The good, the bad and the pretty

FS: Do you see any holes in 2k3? Anything that needs to be addressed by Epic/DX?

Asia: Well I hate to say it, but I felt like I was testing a beta version when I sat down and tried to make some skins for the new game. They've included a disc with some new proggies to assist skinners and mappers, but after I finished installing UnrealEd, UPaint, and Maya, I was unable to use any of them immediately. UnrealEd and UPaint both needed patches before they would run, and Maya needed to be registered at a website online first. So that was pretty annoying.

UPaint is a cute 3-D app for viewing and editing your UT characters. It will offer a lot of potential benefits for UT skinners once the bugs are ironed out, but I found myself saving my work repeatedly like an obsessive compulsive, 'cause the proggie kept crashing so often. And one of the most useful commands -'export character to Unreal'- froze the proggie for good every time I tried to use it.

Eventually I decided that UPaint wasn't quite ready for prime-time yet, and I went back to working on my skins 'the old-fashioned way' - graphics in Photoshop, import them with UnrealEd, then open UT2k3 to view the 3-d model in the Player settings.

Maybe more skillful users will find the new proggies handier than I did - I'm merely a self-taught 'trial-and-error' geek myself, but I admit I found it easier to go back to the skinning methods I used with Unreal Tournament. Oh well, whatever works, right?

FS: When can we expect Asia skins for 2k3? Maps? Are you considering playing
competitively?

Asia:Playing competitively? You mean for money? You mean someone would actually PAY me to play Unreal? Aw quit teasing, you're making that up!

As for the UT2k3 Asiaskins, keep a lookout for 'em, they'll be coming soon! I just finished my first one last night, and I've only just begun!