[dev thread] Mad Max Fury Road

[davidlallen]

Great progress folks!

Chugginator's punk would be a good choice to put onto the motorcycle, see earlier in the thread. The first level guys are the ones players will see the most, and they don't have gunpowder weapons. Crossbows, clubs, etc. Two guys is plenty.

I guess I haven't mentioned it in the thread yet, but I was discussing with a couple of people in PM. Assuming we get the truck and a motorcycle done, the biggest graphical problem with the mod is the player's beginning unit. So far all I have is the vanilla ancient warrior. What I want is a "survivor" type guy, *without* a skirt, and *without* a gun. That is the guy most people will see first so I'd like it to be unique.

Among all the units I can find, in game and on the forum, there are two kinds: (a) guys with skirts and melee weapons, (b) guys with pants and guns. If you look at the vanilla warrior and other melee guys, I do not know the real name for what they are wearing. But it looks like a skirt.

A crossbow would be great, but any kind of non-gunpowder weapon would work. Would anybody like to tackle that?

 

[Refar]

I want the unit to be useable for the WW2 setting as Wehrmacht-bike as well (It's what it is after all) so i will rig it with those WW2 Infantry dudes first.
Once rigged however, it's quite easy to put the punk, or whatever else on it. (It's easier to remove the helmet and gun than to add those...)

I am also hoping to do 2 versions - one with the gunner in the sidecar animated for ranged and another with only the bike for possible melee. Depends on how it turns out and how long it takes me to get one done....

 

[davidlallen]

I have cruised around and found the 18 "most appropriate" leaderhead animations, and mixed and matched the backgrounds. The 18 screenshots are at this link, along with a couple of the old "lo-res green" ones for reference. For the next version, I am planning to use these screenshots, with the 70 MB leaderhead animation pack available by separate download.

A while back in the thread, Colin commented he liked the lo-res green leaderhead graphics style but there was a lot of green. seZereth just commented that he doesn't like the new leaderheads much.

What I'd *like* is to be able to change the animations and backgrounds of what I have, to match the post-apocalypse style better. I have been able to do a couple of trivial reskins (see the tattoo on Kilobyte's head, and Brandi's shirt), but that's my limit. I may be able to search around and find better post-apo background images on the web; I could probably put those in.

One person suggested by PM that I should consider 2D art. This is what FFH has done, and they look great. It may take "a while" for a 2D artist to get interested in this project. I don't really know how to start that.

Any suggestions on what I should do in the short term?

 

[phungus420]

If I were you I'd ignore the leaderheads. The most succesful mod (in terms of downloads) is the FFH mod, and it totally blows past them, using some very good drawings (I'm sure you can find some good art for them). Just focus on units. I did a runthrough of your last beta build, and while it's coming along nicely, I must say it is a bit lacking in unit types. It's not that you need more prgrossing linearly, you don't need to expand the tech tree, what you need are more mixed arm--rock/paper/sissors units to increase the strategery if combat. Having counter units and differentiating a few UNITCOMBAT types would be a big step up, and is where I'd reccomned you focus your energy right now.

 

[asioasioasio]

I would stay with 2D LHs too (it's what we did for 1939 - the new version for BTS that is still in production process). Imo those animated LH are good for kids - and postapocalyptical mod needs to be "dark", "dirty" and "bad". Cartoons aren't dark, aren't bad and aren't dirty. But of course it's your choice and i would understand if you would choose animated 3d LH.

@Refar. I'll put motorcycle here today so you could use the parts if you want.
I'm glad you'll animate the motorcycle

 

[seZereth]

I´d definitely go for 2D Heads too.
try finding pictures at defiantart.com (i think) or cgsociety.org
And then make a list of which you like and in the worst case, one can modify them a bit to match in style etc.

Furthermore, I suggest you don´t hurry too much with the art, I think I soon will have more time again and I already started working on Mad max styled "Punks" some weeks ago ("homungus" followers from MM2 ). So, don´t hurry too much, try to concept out what kind of stuff you need and be a bit more patient, so people can see quality instead of hurried out stuff. FfH started with only placeholders too and look where it is now and how many high quality units it has.

 

[asioasioasio]

I agree.
making things slow and with patience brings quality, making things fast - force you to make the same thing twice.

BTW sZereth - Congratulations with yesterdays match! One step further to European Champion

 

[Refar]

Personally i would prefer animated leaders - if doable. I agree however that good, atmospheric 2D leaders are probably better than poor, cartoony 3D ones.

For 3D i cooked up a quick demo for using the FF Effect i mentioned earlier to make the LH's look Fallout'ish, while keeping them animated. For now i removed the BG, but it's possible to keep the background - with or without the green noise overlay. (It's a bit more work, as it would require to slightly readjust the image plane for each BG, so i skiped it for now.)
In GreenNoise archive file there is a simple CustomAssets setup, that will apply the effec to all Leaderheads.

Regarding 2D LH's... I found a old backup with original Fallout sreenshots (i collect everything, the only problem is, finding the stuff in my archives, which feature the oldfashioned "everything in one huge pile" system ). Those are the characters from Fallout 1 & 2 cutscenes. They are only 100px small - but i guess those Fallout Tactics green ones were not much bigger... There are more in the attached archive.

