Skins @ Hive World Terra

Server outage and file replacement

Over the weekend I added two new files (DanVanMan's Dark Crusade Force Commander and the new Dawn of War Texture Tool v1.7). Unfortunately, due to a disk failure on the server, all of the weekend updates were lost.

Both files are now available again and I'm working to replace the other changes that I made over the weekend.

Apologies for the outage and temporary loss of files, but thanks to ASO for resolving the issue quickly and keeping me (the customer) informed of progress.

By IBBoard on 19th December 2006, 19:38

Two new texture packs and a recount

Firstly, my apologies for falsely announcing we'd reached our 400th download with Crystalking's latest submission. We had, in fact, reached our 405th download! While doing other Admin duties I noticed the discrepancy, did a quick recount and noticed that five downloads in the Miscellaneous section hadn't been counted.

Now for the real content - new downloads! A few days ago, Hangar-8 released his latest skin pack, this time for the Tau. His Camouflaged Tau give all of the Tau (including the vehicles) camouflage, and make the Kroots' skin less team colourable so that they don't turn out so neon in some schemes.

A great new submission from a new contributor is the Flesh Eaters skin pack for the Space Marine infantry from Fleshp0int. The Flesh Eaters are a vampiric successor chapter of the Blood Angels, and vehicles will be following soon.

Thanks to both submitters for their new contributions, and hopefully screenshots will be updated on various downloads at the weekend.

By IBBoard on 14th December 2006, 21:45

Old-style Front End Space Marine added

Gamers who started with Dark Crusade, or the Game of the Year edition of Dawn of War, may never have known, but Space Marines used to be a more colourable than they now are. Previously their eyes were colourable, and their squad markings arrows shared their colour with weapons. Some people prefer this layout, and Crystalking has now submitted a texture to revert the Dawn of War front-end Space Marine to the original texture.

Incidentally, this is also our 400th download to be made available! It's an interesting reminisce on how the game used to be for a 400th download.

By IBBoard on 12th December 2006, 20:04

Over 100 Space Marine textures!

Following the latest submissions, Skins@HWT now hosts over one hundred Space Marine texture downloads and is very near its 400th file!

The new files in the latest update include a Dawn of War v1.3-style Force Commander and a Team Colourable Force Commander for Dark Crusade. These two skins take us to a total of 101 Space Marine files available for download!

The other new skin is a modification of the Tau Codex Weapons skin to take it to version 1.1. The changes make the guns match the codex but still be colourable, and also reduces the number of textures required.

There's also an update to Crystalking's Army Painter mod with a version now being available for Dark Crusade.

Thanks to all of the contributors, and thanks to Crystalking for submitting Chknslvdrvr's work. Who knows when we'll make it to 500 downloads!

By IBBoard on 9th December 2006, 17:24

Tau and Human Auxiliary downloads

New for today are a set of Tau Codex Weapons textures and a Gue'Vesa teamcolour.

Ezekeil's texture set is based on Adonis' "Tau with badges" textures (the first set to be released after Relic didn't include custom badges on all models) and makes their weapon colouring closer to that of Games Workshop's models.

Briarus' Gue'Vesa teamcolour takes the colours from the end of the Tau Dark Crusade campaign and applies it as a skirmish team colour. For those who don't know, the teamcolour is for the Imperial Guard, as the Gue'Vesa are the Tau's human auxiliaries.

Thanks to both submitters, and hopefully we'll see more from both of them.

By IBBoard on 5th December 2006, 21:04

Chopsuey's Chaos Space Marine link fixed

Following a comment in a new download submission, I recently discovered that Chopsuey's Chaos Space Marine texture wasn't working. In this case it was because the download linked to an off-site file that had been removed.

Thanks to MadMaffMan for digging out his download of the texture and submitting it so that we can once again have a working download of Chopsuey's texture, now hosted here on Skins@HWT!

By IBBoard on 5th December 2006, 19:52

New Black Templars from MadMaffMan

Well, they're actually updates, but they're still new textures for the site.

Following on from the original Initiates and Neophytes textures, MadMaffMan has release an updated Neophyte texture that gives a correctly proportioned badge. He has also taken some of the comments on his Black Templars Rhino into account and released an updated Black Templars Rhino that uses a badge layer so other chapters can use it.

We also have two downloads currently pending - one is a re-work of Chopsuey's Chaos Space Marines and is pending a response from the author, the other is a change to the weapons of Adonis' Tau skin sent in by Ezekeil777. Ezekeil's skin is good to go, but unfortunately time has run out for tonight, so expect to see them both soon!

By IBBoard on 4th December 2006, 20:52

Crystalking's Army Painter mod update

Crystalking has now released a new version of the Crystalking Army Painter. v1.1 is still designed for Winter Assault, but a new version is also in the works for Dark Crusade and should be available soon.

By IBBoard on 2nd December 2006, 21:19

Texture Tool v1.6 and Golden Eagle Buildings

Version 1.5/1.5.1 of the Dawn of War Texture Tool has turned out to be quite buggy. Having been told of a few bugs, and then discovering one or two myself, I've now updated the tool and released Dawn of War Texture Tool v1.6. As well as the bug fixes, the 1.6 Texture Tool also comes with an improved Options dialog.

Also newly released today is ezekeil777's Golden Eagle Buildings. Designed to compliment Hangar-8's Golden Eagle Space Marines, the buildings add the same gold eagles to all of the Space Marine buildings.

Thanks to ezekeil777 for his first contribution. Hopefully we'll see more from him soon.

By IBBoard on 2nd December 2006, 18:06

Skins@HWT needs extra bandwidth in November!

With the release of Dark Crusade in Europe at the very end of October, November was a busy month for downloads from Skins@HWT. Where as July, August and September used 21GB and October used 24GB across all sites, November used over 28.5GB on Skins@HWT alone!

Adding the site's bandwidth to the usage from Hive World Terra, IBBoard.co.uk, HWTSkins.co.uk and Perfect Imagination meant we ran over 20% over our bandwidth allowance for the month! Luckily the guys at A Small Orange hosting are great and we stayed online after buying a little extra bandwidth.

Thanks to everyone who visited, especially those who commented on downloads. Hopefully the site will continue to thrive with the latest Dawn of War expansion pack.

By IBBoard on 1st December 2006, 18:49