New unit; Napoleonic Rifleman

[Smoking mirror]

I may do a napoleonic cavalry also, I managed to revamp my animation regime, and cut the time it takes in half- this alowed me to spend more time on the actual animation rather than the tedious cuting and pasting- I may well start the light infantry from the begining, I wasn't too pleased with the animations.

Feel free to modify the animations by swaping heads, uniforms aditions etc.. a napoleonic era scenario could always do with more veriety.

Ive been thinking about doing a successor to the civil war infantry (before the WWI infantry) like the breech loader, the British Victorian redcoat rifleman would be a good example, but in this era all the diferent nations had very different uniform styles and helmets etc... (think of the difference between the british helmet circa late19thC- and the german helmet of the same time).
Perhaps If I do the british unit someone else could add different heads to get regional variations.

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Cool thang U caught me by surprise with this unit !!! Yes, I can try to create generic headgear 8while the uniforms differe in other ways, there should be ease of customizing at least a number of these (civ-colours present a problem at times- I.e. my Russians are Red, while the Uniform colour of this time should be Green- well in a scenario this can be taken into account)...

 

[Donal Graeme]

WOW! That unit is most excellent.

I like the idea of having the progression of firearms, so that there is not that enormous jump between Riflemen and Infantry, or actually between Musketmen and Riflemen. Perhaps have a tech like Conscription, which comes from Nationalism. That could create the ability to draft, and gives this unit.

 

[Kal-el]

The problem I am having is in choosing a name for this unit.

I already have:
Arquebusiers (original Civ3 animation)
Musketmen (Dark Sheer's Colonial Infantry)
Riflemen (original Civ3 animation)
Infantry (original Civ3 animation)

I would rather not name these guys Infantry with a preceding adjective, e.g. Napoleonic Infantry, etc. I am thinking about calling them Grenadiers but was hoping for some other ideas. Any thoughts?

 

[zulu9812]

Dark Sheers Musketman > Matchlock Musketman
Smoking Mirror's Musketman > Flintlock Musketman

I know that's still a preceding adjective, but Grenadier breaks from the norm of referring to the unit's weapon. And if this is a Grenadier, what the heck is noonob3's unit???

 

[thestonesfan]

I called Dark Sheer's guy Musket Infantry, and SM's guy Flintlock Rifleman. I wasn't too keen on Flintlock Rifleman, but what can you do?

We may be about good on gun toting infantry. Maybe a WW2 soldier, I don't know. The existing infantry looks like a WW1 doughboy. The artillery tree could use some fleshing out, with a cold war style Howitzer and maybe an early cannon to go with the original musketman.

A new Apache chopper wouldn't hurt either

 

[joespaniel]

Originally posted by Smoking mirror
Ive been thinking about doing a successor to the civil war infantry (before the WWI infantry) like the breech loader, the British Victorian redcoat rifleman would be a good example, but in this era all the diferent nations had very different uniform styles and helmets etc... (think of the difference between the british helmet circa late19thC- and the german helmet of the same time).
Perhaps If I do the british unit someone else could add different heads to get regional variations.

I just posted in your British UU thread about that unit, are you going to finish that one? It was quite good!

As for your new Napoleonic musket unit, its EXCELLENT!

 

[Dark Sheer]

@Smoking Mirror : One thing I notice is the unit seems to have its feet nailed to the ground in the death flc. Notice how the part of the legs that touches the ground doesn't move from the point the unit start falling unit it hits the ground.

A great unit by the way.

 

[Jewell Man]

Originally posted by Dark Sheer
@Smoking Mirror : One thing I notice is the unit seems to have its feet nailed to the ground in the death flc. Notice how the part of the legs that touches the ground doesn't move from the point the unit start falling unit it hits the ground.

A great unit by the way.

Maybe that's how he died. Stepped in a patch of superglue and starved to death.

 

[Jewell Man]

Looks like you have a real winner with this unit SM. Excellent job. I was really hoping someone would create a unit of this type. My wait is finally over!

Now... I don't suppose anyone will be working on a cavalry unit of the same era soon, eh?

 

[Jewell Man]

Originally posted by zulu9812
Dark Sheers Musketman > Matchlock Musketman
Smoking Mirror's Musketman > Flintlock Musketman

I know that's still a preceding adjective, but Grenadier breaks from the norm of referring to the unit's weapon. And if this is a Grenadier, what the heck is noonob3's unit???

Matchlock Musketman and Flintlock Musketman are the names I intend to use.

The Wehrmacht revived the name as part of their program to instill pride in the forces by using names that evoked the past glories. Grenadier itself seems "french". Is that the actual term the Germans used or is there a German language equivalent?

