Dune Wars Art Thread

[Lord Tirian]

Hi, fiddled around with the texture - I changed the dress marginally (I like the slightly baroque feel it has), replaced the bright white belt with a modest corsage, matched the skin colours, removed the distortion in the UV map (the eyebrows!) from the face and made the headdress look more like gauze. And removed the CREEPY eyes and replaced them with bluish spice-eyes.

Haven't tested it in-game - but since it's mostly a retexturing and minor nif-adjustments, it should work just as Deliverator's version above - but I guess he should take another look at it first - he may want to change things around and match the texture better to the intended surroundings (as with the Fedaykin), because you only see how they really look like after putting them into the game.

Cheers, LT.

 

[davidlallen]

Hi, fiddled around with the texture [...] Haven't tested it in-game

Ah ... help please. Neither yours nor deliverator's seems to work correctly in-game. I have put my artdefine section into the spoiler.

Spoiler :

<UnitArtInfo>
<Type>ART_DEF_UNIT_REVMOTHER</Type>
<Button>Art/Units/revmother/revmotherb.dds</Button>
<fScale>0.46</fScale>
<fInterfaceScale>1.0</fInterfaceScale>
<bActAsLand>0</bActAsLand>
<bActAsAir>0</bActAsAir>
<NIF>Art/Units/revmother/revmoth.nif</NIF>
<KFM>Art/Units/missionary/taoist/taoistmissionary.kfm</KFM>
<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/revmother/revmoth.nif</SHADERNIF>
<ShadowDef>
<ShadowNIF>Art/Units/01_UnitShadows/UnitShadow.nif</ShadowNIF>
<ShadowAttachNode>BIP Pelvis</ShadowAttachNode>
<fShadowScale>0.85</fShadowScale>
</ShadowDef>
<fBattleDistance>0.35</fBattleDistance>
<fRangedDeathTime>0.31</fRangedDeathTime>
<bActAsRanged>0</bActAsRanged>
<TrainSound>AS2D_UNIT_BUILD_UNIT</TrainSound>
<AudioRunSounds>
<AudioRunTypeLoop/>
<AudioRunTypeEnd/>
</AudioRunSounds>
</UnitArtInfo>

With deliverator's unit, the cloak is visible but the rest of the body is invisible. It is just a floating cloak. A cool effect for a ghost, I suppose, but not what I was hoping for. With your unit, using the same fscale, I get a huge (bigger than the gameboard) flickering rectangle.

Both look fine in nifskope. Could you try ingame please?

 

[Lord Tirian]

With deliverator's unit, the cloak is visible but the rest of the body is invisible. It is just a floating cloak. A cool effect for a ghost, I suppose, but not what I was hoping for. With your unit, using the same fscale, I get a huge (bigger than the gameboard) flickering rectangle.

Ah, the skin partitions in the Nif are messed up.

Tried to fix them, but no luck so far, something keeps screwing up during the export and I don't know what it is right now - will probably take a bit longer.

However, I made a version without skin partition data, meaning it won't have support for shaders and team colour (but it doesn't have that anyway) - but it works, tested it in-game as well. I updated the file in the post above with a working version. If you take the nif-file, it should work for Deliverator's texture as well.

Cheers, LT.

 

[davidlallen]

@ LT, Great, thanks. I have used your nif and your skin, and it is working fine.

In unrelated news, do you still follow the Super Spies thread? We had some cool ideas for enhancements. Well, I thought they were cool. But the AI for Super Spies looks pretty complicated so I had not tried to enhance it. Do you think anybody who knows the code would be interested in adding a few things? Please see this post.

 

[Lord Tirian]

In unrelated news, do you still follow the Super Spies thread? We had some cool ideas for enhancements. Well, I thought they were cool. But the AI for Super Spies looks pretty complicated so I had not tried to enhance it. Do you think anybody who knows the code would be interested in adding a few things? Please see this post.

I'm afraid I'm not deep into the SDK - I started familiarising myself with it a while ago, but then a horrible hybrid of C and C++ programming became a major part of a project I'm doing for my course - which needs to run on an 2003 version of CERN's root framework (it's really a weird Frankenstein-program), so my Visual Studio is right now in a state where it works for that project... and I don't dare to touch it until the end of month (at that point, the program should be finished, I hope).

Plus, when coding became more important for my actual course, I have to say that it took the fun out of coding for fun, so I never really got familiar with the SDK for anything more involved than merging and really minor tweaks (like changing formulas etc.) - and the pretty tight way SuperSpies was done (hijacking the aircraft interception code) doesn't make it easy to unravel it to play around. Nowadays, graphics are more fun - because it's more "WYSIWYG" - instant satisfaction from a finished model.

Cheers, LT.

 

[davidlallen]

the pretty tight way SuperSpies was done (hijacking the aircraft interception code) doesn't make it easy to unravel it to play around.

Could you suggest which other people are still around, who may have knowledge/time/interest to poke around inside super spies? I can PM them.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Could you suggest which other people are still around, who may have knowledge/time/interest to poke around inside super spies? I can PM them.

