Skull Leader

The Tomcat variant shown was the "F-14A Plus Kai" if I recall the compendium's terminology, basically an F-14 that was enhanced with overtechnology. (the one shown in the beginning of Macross Zero was modeled after a fujimi 1/72 F-14D tomcat, right down to the inaccuracies). Basically an F-14D on the outside, with an F-14A cockpit.

It's a shame you don't remember who you got them from... I'd love to get a few more!

Found my initial review of it.... and I mention getting them from Valkyrie then too http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=7801#entry141893

I believe you got them from someone else when they were recasting some stuff, I don't recall the exact circumstances, but I DID get them from you... sometime around 2002-2003

I may have shown this before.... I actually bought this kit way back in the day from Valkyrie. I actually bought two from him but I haven't built the other yet. This little guy is unscaled, but it's very close to the old imai 1/170 battroids, so it's probably a similar scale.. maybe 3 inches tall. It's a fixed-pose resin statue. You've got some latitude about the angle of rotation in the shoulders before you glue them down, but that's it. You can build the kit either as a VF-1A or a 1S (my second one will be a hikaru strike, if I ever get around to it) It's not super detailed but it turns out a nice desk statue. I brush painted this years before I learned how to airbrush.

Actually my first time using illustrator was to make my own 17 squadron decals for a 1/48 Jaguar I know a little about it!

LOL it always seems like "too many hobbies and not enough time" honestly... and this is a completely new adventure for me... I used to know a decent amount of HTML, but beyond that I've never coded anything in my life, and my wife has literally had to take my hand and teach me how to use illustrator (she lives in it at work, so she can do it blindfolded). hopefully the results justify the effort!

Lol thanks Micky.... I'll have photos up soon

Hmmm, looks like we'll just have to proceed with the regular version of the game for now. If we play the waiting game perhaps an option will present itself. I'm not too upset about that. (not yet anyway) I did the upgrade using Adobe Illustrator. By doing them as vectored graphics, we can resize to the newer monitor resolutions without any loss of quality. Honestly it may be a few months before I get down to the nitty gritty of figuring Unity 3D out.... I've got some model commissions I need to finish up for a few veterans and then I can focus a little more on it... in the meantime, it's 5 or 10 minutes here or there converting artwork. It was slow going at first, but I'm getting the hang of it, so I'll be able to whip them out a little quicker. Of course I'll post regular updates Just don't expect them to be very exciting yet lol.

It's still got some details to fix and work out, but this gives a pretty good idea of what the profiles will look like Comments? Criticism?

Decided to go with Smooth. I started with Roy but I've already decided to delete it all and start over...I decided to start work on the second pilot instead.

So... shall I try to replicate the pixilated graphics? Or try to smooth it out?

I'm starting work on vectoring some of the game art. I'm starting with the pilot profiles. This should take some time

That is the $64,000 question.... I've got a line out to a few of my computer geek friends to see what they say before I go throwing money down for a drive I'd likely only use once, lol

I can get an external 5.25 floppy drive. Most of the existing 5.25 drives are USB though... and my laptop is running ver. 4.00.950a, which doesn't support USB... so I don't know if just throwing an I/O-to-USB adapter on there would make it work, or if I genuinely need to find an I/O ported external floppy drive. I can probably solve that problem.

I actually own an old IBM thinkpad that runs windows 95... if you have a drive and trusted me enough, you could send them to me and I could do it (or try... ) I'm legit! Does your 5.25 drive have an I/O adapter? My laptop doesn't have USB ports

It's an expensive option, but you might be able to find an old PC98 laptop that runs windows 95 and rip them off that way. You'd be certain that the computer wasn't trying to alter the files Alternatively, what about an emulator that runs the pc98 version of MS-DOS or windows? Maybe you could rip the disc images that way without corrupting them? I see a couple of laptops on ebay, but at $2000 a pop, I don't know if it's worth it

Were PC98 floppies the same as IBM ones? I guess they would be. I'm getting in to breaking down the menu trees... I'll worry about the story and the dialogue after I've figured out how to completely get myself around the game. I've got a pretty good idea on those now... no idea if menu options change later in the game. There is an option from the main menu for a special mission if you have access to the "remember me" disks as well, it's a megaroad mission!

Damn dude.. I'm impressed!

Yeah, getting to play the Stampede valkyrie and the star crusader were pretty cool. I don't remember a great deal about the star crusaders, but I remember the SDP-1 Stampede valkyrie being a one man army Sadly, I'm an android guy, so the goggles app is a no go for me (the only alternative in the Google play store is still in beta and is getting terrible reviews) Btw, I have the entire story up to the point you take control of Hikaru captured.... screen by screen it's something like 130 pages of dialogue so far.

I also think I've found a way to rip the audio, but i'll have to do it as .mp3 files

I got the font issue figured out... its displaying japanese now, so I've begun collecting screen grabs for translations, etc

I have the game disks as .fdi files and I run them on a PC98 emulator (anex86 in this case, though others exist). I think I may be doing it wrong, because even with the japanese language font loaded, the text still shows up as gibberish. I have Skull Leader, Love Stories, and Remember Me, but I don't think I have the complete pack version. I have no idea how to rip the music honestly... I've got a message out to apollojoe as to how he did it, but I don't know if he speaks english, he may not respond. I still haven't decided if I'm gonna try to rip the bitmaps, or do new vector versions. I think new vector art would look better, especially scaled up on the bigger monitors of today, I do confess to liking the grainy look of the originals though... gives it a retro feel. I'm a *long* way from figuring out if I can do this... it could be 6-8 months before I even begin laying groundwork (if I can can apply myself in my spare time enough to learn c++) If anyone else (yourself included, Boinger) wants to get on board with this, I'm sure I'll need all the help I can get. Here is a short list of things I'm gonna need: 1. Complete translations of all the menus (when I played through it before, I was able to figure some of it out by feeling my way in the dark, but it would be nice to know what they really say) 2. Complete translations of all the dialogue (I've never played the game beyond a couple of missions, and as I said before, the text is gibberish, so I have no idea what they're saying) 3. A walkthru/Mission guide for each mission in the game, and the scripted events that occur in each. 4. (If anyone can do it), all of the music files ripped to some neutral format... either .midi or .mp3 I guess... I could "steal" the ones apollojoe has already done, but something doesn't sound right about a couple of them, I'm not sure what process he used to get these. 5. (again, if anyone can do it) I need full size rips of all the artwork. Being bitmaps, I could probably just screenshot it, blow it up, and re-draw, but thats a lot of work. Anyone else want in on this clusterf*#&? LOL Boinger, I'm interested in getting .fdi images of that complete pack if you ever get it figured out.

Well, I've always wanted to learn how to program... It just so happens that a copy of Unity 3D exists on my computer... everyone says it's the shiznit for game developing. Time to hit the books I guess

Nix rpgmaker... it doesn't do isometric maps