Ancient TW: GRAPHICS discussion

[macsen rufus]

Evening all,

Just back from thr pub so please forgive any spelling errors

Gneral thought: don't really need any quivers in plates without bows: let's face it, if your sagis are fighting, you've got other things on your mind... and we want to make the most use of the BIF space and extra space for shields results in morre unit variety than extra details on sagis in melee. And the larger the final BIF plate becomes, the les reolution we getb on the battlefield.

[dimitrios the samian]

No problems mac , this ones in your court .

But imagine how nicer it would be if the Archers did have their own charge and fight rectangles with quiver ....

But its ok , I figure that in the heat of the battle those in the idle/stand position nearby/behind will be visible , thus sufficient enough to differientiate them.

Anyway i just hope it al works on the 640's ... eg no resolution problems or other unforseens .
& I'll save myself time also on my Hellenics too .

So for the sake of resolution and more sheild variety , no quiver on charge or fight .

Onwards we go guys .
Cheers

[macsen rufus]

I haven't thought that bifs larger than 512x512 lose quality. CA's HlPlArHm has 10 actions, but there are no shields and i think 11 is the lowest we can go.

Oversized BIFs will lose a certain amount of quality because they are rendered as if they were normal size, and need to be rescaled in the unit_prod to restore them to the same size as other units in battle. I can't really quantify the effect but there is bound to be some.

As for the number of actions, it doesn't matter in the slightest - the BIF plates are purely images, and the actions page files define where the engine looks to find them - that's why more than one unit can be placed on the sheet, using different images. The individual units' actions will be limited by what can be defined in the actions pages, but this doesn't limit what can go in the BIF.

Which attack the sagis will use, slash or pierce? The updated throw probably won't fit for melee(i guess that's why CA didn't add separate animation).

Ah, knew I'd overlooked something The sagis don't have shields, so the pierce animation may look a bit odd due to the 'front' hand. perhaps better include the 'slash' action after all

Btw we should test the palette convertion and if the player colors show properly in game, i had some issues last time.

I have a suitable palette, so will give it a shot soon...

EDIT: seems ok - no visible problems:

WyZSTyr.bmp

[macsen rufus]

Thanks for that Yan - I've downloaded the RAR and have a plan of action for building up the BIF from the files. Just need to clear some calendar- and head-space to get it done, now. I'm really looking forward to getting some properly-attired Romans out in the field

I think I'm on top of the naming conventions, but I'll know for sure once I start building up layers in Photoshop...

[macsen rufus]

Evening all,

I have a few minutes for a quick drive-by post

First I have to confirm PS does what I think it does with the 'Use all layers' function, but assuming it does, I'll compile each action/view into its 12 frames then each of the 44 separate 12-frame cycles can be cropped to their absolute minumum rectangle. The individual sizes will then be the basis for setting the actionspage co-ordinates as I juggle them all into a single 12-layer image. I reckon there's probably enough empty space to be able to bring it down to a 640x640, if not then it will have to go to 768x768, leaving loads of room for accessories. In short I'll be compiling it 'vertically' so the spritesheet route wouldn't be appropriate.

Anyway, my Saturday shift has been cancelled again this week, so I have a fairly clear weekend to play with it

[dimitrios the samian]

Hello Mac ..

Play with it & remember ... if Jupiter calls go on the warpath .
Divertion can help keep yr mind fresh .... as I can imagine the task ahead will take quite a bit of time .

I reckon they will fit easily into the 640's .... even with the huge backswing on the bow's rectangles ....

..... so if the deciding factor is miniscule between a 640 or 768 ,
Let me know & I can share my thoughts .
eg , say if we need a few pixels less width per rectangle over the bmp's size ,
we can snip a bit of the bows backend & do it , to make them fit them into a 640 instead of the larger .

Anyway , I'm busy also currently drawing bows & quivers into the HTW bmp's , which don't swing much at all compared to vanilla .

Enjoy yr weekend.
cheers

[macsen rufus]

The BIF is coming together, and it looks like a comfortable fit on to a 640x640 (though maybe I shouldn't tempt fate by saying so ...)

However, I couldn't do what I'd hoped I could so it's taking a little longer than anticipated. Progress so far:

[dimitrios the samian]

thanks yan

[macsen rufus]

What is that?

Paste a layered selection directly into layers - I think ProMo can do it, but there's no mutually-compatible layered format between the two programmes, so I stuck with PS. I haven't fully got to grips with editing in proMo yet, just using it for LBMs really...

[macsen rufus]

I hope to get these chaps up and running over Xmas, but my PC is getting a bit unstable, I think it may be preparing to die... frantically backing up everything. I'd hate to have no PC over the holiday, let alone lose all the RCW data ....

[dimitrios the samian]

Back it all up mac !
My laptop began to get hotter than usual these past few days , so i put all the bifs & work on a dedicated thumb drive , so i have no mishaps .
Food for thought mac..

[macsen rufus]

The problem is that my dedicated thumbdrive seems to be a major element of the instability - so it's going (very sloooowly) on to my Google Drive. I've also cleared up a lot of hard-drive space (too many mods, not enough room for pagefiles!) and defragged it... not sure I'm ready to try the thumbdrive again just yet - it took four attempts to get XP to load today, and I don't want the drive forcing me to do another hard power-down in case it doesn't come back at all next time I reboot.

