New Comrade: Russian Shock Infantry(1/17/06)

Hailing from the frozen north of Russia and armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, this big man is the type of guy you'd want with you if you want to kill every last mother#$^&@& in the room...

Fox Mcloud I hope you enjoy your unit..

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Russian_Shock_Infantry.zip

Also some people wanted a looping attack animation so I included a new one availible separately below.

I really like this unit, but won't the attack appear choppy in game since it doesn't start and stop in the same position? Maybe you can make an alt attack with less swiveling movement. Great unit though, we need more original infantry types.

looks like i'll have to make a Bond Rocket Launcher unit now!

looks great!

What's that white thing at his right shoulder?
Btw a usefull unit....

Quite good.
A few issues:
- Attack: there could be a little recoil (but it's not very important). I agree with the previous remark: make an attack where he move to the left, then to the right, to end in the same initial position.
- Death: the boot don't fall to the ground. When he's on his back, let, the legs fall to the ground
- Default: well, I prefer that for a fidget, and have a more static default, with only small moves...
- Fortify: You forget to raise the left arm to grabe the rifle... But in the attack he holds the rifle with both hands
- Run: The legs are going through the back of his coat. General note: I think it would look better if your guys hold their rifle with both hands in the default and in the run

This is your best work todate. It's nice to see all that practice you've been putting in paying off.
I agree completely with Steph's comments (both in this unit and in the last couple). You should consider them for a version 1.1 of this unit and your following units as well.

When you make your units you should generally try and have most animations start and end at the same frame. This makes continuety/looping of the various animations easier.
Default should have very little animation. Too much animation here is both distracting and a CPU problem for slower systems.
Fidget is the place for all the fun little things you wish to add.
It is quite clear you're getting the hang of this. However, you are consistently skipping 1 step. QA (Quality Assurance). I make mistakes here too, and when I do I fix them and release updated versions. You often just let it go and move on to the next unit. The result is alot of your units are quite interesting, but with some strange bugs.
Amongst the bugs with this unit are:
The coat not conforming to the legs during the run. This can be done with the magnets within Poser, as I recall.
The odd color on the back (shoulder blade region).
Animation anomolies (gun traverses, but does not start at nor finish in the home position).
There is no continuety from the fort to the attack nor from the attack to the death.
The default animation is a good fidget, but a bad default.
Other things: (not really bugs)
Holding a rifle in one hand and having the barrel drag in the dirt looks bad. No soldier would do that. Either on the shoulder or better would be as Steph suggested, have him use both hands all the time. This would include the icons where he also has the odd weapon dangling from one arm stance, plus his feet are pointing really wide. I think he should be in something similar to parade rest. His feet roughly shoulder width apart (which they are). His toes mostly pointed forward (not sideways). His rifle held with both hands at a 45 degree angle.

I agree with Bjornlo. Your units have a lot of potential: props are good, they fill munch needed gaps... But there's always a little something in at least one of the animation that makes them hard to use.
Fortunately, they ar getting better and better.
I hope we can help you to improve your animation, until you find a "perfect" animation and are able to:
- Redo your existing units with a nice 2.0 version
- Make hundreds of new units so I can finish my mod

Next I was going to redo the Samurai Flintlockman's attack.

About the attack: I had the choice between the shells(which we all know machine guns do alot of lol), and a looping animation. The problem is, in order to get the dropping shells to work properly, I couldn 't have it looping because the shells would return to their orginal position, so in essence they fell during the attack and then mysteryiously rose back up again..

hundreds more units? Lol...

Sword_Of_Geddon said:

Next I was going to redo the Samurai Flintlockman's attack.

About the attack: I had the choice between the shells(which we all know machine guns do alot of lol), and a looping animation. The problem is, in order to get the dropping shells to work properly, I couldn 't have it looping because the shells would return to their orginal position, so in essence they fell during the attack and then mysteryiously rose back up again..

hundreds more units? Lol...

Click to expand...

Don't have it loop. You can just have the run goes left, then right, as a continuation of the animation (not a reverse of the first part), bullets always falling!

Why didn't I think of that? I'll redo the attack, along with my first poser units'.

Sword_Of_Geddon said:

Why didn't I think of that? I'll redo the attack, along with my first poser units'.

Click to expand...

Because if you were thinking of everything, you would be me

lol....I wonder where you got your powers from, are you Steph, perhaps the last survivor of an alien planet, come here as a baby on a spaceship?

BTW I forgot to add that this unit is based on(By Fox Mcloud's request) the Shock Infantry from Rise of Nations(The INformation Age Russian infantry).

It's a very interesting unit, and I'll use it my mod for Russian modern infantry when it will be updated to the required standard.
This way, I'll use the Forest Spetsnaz for the paratrooper

My mod starts to be a giant musical chair game!

hey: this is pretty good.

my only real complaint is that he looks like he has the 'ole G.I. Joe swivel-action hips going on. no biggie though. keep up the good work.

sidenote: would you ever consider making a maxim mg unit (or a vickers) in the future? we dearly need early MG units in our little civ3 universe...

this is a great unit!
also, i dont think it was noted, that the shadow is purple in the death, even with alpha blend.

El Justo said:

hey: this is pretty good.

my only real complaint is that he looks like he has the 'ole G.I. Joe swivel-action hips going on. no biggie though. keep up the good work.

sidenote: would you ever consider making a maxim mg unit (or a vickers) in the future? we dearly need early MG units in our little civ3 universe...

Click to expand...

You mean the German thing you asked for in Hikaro's last lottery?

i don't recall. maybe. it's essentially a 1st (maxim) or later (vickers) generation of a machine gunner. we really need an early gen. MG unit. i understand if you have other things on the agenda...though i figured i'd give it a stab while i had your attention.

China needs a rifleman, I was thinking something like doing the Ming

Great Idea Shiro and nice job SOG I look forward to the changes suggested by Steph and Bjornlo.

the attack looks crooked, he's standing at an odd angle to the side..possibly camera problem.
The shadow is purple, pallete issues?