Feedback wanted!

[Rinsui]

@Kitagata
The next release will be on July 1st. This will be a new "base" version (~1.3GB), that will supersede the current base version+patches.
It looks like we can't have distinctive sounds for all those special units we are about to field, then. Well, please do not hack more of the original unit sounds; for Kali, Dragons and some of the more stupid-looking Yomi Units etc. it would suffice to have an "undistinguishable grunt" of some sort - one for all of them. So you are free to "conquer" one of the voice types - Light_1, Medium_1, Heavy_1, General_1, Female_1 - for each of the cultures; and I guess you will have to do that for mercenary units anyway. Unlike yourself, I am not sure the snow monkeys will keep their voices in an "egyptian" army. Rather I am convinced they will not, just like Son Goku doesn't. Hmm. This is a problem we didn't think of...
Yep, I fear I was right. I just tried the snow monkeys within a Yomi (egyptian) and Rebel (roman) army. The roman ones had your beautiful screechings, but the Yomi ones were just plain soldiers. Damn. I really liked those monkey sounds. But I guess you understand we cannot afford to sacrifice one whole voice cathegory for every faction just for a single unit. My test was with custom battles, so I am not 120% sure this will affect stratmap mercenaries as well. But then again, do all mercenaries really use roman voices? Until this problem is sorted out, the monkey sounds are on hold and will not be included in the next release.
Beast riders are "camels" too, yes. Horse sounds would be a little strange for them, eh?
The headless horses mainly fill a gap in the Yomi roster. The problem is: there are generally four levels of cavalry: 1 is light, 2 is medium, 3 is heavy. The Yomi had medium (beast riders) and heavy (shishi). Undoubtable, Shishi "look" pretty heavy, and not just "medium". They have a certain weakness to ensure a Yomi player doesn't get overly cavalry-enthusiastic (they may run amok), but a giant lion just isn't "medium". The next decision was to make the beast riders either medium or heavy, and to fill the third slot with something appropriate. I first thought about using the Tengu Camel Archers for this, but I need them to have at least a second missile unit for the Yomi.. If you take the time to read through the unit descriptions, you will note the Yomi have serious problems with live horses.. Now ok, it is possible to... grr. Yes, I could make up a new Yomi archery unit, alright - to fill the ensuing gap in the missile department. But I don't want it to be "better" than the Kappa archers, just different. Hmmhmm. Let me think about this. Hmm.
Btw, I agree the Yomi cavalry, and especially their archery shouldn't - relative to the other units they field - be the best. On a sidenote, however: in MP battles with unlimited amounts of money, the Yomi will be nearly unbeatable. The BLTW campaign game should give even the most experienced players a real challenge when facing a Yomi army - and I think just giving them a money boost (which is very easy to implement), I want them to be really stronger than the other factions. But... now I have to go back to unit-implementing. Tedious bug-slaying has slowed me down a lot during the last days. It's time to move on.

Edit: Upon several trials, the new leopard sounds worked like a charm. I also included the new mongolian eyes into the new textures that are currently used for all units but generals and officers - this gives a bit of variation to the faces. Very good idea indeed.

[Moros]

Does the run amok work on normal cavalry though?

Also I just donwloaded the new base build and the updates. I'll start looking for a fix for the white banner.

[Ticu]

Well, another option would be to simply make the screeching sounds play when you select the units. You can customize that for any individual unit without replacing anything.

By the way, I've been out of the house for around a week, so I wasn't able to work very much on the animations. I have created a new, faster, 2 handed animation set, as well as included one I found that has the units holding their spears with 2 hands even when standing idly or marching (the old set didn't do this). I will finish up and try to upload the file soon. ;)

EDIT: Here it is

I didn't include a slower crossbow animation because I think it's possible to simply edit one of the stats in the EDU file in order to modify the rate of attacks. I know this works with melee units, and I'm pretty sure it would do the same with the Singijeon.

[Rinsui]

Ha, yes. I would be glad if it did work. But I upped the attack delay for the Singijeon to 200 (20 secs), and they still attack as fast as before; so if you can make a crossbow animation that has about a 10 sec delay, I would be very grateful. And provided it is easy to do, another 20 sec delay one would be good, too... for now, I'll try out your 2h animations. Thank you!

@Moros
Yes, even normal cavalry runs amok pretty well ^^/. Those white banners are a mystery to me. Try playing at the Rebels in custom battles, and you will notice they use the default RTW roman interface, too. I guess if you can find out where they get that default interface from, the banners problem could be solved too... Strangely, the slaves in custom battles do not seem to use the banners specified in descr_banners.txt!

@Kitagata
Ticu's suggestion concerning the Monkey sounds sounds reasonable to me, as it is better than nothing...?

[Ticu]

I'll see what I can do. It may be that the animations may only be tweaked using a script if it affects movement speed. I may need to edit the animation and tween it a bit in max.

[Ticu]

Alright, I guess a decision's going to have to be made about the crossbow animation. For some strange reason, all crossbow animations appear to be non-editable in the sense that if they are reexported, the bones start to behave erratically in game. The only one I was able to re-edit was the hold animation, but that presented some problems. It seems as if the hold animations of missile units have their length multiplied by a changing value for each indiviual soldier in a unit, causing each of them to fire at slightly different times. Due to the fact that I greatly increased the count of the hold animation frames, the firing variation times became much longer as a result. This caused the soldiers to shoot and reload out of unison (by 5-10 seconds approximately). Also, because the firing wasn't grouped in the same time interval, several soldiers would shoot long after the group firing sound effect had played. It seems like I won't be able to change the speed between firing volleys... unless I can figure something out.

One possibility is to take the bow stringing animation and modify taht instead. Although it would most likely affect the smothness of the transitioning between the ready and holding animations, it would also allow me to get the desired transition time between volleys. I suppose the good news is that I've found out how to make soldiers fire at closer times.

Tell me what you think.

[Rinsui]

The general approach I take with this game is functionality > cosmetics. So if you can give me longer reload times by including animation cycles that don't look as 100% good as the original ones, their "functional superiority" will be given preference. Sometimes the .CAS exporter is (randomly) erratic btw, so it might help to simply try lengthening the old crossbob animations again. I had a similar problem with the Singijeon, which suddenly mixed up their bones upon export (there is a picture on page 2 of this thread).
I guess you are experienced enough with the animations already, so allow me to compile a comrehensive (complete) list of what I think we will still need. Unless I forget something again, that is. ^^/
After this, we should be able to close the animations chapter:

1. A semi_fast 2-handed spearman (Yari Ashigaru, "old style", that is, just 1-handed while idle and moving)
2. A normal speed crossbow animation with about 25 seconds inter-volley time (Singijeon)
3. A normal speed crossbow animation with about 15 seconds inter-volley time (Dragonfire Troopers)
4. A slow-moving crossbow animation with the minimum possible inter-volley time (is 3 seconds possible? - for the Chu-ko-nu)
BTW, it would be great if you could name the animations set according to movement speed. In RTW, there are 4 movement speeds for both infantry and cavalry: fs_slow_xxx, fs_xxx, fs_semi_fast_xxx, fs_fast_xxx (horses are a bit different, but we don't need those).
To tell you the truth, I have little clue about animations above using them. Consequently, I cannot judge the workload you'll have to manage. If it is too much, tell me. Otherwise, just take your time. As for me, i'll try to punch out about 3 units a day - the most difficult ones (except the Dragon) are finished already anyway.
Thank you again,