Dune Wars Art Thread

[Deliverator]

Sherlock-Holmes-esque powers of deduction! Yes, the animation in the Sunami NIF runs for 30 seconds. The plague NIF doesn't actually have an animation it is all done with particle effects that just constantly disperse - one particle effect for the cloud and one for the skulls.

I've not worked with one of these NIFs with built in animation before, but I think I've found the Controller that is doing the work. I'll have a play and see if I can cut the time down. Whether that will make a difference I don't know.

 

[keldath]

david - you mentioned that you changed the harvester model - how about using the modern harvester model, instead of the current desert harvester improvement - it will be like the improvement is actually a harvester ..

 

[Deliverator]

Also, on harvesting. Why don't we make the Deep Harvester a Harvesting Carryall or Worker Carryall or whatever. It feels weird harvester builds harvester. It can just be a name and graphics change. Eventually, myself or someone can make a unit for it. Also, I really want myself or someone to make a unit like the harvester in the second post.

 

[davidlallen]

Carryalls are a later tech. The early tech is "supposed" to be primitive fremen, although we have to be a little vague on how primitive fremen got on-planet. The concept is that once you have carryall tech, you could drop off some other unit which is even more efficient at building/harvesting spice. But we have not worried about that yet.

 

[keldath]

i agree with deliverator,

maybe for early game the harvester can be called like a gatherer/spice gatherer,
build by a ecologist/spice scout/spice marker/spice seeker/evaluator (of spice) or something like this....

 

[Deliverator]

Ok david, try this Sunami NIF. I basically curtailed the animation after 10 seconds instead of 30.

Looking at it I can probably do all the swirling that we have with existing sandstorm if we want it more interesting. It may even support the thunder sounds too...

 

[davidlallen]

maybe for early game the harvester can be called like a gatherer/spice gatherer,
build by a ecologist/spice scout/spice marker/spice seeker/evaluator (of spice) or something like this....

We could delete the deep harvester altogether, since the worker can now travel on desert with the right techs. That would solve the problem of deep harvesters as scouts, since I hardly ever see the AI use a worker as a scout.

 

[Lord Tirian]

We could delete the deep harvester altogether, since the worker can now travel on desert with the right techs. That would solve the problem of deep harvesters as scouts, since I hardly ever see the AI use a worker as a scout.

The deep harvester building harvesters is weird, I agree. Personally, I'd like to see the worker carryall, but I probably played too much Dune 2000/Emperor!

Another alternative would be making harvesters a cheap unit that can build a harvester improvement but destroy themselves in the process (like starbases in Final Frontier) - essentially, you drive your harvester to the intended region and then - *pop* - you tell it to harvest. You could even make the action fast as you the time to create it is already "contained" in the build time - big drawback though: Micromanagement hell and it will tie up a lot of the production.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

How about the Desert Worker can be upgraded to Worker Carryall when carryalls become available?

 

[koma13]

I know there is 1.2.2 patch but I can't find it. Anyone can point me to the link, please?

 

[davidlallen]

Sorry, I was trying not to make official patches. This link.

 

[koma13]

Thanks!

Sorry, I was trying not to make official patches.

I know but I finally want to check out Deliverator's 'water for food' patch which has 1.22 as a requirement.

 

[Deliverator]

Try it, but bear in mind version 2 will be completely different. Lots of refinements and changes. It may be releasable in another test patch tomorrow.

 

[Lord Tirian]

The water resource - the blue radioactive rice-field-blob - is hurting my head. Hence I tried to change it, now water is hard to do (a real splash would probably just look like the ground before... just darker - but that's not really distinct enough), but I took the oil resource, recoloured it and tweaked the transparency a bit. It looks water-ish now - it's far from perfect, but it looks neat, distinct and is better than the current one.

Stuff attached, uses oil animations (obviously), so link to the kfm-file of vanilla oil. Also added a new button that doesn't look like an ocean (also in the archive).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

Well, in the Water For Food v2 that I've spent most of the day refining I have an Aquifer/Groundwater resource that you build Wells on to get water.

I've made a nice icon and then made the 3D resource invisible. Very nice and realistic, but I expect people will want something to indicate there is Groundwater in the tiles. Maybe we could just have a few scattered rocks and pebbles just to say: "there is something different about this tile".

Edit: Also the dropship from here is ripe for adaptation into Dune Wars. Could be our Worker Carryall...

 

[Lord Tirian]

Very nice and realistic, but I expect people will want something to indicate there is Groundwater in the tiles.

...and no screenshot to show? Tease!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

Well, this is all I got since I'm currently running another autoplay. When I said invisible I meant it - the groundwater tiles have nothing in them. So you can only tell they're there by mouseover or turning on bonus icons.

 

[davidlallen]

Sigh. Yet another art request. I have the new implementation of sandworms working, so that a map effect appears for wormsign and the unit itself appears on an attack. But I have only a placeholder effect. I am using the original tsunami effect.

Is it possible to break off the default "sand hump" unit into an effect? Or at any rate is it possible to build a wormsign effect, whatever it may look like? It is unfortunate that my original implementation has a fatal flaw; it prevents settlers. The only way I can find around that is to use a map-only effect instead of a unit. I wish there were a better way.

I will upload the 1.2.3 patch and announce it on the welcome thread, in a couple of hours after some more autoplays.

 

[Deliverator]

Having looked at the Sunami effect I think it is possible to make a decent wormsign, probably even with lightning effects which will make koma happy. It may be better to go with the placeholder for now, that will make it easier for me to try things out since I don't have your Python code.

Did the new Sunami NIF I posted fix the fade out issue? I'd really like to know as it will inform what I do for both the map based sandstorm and worm.

Will the lovely worm unit ever be seen now? Will your map effect wormsign spawn it or something?

 

[davidlallen]

Did the new Sunami NIF I posted fix the fade out issue? I'd really like to know as it will inform what I do for both the map based sandstorm and worm.

I am not sure this solution is perfect either. The map effect code I copied from Gods Of Old triggers the effect every 3 seconds. But I observe that if I sit and watch for 30 seconds, the effect disappears and does not reappear. This does not match what the code seems to say. The tsunami animation runs for 20 seconds. If it were actually being triggered every 3 seconds I think we should see the first three seconds of the animation over and over forever. Instead we see 20 seconds of animation, once. I am not sure how the nif interacts with the trigger, but the plague effect seems to last forever while the tsunami does not.

When you have the opportunity, please download the patch and see what you think. It isn't convenient to have two versions of the mod in general, but sometimes what I do is make a zipfile of all the files in my mod directory which includes my local changes; then delete the mod directory; then re-install say version 1.2 followed by patch 1.2.3. After seeing what I wanted to see, then I can delete the mod directory and unzip my local changes.

Will the lovely worm unit ever be seen now? Will your map effect wormsign spawn it or something?

I think the worm is one of the best units I have seen. It is still there. In 1.2.2, there is a "unit" which looks like a round lump of sand until it attacks. In 1.2.3, there is an "effect" which looks like a thundercloud until it attacks. The attacking part is identical. When the AI determines that an attack is about to happen, it spawns a unit, which attacks and then dies.