by ZachC

An exciting new hoverboat from Nex3d will be soon be available. The XII Gold Limited Edition is a numbered series in bright shiny gold. Now when Nex says limited, that’s exactly what he means. In this case even more so! This boat is a numbered series. That means that each boat is limited to the one copy with that number assigned to it. So if you buy number 3, that’s the ONLY number 3 ever to be built. The one he loaned me for this column is the XII Gold Limited Edition 07. There will be others identical to it except for that number 7. Nex informed us that there are 20 individually numbered boats to be made available and they will be released a few at a time. The price will probably be 53,000t each, but he completely sure of that while I was talking with him. What I can tell you is that the color is striking and the detail amazing, as always with Nex’s creations.

 

Another incredible developer I knew from years ago is Relapse. He’s returned and relisted many of his incredibly well done creations. I’ve had one of his original Red Blisters Hoverbikes for years, and happily just added his Blue Spectre and Yellow Quark to my collection. All of his incredible bikes are priced at 19,500t and include this awesome model and a well detailed paintjob.  

The bikes were first released sometime in late 2004. I actually remember the announcement day. I went to the release party at Relapse’ There house. The bikes were amazing and were far beyond what anyone was doing back then. 

Relapse tells me that the modeling of the bikes ended up being the most difficult part. There was a lot of “in world” testing of the model before it could be submitted for approval. Most of the time was spent tweaking the foot rests and hand controls in order to make sure they not only lined up in the proper place, but that they were also placed at the proper angles. 

Relapse does only quality work, and he invested this time because it’s really important to him that when someone is sitting on the bike it looks as if they could really be sitting on the bike with weighting and able to control it given the body angle that There puts the avatar into when resting on the bike.  

Relapse stated: “I’m not sure if this has been addressed since I released this hoverbike, but the male avatars hand placement is slightly different than that of the females… so I had to make some compensations for both so the model would work for either.” 

He went on to elaborate:

 

“Texturing was a straightforward process and the methodologies were used here that apply to all my items; light source, fake shading, weathering, etc. 

Of course the inspiration for the model came from the speeders in “Return of the Jedi” but this choice was simply because I was trying to find a hovering vehicle design that would fit the nearly impossible angle of a There avatar riding a hoverbike (leaned so far forward the hands are below the knees???). This, along with the knowledge that such a design would be popular and recognizable were the core reasons I went with this design approach.”

 

The best part of all though, is that Relapse told me he has another more difficult hoverbike design laid out that he shelved before building these. He’d like to reopen that design and see if he could pull it off. “It’s something There hasn’t seen before.”

 I don’t know about anyone else, but that sounds exciting! 

On the down side, several of my friends and I were checking these bikes out and one of us came across another bike using the same Relapse model. As most of you know by now, I’m death on texture theft, but stealing a model is even worse and this case is flagrant. Like I said, I’ve known Relapse for a long time, and he assures me he has never released that model for anyone else to paint. I’m not going to mention the name of the bike(s) nor the thief; not because I really care about his feelings, but because I don’t want to create a demand for his items from unscrupulous speculators. This theft has been reported, and if past practice is any indication anyone purchasing the stolen model will very likely find an empty spot in their inventory where it used to reside. The image here shows one of the bikes parked in front of two genuine Relapse bikes. I think the picture says it all.

 

Moving on to collectable buggies, I’ve been trying to bring you more information about them, so once in awhile, as I have time, I search a few out. This week I located a Hyena by _Nazgul. All Nazgul buggies have become collectable. He left world quite some time ago, and has never relisted his buggies. That isn’t to say he won’t ever relist, but he was always very mindful of the collector community so the chance of that is remote in my opinion. The quality of his work was excellent and very original. The Hyena is a case in point. The one I located is currently listed at 150,000t. As always I don’t discuss whether that’s a good price or not. You need to check it out, see if any have sold recently, and maybe talk to a trusted reseller of collectables for that information. I will say that if you have or buy a Nazgul buggy you have a rare gem.

 

A more current designer is Onus; and he’s really proving that “Onus is back”, and he’s back with a vengeance. His latest creation, the OMC – PureEvilGT is doing very well for him. In fact the first listing sold out and he had to relist. This buggy isn’t your typical Onus buggy. His buggies are always high quality with a smooth clean look. This buggy takes him to a new genre. The graphics are pure evil! I guess that’s where he got the name! It’s priced at 15,000t which is a great deal for an OMC. It isn’t limited and it’s selling well which should tell you that a lot of people agree with me.