Art Stuff

[achilleszero]

Phungus: what is this CvGameCoreDLL.pbd file in the gamecore zip? Is it that just a pre-converted form of the gamecore dll?

 

[phungus420]

I believe it references the source code for the debug dll, I'm pretty sure you need it. Without it, I can't see how it can reference specific strings and source code failures, as everything in the dll is compiled, and it would just come out as 000100100100101, and be utter jibberish, so I'm pretty sure it needs it so us humans can make sense of the debugging info.

Edit: At least that's my assumption. It's entirely based on common sense though, and could be incorrect, but I'd wager a donut on it.

 

[achilleszero]

Does anybody here know a good program for drawing/making text, like in the CivIV main title? I am in need of one to make the LoR main title screen, and unfortunately the supposed art guy doesnt know jack about art programs. (Merri, I know you know of one since you made that cool button and all)

 

[Merri]

I'm a dinosaur, I use Paint Shop Pro 7 released in 2001. The good thing about it's shareware version is that it runs forever when you open a file into it. It simply skips the dialog that is supposed to prevent you from launching the program It also runs instantly which is something I like (with modern programs like PhotoShop you can almost go make yourself coffee while it is making itself usable). However, to get anything done with it you have to spend time learning it (although the same holds true for PhotoShop, Gimp & others - but PSP7 needs more manual tweaking, there are less automated candy tools).

Civilization IV logo - made a backup in attachments and also a quick LoR text you can freely work with or just ignore it.


For working with icons, I use IcoFX, best tool I've found for making the icons and getting all the sizes done. It accepts PNG as source format which is something I like.

 

[achilleszero]

Thanks Merri. Both of those logos look really good. Will probably wind up using one of those.

I have GIMP 2.0, but it either must be outdated or I dont have the required plugins. The text functions seemed really limited. Ill install the IcoFX and see what it has to offer. Ill also have to get the PaintShopPro7, as programs that start up instantly are much more desirable to me.

 

[Merri]

Quick Guide: in PSP7 you can create text as vector images, which you can transform to be the way you like. However, you can't apply any raster effects to vectors, thus you need to convert a vector layer into a raster layer. To raster layers you can apply all kinds of effects that work on the non-transparent area. Also, you may lock a layer's transparency in the layer window (lock icon). Out of the effects department I tend to use a lot of Drop Shadow, Inner Bevel, Unsharp Mask, Gaussian Blur, Noise (Uniform), Edge Preserving Smooth, Texture Preserving Smooth and several of the Enhance Photo effects. It is pretty much trial & error to get anything worth looking at. Most often to get the best looking results you must have several layers (with those texts I did several effects, but also created a mask to avoid having too soft edges - lor2.png is actually based on lor.png, just a few more effects applied).

Masks work separately for each layer which may be confusing at times. Handling mask data is rather limited from my experience. To merge a mask to layer you have to make other layers invisible, do an empty extra layer and then do Layers > Merge > Merge Visible. This then destroys the mask and you get a single layer without the mask.

Ask freely if you need to figure how something is done, it is likely I know at least something with the eight years of experience I have



Regarding the opening screen: the current Wolfshanze one has it's text out of my screen. I play it windowed in 1280 x 800, although I can't see it properly in my main resolution either (1440 x 900). It would be nice if the new opening screen would take varying resolutions better into account. Seeing the name of the mod and the Civ4 logo text would be nice

 

[achilleszero]

I more than likely will have many questions to ask you, as you have 7years, 9 months more experience than I.

So I gather form what you say about the Wolfshanze screen, is that the game doesnt resize it in both dimension to fit the exact resolution, but rather just makes both dimensions larger by same percentage. I belive this is because he only used the 1024x768 plane that is part of the BtS opening screen. I am using an actuall 3D scene/nif based on the BtS screen. So I actually have the scene spilling over on all sides. The logos will be on a similar plane but the rest of the plane will be transparent and the scene will be larger. So I hope since Firaxis thought of this, then I wont have this problem with different resolution.

 

[achilleszero]

Just so every one wont think that Im not making any progress on the Opening screen here is a half done screenshot:


Remember there will be the menu box covering the 54th and the right spartan.

There will be 3 more spartans, 2 way in the back, and one in the fore ground centered between left of screen and main menu box. He will raise his sword at about 2 second mark and then the LoR title will appear. And then he will just stand there with sword held up and cape flapping in the wind. There will be 1 or two more 54th gettin smaller and trailing off towards the valley to the right. Those are all done just need to attatch them (except main spartan/leonidas, still making the animation look seamless). Still playing around with the scale of everything, as I cannot tell what it will actually look like in nifskope. I to fire up the game every change I make. The screen looks through a camera that I cannot look through so prespective is all kinds of messed up.