 

[seZereth]

those 2d fallout ones look cool.
the green noise is cool too, but I fear the LHs would have to be made black and white to make it look right, somehow

and yea, Germany played really well yesterday EM we are coming!!!

 

[Refar]

Yes you are right - the noise effect looks best on Lincoln who's mostly Black and White.
Desaturating the textures to greyscale (or maybe even greenscale) and ingrease contrast for more defined features should be easy enought, if this approach to LH's is going to be pursued.

 

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the suggestions on leaderheads. I like the 2D fallout graphics; I will see what they look like blown up. Also I will check into defiantart.com or cgsociety.org to see if I can find more p-a style art. However, overall I would love to use 3D ones. When I first got the game, that was one graphical thing that really got my attention.

@refar: thanks for the experiment on the green overlay. I agree it looks better on mostly B/W graphics, so I'll keep that on the back burner.

 

[davidlallen]

@phungus420: Thanks for the feedback on unitclasses. I had two goals with the units, (a) start small, (b) try to avoid units with "ancient" graphics. There aren't many good unit graphics available. I will see what I can do to increase the unit variety.

 

[Refar]

@ Fallout Grafics - i just found out, that they were originally about double the size in the game... No idea why i scaled them down back then... Perhaps because 10 years ago Harddrive space was more limited than now

Anyway... At the link below are a couple in original size. If you find they are of any use, we can think how to get the rest... I still have the games and a bunch of old saves, in case some can not be found on the net...
http://www.mobygames.com/game/fallout/screenshots

 

[asioasioasio]

sidecar texture needs some fixes - but AO is seperate layer so it's easy to fix
http://www.badongo.com/file/9807995

 

[Refar]

Here comes more Fallout pixel spam, sorry

I found a tool to extract the datafiles. These "talking heads" you have seen the pictures above were somewhat animated - simialar to Civ3 LH's. The anims do not look too good - by todays standards that is, back then they were stunning.
Anyway - we cant use those animations directly, but they existence means, that there are images for different mood-states of the head, which we could use.
Also the Backgrounds are stored separate, so it is possible to use them independently. Everything is about 200 pixels big

I attached all the Backgrounds and one complete image set for the Punk-Girl talking head, so you can get your self a picture of what it there. I can extract the rest of them if needed.

Also made a simple template, that will allow to display multiple static images, depending on leaders mood. My 2D skills are not overwelming, so i think someone more experienced could make the pictures look better.

In the Static_Mood.zip is a demo with 3 images for Nice/Normal/Bad mood. It will also smile, when accepting offer and look angry when rejecting one. Again it's only a first quick tech demo - it's possible to expand on it by adding more mood, or even multiple alternating images per one mood.

@ Asioasioasio - thanks for the Bike-files

 

[davidlallen]

@Refar, you are @#$%($#%ing awesome!

I have limited free time the next three days, but I will definitely investigate these come Saturday morning.

@asio, I loaded up the motorcycle. It looks like a good start.

@garret, any luck with C.Roland in understanding why your cyborg variant doesn't display in civilopedia? I can't get the unit to work at all except in WB.

 

[seZereth]

I really like those fallout graphics stuff, maybe we have to apply a filter on all of them, to get rid of the enlargement artifacts.

i am still unwrapping this bloody tanker. god, like I hate unwrapping!
But, good side of it, I might be able to finish it (with texture) in the next few days

 

[Refar]

I really like those fallout graphics stuff, maybe we have to apply a filter on all of them, to get rid of the enlargement artifacts.

The source images are not really high quality - 200x200 pixels and a bit grainy (they apparently used a reduced color palette). But i assume as well, that someone with a bit of Photoshop experinece can make those look a bit better. I do not know all the inn-and-outs of Photoshop and i made the girl very fast, just to see if it works out at all.

i am still unwrapping this bloody tanker. god, like I hate unwrapping!

Do you know someone who doesn't hate it...

And @Asio - thanks for the bike files. I will see to get it finished in the next couple of days.

 

[asioasioasio]

lol sorry SeZereth
Refar - you're welcome

I'll sit on Interceptor in free time

 

[davidlallen]

lol sorry SeZereth
Refar - you're welcome

I'll sit on Interceptor in free time

The interceptor would be a challenging project. But, we have a motorcycle, fuel truck, and pickup truck. So that may be enough for now. I have a worse problem with the weapons depot. Could you make a quick warehouse type building that would look like a military base storing tanks, artillery and so forth? I have searched a little for pictures like "depot", "armory", etc but I have not found any good images. The idea would be a concrete type warehouse, maybe with barbed wire, without any smokestacks on it.

If you look in my version 0.3, you will see the ruined airbase resource and rebuilt airbase bonus. This is your airbase model, with some texturing added by seZereth. I have done something similar for the "bunker" building as the ruined/rebuilt silo which I will put into version 0.4.

But, for the ruined/rebuilt depot, so far I am using the stone resource and quarry improvement, which doesn't look so good.

Also there is a progression of three buildings where I am just using some default graphics: junkyard (improvement), salvage center (improvement), construction yard (building). Right now they use windmill, lumbermill, forge respectively. These could use simple building designs as well.

Let me know what you think.