[dimitrios the samian]

Then uploading to google is the way to go ....
I'll lihht a stick of incense and send out some positivity so all gets backedup .
Enjoy yr Xmas & yr days of from work .
Cheers

[macsen rufus]

I seem to have the PC stable again... phew!

And to celebrate, the actions are all compiled and run smoothly in BIFreader



Plenty of room left for weapons and shields, and I'll get on to those soon...

[dimitrios the samian]

Great news ... On both fronts.

If you can ....post some screenshots , as im interested to see just how much clarity is lost by using the bigger bif plates.

Well done once again .

[macsen rufus]

Next update:

making progress but still quite a bit to do - got the sagis working, though it shows up some indexing errors on the faction colours:

[dimitrios the samian]

They look very nice resolution & clarity wise , considering they are on the 640 Plate & supposedly lower in quality .
Nice work Mac & Yan !!
All the best for the New Year lads

[macsen rufus]

A little bit further along - correct palette this time, and with weapons added to the sagis:





Next job is to sort out the legionaries and some auxilliaries

[macsen rufus]

Got the basics done on the legionaries, just have a few twiddles left to finish off. I'm quite pleased with how the 1-2 attack animation with the shield then sword-thrust has worked out


And in the process of all this, I've made a couple of weird discoveries related to placing units in the startpos file. Seems the game can be a bit picky about unit names. First off I tried to give the Populares a couple of units of First Cohort legionaries (Legionary2 in the unit_prod) with a valour bonus....

ie MakeUnit ... Legionary2 160 1 (ie 160 men with 1 kill) >> killed the startpos - not available at main menu

so I removed the valour boost:

MakeUnit ... Legionary2 160 >> startpos loaded, but the unit came out as 2 men with valour 8!

Aha! I thought - even though there's no space in the name, the engine interprets the "2" as a quantity of the basic Legionary unit, so I changed the name of the First Cohort to LegionaryB, instead:

MakeUnit ... LegionaryB 160 >> killed the startpos again!

The game works fine with these units, with the sole exception of putting them in the startpos. Any unit that goes in the startpos cannot have a name that begins with the whole name of another unit. I think I have the fix, but have yet to try it - basically I need to rename the basic legionary unit to LegionaryA, so that LegionaryB no longer contains the whole name of Legionary. I imagine when the startpos file is parsed, it stops as soon as it sees the first valid full name, then anything that comes after is assumed to be the number of men.

EDIT: yep, works fine with LegionaryA, the Populares now get their two experienced units of First Cohort legionaries.

Anyway, enough of that - here's a few screenies of the new legionaries in action:

[macsen rufus]

More units are now working:

Auxilia classica - with suitably nautical shields:




Briton and Gallic auxiliaries:





Next will be revised Samnite and Batavian auxiliaries, once I have the spear animation sorted.

[Leith]

What can I say? I am in awe of your superior modding skills, Mac. By the way the shields look great. Thank you for all the hard work. Cannot wait to check out the Samnites with their spears and hopefully new shields.

P.S Thank you very much, YanBG for your great textures

[macsen rufus]

Thank you, Leith

No need to wait for the Samnites, they're here:



They share the shield with the British auxiliaries, as they don't both appear in the same scenario.

And for the refreshed Batavians, here they are trashing some Celtic swordsmen:




Indeed, YanBG's 3D modelling skills are a real boon for the ancient battlefield

[English_Bob]

These all look awesome, I better go back and read it all now :)

[dimitrios the samian]

Welcome Bob ,
Its good too see new members acknowledging the great work done by Yan and Macsen on these Romans .
Stay awhile and enjoy , much more coming in the future .
Cheers

[macsen rufus]

OK, so it's been a couple of years since this thread was last dusted off and aired, but I thought it was time for a quick update after spending so long in Westeros.

So allow me to present our new animation, courtesy of @dimitrios the samian : here are two units of the new Arab swordsmen slugging it out for Palmyra and Nabatea.



I still have some work to do on weapon and shield coordinates, and then I can move on to the archers, spearmen and skirmishers

[dimitrios the samian]

thanks guys ......
more to follow .....
Eventually this bif will be ported over into a 640 & i will add in a Slinger & Armoured Heavier type also

[Leith]

Congrats, DTS, on such marvelous units! I wonder how many bifs you are planning to offer us. (the more, the better, of course)

[macsen rufus]

OK, I'm totally confuzzled now...

The Arab swordsmen work fine, but the archers drawn from the same BIF, using the same actions and same weapon, cause a CTD when they are walking across the battle map. Absolutely no clue why.... almost anything possible can be ruled out. It would be one thing if it CTD'd at the very start of the battle, but they are fine for a few minutes, then suddenly it's gone. With no special event or action being seen. So far they've not managed to walk far enough before the CTD to engage the enemy, so the only action which hasn't been tried out is the shooting. So it can't be that.... or anything else.... but it's SOMETHING! AAAAGH

[dimitrios the samian]

yes try Yans suggestion ....
I really hope you find teglitch macsen , seems like its a first

[macsen rufus]

I've now thought of a couple more combinations of things I haven't tried, so I'll tackle them again tmrw. Currently I have it filed under 'just cos it's impossible, don't mean it can't happen'


ETA:






Not sure what exactly was wrong, but it was something in the unit prod that only happened when the archers were under the player's control, but NOT under AI control....

Anyway, I can move on to the next unit now...