The valley is where i will have the peasants trailing the spartan/54th as if their leading them to incite more revolutions elsewhere. I just havent found a suitable model and may windup making card board cuts from picture out of them since they will be tiny any way.

There is smoke rising from Leo's house chimney (just doesnt show up in screenshot). And I will paste the ancient road graphis leading up to the door, possibly having some peasants near it. The red baron is now a problem. He flies across the screen every 16 seconds but I cant make him appear off screen. It disappears off the right side, but he reappears in the screen. I am trying to find out how the fighter in game actually is controlled when it is on patroll, as I think that would look cool if he was actually flying in a circle instead of straight line.

Also thinking of having a city in the very back, with the revolt flames rising up. But i dont thing there will be enough room to see it.

EDIT: Suggestions welcome. Also any help with pointing me to good peasant units or picture would be much appreciated. As well as any help locating how fighter special animations like Patrol/intercept are handled would be useful.

 

[phungus420]

...one in the fore ground centered between left of screen and main menu box. He will raise his sword at about 2 second mark and then the LoR title will appear. And then he will just stand there with sword held up and cape flapping in the wind.

That was going to be my only suggestion, so if you've got that going sounds very good. I had to stop working on LoR light last night, as I have a family member that just go diagnosed with terminal cancer, and having experience with medicine (worked in the ER for 2 years), I've kind of been busy with that this last week, especially yesterday. It's not looking like things will lift up anytime soon, so development from my end will be slow for a while here. I have a few hours to work on things though. I'm hopeing I can get everything done at the same time as the title screen, as that would be a perfect time to release LoR.

BtW, you may try using a simple mod, like just a blank mod folder with an ini file, and put the opening screen you are working on in that. That way you would only need to wait for the core BtS game to initialize when testing, rather then being slowed down by all the extra art, and python that LoR introduces. Might make in game testing go a bit faster.

 

[achilleszero]

That was going to be my only suggestion, so if you've got that going sounds very good. I had to stop working on LoR light last night, as I have a family member that just go diagnosed with terminal cancer, and having experience with medicine (worked in the ER for 2 years), I've kind of been busy with that this last week, especially yesterday. It's not looking like things will lift up anytime soon, so development from my end will be slow for a while here. I have a few hours to work on things though. I'm hopeing I can get everything done at the same time as the title screen, as that would be a perfect time to release LoR.

My condolenses. Same thing is happening to my father. I dont think we really need to ruch things anyway.

BtW, you may try using a simple mod, like just a blank mod folder with an ini file, and put the opening screen you are working on in that. That way you would only need to wait for the core BtS game to initialize when testing, rather then being slowed down by all the extra art, and python that LoR introduces. Might make in game testing go a bit faster.

God, why didnt I think of that?

 

[phungus420]

My condolenses. Same thing is happening to my father. I dont think we really need to ruch things anyway.

Sorry to hear about your dad. That's closer then for me, was my aunt. Loosing your parents would be unfathonable to me, but I suppose it's better then loosing your children, fortunately I have none of those though.

Surreal today, I walked in and all her kids were there and they were real anxious and said she was in coma. So I walk in there, totall unresponsive, checked her pulse, couldn't find it, no breathing. So I asked them if she was DNR or if they wanted me to do CPR, they sad DNR, so basically I ended up pronouncing my aunt dead. Surreal man. She was just discharged to hospice a week ago, and was supposed to have a couple of months left. But it's better this way, she was still lucid and not suffering until yesterday, so at least she didn't go through too much pain as can happen often with cancer, and at least she died with all of her children and her husband in the room with her.

Anyway on the bright side that means I can now focus on LoR again.

 

[Merri]

I've lost my grandpa to cancer. In his case they never really believed there would be anything wrong with him (a small town hospital in the middle of nowhere) until he turned yellow. And when one goes yellow it is too late to do anything. However, I wasn't very close with him, he was a busy worker for almost his whole life, so even when I did spend many childhood summers in his place he rarely was around. The cancer caught him soon after he was practically pushed away from an active role due to high age.

Thus my learned lesson here: keep yourself active and positive to life and live longer.


Did nothing yesterday after work, very exhausted after work. Hopefully I got enough sleep last night, I really want to get the merge tool done sooner than later.

 

[achilleszero]

Sorry to hear about your dad. That's closer then for me, was my aunt. Loosing your parents would be unfathonable to me, but I suppose it's better then loosing your children, fortunately I have none of those though.

Surreal today, I walked in and all her kids were there and they were real anxious and said she was in coma. So I walk in there, totall unresponsive, checked her pulse, couldn't find it, no breathing. So I asked them if she was DNR or if they wanted me to do CPR, they sad DNR, so basically I ended up pronouncing my aunt dead. Surreal man. She was just discharged to hospice a week ago, and was supposed to have a couple of months left. But it's better this way, she was still lucid and not suffering until yesterday, so at least she didn't go through too much pain as can happen often with cancer, and at least she died with all of her children and her husband in the room with her.

