New unit: X303 Prometheus (May 13th, 2005)

This is my third unit. Unlike my first two, this one was rendered in Bryce.

Civilopedia Icon:



Previews:


Run

AttackA

Death

Victory


Download here

BANDWIDTH WARNING: this file is 7.8mb.

I would appreciate knowing what you think of it. If you decide to include suggestions for improvement, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts; but keep the following in mind.

• This is my first rendered unit, and I have limited tools.
• This is only my third unit overall. What takes the great unit creators a few minutes may take me several evenings.
• And finally, this unit is finished in my opinion. I will take your suggestions under consideration, but unless my mistake was considerable or the change is trvial, look for your suggestions to figure into future units not this one.

This unit includes

Civilopedia Icons
Units32 icon
Animation files
AttackA/B/C, Fidget, Fortify, Victory, Defeat, Run
Sound files
Attack A/B/C, fidget, fortify, run (attackC is reused for victory)
Civilopedia.txt content
Pediaicons.txt content

The sheilds and death turned out to be challenging, as did a few other items. I think it turned out ok. Let me know what you think.
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Updated May 15, 2005 : Version 1.1
Fixed an offset issue in some of the FLC's (automatically added by Civ3FlcEdit).
Fixed squished look to victory animation.
Fixed palette issue in victory animation.
Re-did all FLC's with Flicster and saved 5-10% in size per FLC.

It's very nice. Though rather big, isn't it?

It's HUGE (but that's not a bad thing ). My only advice would be to break up the large flat gray surfaces with a little texture. The death is cool, but the victory animation looks squashed.

Hurray! It looks awesome, Bjornlo. If ever there was a unit designed by committee, this has to be it. Thanks for all the patience and listening to everyone's ideas and feedback. It was fun being a part of the process.

Camber said:

Hurray! It looks awesome, Bjornlo. If ever there was a unit designed by committee, this has to be it. Thanks for all the patience and listening to everyone's ideas and feedback. It was fun being a part of the process.

Click to expand...

Thank you Camber, I should have thanked all the people who gave me feedback and requests for this unit. As you know, I built it for someone else, knowing next to nothing about it before hand.

Thanks to (in alphabetic order)
Aaglo, anarki, GoldFlash, Holy Emperor, Marine Corps, Neo Mega, Steel General, VBraun
and especially Camber, Roman Legion and Ur Mum.

Yoda Power said:

It's very nice. Though rather big, isn't it?

Click to expand...

It is HUGE, but that is by request.

Kinboat said:

It's HUGE (but that's not a bad thing ). My only advice would be to break up the large flat gray surfaces with a little texture. The death is cool, but the victory animation looks squashed.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice Kinboat. If Bryce5.5 is as fast as they claim, I might do that for a v1.1 of this unit. I was trying to remain faithful to the show, and it is (as far as I could tell from screen captures posted on the web) quite flat there.

I was a little concerned about the ship looking a little out of proportion in a few of the views, I just didn't know how to fix it. Unit Newb, you know.

*feels proud to be listed on this unit's credits*

glad my advice helped with this great unit. i'll download it now and test it in game to see how sexy it truely is

great job Bjornlo, but I have tested it and found errors here are the following.
1.When it goes on a bombing run it leaves a clone of is self behind with sheild on and the other one does what its supposed to do.

2.Its off center

I like the the way u did things but would find it better if u could fix these errors.
other than that thanks for the good work.

Roman Legion said:

great job Bjornlo, but I have tested it and found errors here are the following.
1.When it goes on a bombing run it leaves a clone of is self behind with sheild on and the other one does what its supposed to do.

2.Its off center

I like the the way u did things but would find it better if u could fix these errors.
other than that thanks for the good work.

Click to expand...

#1: I have no idea how this happened. I never tested it with bombing, since on the show it was a carrier with guns and missles and "might" have had mines. Have you tried the other things? Does this happen on an attack, or only on bombing? There is no FLC that shows a unit cloning itself, so this is a complete mystery.

#2: This is mostly on purpose. The unit is so large (per your request) that if I perfectly center it, the missles fly off in just a blink of the eye. My solution was to move it slightly back; it rotates not around the exact center of the ship but around a position slightly forward of the main-gun. Is this what you were refering too? I am not anxious to re-render this right away, since it takes several days to get all the animations rendered. There are over 1600 frames of animation. I have a 2nd machine I was loaned from work, so I could in theory render on one system and work on the other. But this is still rather tedious, and keeps me from doing some other work I had planned.
Explain to me how and where it is off-center, please.

The unit is in the grids beside the space it is supposed 2 be on, so as I said before its off center. and u should see what I am talking about try the unit in yuor game on a bombing run, I put it on bombing because I use it to soften up my enemies before hitting the city. but u should try it and see what I am talking about it kinda hard 2 explain.

The off-set you're seeing is not lack of centering. It is caused by the way civ displays units. It is what is known as an isometeric view. The unit is in the correct square, but has some altitude, and so looks a little like it is in the square North of where it really is. Look at the shadow and you can see which square it is on. This is the same effect you would get if you looked at a scene from a distance. The things hovering over the ground would seem to be a bit further then they were.
As for bombing... You know, the unit should not be used that way. It should not be an air unit. It should be a sea unit, and the seas should be changed to be "space" and the ground should be changed to be planets. This is the only way I can think of to implement is space cruiser in the game. It must be able to stand and do toe-to-toe battle with another unit of the same class, and this can not happen except with land or sea units. The AI understands SEA based carrier, but does not understand land based ones. So land stays as land, and water should be space. You can have it soften ground targets with BOMBARD instead, the same way a battleship does.
I'll test it in game later tonight, and get back to you on the rest.

Well could u fix it 4 me i dont like it over that far, and I alredy knew what an isometric view was.

Roman Legion said:

Well could u fix it 4 me i dont like it over that far, and I alredy knew what an isometric view was.

Click to expand...

Ok, you're right. I'm wrong. Something else is going on.
The ship is NOT in the right square. I'm puzzled as to why. I did not have this unit on either of the last two, nor on my practise units.
It does not appear north of the square with the shadow in the right square.
The unit and the shadow appear 1 full square off from where they should be. The problem is not in the source files. They are rendered in the right location. The BMP's all look right. The storyboards all look right, but the ship is definately in the wrong square.

I fixed the offset. Looking into the strange bombing glitch. I'll be updateing the files in the first post later tonight.

Ok, I finally figured out the bombing issue. It is because I made a victory animation.
If you wish to have bombing, and I reccommend against that, you need to replace the x303_victory.flc and sound in the x303.ini file to point to any victory flc and sound from any bomber.
Bombers do not have a victory in combat, and so do not have an opportunity to celebate. A battleship, or in this case a spaceship, could have such a victory.

Updated May 15, 2005 : Version 1.1
Fixed an offset issue in some of the FLC's (automatically added by Civ3FlcEdit).
Fixed squished look to victory animation.
Fixed palette issue in victory animation.
Re-did all FLC's with Flicster and saved 5-10% in size per FLC.
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Preview files and links updated in post #1

That's a very nice unit.
I will use it for MoO mod, most definitely.

Bjornlo said:

Thanks for the advice Kinboat. If Bryce5.5 is as fast as they claim, I might do that for a v1.1 of this unit.

Click to expand...

Yeah from what I have heard it is much faster but at $99 it's not something that comes cheap. Personally I'm gonna wait a while and let the price drop before buying 5.5.