Chariots

[Aurelian]

Two questions:

1. Has anyone created a chariot unit yet?

2. If not, let's discuss how it could be done.

Just think, a couple of chariot bifs and people could start working on mods for the ancient near east... or add chariots to the ancient Britons in Rome mods.

A few opening thoughts:

It seems to me that a series of chariot bifs (two horse, two horse armored, four horse, scythed, etc.) could be put together as 'horse' bifs. The chariot crews (Egyptian, Briton, Hittite, etc.) could then be done as 'rider' bifs and placed appropriately.

Is there any obvious technical reason that this wouldn't work? Would a chariot be too big for the animation system or something?

Thoughts?

[Scipio]

If your wondering about thaT FOR AN ancient mod then I think we should find a way to do war elephants but I think that making elephants are near imposible

[komninos]

I have managed to start a chariot unit some time ago ... needed for the Trojan Wars mod. But ... I was never a good computer graphics designer.

I think the only person so far that can do it is Duke John. For the rest of us ... this is the procedure I have cut out for it.

You get a 3D modelling software ... lick Rhino (25saves free) You design the chariot ... no horses or people.
You render is on a Green background in the four angles the MTW demands.
Then you get the archer and peasant BIFs and get the equivalent BMPs. From the archer you cat out all running images and you live the following.
1. Standing
2. Firing
3. Fighting
4. Dieing
Form the peasant you live
1. Standing
2. Fighting
3. Dieing
You get the images of the peasant and put them in front and to the left of the archer.
Then you get the chariot and insert image of the Archer/Peasant on the chariot (a lot of cut and paste there).
After you do this for 4 images X 4 motion sequences x 12 frames you get your chariot unit.
For the horses you get the LiHorse and then you copy and paste each image so to made a double horse image
After you manage to make BIFs out of them and you pass the coordinates OK.
Your chariot image is DONE http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Now chariot images ... you can get A LOT from the www.dbaol.com armies (http://www.dbaol.com/armies.htm) section.
For existing mods the most important ones are.
Early Northern Barbarian
Mycenean & Minoan
Dark Age and Geometric Greek
Etruscan
Early Carthaginian
Later Achaemenid Persian
Gallic
Galatian
Ancient British
Scots-Irish
Caledonian or Pictish

For upcomming mods ... some of the ~2000BC
Hyksos
Early Canaanite, Ugaritic or Syrian
Hittite
New Kingdom Egyptian
Early Assyrian
Sea Peoples'
Later Libyan
Philistine
Later Canaanite, Ugaritic or Syrian
And for far east
Later Shang Chinese
Chou and Spring and Autumn Chinese
Early Indian
Han Chinese

[barocca]

Quote[/b] (Scipio @ Oct. 11 2003,22:55)]If your wondering about thaT FOR AN ancient mod then I think we should find a way to do war elephants but I think that making elephants are near imposible
i think elephants not impossible at all, simply giant horses they would be,
you can add ten custom bif folders for a mod after all,

there was a mod for shogun that had TANKS in it,
it was never finished, Shogun had no artillery, so all they had was muskets projectile stats and ridiculouly high armour level and superb charge bonus,
you only had the choice of Shermans, or Shermans...but it was riduculously funny pitting them against Ashi''s...

and no, dont ask me for it, it's on a backup cd somehwere....maybe...i lost over 200 CD's, dozens of them with valuable backups of the old Org on them, when house was broken into...i'll have a look for it tomorrow after work...

[Scipio]

Yes but if you blow up a horse then I dont think he can crush can he? I mean no horse that I know of in mtw has ever crushed an enemy by stomping I geusse you could have him as a horse/artillery unit. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[barocca]

um, no, didn't mean blow up a horse,

i meant take pics of an elephant and alter/mod/use them to make a new elephant bif,

then you add a man onto his back as if the elephant was a horse, (the man could be several men, or even a palanquin)

you can make anything a "horse", you just have to make sure his "rider" looks right...

a knight is made from TWO bif's, the knight and his horse,
you can put any knight/rider unit onto any "horse" unit,

the game combines the 2 bifs on the fly, so all you see is the knight and horse together as one unit,

NOW if you make stomping the "fight" action for the unit, and make your elephant animation "stomp" - well, we have stomping elephants,

very very very do-able

[barocca]

btw,
there is a setting in the unit prod file called scale, that adjusts the size of the unit on the battlefield,
meaning the elephant does not have to be elephant sized for the bif file,
we can scale the elephant up as much as we want....

