Wonder Man Released

Wow, it's Wonder Man! I WONDER what its like to play as him! Unfortunately, I cannot find out, seeing as I still don't have enough gold! :(

Speaking of Wonder, guess who's coming next What-If week! ;)

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If Week 1 - Behind the Scenes

My long-awaited Justice League What-If is finally here, and this week, I "released" Superman and Classic Batman in what is actually my 150th POST OF ALL TIME! Yay! :D

Now, you know by now that I don't like to repeat myself, and I've already gone over how I made the Thunderbolts loading screen, and how I composited the TDK Batman gameplay pictures, so you'd think there wasn't much to say as far as how I created these images. Except that I haven't gone much into detail as far as the actual modeling process of these heroes goes.

Each hero starts with a cube. Not a box, which is 2 dimensional, but a cube, which is in 3d space.

I then began manipulating the cube using various tools, which is where things start to get complicated.

Here is the cube after I have subdivided it, which basically means that wherever there was one side, now there are four. But it gets even more complicated. This type of subdivision is called a Catmall Clark Subdivide, which rounds out edges. Of course, I don't think about this kind of thing while I'm modeling a hero. That would be distracting.

Here, I pushed around the polygons a bit, by bringing down a point to form the top of the chest, and flattened the sides of the cube.

Here, I extruded the sides to form the arms, and pushed a few more points to strengthen the chest area. I could go on like this for many, many more steps. I could describe how I carefully add symmetry modifiers, weld separate objects together, convert to points and invert the selection to get rid of unneeded objects, etc. etc. But I know that that would probably bore anybody who doesn't really understand it to death, so I'm going to stop here. You can, however, request a full tutorial if you would like to know, down in the comment section, and I might be tempted to write one if enough people are interested. 

The real reason I showed you all this was to impress upon you how much effort goes into these What-Ifs. It's not like I have a team that models, textures, rigs, poses, lights and renders these heroes for me. Each hero takes me roughly thirty minutes to an hour to model, twenty minutes to texture, and two to three minutes to rig.

Here's what Batman's model looks like, un-subdivided and without textures:

I'd also like to mention that I actually model the hands and legs separately, and then attach them later to the body model. And that, in the final model, the cape is rigged for movement as well as the skeleton.

Another new thing that I did involved Superman.

You'll note that my Thunderbolt What-If didn't require any male characters with their faces exposed, which made it really easy for me to model them.

I did need to model Moonbeam and Songbird's faces, though. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job, as a closer inspection reveals.

But for this What-if, I needed two completely exposed faces: Superman and Wonder Woman.

I spent a lot of time on Wonder Woman's face, trying to make it not completely flat. And Superman's head gets re-used for every other male character except Batman, because I liked it so much. I think it works best on Flash and Green Arrow.

Here are the hero icons:

I can't wait for you to see the rest of this What-If, it's going to be AWESOME!

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If - Week 1

Note: the following post is fictional, and does not represent any actual gameplay or announcements from Gazillion Entertainment, Marvel or DC.

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Today SHSO kicked off their amazing new DC crossover event with this new loading screen, which featured six new JLA heroes and a new villain, Darkseid. 

This is the second DC crossover since they released The Dark Knight Batman, which sadly did not get a follow-up with the release of the final sequel movie. But, seeing as SHSO didn't release a new Amazing Spiderman repaint for THAT movie either, (hopefully when ASM2 comes out!), I can forgive them for it.

Anyway, so they're new line-up of heroes is: Superman, Classic Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow, an awesome assortment of characters we know and love from the comics. 

And this week saw the release of Superman and Batman, as I thought when I first saw the announcement for it. Luckily I was able to get both, and here are their hero reviews!

SUPERMAN

MOVEMENT

Superman can fly, obviously. He flies in his usual arms in front style, which is fun. He has standard jump though, which is too bad, since I've been dying to play a double jump hero.

I rate his MOVEMENT 3.5/5!

