[UNIT] Mighty Ships Et Al

Well yeah, about two years ago I learned how to copy bone weights to a mesh, and since then I converted dozens of bipedal units for RI use, the bulk coming from EU4 (which also needed substantial pre-processing to reduce polycount) and remastered AoE3. Going forward, there is an additional bunch of units from AoE3 I want to convert before I'm done with it, Native American this time. Also one thing I'm currently trying to do is tidy up the RI assets to make them more friendly to other modders - currently I get lost in them myself from time to time and I understand that figuring them out can be hell for anyone else.
 
Nah, I mean the unpacked internal structure - when I realized I'm having trouble myself when looking for, say, African flavour rifleman - there are several folders to look and the name of the folder with the actual unit can be literally anything. I want folder names to be really searchable (like it would be LI_Rifle_Africa in this case - "land infantry - rifleman - African flavour". So you'll be easily able to search for, say, all flavour axemen. Also, no double-checking what a unit in the folder, say, "AMX_AUF1" or "germu" is used for. And even while most of them are named kinda logically, lack of consistency makes for a hard time sorting stuff - "French Medium Cavalry" will be before "french_frigate" and both of that before "horseman_france".
 
Have you considered just making a nested folder structure? I do that for my art module for RiFE where I basically go: Country/Units/UnitName. So like for example Calabim/Units/Knight. That's also how VD works, mostly.

I am saying this mostly because what you propose has a name in my industry. We call it Hungarian notation and it's universally loathed as something that sounds good until you have to read it.
 
It's still within nested folder structure obviously - but RI has so many units that if I just go to Units/Unique/France, there will still be over a 100 units looking at me. I want it to be both navigable (as it already currently mostly is, apart from some cases where it's not immediately apparent where to look, such as with units shared by two-three civs) and searchable throughout (which it currently isn't at all). The system is not going to replace the nested folders already in place, just build upon them. Also, I think "LC_Knight_America" or "LS_Cannon_Arabia" is not such an incomprehensible thing. At first I was going for no prefix at all, but then I realized that from practical use standpoint, I'd rather see, say, all the naval units in one place when everything is sorted alphabetically. Could have been done with nested folders "Land/Naval/Etc", but ultimately that's just more clicks navigating. I've seen how VD works, and I applaud the systematic approach, but I feel that mod took nesting too far, and it takes a lot of time to simply navigate. With current system, everything is still grouped in large groups by folder (say, all flavour units of a certain civ or an artstyle), but within it visual navigation is much easier, at least for me. Just so that you understand the scope of the problem, I need an easy way to work with over 3500 units. So inevitably it has to have elements of both, or I'd end up with a colossal matryoshka doll.
 
Believe me I understand. I mean, I currently have something like ~300 units of my own in just my two art modules. And that's not counting my other work, side projects and the giant reference library that I hold on my hard drive. Finding the unit I want in that can be a chore some times.

If I may share some advice for what works for me:
  • An extra click is better than more reading. Having too many units in one folder irregardless of how you sort them is always going to take longer to sift through than having sensible categories. And it's going to leave you feeling tired afterward.

    Ideally you want to only have so many units in your folder that you can pick the one you want at a glance in less time than it takes you to pick a category and open it. For me that's somewhere between 10 and 20. Any more than that and it gets annoying.

  • Find meaningful categories and stick to them.
    Too many categories can be as bad as too few. And you have to find ones that make sense. Otherwise you are just moving the problem around instead of fixing it.

    For my work with FFH I went with CIV -> Units / Ships -> unit and that was sufficient. But for some other projects I am working on (not published, for personal use only) I split the units up by era (CIV -> Era -> unit) and that works really nice. You could also go with say infantry / cavalry / artillery etc.

    Basically anything that works. Just don't be afraid of deep nesting and what ever you do stick to it religiously.

  • Be rigid in your organization.
    Having everything organized in a standardized way really helps. In my experience doing it right means your brain can just switch to autopilot until the final step. But you have to be rigid. I some times go so far as to create empty folders for units I expect to add some time in the future. If you don't stick to your organization religiously you won't ever get the full effect.

  • Windows paths are limited to 256 characters. And some people use really stupidly long paths for their install, or worse yet use steam like some pleb that didn't but the game when it was originally out on CD.
    Steamy jokes aside the 256 character limit is real. I actually did have problems with my module tripping up people with steam so I had to reorganize things. So better to take that into account sooner rather than later.

