Art Stuff

[phungus420]

Cool, kind of busy this next week, so it might take me a while to get LoR light out the door. I'd also like to update things, the New Alex, and leader replacements at around the same time. So hoping the opening screen works by then. How is that looking anyway? You have any screenshots?

 

[Merri]

A bit out of the blue, but here is an alternative icon that I made for LoR. Used the famous French Revolution picture.

Spoiler :

No, you're not gonna see the boobs.

 

[phungus420]

That's a cool Icon. Could you change the LoR to CIV (all the Expansions say Civ, not their XP name in the Icon picture). Also the main picture in the icon isn't really visible, the color contrast probably needs to change slightly so that you can more easily see the picture in the circle.

 

[Merri]

Now you can see the main image (more or less), but the text isn't as visible. Maybe I leave a final & third try for tomorrow.


Edit
Who needs sleep?

 

[achilleszero]

Cool, kind of busy this next week, so it might take me a while to get LoR light out the door. I'd also like to update things, the New Alex, and leader replacements at around the same time. So hoping the opening screen works by then. How is that looking anyway? You have any screenshots?

Ermmm, well the individual pieces are kinda working the way I want but the screen as a whole isnt assembled. The red baron is a lock it took 30 seconds to put him in. TheCoyote has given me a clue to how I can make the Spartan in the middle act right, just need to tweak the motions and make the cape flow seamlessly. But I still need to reskin the 54th as they are not detailed as the other units. I also need a better peasant model. All the ones I see in the DB are ancient farmer types. I would really like some revolting medeival/french revolution type peasants with pitchforks and torches and what not.

The most important thing hanging this up is the lack of a good terraing graphic. All the units need something to stand on. And DaVinci's crib needs to be sitting on a hill. Once I find that everything will fall into place within two days after that.

Also I need to make a satisfactory Legends Of Revolution title, Im just using the vanilla Civilization IV title. I dont know how to make all these fancy letters. Once I have that I was thinking about having the main Civilization IV title already be in place when the screen appears. And then at about the 2 second mark make LoR fade in over about 1-2 seconds. Still making all this stuff do that will be easy but finding the terrain and title is the hard part.

No, you're not gonna see the boobs.

That legends 4 button looks amazing, though the main figure could be bigger as it will appear tiny onthe desktop. How did you achieve the aged look for all the figures in the back ground? And why cant we see boobs?

EDIT: Phungus, so I take it the 3 leader swaps (Xerxes,El Cid,Akbar) are a go? If so Ill start looking into another trait switching party.

 

[phungus420]

EDIT: Phungus, so I take it the 3 leader swaps (Xerxes,El Cid,Akbar) are a go? If so Ill start looking into another trait switching party.

Yeah, they will be switched.

 

[achilleszero]

Ok, I guess there going to need buttons. Hmm, Xerxes, another aggresive empire builder guy. Who could switch traits with you???

 

[Merri]

Hopefully a final version: I increased the size of the man and the CIV text in the smaller icons, while leaving sizes 256 x 256 and 128 x 128 as they were. Now you can finally see some detail even in the smaller icon sizes, you can even kind of see the gun he is holding in the 16 x 16 icon.

How did you achieve the aged look for all the figures in the back ground?

I selected the guy by hand and made him his own layer. Then I applied some opacity to the old layer.

As you probably guess, I'm not a natural graphics artist (or merely "editor") and simply have to do things multiple times to get them right

And why cant we see boobs?

... Don't bring boobs in to a gun fight? (But here you go)


Edit!
The icon has been updated with a 64 x 64 size.

 

[phungus420]

Merri, you need to adjust the button to 64x64. I can obviously do this with GIMP if all you're going to do is scale it, but i figure you might want to touch things up a bit once it's reduced in size (64x64 is the largest size an icon can be to be used by the desktop).


@achilleszero

Well since you're the art guy, I'm going to wait until updating the new leaders until you've checked and approved them. I am certainly capable of adding these though if you prefer; so if you have other stuff you're working on I can do that. It just seemed last time with the new leaders you wanted to set things up first before handing it off, so I'm happy to oblige.

 

[achilleszero]

Phungus, i have actually already added them (atleast made them display/no pedia text etc.)and am working on switching the traits. Should be easy as finally a military trait has been freed up with hirohito leaving. I most likely will have things up tomorrow if I dont have to work.

