East African Sword Dudes (12 November 2006)

[Plotinus]

Like my other Ethiopian units, these are partly based on some of these images. I'm quite pleased with how these came out given that they are my first sword units.

Abyssinian Swordsman

Get him here.

Ethiopian Swordsman

Get him here.

Ethiopian Industrial Swordsman

A rather clumsy name, but it's what he seems to be. Perhaps he could replace the Medieval Infantry. Get him here.

The Ethiopian Industrial Swordsman won Unit Of The Month November 2006!

 

[Quinzy]

wowee! fantastic!
would these work for any other area's of africa? like Mali?

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Nicely done sword dudes to match the nicely done spear dudes!! They'll find a place in my mod !!

 

[Mirc]

Very nice!

However the death animation of the Ethiopian Swordsman is extremely slow. I guess it's faster in game?

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks!

[Quinzy] I should think the Ethiopian Swordsman would work quite well for Mali.

[Mirc] Yes, the animations are all better timed in-game. It's hard to find a speed for the previews that looks good for them all, as they all run at different speeds in-game.

 

[CC-2224]

Excellent units ! You're filling up the African gaps rapidly!

 

[Quinzy]

cool, thats good to know plot!

 

[Stormrage]

Great units, Plotinus! I love the industrial one!

 

[Ares de Borg]

Very, very nice and useful units. Thank you!

 

[Keroro]

Hey Plotinus, they're good looking units. I checked in game and the animations are really good quality, but for one thing (hyper critical mode on) - they die very slowly. It kind of looks like they're falling from a great height, like off a skyscraper or something. I don't know if anyone else noticed this. Apart from that I love them, especially the second one with the robes. It's even more impressive considering that you say these are your first sword units. Good work.

 

[Mirc]

(hyper critical mode on) - they die very slowly. It kind of looks like they're falling from a great height, like off a skyscraper or something. I don't know if anyone else noticed this.

However the death animation of the Ethiopian Swordsman is extremely slow. I guess it's faster in game?

.

 

[Plotinus]

[Keroro] I think the death speed is OK - it's supposed to be a fairly slow stagger backwards and then the faster collapse. I've used a similar animation in some of my other units with a similar speed. But if you think it's too slow then it's easy to speed it up with Flicster, although it might not match the sound if you do that.

[EDIT] Whilst checking this I just realised that, although I included the Fidget animations, I forgot to put them in the ini files for all three units! I've now corrected this and re-uploaded the units. I had been vaguely wondering why they never seemed to fidget in-game, but it's not the easiest thing to test.

 

[Steph]

The animations are very nicely done, and very much needed. However, the Ethopian swords look a bit to much like Japanese katanas. It would have been nice to make something more original.

 

[TopGun]

Very nice! Thanks, Plotinus... I've been hoping that you'd go back to making more Ethiopian units.

Top notch!

 

[egroen]

Wow, great detail!

 

[Plotinus]

[Steph] Yes, I did use Kinboat's katana prop. However, it seems that Ethiopian swords do actually look quite a lot like katanas - the slight curve to the blade is particularly close. I did quite a comprehensive search and couldn't find any sword prop that looked more like an Ethiopian sword than this one. But as you can see, I did give a more dramatically wonky one to the Abyssinian Swordsman. Blades of this shape have also been used by other African warriors, especially in central Africa, I think, so that unit could be quite versatile too.

 

[Keroro]

@ Plotinus, I've never really used Flicster before, but I tried reducing the delay and IMHO it's more realistic. Thanks again for the great units.

 

[LouLong]

Very cool, indeed, especially the second one !

 

[Bluemofia]

Really nice! Wonderfully done attacks; no lagging in the slicing, and really smoothly done!

 

[odintheking]

You kick ass, Plotinus! Your units always set the bar high for quality, .

BTW, I love the fabric on these dudes!