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by Left Foot Brake » 11 Aug 2022, 12:37 Hello / Bonjour!
My name is Left Foot Brake - I am fairly new to the world of Tennis Elbow, but not to tennis games. I have spent nearly last 30 years+ playing/making/modding games... mainly sporting ones and mainly motorsport games. I used to be a professional racing car driver, but I'm now too old and slow.
I specialise in car racing simulations, and have spent over 2 years developing my latest mod.... which I am nearing completion and looking for something a bit different to do for my next project. I can do a lot of things as a graphic artist, a sound and video editor (I have developed many audio-only based mods and enhancements for various car games) a bit of 3d modelling and game programming experience, too. Then of course, I have been playing Tennis games since Pong first appeared.... probably spent several 1000 hours playing Smash Tennis and Super Tennis on SNES. Then Actua Tennis on PC and I'm sure I played a game called Tennis Elbow back on PC a hundred years ago. Later, I used to drive an hour to a video game arcade just to play Virtua Tennis 2 when it was new (You kids and your downloadable content these days!
). I have played all the Virtua Tennis games, all the Topspin games, all the Namco Tennis games and pretty much all the others too at some point. I have been enjoying TE4 a lot and have great respect for Manutoo and his work. I like that the game can be modded fairly easily, but I have felt like a total noob again trying to learn the structure of the game and it's file system... what works, how to add and edit things etc. Even though there is a lot of very useful and valuable information there, I have found it difficult as a fairly dumb English-Speaking guy to get certain things to work. ALL the information required is here somewhere but at some point I would like to assist with making a more comprehensive guide to the modding structure.... I am sure this will all come with time but I am just stating an idea.
Anyway, I am letting everyone know about a new mod for TE4 I am working on... working title Virtua-Topspin 5. It started as a bit of an experiment and now it has grown to something much bigger. I have replaced all the Menu GUI with a nice blue theme, changed some of the sounds to my own versions ripped from various ATP events this year, added some questionably legal tennis themed music from various sources (not intending to be released with the mod), and working on some new animations and outfits. There are so many awesome players animations that could be added (maybe they are already, I don't know?), I would like to contribute some. The first one I am working on is Tiafoe's forehand. If you know Tennis, you might think that's good or bad...
Anyway, I have attached a little teaser for you... I will keep the community updated as to it's progress... please expect annoying threads from me in the future asking stupid questions in the meanwhile.