I will be including the whole FPK this time as I have made a revision of it that I think you will be pleased with. No xml or folder changes this time so it should all work and I am checking it all right now. This is probably one of the biggest optimizations that I have done so far. I have massively reduced polys on 300+ units. When I say massively I mean like 200 of them were reduced by around half and the other 100 by like 20%. It seems that alot of unit makers are too lazy to delete the meshes of the original unit and instead just hide them. This pretty much doubled alot of units poly count. If this doesnt help graphics performance, I dont know what will. I even got the early flyer below 2000.. There are still a few single unit graphic/mechanical units hovering right over 2000 though. And the only non-machines over 2000 are a few chariots, but I dont know if theres much to do abbout those, sice there a complicated model.

All this whole sale reduction has also shaved around 20 MB off of the FPK (actually 10 were from the cutting of Hirohito, as his folder alone was 19MB!!) I did all this when taking breaks from the intro screen over this week. Now back to the Intro Screen!!

 

[phungus420]

Cool, cool. Releasing a patch right now, but it'll take a while for Strategy Informer and ModDB to aprove the submission (they have to review all submissions, that's the price you pay in using a file service that doesn't bombard your users with adds, they require checking the content). So your art improvements and changes will go in the Next test build. We haven't had one of those in nearly a week . Also when it comes to units over 2000 polys, I'd prefer to just drop them. Even if they are 2001, and a cool looking chariot. You gotta set the cut somewhere you know, and that's the line for LoR. And there is nearly always a model available that looks good, and passes the 2000 poly standard. If nothing else we can always just use the default BtS model, and I'd rather do that then have a 2001 poly model being used, lol.

Also Finnish is making it in the Patch thanks to Merri's Work. I'd still love to get some translations for spanish, french, italian and german, but no one is jumping at the chance, .

 

[achilleszero]

Ok then, unfortunately I didnt really keep track of which ones were offending the 2000 limit. So I will have to track all those down again. So I might not get to them for a bit. And just to let you know these 300 units werent +2000. 95% were units that were passing by the 2000 poly screen at like 1300 to 1900 and are now half of that.

Any quick suggestions on whose LeaderheadInfos to copy for the new leaders? Rght now I have Xerxes as a Alexander clone ( a bit Ironic, but I see a resemblance), El Cid as a Mehmed clone and Akbar as a Saladin clone (though Id like to make him a little different as not to pigeon hole Arabia with cloned leaders).

 

[phungus420]

El Cid should definatly be a warmonger, and religius zealot. Not really sure who fits that bill, but that can definatly be modified in the XML. Akbar is more of a backstabbing consolidator type, probably Napoleon would fit him the best for personality.

 

[Alsark]

Sounds good! When do you think the next test build will be uploaded (just looking for a general estimate to work on the profiles for those three leaders).

 

[achilleszero]

and Akbar as a Saladin clone

Akbar is more of a backstabbing consolidator type, probably Napoleon would fit him the best for personality.

Wait I meant Abu Bakr. Are we on the same page or did you just copy my mistake?

 

[Merri]

phungus420: I made the 64 x 64 icon and updated it to the earlier download. I simply used the 256 x 256 image, shrunk it down and applied some careful sharpening to bring details better out. The guy is pretty much the same size as in the 48 x 48 icon.

 

[phungus420]

Wait I meant Abu Bakr. Are we on the same page or did you just copy my mistake?

Just coppied your type,

Thanks Merri, will use that icon in the next test build.

 

[phungus420]

Debug dll

I've found the debug dll to be immensely useful when doing art stuff. If you're missing a string or whatever, something obvious like in the artdefines, it'll actually tell you the problem, rather then just crashing on you. So uploading the debug gamecore in case you find it useful when modding. To use it, just extract it to your assets folder, and overwrite the original gamecore. You need to play Civ4 in windowed mode though, otherwise things can get annoying.

 

[achilleszero]

Debug dll

I've found the debug dll to be immensely useful when doing art stuff. If you're missing a string or whatever, something obvious like in the artdefines, it'll actually tell you the problem, rather then just crashing on you. So uploading the debug gamecore in case you find it useful when modding. To use it, just extract it to your assets folder, and overwrite the original gamecore. You need to play Civ4 in windowed mode though, otherwise things can get annoying.

Coolio. Should be useful. almost done checking the crapton of units in game. Only art defines changes in this go round will be Bakuel's new greek. Just out of curiosity, are you fine with the generic hoplite UU? There are several different hoplites in Bakuels pack from several different city states. Just wondering if you thought the more non descript hoplite would be better for the Greek civ as a whole?

 

[phungus420]

I'd just keep it default. It's a good model.