new unit: modern infantry

[Steph]

When I'm finished with Cossacks, I'll try to make some palette editing to make new versions of Balou's units.

But the result will probably not be as good. Wait and see...

 

[Wolfhart]

Originally posted by Balou
Well, most likely not. I think the forest Spetsnaz will be the last thing I will do for civ3.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I do understand you; you must have sacrificed a lot of time creating those wonderful units of yours. There's many of us civvers who owe you a lot for enhancing our gaming pleasure with your unit graphics, and if I was a rich man I would bloody well transfer a substantial amount of € to repay some of my debt to you. Instead you've only received some words of gratitude on your way, and then this greedy little bugger that is me will eagerly await the arrival of the last masterpiece; the forest spetsnaz.

Originally posted by Steph
When I'm finished with Cossacks, I'll try to make some palette editing to make new versions of Balou's units.

Well, there's certainly a need of such versions in order to differentiate between for example modern infantry, modern marines and modern airborne units (parachute infantry like the US 82nd and 101st Divisions). That's what I'm using this versatile unit for now in my private mods and it gets a bit confusing sometimes, like when I try amphibious landings with the airbornes just because I can't tell them apart. I'm using the "It's Miller Time" victory animation for the standard infantry (those drunkards... ) but that's a somewhat impractical way of telling them apart...

 

[Balou]

Originally posted by Wolfhart

I'm sorry to hear that, but I do understand you; you must have sacrificed a lot of time creating those wonderful units of yours. There's many of us civvers who owe you a lot for enhancing our gaming pleasure with your unit graphics, and if I was a rich man I would bloody well transfer a substantial amount of € to repay some of my debt to you. Instead you've only received some words of gratitude on your way, and then this greedy little bugger that is me will eagerly await the arrival of the last masterpiece; the forest spetsnaz.

Well, thank you. However, I would like to say that it was my own decision to do those units and I only did it because I liked doing it. Maybe in my previous post it sounded a bit too negative. There are a lot of pleasent moments as well.
It is also very important to say that I don´t quite doing civ3 units because I don´t get money for it (and instead "only" nice feedback). This is not true.
The feedback I recieved on my units makes me very glad (and a bit proud). It is a very nice community here at civfanatics.com, no question about that.
I just lost interest in civ3 and want to head over to other things. There is no fault on your side (it just sounded a bit like that in your post).

 

[Nemesis Rex]

Here is a Khaki version of this unit.

Khaki Modern Infantry

 

[Wolfhart]

Damn my poor grasp of this foreign language! Once again it has prevented me from making my meaning clear...
Of course I understand that starting and quitting making unit graphics for Civ3 is your own choice dictated by nothing else than your interest and amusement, and I apologize if it sounded as if someone was to "blame" for this. This was never my opinion .

It is also very important to say that I don´t quite doing civ3 units because I don´t get money for it (and instead "only" nice feedback). This is not true.

And I never believed it was. I only meant to say that I, personally, sometimes wish that I could offer something more substantial than just grateful words to an excellent unit creator , just to show how much I appreciate your creations and all the good fun I've had with them . Your armoured infantry unit for example actually got my fiancée to start playing hotseat with me ("Yes dear, you can have those as your own unique units...") instead of just laughing at my immature insistant gameplaying . When your parachutiste and your peacekeeper were done we had some hard negotiations about who's getting which... Wonder what I have to give up to her in order to secure my exclusive use of the coming forest spetsnaz..?

 

[Steph]

Waow!

If Balou's units indeed managed to bring someone's fiancé to play civ III, then it is the best compliment about their quality we could find!

I'll try it with my wife, but I doubt it works, she prefers call to power or Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (she's a huge star wars fan).

 

[GrandAdmiral]

SWGB is a great game. You must have a cool wife.

Well Balou I hope somone else figures out how to make units like yours or I will probably lose interest in civ3 too.

 

[Risbinroch]

I wish I had a girlfriend which liked games... but no, just my luck I guess, she don't like CM, Civ or any other games... She think it's childish....

Well anyway - Steph: Will you try to make many different color versions: winter, brown (perhaps different browns) etc of all the units?

If so, would it be hard to replace the Parachutiste rifle with another? Hard or impossible....?

