Skull Leader

Never heard of them... got a link?

I have one of those 1/18 scale tomcats. It's nearly 4 feet long.

Trust me, if you wanted any reasonable level of detail and sturdiness in a 1/18 valkyrie, the price would start clocking in at around $1000 once you consider shipping that behemoth from Japan. That would be a total waste of an intellectual property.

Bandai's licensing should still extend to anything from SDF or DYRL... they rereleased 1/55s until not long ago, making a VF-1 of any variety should be well within their rights.

Bandai is a hard bird to classify, and their business methods sometimes mystify me. Hard to say if they'd do it or not.

C'mon guys, the beauty of restoration!

There's gotta be someone out there with a kit they aren't gonna build!

how about a price point that won't make us break the bank?

Considering the last Tomcat flew in 2006, the only reasonable explanations are:

A) The depletion of aircraft during the wars had the fighters re-commissioned

B) The F-14 depicted was the F-14-ST21 (Super Tomcat) but the ones depicted didn't look any different from a standard F-14D's. The ST-21's had some fuselage modifications different from the standard tomcat.

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

Help me restore her to glory!

I know this is probably a long shot but here goes....

Long story short, the YS Storm Attacker kit I have has suffered much damage in the move to my last place, and several pieces were lost. Well,I just got my hobby room set up in my new house and thought I'd see if I could find some replacement parts.

Anyone got a junked kit or a spare kit laying around that I could purchase?

This was the storm attacker model that was on display at the 2003 or 2004 MWcon... as such I'd like to get it back in one piece!

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!