Anyway on the bright side that means I can now focus on LoR again.

Thats horrible having to go through that, especially having to be the one to declare your own relative. Sorry to hear about that man.

They are trying to kick my father out of hospice, cuz he was supposed to have a month left, 8 months ago. Now they say hes not deteriorating even though now he cant walk across the room, or eat very well, lost 80 lbs, cant remember the date, or barely finish an episode of Jeopordy with me. And they declare this even though the nurse only comes by once a week for 20 minutes.

 

[phungus420]

That's crazy, I didn't even know they could take you off of hospice. Don't know what else to say on that man, I'd be going stark raving mad if I had to deal with that . .. .. .. ..

As to the topic at hand, I have finished creating a LoR light fpk. Still need to finish the ethnic unit art entries for the default game's ethnic unit art in the art defines (all the greco roman, middle east, european suff, etc), but it's close to being finished. The FPK is still a whopping 138MB though, which surprises me, didn't know the core art was that big. I used default stuff whenever possible, like dropping the new darius, keshik model, etc. Still the leaderhead folder comes out to 103 MB or something, which means the structures and unit models that are core (the UBs, and added unitclasses, etc) is only around 40MB. Will have this uploaded as soon as I have the default BtS ethnic unit art entries in the ArtDefinesUnit file in and I can load the game and it doesn't crash.

 

[achilleszero]

Cool. The leaderheads do take a lot of memory. I did find a new way to compress the dds files (DX1 instead of DX3, as long as there is no alpha), but didnt really go all out on the leaders. Still I cut proly 20MB easy and could proly cut another 10 or more. I will go back through them and check every file. Lots of the LH have extraneous textures or the same textures in alternate format. And being LHs each one of those files is large.

I did learn something while messing with new Alex LH. Compressing the file does affect the looks of it. After I make a button I always reopen the new file just to see if it is really 64x64, and i noticed the 4 new LH buttons looked crappy. So I didnt compress them and they looked fine. But its only noticeble on really small things, but still something I need to watch out for.

 

[Alsark]

(( Oh, man... and here I was complaining about just being sick. I'm sorry to hear about that, both of you... Looks like this hasn't been a good week for any of us . That would be awful to have to pronounce your own family member dead, Phungus... sorry you had to do that... And I hope that things work out with your father, achilles... that really is a frustrating situation they've put you in... My prayers go out to you and your family. ))

 

[achilleszero]

Well being sick like you were is never a walk in the park so you have every right to complain, it sucks. Im not having to physically go through anything just mentally.

So anyways, Alsark did you take a look at the screenshot in post #68, a few posts up, before we formed a sewing circle? I could use some suggestions on what else to add (read notes as there are a few things I already have plans on but they werent ready yet.)

 

[Alsark]

Well being sick like you were is never a walk in the park so you have every right to complain, it sucks. Im not having to physically go through anything just mentally.

So anyways, Alsark did you take a look at the screenshot in post #68, a few posts up, before we formed a sewing circle? I could use some suggestions on what else to add (read notes as there are a few things I already have plans on but they werent ready yet.)

I think I should be all better by tomorrow. That's the hope at least. And sometimes (or many times, even) going through things mentally can be far worse than going through things physically...

But yeah, man, what you have done looks absolutely great! Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't seen it. I'm really impressed with what you have so far! And from the way you described it and the additions you're still making, it sounds like it's going to be even better once you get everything done. I'll be curious to see what it looks like once you have the road in place; because right now, if I had to be nitpicky, the only thing I'd say is the ground looks a bit bland since there's nothing going on there (but I'm sure the road will help to change that). Best of luck with the screen, and again, terrific work!

 

[achilleszero]

Yeah the ground seems to be lacking.. I have no luck adding satisfactory looking rocks and the texture size is already the maximum that I dare to use (1024x1024). It looks grainy due to the extreme proximity to the camera. One thing I might try is to some how add the wheat resource graphics to the ground and that might make it look more realistic (like wild grass). Still cant find good revolting peasant pictures.

 

[Alsark]

Yeah, the wheat thing could work - at least, it would be worth a try (if not too time consuming). I wonder how some forests would look on one of the more distant hills just to add some landscape variety (mountains may be a bit out of place and would have to be too distant anyway). Corn could work, too, and I think dye could pass as a flower of sorts.

Also I think once more is added to the ground to offer variety, like the roads and/or whatever else you end up adding, it'll draw away some of the attention from what looks to be grainy graphics. So that should probably help.