So here’s my plan…

Altair from Assassin’s Creed (Click on picture for larger view)

Making the costume:

The main portion of Altair’s upper body is three pieces. He has his hood, which is attached to the “robe” and then he is wearing a long sleeved shirt under that. All of this would be relatively easy to make. I would need a big “urban” type white hooded sweatshirt to cut the shoulders and hood off of. Then I would sew that to a very plain white robe that has been modified and sewn together as one piece. Obviously with tails cut to resemble Altair’s. Then a simple long sleeved white t-shirt would be worn underneath that.

Altairs lower half can be made with a cheap pair of charcoal gray sweat pants. Something higher quality would be better, but jeans would be a little too modern looking and wouldn’t tuck into the boots as well. The boots are probably the hardest part of his wardrobe to recreate, so for simplicities sake I would just buy some cheap worn out leather boots from a garage sale or Goodwill and then wrap some thick brown clothe around the upper portion up to the knee. I have some old Hot Topic black buckle boots that could probably be worn down and colored to achieve a similar look as well (the buckles would have to be removed of course).

Now we move on to the really hard part, the weapons. Ideally, going to the local knife store and buying similar looking replicas would look the best, but that is REALLY expensive and I’m not sure what the local laws are in regards to walking around with multiple swords and knives. Making the upper brace would only need some brown leather and a handful of metal O-rings. The cumberbund type belt he wears again just needs leather (or fake leather) and put some sandpaper and maybe a woodburner to it to give it texture. The elaborate sword and knife holders/sheathes will depend on what fake weapons I can get my hands on. Also, he has a simple red wrap under need the cumberbund, but that just involes some stylish cuts of some basic red fabric from the local fabric shop.

Altair’s amazing gauntlets are different from each other. His right gauntlet is a simple wrap with no glove on his hand. His left gauntlet is much more involved with its metal plates and hidden dagger mechanism. Some thin sheet metal would do well and you could just give it a quick chemical dip to age it and give it a bit of a design. His left hand is missing a finger which can be folded down if I want to get that detailed, but he wears fingerless gloves with metal grommets on the knuckles. The grommets are barely noticeable, so I will most likely skip that detail to save time.  The knife mechanism is very detailed and I highly doubt I could make something like that given my complete lack of tools for metal working.

So here’s what I need:

- White hooded sweatshirt with deep hood
- Some sort of white robe
- Long sleeved white t-shirt
- Charcoal gray pants (most likely sweatpants)
- Brown left-handed glove
- Very thing sheet metal
- Red fabric
- Leather/Fake leather strabs and triangle for upper brace
- Handful of metal O-rings (Approx. 2″ Diameter)
- Large piece of leather/fake leather for belt
- Very old brown leather boots – or – age my current black Hot Topic Boots (as well as some other mods)
- Mechanism for hidden dagger
- Various fake weapons with brown sheathes
- Contacts, so I don’t have to wear my glasses (unless Altair is extremely near-sighted)

Without  any of the weapons or the leather belt and upper body brace, the costume is relatively easy and cheap to obtain the materials for.  That will be my starting point.  Then once that looks good I will move on to the more difficult portion of the costume.

Ideally, I feel the map is best suited for 2 or 4 players, but more is obviously acceptable as well. It will just make it even more chaotic. There is bot support if you can’t get enough people online for a full match. Anyways, feel free to download my first map and give it a whirl. Just unzip all three files into Documents/My Games/Unreal Tournament 3/UTGame/Published/CookedPC/Custom Maps (Directory may be slightly different for those on XP).

Download DM-Doomz_TwinAngelsv10

The only downfall of the Asus C90 is that it is very hard right now to buy a MXM Graphics Card by itself. I contacted a few companies that sell custom laptops and they said that they could not sell me a single graphics card because they get them from the distributor already in the laptop. That really didn’t make sense since they say they are custom computer “builders”, not resellers. So, if you get a laptop you may want to order it with the video card that you know will get you through until your next laptop build. You may not be able to find a card to upgrade with from a retailer if you decide to upgrade later on.

Check out the Computer Shopper video overview of the Asus C90S from this month.

The demo download is surprisingly small at about 750MB. I am not sure what the difference is between a “beta demo” and a regular demo, since this seems pretty solid and only crashed on me once due to my graphics driver going haywire. My rig is currently a little underpowered with a 1.6GHz dual core Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) with 2GB of Crucial DDR2, and a nVidia 6800GT. Luckily, I got things running smoothly at 1024×768 and all the bells and whistles turned down to their minimum settings. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed to see that the graphics options are very limited. In past versions of the UT franchise, you had extensive control over various graphical options, but UT3 just gives you a couple sliders to raise and lower the overall graphical appearance. Honestly though, even with everything turned down, this game looks great.

