Heavily Teamcoloured Units (preview)

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Mattastic

Warlord
Joined
Jan 4, 2006
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I've long missed the good old days of Civ1, where you could identify the controlling civilization of every single unit on the screen without even having to look at it, let alone hover your mouse over it or search for an irritating little flag that somehow manages to follow them around. To this end, I have been reskinning various units so that the teamcolour shows up on much more of it, and often in more logical places, for easy recognition.

This is just a sample of ten units which I've been working on. I decided to stop here and see what people think before I continue on all the others, 'cos this is hardly a quick and easy job. I also aim to finally remove those flags next to all the units too.

I hope people like it. :)

 
It's a very good idea. The Infantry is very easily recognizable, as are all the rest.. The only one I find needing work is the Knight.
 
Some of these are pretty good, like the axeman and the archer, but it seems a bit too much on something like a cannon or an infantry. In general I think older units look better with more team colors simply because clothes are often colored. Modern units however, should minimize team colors because it breaks (IMO) the immersion, I mean can you imagine infantry running around in bright blue or red uniforms. :) That's why I like the flags in Civ4 - it let's you minimize team coloring while still letting the player easily distinguish between units of different civilization.

Anyway, it's just my opinion, this is definitely a matter of taste. In any case, you did a good job on changing the locations of team colors and I do think it looks good on the ancient units. :goodjob:
 
Shqype: I'll see what I can do with the knight. At the moment, the curtains on the horse are teamcolour/gold, but I may make it solid-teamcolour instead, because it looks really bad with lighter colours. Thansk for your input.

Rabbit, White: I understand your point about modern units. My biggest concern, in fact, was having modern infantry running about in anything from bright blue to cyan to yellow. However, ther are three reasons why I personally feel this is better than just having the flag:

1) There are no rules in the game for camouflage. There's nothing to say that a bright orange man a thousand feet tall should be easier to see or hit than a guy who looks exactly like a bush. Excluding extreme examples like this, the only thing that makes Infantry better than, say, an archer is the power of the weapons.

2) This way, all the units follow a clear evolution. As the game does not mirror real history, I don't think camouflage is necessarily a part of modern warfare if I don't want it to be. After all, these units are taller than most buildings, so they can't be that good at hiding.

3) The sight of a silly flag following my units around spoils immersion for me more than bright red and blue infantry.

I understand your opinion, however, and I think a lot more people will see things according to your argument. Luckily, removing the new skins for certain units is not difficult. :) I hope you can understand my view as well, however.

Thanks for the input!
 
Mattastic, this is great! I am xml and python (unless it's monty) illiterate. Maybe I should put some time into it... but maybe not... especially when we have creative types like you out there
 
The new version really looks good - though of course the units loose some detail / eyecandy by pasting solid colors over their regular textures. And removing the flag wouldn't seem a good idea to me, since the units aren't all that big after all - the team color wouldn't be enough for me to quickly identify the units I'm afraid. Also, there are some very similar colors... a flag helps a lot there (if you find it ;) ).
 
Thansk guys.

Hassenpfeffer: You don't need XML or Python skills to reskin. All you need is a good image editor and a steady hand, as the art files are all stored as DDS images. I appreciate the kind words though. :)

JDexter: Yeah, I think you may be right about the flag. As I see more and more of these ingame, I have come to a similar conclusion. Oh well.

Frostyboy: Cheers. :)

I'll have to work on more of these soon, but they're taking the backseat for a while as I have finally found what I need to complete a more important mod.
 
These units are great! I plan to use them to some extent in my scenario. However, I've come accross a problem. When I used the units for Mongolia (brown) in my scenario, they started brown but as soon as I moved them all of them turned red! Not red blobs or anything, just the newly changed team color part was red! So, if you know why that happened, or if it was just an error on my part, it would be greatly appreciated.
 
These units are great! I plan to use them to some extent in my scenario. However, I've come accross a problem. When I used the units for Mongolia (brown) in my scenario, they started brown but as soon as I moved them all of them turned red! Not red blobs or anything, just the newly changed team color part was red! So, if you know why that happened, or if it was just an error on my part, it would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

I often found a bug like this one with the longbowman in the original game... For some reason the teamcolor changes to red... It has happened to me with different civs, but only with the longbowman... I think I´ll post this bug...
 
I think I'm going to borrow the infantry, artillery, and rifleman for the Lunar Mod. I like being able to see the team color and this will help me also differentiate my units since there aren't many skins out there. Any chance you'd do tanks, modern armor, the Panzer?
 
That's a great and very worthwhile idea Mattastic! Your screenshots look pretty good and I can visualize the grand result very well.

One thing I notice tho is that your cannons and artillery seem to be fighting off MTV's west coast customs crew more than enemy troops. Those patterns for the cannon and artillery aren't really believable to me personally and maybe other people aswell.

I think that for the cannon, you could omit the pattern on the barrell and still achieve a noticeable difference visually and be able to distinguish one civs cannons from the other easily.

For the artillery, its a little tougher to suggest an alternate pattern. I'm not sure what the current limits of unit graphics are but maybe something like a nearby ammo crate with a dominant civ color could add distinction in place of the flames on the guard. If thats not possible, completely civ coloring the the plates around the barrel might probably be too funky looking in the end and make it look more like some toy cannon that 5 year olds play with and swallow rather than something believable. I dunno.

Only other comment I have is the circles on top of the battleship cannons look like good bullseye's for enemy airplanes but thats really something negligible and the circles really help the ship in being distinguished from other civs ship without making it look too weird.

Thats just my prespective so dont take it the wrong way plz. What youre doing is great and I can't wait to see more modifications :)!
 
Okay, nice work.

And I'm very curious how you've done it. No matter how i reskin my units, the areas with teamcolour still are the same. I downloaded your units and found all teamcolour blacked out, but that doesn't word that simple with my units. So how can I add/remove teamcolour-areas?

Thanks for a short tutorial.


EDIT: already found out, how to. :)
 
Hmmm I like the idea, but you seem to los of detail in a few units. Take for example the battleship and the infantry. On the other hand, you did a very fine job with the canon and the knight.
 
I have no problems identifiying which unit belongs to who, I hope the colours on the units will eventually be removed altogether and the flag tells you what team your units on, it would be much more realistic that way.
 
More Team colors are good, you can never have too much. I hope this project goes to completion and re-skins ALL the units.
 
For the units up until the gunpowder ones, they are great, especially the gunpowerder ones (you should also add the change for the grenadier unit). However, the heavy use of team colors for later modern units make them look ugly.
 
Wow, I had no idea there was still ANY interest in this at all. I might make some more - I've learned some new skinning tricks that might make the detail clearer and hopefully look a bit more natural
 
hey i tried downloading ur file and it doesnt work.... if u took it down can u upload it again please? thank you
 
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