Glider1 has a pretty good grasp of it - he cleaned up TrojanSheeps original modcomp, changed stuff around a bit and fixed a couple of bugs as well for his mod.

Cheers, LT.

 

[keldath]

humm,
you guys want me to get the woc super spies in the game?

as for help - johny smith might help.

 

[davidlallen]

Super spies are already in the game. I am trying to find somebody who may be interested in doing enhancements for it, according to various ideas that Ahriman (mostly) had. I got the impression that johny smith was tied up with rapture lately.

 

[Deliverator]

Really? On my screen it is looking fine now. Which resolution have you choosen?
But the brown arch sides are very low res. I try to improve that.

1280 x 800 is my resolution.

Do people like the blue moon at the top? It is quite low res but I can make a better one. I might do two variants one with just stars scattered across the top and one with a better moon. Then people can choose their favourite.

@LT: Great work with Reverend Mother. Thanks for tidying it up and making it work. You're a fellow Doctor Who fan? Just the new stuff or the classic series too?

 

[koma13]

1280 x 800 is my resolution.

Can you send me your edited psd file after you finished your changes? I can set exact borders for (dds) files with gimp. This will surely eliminate that lines.

Do people like the blue moon at the top? It is quite low res but I can make a better one.

I like the blue moon very much. It gives a nice colorful contrast to the desert.

I might do two variants one with just stars scattered across the top and one with a better moon. Then people can choose their favourite.

We could make the moon only appears from time to time.

 

[Lord Tirian]

@LT: Great work with Reverend Mother. Thanks for tidying it up and making it work. You're a fellow Doctor Who fan? Just the new stuff or the classic series too?

Mainly the new series - mind you, I'm actually a German but I'm doing full-time study here - around the same time the new series started, so it was my companion through my entire study so far - but this also means that I've never heard of it before. So watched some of the classics and while they're fun to watch... I guess things like that never "click" that well if you don't watch them as they're made.

For the Reverend Mother: Do you think it's worth the effort to make a shader version working? It doesn't look like an unit that would profit a lot from a gloss map, so I'm tempted to say: It works, leave it at that.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

I think she's fine as she is. Shaders seem to be mainly useful for metallic things. I want to get into particle fx more. There seems to loads of cool stuff you can do with that. For example we should convert this to make a city shield - it looks great. You seem to have a good handle on the particle stuff...

Yeah, I loved Doctor Who as kid in the mid-eighties. The new series is well done, but there are great ones from the old series that still stand up. The Talons of Weng Chiang, The Caves of Androzani and The City of Death spring to mind...

 

[Deliverator]

Can you send me your edited psd file after you finished your changes? I can set exact borders for (dds) files with gimp. This will surely eliminate that lines.

I haven't been using photoshop at all, except at the beginning. I extracted them into Paint.NET because that's what I know well. I could try and reconstitute the separate images back into the psd, but it would take me much longer than you since I don't know it well at all...

Anyway, I've remade the moon and added a few stars and I'm pretty happy with it. If you can find a way to eliminate the lines then we'll be done I think.

Edit: Noticed that the shadow fade on the right bottom bit of archway is missing.

Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nmodtdyjzmx

 

[koma13]

I haven't been using photoshop at all, except at the beginning. I extracted them into Paint.NET because that's what I know well. I could try and reconstitute the separate images back into the psd, but it would take me much longer than you since I don't know it well at all...

Ok, I will care about the problem. I can recreate a proper image in gimp with your dds files. This will allow me to remove those lines. I will also try to make a more smooth transition between clouds and stars.

 

[Deliverator]

Another one of those small things that was breaking the Dune mood for me was the world picker. So my next patch will have a planet that looks more like Arrakis. Also, it might be nice to have another name for this script other than Archipelago... Arrakis is taken so what?

 

[koma13]

Here is an updated version of the city screen.

Can anyone try it and report if there are still visible lines in the upper part of screen?

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4nzzqzzzkg3

 

[Deliverator]

The lines are still there I'm afraid...

Can the python be adjusted so that SkyLeft and SkyRight come down just a little bit more... or is it not that simple?

 

[koma13]

The lines are still there I'm afraid...

Can the python be adjusted so that SkyLeft and SkyRight come down just a little bit more... or is it not that simple?

Hmm. The lines coming from the upper graphics. In the middle of the screen (upper archway) there are no graphics below. Hence stretching them down won't help. Is anyone else is getting those lines? Maybe it's an driver issue. I can switch to all resolutions on my computer without any problems.

EDIT: ok, you can at least try to fix it for skyleft and skyright but this won't fix lines in the middle:

Look in CvMainInterface.py line 2421-2429. Change all '66' to 68 or 70.

 

[Deliverator]

I get the lines with all resolutions that I try. I'll try changing the Python.

Changing the Python numbers makes no difference.

Nevermind, I reckon we release it and see if it's a widespread problem, if it's only me that gets it I can live with it. It seems to have something to do with what happens when the panels overlap. I can play with the various different DDS subformats - see if that makes a difference...