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AngryEwok

501st Member[501st]
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Everything posted by AngryEwok

  1. I can provide high resolution screenshots of the Heavy after Thanksgiving, if needed, but essentially it is unchanged from the last Battlefront, which is to say it appears to be an ROTJ Stormtrooper with an ANH Special Edition Sandtrooper backpack.
  2. Here's my pan. Price went up a couple of dollars recently, but should total up to about $15. ----------
  3. Sorry to be OCD, but the Attache isn't a PNG like the other ribbons... so... I fixed it...
  4. I live by myself and my garrison isn't the biggest, this part is what I dread the most: taping for fit by myself. You're looking good!
  5. Absolutely, Shawn. I've seen at least one person build his pack (and even modify his armor) according to his interpretation of screenshots rather than the CRL and he was really disappointed when the 501st couldn't approve him. Guys and gals, if you're aiming for CRL approval, please build according to the CRL!
  6. Well, the WEDCO 12.5 qt. drain pain has arrived! She's coming together!
  7. This should be the easiest piece to reproduce. I got lucky and my Home Depot had a 24" of PVC precut for about $5. I'll hit it with two coats of the satin black. Home Depot didn't have flat end caps, and so I ordered some offline from Wal-Mart. You can modify rounded ones, but I didn't want to do that if I could just buy the things flat for the same price. The "white plate" with the seven bumps is a curious feature. The Sandtrooper pack mortar tube uses the thermal detonator, which Pandemic could have done, also, as the texture is already in-game. Instead, they went with what appears to be the shoulder strap. Weird decision. In any case, I've seen two methods for reproducing the plate: 3D printing or just using a spare shoulder strap.
  8. As you can see from the various screenshots, in-game this bottom-right box appears to be angled downward at the front, but our CRL, I think mercifully, allows for a simple box. And that's what we'll be doing. Rather than glue a panel on, which is sort of the standard practice with most of our HWT's, I decided to cut the windows directly out of the box so that I could adjust depth on the inside. Not perfect, but after some sanding it'll do just fine! Now for the paint... She's painted! The interior is actually the lid, sanded and painted. I will be darkening it just a tad more, as I only want a little hint of that Satin Slate Blue to peek out. The depth of the interior is adjustable, which is what I was going for. If someone wanted to get fancy with LED's for non-official events, this would be a great place to do it without getting into trouble as far as clearing the CRL goes.
  9. Here we have the Middle Tube element which is a 30 count Clorox Disinfecting Wipes container. The lid is black, the body is Rust-Oleum Slate Blue. I've painted the lid with satin black and I'm ready to move on to the container. One thing I have noticed with other builds is that the moulding seams and HDPE rating at the bottom of the Clorox container are still pretty visible even after painting. I went over the bottom of the container with bondo to cover this up. This isn't a necessary step, even for Centurion, but it is something I wanted to do. Time to paint... The Standard features a black stripe with optional screws going down the face of the Middle Tube. Most of the HWT's have done this by simply taping off the stripe, but I have also seen folks glue something down, as well. I'll be using a magnetic strip which I can remove once I clear the CRL. I'll explain why: Although on the surface this is pretty much the most boring part of the pack build, it offers a really good illustration of the challenges of creating a CRL for this pack. For one, its not actually a tube in the game because of hardware limitations, but visually we all understand what it is representing and so the CRL calls for a cylinder, not a five-sided polygon. But there's more: as you can see, the texture as it wraps around the middle tube appears to be mapped incorrectly. It isn't broken, per se, otherwise it would probably show up bright pink or just invisible, but I'm confident this is not how the guys at Pandemic wanted the tube to appear. As an amateur texture artist, I was determined to pour over the texture[#1] and figure out (1) what is going on with this piece, and (2) how Pandemic intended for it to be displayed: If you look carefully at my red-outlined areas of the in-game model, you can see that Pandemic intended for the Middle Tube and the Drop Siphon Funnel to share the same red-outlined area of the texture. Clearly, the HWT pack was supposed to resemble the sandtrooper packs #2-5, which all feature two blue-gray cylindrical canisters with separate black domed lids, called mushroom caps[#2]. But it appears Pandemic accidentally mapped the pink-outlined side of the Middle Tube to something else, perhaps the MP40 pouch. The result is a weird, compressed texture at the most visible part of the Middle Tube, which the 501st has re-created in the HWT CRL as a black stripe! So what was the pack supposed to look like? Now! All of this is super interesting to me (and probably only me), however there is a giant caveat to this and any other rabbit trails I go down: back in the good ole days, videogames used to require imagination to interpret what exactly was being presented to us on the screen in very low resolution. The 501st CRL doesn't work that way. Is it okay if the Middle Tube isn't exactly 8.5 x 3.25? YES! And is it okay if you use Valspar Silver Fox instead of Rust-Oleum Slate Blue? YES! But if you're seeking CRL approval, build according to the CRL.