[Scipio]

Beautiful Barroca Simply fantastic I didnt think I would see a stomping elephant till RTW http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

[barocca]

well someone will have to make one, i am up to my neck in the Shogun Mod,
i just mean to say how it can be done,
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

HERES EXACTLY HOW

NOW ideally you need 4 views for each action, BUT you can get away with only three, (i do it all the time when i have to modify or make a new bif file)
views from the front, side and rear,

Then you need a series of 12 images (FRAMES), just like an old fashioned flicker book, where the last image/frame leads into the first image/frame,
the game shows the 12 images/frames in series repeatedly, so the last image/frame needs to "feed into" the first image/frame,

For EACH frame You NEED at the minimum
Fight actions (x3 front, side and rear) (STOMPING ELEPHANT)
Die actions (x3 as above)
Stand actions (x3 again)
Walk actions (x3 again)
Run/Charge can be same and often ARE the same (x3 again)
Run/Charge are sometimes EXACTLY the same images as WALK too, especially with elephants you can save making a set of actions here.
IF you want the man/men to SHOOT you will need to make that action as well (x3 front, side and rear)
BUT IF you make man/men/palanquin and Elephant into SEPERATE FILES (see below) THEN we can use the Elephant standing for that, you simply need to make the shooting actions in the man/men palanquin set of images/frames

giving you 15 or 16 images per action / per frame (12 of these)
180 or 192 images in all - not all that overwhelming when you think about it,
if my math seems odd CHECK BELOW, a major time saving is explained further down)

each set of actions requires 12 frames, each frame is only a mini step from the last frame, so each frame really only requires a small change just so long as frame #12 feeds into frame #1.

NOW make absoultely sure that each action set occupies the same space in each frame,
what i do is divide the 512x512 box into rectangles - i actually DRAW these onto the image
and then I use something that does not move much to "mark" the exact location i will need for that action location in each frame,
ie:- for the Stomping Elephant the back left leg may never move, so i make sure that leg is ALWAYS in the same pixel co-ordinate on each frame,
OR if you want the man/men/palanquin to ROCK as the elephant walks pick a spot as an axis, and make sure that spot stays in the same pixel co-ordinate location for each frame,
that makes the images appear "smooth" and for the man/men/palanquin will help you seperate them from the elphant later (explained below)

NOW THANKS to the CA tools Lk and I no longer need the pallette limited to 256 colurs, but as few as possible is far easier to work with, 16 million can give odd results when you try and compress that to 256, SO if you can keep the image to 256 colours or less that would be very good,
AND the total size of each of the images/frames should be 512x512 - we can make the low res version from that,

seriously, if you have some good consistent images of elephants this should take someone with patience and concentration 36 hours (give or take)

thats how long it took me to make the Sherman Tank Bif.

If you actually MAKE the set of images send them to me or LK and we will compile them into a bif, we will make sure the background colour is correct and in the correct location in the pallette,
AND we will make the actions pages for you,
if you do this LEAVE your "boxes" on the images, that makes life a whole lot easier for LK or myself to make the actions pages

For a simple one simply place the man/men or palanquin on the same image as the elephant,

OR you could just as easily do that to begin with, then seperate them afterwards and send us both sets,
NOTE - the man/men/palanquin DO NOT need to occupy the same region of the image as the elephant when they are seperated - just make sure they are in exactly the same position on each of their own 12 frames. (again boxes work well here)
(ALSO make sure the elephant is complete, no gaps where you man/men/palanquin was)
that way you could make NEW man/men/palanquins later on if you wish.

i think i covered everything, it may help to copy this to word and print it.
GOOD LUCK and happy hunting,
B.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[barocca]

ah,
and to get this topic back on track the same applies to any set of bifs,

for Chariots simply make the complete image first,
then seperate the chariot from the horse,
i would suggest only twin horse chariots, they will take up less room,
but once you have the "twin horses" and chariots seperated then you could easily make new chariots to go with the horses.

naturaly you could make 4 horse chariots, but then you may be squeezing the image size for room for four horses per action...

[barocca]

oh yes,
if you ABSOLUTELY DEMAND four views they are
Front (zero degrees)
Rear (180 degrees)
front Side (60 degrees)
and
rear Side (120 degrees)
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Scipio]

I hope somebodys listening to you Barooca cause Im definatly not made out for that job although I can make a good civ 2 elephant lol http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Shogun 144]

Scipio I think that someone already chariot mod awhile back. It was for a Ancient Israel campaign. It looked superb. I would recommed looking around the past pages here for it. I don't remeber thread name though.

[Lord Of Storms]

If I recall correctly LK and LBA did something with an Elephant, if not I know if anyone else can they can and the Chariot also, after all they came up with the mobile artillery unit a nice piece of work...LOS

[Scipio]

can it be found somewhere in these forums?

[Metal Storm]

I am making an war elephant but will definately need help with the action page numbers. I do have a bunch of questions I started a new thread in the Entrance hall because I didn't know I could post here. Sorry.

***I don't know how to calculate or come up with the numbers to assign the different movements/actions. If anybody knows how and is willing could you enlighten me so I can get this War elephant to work? I'd be very appreciative.
Barroca I know you voluntieerd to do this a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to assume you were still able or had the time. But if so, let me know and I'll sent the Image sequences to you.