Unit Preview: Yevon YAT-97 Artillery Mech

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, my next unit project is here and just about ready to get started. I'm doing what will be the third Yevon UU (if Kinboat completes his Modern Legion before I get done with this, that is). The YAT series of Machina are dual barreled, hovering mortar droids. These suckers could also probably be used for other Sci-Fi scenarios as artillery or AA units.

Anyways, the preview is below. Blue parts will be civ-colored (if that's too much civ-coloring, please let me know).

 

[Mr. Do]

Wow, that looks really good, just like I remember it!

 

[Dease]

thats one cool unit

Civcoloouring is perfect IMO and the texture looks really cool

Assuming this guy fires forward (instead of upwards), how does he/it deal with the force of the backfire?

 

[muffins]

Sweet! I especially like the textures

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, glad you guys like it. The particular texture was chosen becasue this particular unit has a similar texture in FF X The main difference is that the Civ-colored areas are pale green on the original. Since pale green is the civ-color I assigned to Yevon in my FF mod, it works out. Anyways, I've slightly re-did the texture on the civ-colored areas to make them a bit brighter (this version, when I translated it to 256 colors had some of the darker parts of the civ-colored areas turned into gray colors), and I finished the default and run animations. I'll be working on the fidget and fortify animations tonight (I'll most like ly include some non-canon laser eye attack b&c anims for those who don't want to use this as a dedicated artillery unit).

Also note that I'm running out of attachment space and only have about 2 megs left. What that means is that I can only add two more units at most until I can either get (a) a high-speed internet conneciton that allows me to upload 1-2 meg files via the file upload service, or (b) my current slow-@$$ connection becomes stable enough to allow the use of the upload service for uploading large files or (c) someone who has high-speed access is willing to upload my old units to the file server (and PM me with the addresses) so I can clear my attachment folder. The reason I'm mentioning this is that it'll most likely be at least 5 months before I have my own place where I can get high-speed internet installed, and the only way my current access will be either fast or stable enough to have a reasonable chance of successfully uploading the files to the server will be about two weeks from now. Also, I'd like to assure someone who requested a certain unit from me that I'll be doing that one next, so he shouldn't worry about it not getting done before I run out of space.

Anyways, here's the run animation:

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Odd selection for a unique unit, since Machina(as they call them) are supposed to be banned threwout their civilization...those buddest wannabe hypocrists!

 

[Hunter Noventa]

thats one cool unit

Civcoloouring is perfect IMO and the texture looks really cool

Assuming this guy fires forward (instead of upwards), how does he/it deal with the force of the backfire?

I recall that it fires at an angle. Something like 45 degrees. And it hovers, so dealing with rocoil is easy enough.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Odd selection for a unique unit, since Machina(as they call them) are supposed to be banned threwout their civilization...those buddest wannabe hypocrists!

That's kind of the point. The Church of Yevon (and later the New Yevon) used these Machina to defend their most sacred places. The New Yevon (in FF X-2) used the formerly forbidden machina openly.

Dease, Hunter Noventa is right, the YATs fired their mortar cannons at a 45 degree angle. I'll have them rock to the side slightly, as well as incorporate a recoil device into the gun arm (it'll move back slightly with each shot). Yeah, and the hovering part is my excuse for giving this unit the ability to ignore movement cost on ALL terrain That way, Yevon players won't have to worry about their artillery lagging behind their modern age blitzkrieg.

I've finished the fidget animation, and will be working on the fortify animation later tonight, and I'll post a preview of my progress then. Right now, my ship just pulled into Pearl Harbor, HI, and I'll be going over to visit the Arizona memorial and the USS Missouri (maybe take some pics for some certain unit makers to use when making their models ).

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Never played X-2. I am very sceptical of Final Fantasy sequels to be honest

 

[Dease]

OK, I see your point regarding recoil, I just figured the guns are SOO big he'd just fall over when firing

As for the run I'd say add some nice big billowing dust trails, that is, unless the anti gravity thingamagig doesn't stir up any dirt/dust, I just think your present run looks a bit too much like a default animation .