  10. I'm starting off with the Drop Siphon Funnel component because I had all of the materials in my kitchen pantry. As you can see, the CRL standard[#1] very closely matches the model in-game. Specific measurements are not required[#2] but I want to be careful to recreate the general proportions. The upper should be about one-third the length of the lower, and the entire component should be approximately 9.5" tall, one inch taller than the so-called "Middle Tube." The upper portion of my Drop Siphon Funnel is the bottom half of a 1L nalgene bottle, appx. 3.5" diameter per the Standard. First, I'll use the belt sander to sand the bottom of the upper piece so that it sits flush on top of the lower piece. Done. As you can see, I was able to get the upper perfectly flush to cup with the belt sander. Now its time to address that recess at the top of the element. All of the HWT's at the Centurion level have a nice flat surface. ukswrath achieved this affect by using E6000 to glue a piece of yard sale sign on top of a cup, then trimmed the edges flush after the glue dried[#6, Scroll to 5a]. I've decided to fill-in this recess using bondo. Done. I believe it will pass inspection. As for the lower piece, others have used different types of funnels and printed models and even craft paper for this, some of them coming out more accurate than others. Because this piece is more prone to break than any other part of the pack, I want to go with something that is sturdy but that I can replace without any hassle. I'll try a run-of-the-mill plastic cup from a favorite local restaurant of mine. The measurements of the cup are 3.75" diameter opening, 2.75" bottom, 5.75" tall -- a little too wide and too short, just like me. While I was working with the bondo for the upper, I went ahead and put the leftover bondo on the bottom of the cup, too, so as to fill-in the recess and cover all of the recycling logos. Not a necessary step, but it won't hurt and it gives me just a little bit more experience working with the stuff. The eight rivets around the rim of the funnel are a detail added by 501st members which is not discernible in-game, and for that reason not required[#3]. I'm going to go without the rivets because the sandtrooper pack mushroom caps do not have rivets, either, and this was obviously the inspiration behind many elements of Pandemic's HWT pack. Speakings of the sandtrooper pack, the guys over at MEPD recommend Rust-Oleum Satin Slate Blue for the various blue-gray parts on their packs[#4, MEPD], which is similar to what ukswrath used[#5] and what I'll be using, as well. So let's paint... Done. I'm pretty pleased with this.
  11. Disclaimer: Out of a general love for the Battlefront games and how they were made, throughout this build, I have included a plethora of Battlefront (2004) and Battlefront II (2005) screenshots and texture renders and compared each individual part of the in-game pack to the corresponding parts in the CRL and noted how they differ. If you are building a HWT pack for 501st approval, please do so according to the standards set by the CRL -- not according your interpretation of the in-game pack! 1. Drop Siphon Funnel 2. Middle Tube 3. Vent Box 4. Bottom-right Box 5. Button Box 6. Radio Box 7. Mortar/Antenna Tube 8. Pack MATERIALS 1x WEDCO 12.5 qt. drain pain, $14.94 from Fleet Farm 1x Popit! Stackit! set, $15.61 from Amazon Warehouse Button Box - XE-041 container 6.6" x 4.75" Vent Box - XE-051 container 8" x 5.6" Bottom-right Box - XE-061 container 9.1" x 6.6" 1x squirt bottle cap (Drop Siphon Funnel, top) 1x 1L Nalgene Bottle (Drop Siphon Funnel, upper) 1x Takeout cup (Drop Siphon Funnel, lower) 1x 30 ct. Clorox Wipes bottle (Middle tube) 1x Self-Adhesive Bumper, $4.76 6/pk from Wal-Mart 2x bottle caps (Radio Box, knobs) 1x 24" 2x2 PVC Pipe (Mortar Tube), $5.12 from Home Depot 2x Flat Pipe Cap, $3.53/ea from Wal-Mart TOOLS, PAINT, ETC. Rust-Oleum Satin Slate Blue, 12 oz., $10.96 from Amazon (this was really pricey for me because no one had it locally) Rust-Oleum Satin Black, 12 oz., $3.67 from Wal-Mart Bondo Body Filler, 12 oz., $7.97 from Wal-Mart References HWT Pack CRL EIB's and Centurions with the WEDCO 12.5 qt. drain pain: TK 20466 TK 10737 TK 10204 ukswrath's pack build
  12. I think as we continue to hone in on "What is a Heavy Weapons Trooper?" and I assume eventually create a clean thread to be pinned for newcomers, it would helpful to begin to (1) eliminate references to things that are not a Heavy Weapons Trooper and (2) begin to add a basic FAQ with references to prior discussions where standards were agreed upon and some pretty obvious questions addressed, namely: a) How picky are 501st approvals going to be about pack standards when the current standards are not terribly close what we see in-game? What I have seen is a general agreement that we need a basic standard for the pack so that people aren't just doing 'whatever' with packs filled with lights and gizmos, but that we do not want to be extraordinarily picky about the specifics when what we are representing is a low-resolution, low-polygon model that is suffering from both texture issues (the middle tube is glitched, such that the black-stripe detail we have added to it is totally idealized) and clipping issues (which is why to look at the front, the handle at the top of the pack appears to be open, when in reality the space beneath the handle was apparently intended to be closed). My main concern is that we really need to start getting consistent with whatever standards are arrived at, and that means eventually addressing the utter inaccuracy of the antenna. If I can't have lights, why am I allowed to have the antenna? I'm 99% sure that DICE is about to establish the ANH:SE Sandtrooper's backpack, ironically a character rejected by the MEPD as a HWT, as official HWT equipment. Are we prepared to accept that pack, considering it will be canon? b ) What weapons are allowed for 501st approvals? In Battlefront (2004) and Battlefront II (2005), the HWT has only these three weapons: MiniMag PTL Rocket Launcher, E-11, and the SE-14r Blaster Pistol. We seem to have gone our own way with this and the DLT-19 and the T-21 have easily been the most popular in the approvals I have seen. The general idea seems to be that the HWT should carry a BFG and that's all that really matters. Is that a problem? I don't think so, but the question has been brought up in the past.
