Conversions and updates are coming along far more quickly with the help of LAGIdiot, popwebz and artdude. They have really turned the tide on this 1.5 conversion. Amazing how Gregtech, Mo'Creatures, Greg's Lighting, OpenCC, MiscPeriphs, Mystcraft, ChickenChunks, Ender Storage, Magic Bees, Better Than Wolves, Nuclear Control and Soul Shards can be converted/unstitched within just a few days with new blood. I've been getting worn out with all this conversion, and I can't say how grateful I am for these guys to come, join and contribute.
Also, big, big, news:
GoldBattle created a new customizer for Soartex that is compatible with the 1.5 texture format! You can also patch your result with the mod patcher to add mod support.
http://customizer.soartex.net
We've just finished populating it with textures. Test it, play around with it, tell us about the bugs you get. We are going to need help converting it to 1.6 compatibility.
By the way, this file here can be placed on top of any mod ore on a difference layer to convert it to the brown shale stone in the customizer:
I think it would be neat to have a mod in the patcher that enables shale brown ores, could somebody convert everything? XD
Going forward, I want to take better advantage of this 1.5 texture format and better distribute the workload. I was running around doing spot compatibility fixes for months, and remaking while I was at it. After this initial conversion, I can stop working on FTB as a whole and focus on one, maybe two mods exclusively because mod support doesn't break on update. I have Forestry and Vanilla in mind. This is a community project, and I'm expecting mod support to improve from treating it that way. Pick a mod or two, make it look nice, and put your own touch on it. It will look far better than my rushed hands would ever make it look.