oldtimey stadium, it'll help.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If anybody is going to Opening Day or any games this week in Baltimore, I need your help with pics of Oriole Park. If you want to contribute to my efforts please PM me or drop me an email at thebigoriole@yahoo.com if you are interested. Thanks!

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Oriole Park v.5.0 WIP update: I'm slowly starting to see pictures show up from this year's games. Unfortunately tonight's game was rained out and tomorrow's game looks like it will also be rained out so that means no new pics. I had somebody that agreed to take some for me tonight but thankfully they are going Sunday as well.

I was able to change the RF OOT scoreboard and ads as well as adding a couple of other ads to the stadium. You can see the progress here.

I've also been playing around a little in ZMod trying to get the hang of it. It's pretty powerful but it seems there's a ton of buttons and menus you have to go through to get the program to do what you want. I wish it was less cumbersome. Rolie uses hotkeys so that may be the best way around it...

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Another update for Oriole Park v.5.0...

MAJOR PROGRESS! :jive:

I am pleased to say that thanks to a member of OriolesHangout.com, I got some spectacular pics of the park and as a result have been able to make some major progress, basically almost finishing the day version of the park itself minus the Hilton Hotel, which is next on my agenda.

You can see preview pics at my site here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oriole Park v.5.0 update:

Well after that little false alarm I've finally finished the rendering for the Hilton for real this time. I thought I was done two days ago, but after looking at the main tower I realized that I had 32 windows instead of the 16, and I also needed to add an additional window on the end in the yellow section of the main tower. So after making those changes I then decided to merge it into the mstadium file to see what it might look like in game. Well it was now too tall. :wall:

Ah, the trial and error process... Anyway, I reduced the size of each part manually a couple of times, the last time by 20% and now I am pleased to say I am finally done rendering the Hilton in ZMod.

All that remains now is to get the thing actually added to the part I have mapped to the Zenith Apt building texture next to it. Hopefully that won't be too difficult.

You can see all the pics of the rendering at my website here.

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Oriole Park v.5.0 Update:

It's in the game! :jive:

After all that work, I was able to get the Hilton Hotel I created in ZMod into the game, succesfully attaching it to the removable file and reimporting it back from ZMod to an .o file.

You can see the pics at my website here:

Now my Oriole Park mod will be completely accurate for the 2008 season. I've got a new problem with the stadium tower, but I think I can solve it in ZMod...

Man I struggled at first with it, but ZMod has opened up a world of possiblities... 8)

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