FIGHTING

My computer crashed during a mission so I wasn't able to test out his fighting skills TOO much, but from what I've seen Superman is an awesome varied attacker, using eye-lasers, punches, super-breath to freeze enemies, and a Hero Up where he picks up a car and hurls it at attackers.

I rate his FIGHTING 4.9/5!

COOL FACTOR

I've never really been a fan of Superman, so I'm probably biased when it comes to cool factor. All I'll say is that I'll be glad when they come out with a Man of Steel variant.

I rate his COOL FACTOR 1.5/5!

OVERALL: Superman is a fun, fast hero to play as, and fans of the old comic books will no doubt be overwhelmed by nostalgia. My only complaint is that he's slightly overpowered when it comes to fighting. I rate Superman a 4.5/5 overall!

CLASSIC BATMAN

Aw yeah Classic Batman! I've been waiting for this hero since TDK Batman's release. Let's get on to the review, shall we?

MOVEMENT

Classic Batman can scale walls with his grappling hook, and fly down to earth from rooftops. He also has a double jump, which instantly makes me a fan.

I rate his MOVEMENT 5/5!

FIGHTING

Playing with TDK Batman in the Joker mission

Classic Batman uses his grapple, batarangs, and various martial art moves, much like TDK Batman. However, the animations are not a complete copy, which is nice.

I rate his FIGHTING 3.5/5!

COOL FACTOR

He's Batman.

I rate his COOL FACTOR 4.6/5!

OVERALL: Classic Batman is a fun callback to the old comics, and is a must buy for Batman fans. Overall, I rate Classic Batman a 4.8/5!

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Well, anyway, I guess the review section of this post is over. I'm looking forward to the other Justice League releases, especially Wonder Woman and the Darkseid mission.

Look for future follow-ups soon!

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If - Week 1 Teaser

A new post on the What-If SHSO Facebook page teases these two crossover heroes, coming soon to the game!

-- SHSOFan.

Ghost Rider Maxxed!

Ghost Rider was a fun hero and while not the fastest fighter, he still was awesome to play as.

Short Hero Review: Funny emotes, standard movement, chain attacks, really cool looking, somewhat slow and not so powerful, overall I'd give Ghost Rider a 3.8/5!

If he wasn't so expensive, I'd say, "Buy him right now!" :)

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If Teaser

A teaser for my upcoming What-If...

-- SHSOFan.

More Heroes Are Leaving The Store

Looks like people haven't been buying Scarlet Witch, Avengers Thor, Avengers Captain America, Rogue, Punisher, Astonishing Cyclopes, Avengers Hulk, or Hope Summers enough, so SHSO's deleting them from the store.

But, before they disappear, they are having a "going away" sale, with 20% off all the departing heroes.

You know from my reviews of them that Avengers Captain America, Hope Summers, Rogue and Avengers Thor are all good heroes. Cap was a runner-up on my Top Ten List of Best Heroes, and only because I didn't have room for him. So was Punisher.

The first question I have is: WHY?

There's a great line-up of heroes in the store. Why is SHSO getting rid of these perfectly good heroes? Bad sales don't mean people hate them. It just means you've buried them in your confusing store layout.  This is the equivalent of swatting every fly you find, instead of keeping them from getting inside your home in the first place. If they'd just change their store layout so that it was easier to navigate their great selection, and stop coming out with Spiderman/Thor/Iron Man/Hulk/Wolverine repaints every two months, then the stores wouldn't be crowded, and there'd be no reason to get rid of these characters.

These deletions, which are becoming annoyingly regular, feel very gimmicky, almost like they're testing how much they can hold back rewards before customers start disappearing as fast as the heroes.

It's bad enough we have limited gold rewards for no good reason, now instead of one new hero every week they're gonna delete eight? My advice to them is: reward your players. If every time a SHSO player talks about the game to a friend he rants about limited rewards and the deletion of heroes instead of how fun, exciting and fresh the game is, then you're going to wind up losing potential customers, not to mention the frustrated players.

While I don't think two goodbye sales counts as game-quitting material, I am not in favor of their continuation.

On the bright side: well, the store IS less crowded. And there are three new awesome potions in the store!

-- SHSOFan.