  13. We come to a different conclusion, is all. I don't think the MEPD should get the Jedha CRL for the same reason (I assume) they don't acknowledge the Special Edition sandtrooper in their CRL and didn't want the HWT: these three are clearly just stormtroopers with accessories, and not the very unique '76 Tunisia armor.
  14. This has been an interesting thread to read through. Someone correct me if my history is wrong, but weren't the sandtroopers assembled and shot in Tunisia several weeks before the stormtroopers were assembled and filmed at Elstree? And this is why the sandtrooper helmet and armor has fewer details, generally speaking, when compared to the stormtrooper? I've always considered the absence of those details to be what made a sandtrooper more than just a stormtrooper with a backpack, pauldron, and a layer of dirt. I know the greater interest here has been trying to make sense of the canon... but to me, sandtroopers are those dudes in Tunisia in '76.
  15. Rec.'d my HFx DLT-19, yesterday, and I ordered various Centurion parts from Joseph and Tony!

  16. Still waiting on my shipping confirmation... any day, now...
  17. The Magma Trooper, the Jump Pack Trooper, and the Jump Pack are in EA Battlefront (2015). But I don't see how they are relevant to the Heavy Weapons Trooper CRL? EA Battlefront II (2017) does have a Heavy Trooper class in the game (not just multiplayer, but part of the actual canon storyline), and so I think we should wait to see what DICE does with that before possibly modifying the HWT CRL. Maybe DICE will resurrect the HWT from Battlefront (2004) and Battlefront II (2005) in beautiful high definition? Or, maybe they'll do something weird, like base the design on an AT-AT driver. Or, what is more likely, they'll complicate the CRL by having the Heavy Trooper wear an assortment of recycled assets: an ROTJ helmet, ANH:SE backpack, and sandtrooper body with upside down ab buttons? This is from the trailer...
  18. Man, this gets me fired up to join you guys in the ranks of the 501st. Awesome article.
  19. The 501st Heavy Weapons Trooper CRL is based upon the Star Wars: Battlefront (2004) Heavy and Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) Heavy Weapons Class unit, in both games cosmetically identical and called Shock Trooper. NOT to be confused with the red-and-white Imperial Shock Trooper, for which a CRL exists here. EA Star Wars Battlefront (2015) did not have classes, but rather cosmetic skins that could be unlocked with points earned in-game. There is a red-and-white Imperial Shocktrooper skin, but there is not a Heavy Weapons Trooper skin with signature orange pauldron and MP40 hip pouches. The closest thing to, is a skin called Stormtrooper (Orange) which is a sandtrooper with the characteristic high brow, unpainted ab buttons, and ANH:SE sandtrooper backpack (which is also used by the red-and-white Shocktrooper). It has been confirmed that the Heavy unit is returning in EA Star Wars Battlefront II (Nov. 2017), however images have not been released, yet.
  20. TK boots arrived yesterday. Surprisingly comfortable!

  21. I just got my tkboots and tried them on with 1.25" lifts. Not unbearable, but definitely not comfortable at the top of the ankle for me. I'm 5'6 barefoot, I'm a little over 5'8 with the boots and lifts. I'm not really bothered by my height, since I'll be shorter than the rest of the garrison, anyway, so I don't know if I'll rock the lifts or just go natural.
  22. Hopefully Anovos ships my armor in the next week or two, so that I can finally actually start the process of fitting my armor! I do plan on becoming an EIB Heavy. I've got the DLT-19 ordered from HFx, I've got a trooperbay orange pauldron, and I'm looking at the economy of building, buying, or commissioning the three MP40 pouches. I'm planning the backpack last, in the event that the Heavy in EA BF2 introduces a backpack design I like more and that is approved into the CRL.
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