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Grenadier basically referrs to Infantry units with additional grenades (sth at the time it was introduced was quite an impressive weapon). So this could be considered heavy infantry. They also call it Panzergrenadier- motorised infantry with heavy weapons. These would carry a bundle (amongst other items) of Grenades and throw it at tank tracks.

The German Army keeps using this name to describe the purpose of the unit, although it does in modern days not focus on the type of weapon anymore since grenades are a common infantry issue.

 

[Barret]

Great unit. I especially like the attack animation and sound. Small problem though, the unit is missing its head in the city screen. Other than that, it's a perfect unit.

 

[Smoking mirror]

For dark sheer; yes, I did notice the problem with the back leg- as usual though it wasn't untill after I had animated the unit. When I was doing the animation each frame looked O.K. so I continued working on it; Once it was finished (the first time I got to see the animation was after I had pasted all the frames in to the storyboard) I noticed that where I had tried to make it look like his foot was "resting" on the ground as he pitched over, it actual looked as if it was nailed in place! I figured no one would notice it in the game, and as the death sequence took me nearly three hours to do and would take tree hours to do again (with not garantee that something else wouldn't go wrong) I decided to quit while I was ahead and post the finished unit.

One of these days I'll get a good animation program but till then I will be stuck with unfortuanate errors that I can't see till its too late. Still its all part of the fun, I always get a little thrill when I play the animation through for the first time; Will it come out O.k? will the (almost inevitable) problems be highly visible?

 

[Dark Sheer]

@Smoking Mirror : What you can do to avoid this is to Open the Storyboard pcx in a program such as PSP and at the same time open it in Flicster. Flicster read the animation from the file each time you select a new direction. So what I do is paste a number of frame (or sometimes the whole direction ) then save and tab to Flicster to see how it looks. If I am not happy with it then I will just tab back to PSP and press Ctrl-Z (undo) for a few time and repaste again.

 

[wunder]

I've been wiating for a unit like this for a long time!!

Thank's a million!!!!

 

[Cyclonic]

I've added this as flavour for the French only, and called him "Tirailleur". I think this was a Napoleonic era name for any kind of musket or rifle infantry and it sounds appropriate.

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Cyclonic
I've added this as flavour for the French only, and called him "Tirailleur". I think this was a Napoleonic era name for any kind of musket or rifle infantry and it sounds appropriate.

The name for French infantry in Napoleonic era was:
- "Voltigeur" (small agile guy, for Skirmish)
- "Fusiliers" (standard troops)
- "Grenadiers" (big guys who where leading, or sometimes pushing, the others during assault).

This was for line infantry. For light infantry regiment, "Grenadier" became "Carabiniers"

Voltigeur, Grenadiers and Carabiniers were considered elite.

For the Guard, names were different. In French :
- Grenadier
- Fusilier Grenadier
- Tirailleur Grenadier
- Conscrits Grenadier
- Flanqueur Grenadier
- Vétérans
- Chasseurs à Pieds
- Fusiliers Chasseurs
- Tirailleurs chasseurs (later Voltigeur)
- Conscrits chasseur
- Flanqueurs Chasseur

 

[thestonesfan]

The unit looks great in the game, but the head is cut off on the build queue in the city screen. Someone might have mentioned it before.

 

[Smoking mirror]

For dark sheer; The problem is that the model is just that, a model, no animation routines or anything, the program I use is realy only designed for high quality stills. I have to position the model (and all the lights, transparent objects etc...), render in all 8 directions and then move it again to the next frame position. Once all the renders have been completed and the animation is finished, I then paste all the renders in to a story board. The first time I get to see the animation playing is when I paste all the frames. The positioning and rendering on its own takes about two hours for an animation of 10 frames so by the time I am ready to see if Ive made any mistakes Ive already devoted a significant amount of time to the animation, at this point I could storyboard only one direction for a preview, but bearing in mind that I a seldom prepared to devote another two hours to the same animation again a single direction preview would just be more time wasted. I could save each frame (the 3d model rather than the render), rendering only one direction for a preview, So I could go back and adjust the model in each saved frame, but each saved model is about 2-3 megs and with 10 frames per animation and 3-6 animations per unit that would quickly mount up. Also some problems, like the back leg, are ony visible fom a certain angle; So there is no garantee that a single direction preview would show up the problem.
Over all its all very anoying, but that just makes it more satisfying when a unit comes out well

On the issue of the build queue; Sadly how the unit is displayed in the build queue is independant of how its displayed on the map or in flickster; If you check the unit in flickster you will notice it is exactly alighned with the firaxis infantry units; but I think there is something in the X/Y offset that determines the difference between how it looks in game and how it apears on the build queue. I can't think of any way to change it though I think I have some Idea of haow to stop it happening in future units.