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Sword, I haven't played X-2 yet, but I have the strategy guide, that's how I know (I even used that to flesh out the city and great-leader lists for Yevon and Al Bhed)

Well, I had to completly re-render the animations. When I went to re-do the run aniamtion ( I added some tilt to make it look more like it's going forward), when I discovered that the droid was hovering too low, and was scraping bottom on the downward part of the animation, so I raised the whole thing up a ways, and that resulted in my having to increase the boder size of the animation (otherwise the smoke from the attack animation wouldn't fit). Anyways, here's the all-new fidget and run animations:

 

[muffins]

That's really rather good!

Also note that I'm running out of attachment space and only have about 2 megs left. What that means is that I can only add two more units at most until I can either get (a) a high-speed internet conneciton that allows me to upload 1-2 meg files via the file upload service, or (b) my current slow-@$$ connection becomes stable enough to allow the use of the upload service for uploading large files or (c) someone who has high-speed access is willing to upload my old units to the file server (and PM me with the addresses) so I can clear my attachment folder.

It just so happens that I'm getting broadband installed this monday If you want, PM me with links to the items you want uploaded and I'll give it a bash perhaps Monday night or Tuesday

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Thanks, Muffins, the links to all my units are in the unit artists library. Don't worry about the sound packs I did for the units where I uploaded the sounds separately, since I might be able to do those myself (and those don't take up as much attachment space anyways).

I've got the fortify animation finished today. Preview below:

 

[Spart]

Do you use Open Fx??! That looks really cool!

 

[Dease]

I'm pretty sure HT is using bryce for this unit.


Anyway, that fortify looks good although maybe shorten up the laser since when it's fortified it just freezes it at the last frame and a bunch of long lasers might look a bit wierd (and the northen views would get cut off)

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Okie dokie, it's update time again. I decided to make this unit as accurate as possible, I'd do some.... research by playing FFX (plus I wanted to get to the part where you finally get the airship and can do some real exploring). After fighting about ten dozen YAT-97's on my way through Zanarkand dome, I've got enough viewing time to do the death and attack animations properly. I also re-did my fortify animation based on this new info. You see, when the YAT's are in the back row (and out of range of all the charachters except Wakka), they aim and fire both barrels at once, and they do that two times in a row, hitting the entire party with the volley. I've updated the fortify animation and got enough of the attack rendered to post a preview (the attack animation is almost done rendering, but will probably take another 40 minutes).

A few other notes: Spart, Dease is right, I made this unit entirely in Bryce. I actually managed to get a stable enough connection while the ship was in Hawaii to download the small version of Open FX, but for some reason, after I unzipped the file and tried to run the installer, it always aborts installation at about the halfway point. I'm beginning to suspect that my Zip disk has some bad sectors (I've yet to own a Zip disk that's lasted for more than 8 months before going bad), and that the file may have become corrupt, but for whatever reason, I can't get Open FX to install (unless the unpacked version needs more than 3 gigs of disk space) without it coming up with some kind of transfer error and aborting.

Dease, I did the lasers the way I did for a reason, and they do not, in fact, get cut off in the north facing direction. You'll understand after seeing this latest preview...

I'd also like to thank Muffins for uploading all my old unit projects to the server, and I'll update those posts and delete the attachments as soon as possible (it most likely will be an all day project, but at least I'll be able to keep making units).

Anyways, the order of the preview is fidget, run, fortify and attack.

 

[Mr. Do]

I like it, although I'm not sure if I fully appreciate the laser part (?)...

 

[muffins]

I actually managed to get a stable enough connection while the ship was in Hawaii to download the small version of Open FX, but for some reason, after I unzipped the file and tried to run the installer, it always aborts installation at about the halfway point.

I had that too ... twice. I have the feeling that when OpenFX got updated, the small version wasn't packaged properly.

The full version works fine ... if you like your modem to glow red hot from downloading it that is