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Risbinroch
Well anyway - Steph: Will you try to make many different color versions: winter, brown (perhaps different browns) etc of all the units?

If so, would it be hard to replace the Parachutiste rifle with another? Hard or impossible....?

I'm not sure of what I'll do. And it won't be before a while : I'm adding ancient & medieval flavour units to Steph's mod right now.
When I'll start adding modern units, I will check what I miss the most, and make variation of existing unit.
But it will be simple palette change, so the weapon will remain. Sorry.

In my mod, I have modern infantry, modern paratrooper, modern marines, special forces and moutains troops, and I'd like to have unit graphics thant can be clearly differentiated, and with some variation between culture.

 

[Balou]

Wolfhart:
Well, this is really a huge compliment. I´m quite speechless... didn´t know that some appreciate my civ3 units this much.

GrandAdmiral:
There is nothing special about how I do my units. I try to do every step in development to the best I can do, and in addition I take a lot of time to finish whatever I´m working on (I guess you already know that ). I´m also very critical about my own art, especially at the time I create it. (I can see this very clearly at the moment, right now I feel much better about the modern infantry than I did at the time I created it. The same is true for all other units.) However, I still need to learn a lot about animations and modelling. Remember, the modern infantry was the first time I did human animations (or any kind of body animations).

Nemesis Rex:
The khaki version looks really nice. Thanks!

 

[Wolfhart]

Ok, I've tried to do a tan/light-to-medium brown colour variation of the modern infantry, and I did it in order to learn palette editing of graphics so the quality of the result is dubious. Still, I'm posting it here even though Nemesis Rex has already posted his excellent khaki variant, just because I've also converted the drop and the alternative victory and perhaps someone can find some use for it.

A non-animated preview including the original and the khaki variants:

and the download

Regards,
Wolfhart

Edit: failed to show pic, tried again
Succeeded but preview pic looks kind of crappy here...
here's the original pic

 

[Wolfhart]

Lo, the Tan Man runneth!

Just learning to use the utility programs of this board...
but converting to .gif does make him sort of greenish...

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Balou, I was curious, would payment make you more willing to do units? Would you be willing to sell your animations? (out of curiousity) If I wanted to pay you to make another unit of similar quality, what would be an appropriate price to convince you to do that?

 

[Balou]

Dom Pedro II:
No no, that won´t work. Money has nothing to do with that.

Wolfhart:
Your color version is also nice.
See, now there are already three different modern infantry versions
I really wonder how you integrate so many units into the game with such limited possibilities to make them distinctive ...

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Damn! Well, then just enjoy your retirement.

 

[Alone]

MODERN INFANTRY! FANTASTIC! PERFECT! I realy injoied to play whit this unit! ( onley in my games it's instead Mach Infantry and MI is whit Modern Armor needed Sint.Fyb. as advance, that way it came earlier in game to play).

IT'S BETTER THAN ORIGINAL!

It should be inclouded in Conquest.

 

[Nder]

Originally posted by Balou
Well, most likely not. I think the forest Spetsnaz will be the last thing I will do for civ3. The fact is that I already shifted over to another project, not related to civ3 (but it´s still for a computer game). I just want to practice more in the animation and modelling part without needing to deal with palettes, camera angles etc. This is really what annoyed me the most when doing the civ3 units (before Steph´s SBB it was the cut&paste).

Does that mean if someone else were to volunteer to do all the palette stuff you might be more inclined to just work on making great looking models and doing the animations? Then you could pass it on to someone else who could set up the camera angles and work on getting the Civ3 palette issues worked out.
And then they could put it all together using the SBB?

 

[Balou]

Originally posted by Nder

Does that mean if someone else were to volunteer to do all the palette stuff you might be more inclined to just work on making great looking models and doing the animations? Then you could pass it on to someone else who could set up the camera angles and work on getting the Civ3 palette issues worked out.
And then they could put it all together using the SBB?

No, sorry, I don´t think this would work. I just don´t want to do anymore civ3 stuff.
The forest spetsnaz will definitely be the last thing I´ll do for civ3.

 

[Nder]

ok, I just really hate to see you go.

 

[JayaRe]

WOW impressive!