  • Shortcuts are your friend. If you use the same unit art for multiple civs put the unit in the folder for one of them and make shortcuts where the unit should be for the rest. That way there is no digging around.

  • Keep good documentation. I have an excel worksheet that lists all the civs for a mod I am working on and all the units for each civ with labels for what exists, what needs doing and (separate marking) the units I personally made. This really makes things easier because you can see at a glance what you have at hand and where to look for it.

  • A good export script is nice to have. Mine automatically deletes all sorts of temporary files, working files, shortcuts etc. from my folders when I publish my module.
 
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Sword_Of_Geddon said:
Hey Matsuda you working on anything? I haven't see Toad post in abit I imagine he took a break for the Holidays.
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I haven't been recently. I've mostly been dealing with real life stuff and trying to go to school in Japan. I made some progress on some models, but they need finishing. Did have an idea for a Bigeo though.
 

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Matsuda123 said:
I made some progress on some models, but they need finishing.
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It reminds me of my favorite project before the Wrights.
https://topwar.ru/99336-za-dva-goda-do-bratev-rayt.html
True, Whitehead's plane was more "animated", at least in the first version it was planned as a flying car - the wings folded completely and the engine switched to wheels. And yes, with modern engines of similar power (20 hp), this thing flies:crazyeye:.
 
Since I remember people liking my Humankind-converted torpedo boat here, thought I'd post an update of it - I modified it to face the enemy head-on in combat so that torpedoes actually come out of the torpedo tube.
 

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A question to all the experts here.
Spoiler Unit picture :

upload_2022-3-27_13-0-9.png

Say, I have something like this unit. It's designed to be a static emplaced artillery. Generally, I'm quite satisfied with the way it works, but in an ideal world, the base of the unit would not rotate to face the enemy, just the cannon. I found no way to do this - even if it is not animated at all, the mesh still rotates to face the attack direction. Does anyone have any ideas of how I could keep the base always facing one way and never rotating?
 
Walter Hawkwood said:
A question to all the experts here.
Spoiler Unit picture :

Say, I have something like this unit. It's designed to be a static emplaced artillery. Generally, I'm quite satisfied with the way it works, but in an ideal world, the base of the unit would not rotate to face the enemy, just the cannon. I found no way to do this - even if it is not animated at all, the mesh still rotates to face the attack direction. Does anyone have any ideas of how I could keep the base always facing one way and never rotating?
Click to expand...

Do you think it is possible to convert Civ 6 or 5 City models to Civ IV? I've been looking at them, and they might add a lot of variety to the city sets if that's possible. But I don't know much about that.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2169097417

I Imagine retexturing these slightly to make them less cartoonish would make them fit well to Civ IV, or maybe even 5's city models... I'm not sure how one would go about extracting them though.
 
Never tried, but should be theoretically possible. The relevant questions though are the polycounts (might be too high for a practical cityset) and the actual amount of effort needed (which prevented me thus far from converting more of Humankind stuff for instance).
 
Where and how did you learn to convert those? If the models from Civ V and 6 mods were extracted, maybe I could try my hand at it.
 
Walter Hawkwood said:
A question to all the experts here.
Spoiler Unit picture :

Say, I have something like this unit. It's designed to be a static emplaced artillery. Generally, I'm quite satisfied with the way it works, but in an ideal world, the base of the unit would not rotate to face the enemy, just the cannon. I found no way to do this - even if it is not animated at all, the mesh still rotates to face the attack direction. Does anyone have any ideas of how I could keep the base always facing one way and never rotating?
Click to expand...

I'm not in anim, but maybe having a look to the destroyer/battleship turret anim?
 
Matsuda123 said:
Where and how did you learn to convert those? If the models from Civ V and 6 mods were extracted, maybe I could try my hand at it.
Click to expand...

Well, as I wrote, I never actually tried - but Civ 5 models are in GR2 format, which, while a closed one, can be converted with certain tools (most user-created units on CFC kindly include a .blend file as well which speeds up the process greatly). Not sure about 6, never looked into it at all.

Jarmrik said:
I'm not in anim, but maybe having a look to the destroyer/battleship turret anim?
Click to expand...

The problem is, the base of all units inevitably turns to face the enemy, which is what I'm trying to avoid.
 
Sorry, i've read too fast...
In which kind of situation do you use it? In cities, or on other terrain tiles (just like a fort)?
 
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