Since it has been a few months since I have played an Unreal Tournament 2004 game, I decided to give my best shot to the bots before jumping into online play. The controls are very responsive and no problem getting back into the groove of executing dodges, double jumps and wall jumps. All the best weapons from all versions of UT are present and look the best they ever have. Of course that doesn’t last long as I always play with the weapon hidden to see everything in front of me. The weapons sound incredible and make you feel like you are really using highly powerful weapons. This adds to the immersion factor, since many games’ guns sound weak and have almost zero recoil.

It was nice to see that they implemented the feign death option again, but as I promptly learned, bots don’t fall for that trick. The bots are smart even on the lower AI options and dodge appropriately. Even when you are racing at them full speed in the Scorpion (a.k.a buggy of death) they tend to stick to the walls and other obstacles to make it harder to run over them.

There are only a few vehicles in the demo, but the most fun has to be the hoverboard. Using the hoverboard, you can latch onto any vehicle to go a little faster. Unfortunately, to counter the extra speed, you cannot fire any weapons from the board and if you are shot even once you tumble awkwardly off onto the ground. It will take you a second or two to gather yourself, so you are at a serious disadvantage if you are shot off of your board in the middle of the battlefield. Other vehicles in the demo include the Manta, Scorpion, Goliath, and the Darkwalker. There might have been one other vehicle, but I was too busy fragging to remember.

Overall, the UT3 Beta Demo delivered everything I expected and more. Hopefully I can get a new video card soon to be able to play with higher details. Also, I think I will spend the extra $10 and purchase the Collectors Edition with over 10 hours of tutorials for the unreal editor. I would like to get back into map making as that is what keeps many popular games feeling fresh years after the original release date. A strong, intelligent modding community is a great thing to have, and I want to be part of that again. Also, hopefully they will release a nice UE3 runtime demo for my demonstrations of DoomzPunk in the coming couple of months.

Not much has happened for DoomzPunk lately. I’m still looking for a sponsor for the PSU and the Video Card because there is no possible way that I will be able to afford everything since the bills have really been adding up these past couple of months. Apparently my green typewriter keys are in the mail, so I should have them in a day or so to mod my keyboard.

The design will carry over to the mouse, keyboard, speakers, and external HDD.

So far my hardware includes:
- Abacus mITX motherboard
- Intel Core Duo T2300
- AMS eCube Flex-ATX Case
- Noctua NC-U6 Northbridge Cooler
- Crucial 2GB DDR2-667
- Hitachi 250GB SATA HDD
- R2 Mark II and Fragpedals (GamingMouse.com)

I am still looking to obtain a PCI-Express x16 Video Card (8600GTS or better), Solid Power Supply, and a USB to 2.5″ HDD Adapter. Hopefully a sponsor will pull through on at least the video card as I really do not make enough to afford even a $150 card. Once I get the video card, I will have to obtain a waterblock as even if I do not water cool the CPU I will use it on the GPU.

I plan on featuring my project on a couple modding forums, my own website, a YouTube feature, local computer shows, and hopefully a spot in the local art newspaper, The Stranger.

In my Senior year of college for my Computer Engineering degree I decided to skip an internship in favor of doing some research and development on a Senior Project. While most of my peers (not all) were working in lame internships, I was talking with corporate representatives about their newest technology and gaining sponsorships. I got five sponsors and went on my way to make a great mATX project with a separate breakout box with the HDD, Optical Drive, and a USB Hub. My design was meant to turn conventional PCs into a smaller, modular design that would be easier for the average consumer to work on. Also, there was a scientific approach to overclocking and performance results regarding various changes in clock speeds. Obviously being a college student limited my resources and my design, but overall I was very happy with the end result. In May 2007, I presented in front of seven advisers, my peers, and a handful of representatives from companies like IBM and Motorola. I ended up getting an A, but it wasn’t nearly as great as the words of encouragement from the advisers and the corporate reps.

My sponsors on that project were Crucial Memory, Gigabyte Technology, Danger Den, Protocase Enclosures, and Good Work System. I have to thank them since it would have been quite a task to complete the project on time without them. An extra large thanks has to go out to Protocase for their help on creating the external box. If you are building a special mod, you may want to check them out. They are a bit pricey, but you will be hard pressed to find another company that will produce an enclosure as high quality as theirs.

By the way, while throwing out the box that my Noctua NC-U6 came in I found a metal case badge and a pen. Sweet!