Directional facing graphics should be removed

[TrashMan]

And if you are thinking about "other animations or features" as artwork for completely new units, user interface, etc., then I'm sorry to tell you that having been here for mere 3 days means you don't have the experience required to suggest anything; see the link to the Wesnoth Philosophy (TWP) in my signature. Things don't work here the way they'd work in a commercial game.

I'm well aware of that. I've been modding for over 7 years and I've been part of at least 3 full game projects (not mods, full games). But commenting on things never hurt nobody.
And you, as the lead developers, can offer incentives for people to work on specific things.

Yup, I agree that direction sprites are pretty redundant. Especially for units with capes/cloaks.

Well, it's definately something to look out for. Everything you see from the back is a cloak + something sticking out. It's no problem when you have 1-2 units like that, but when you have a dozen units you're running a danger of making them all look the same, since the amount of detail is even more limited.
Take this is a valid concern, nothing more.

[Neoskel]

Well a lot of the cloaks are different colors but i see the issue.

[torangan]

You should have more trust in our art team. Unless I'm completely mistaken north facing standing frames won't happen to prevent such problems. One for sw/s/se and one for nw/n/ne makes more sense and shows enough of the unit to be recognisable.

[thespaceinvader]

And you, as the lead developers, can offer incentives for people to work on specific things.

Exactly what incentives do you suggest offering? Bear in mind that the game produces no income and no products not on general release (i.e. goodies which could be offered as incentives, such as t-shirts, posters etc), and currently cannot afford to run its own servers, let alone pay artists.

About the only incentive which can be offered is seeing your artwork in-game. Which is a good incentive to some artists, and already IS offered...

[TrashMan]

How about an e-cookie?

[Chris NS]

If you're going to argue over projects which will involve artists putting a lot of work in (or anyone else putting a lot of work in), you really need to follow the early development releases and say which new features you don't like, before any more work is done on it.

Calling for a new feature to be scrapped, after one year's worth of art contributions have been put into it, is unlikely to go down well.

[zookeeper]

If you're going to argue over projects which will involve artists putting a lot of work in (or anyone else putting a lot of work in), you really need to follow the early development releases and say which new features you don't like, before any more work is done on it.

Yeah, except that new features like that tend to be started on a whim or at least without prior warning, and if you argue against them, you're going to get told that "let's see how it works out". And after we see how it works out, it "can't" be removed anymore because someone spent some time on it already.

Calling for a new feature to be scrapped, after one year's worth of art contributions have been put into it, is unlikely to go down well.

Which is unfortunate since it's completely irrational.

[Iris]

And you, as the lead developers, can offer incentives for people to work on specific things.

I am not lead developer... I'm lesser developer actually. So my words means nothing to the world.

[turin]

The thing is, "scrapping" NE-facing frames wouldn't actually waste any art at all; the NE frames would still be used for attack and defense animations, it just wouldn't be used for the static frame. There would be no throwing out of perfectly good artwork, just a change in when the artwork was used. So we could very easily remove directional facing frames without actually removing anything...

[Vendanna]

And why? I don't see any benefit in throwing out the north facing images nor a true reason to do so, after all you already should know what units you have at your disposal and usually know where you put them.

If you find something you don't know, you actually mouse over it, and its rather intuitive and give a feeling of completeness to the game.

Obviously, I also know that there is people that is adamant into no changing anything at all (if ain't broke don't fix it they could tell) but I don't see anything wrong with more quality art.

And after all, while some may don't want it on wesnoth, north facing/north movement could do whonders for another games using the wesnoth art (x-com esque type need north frames, and golden axe types too) so unless it actually damages gameplay horribly I will vote in favor of the north facings.

[zookeeper]

If you find something you don't know, you actually mouse over it, and its rather intuitive and give a feeling of completeness to the game.

Does it really give you a sense of completeness when a hundredth, a quarter, half or two thirds of the units in the game have directional standing frames/animations and the rest don't? That's pretty much exactly the opposite of "completeness" to me.

[Vendanna]

Does it really give you a sense of completeness when a hundredth, a quarter, half or two thirds of the units in the game have directional standing frames/animations and the rest don't? That's pretty much exactly the opposite of "completeness" to me.

I was refering to the completed unit not the overall units that are still missing the "feature"

Obviously, the game will probably look better the next year since graphically most things will be done (I suspect that the TC will be completed in that time) and the north facings gives a sense of completion on the units that already has them.

The others simply had not that privilege yet, but that's the society where they live that made them that way.

[Urs]

I ... don't think this should happen.

I mean, once directional facings and animations are going to be completed, it's going to look a lot better. And people aren't going to have a lot of trouble memorizing two frames for a unit, considering they are the same unit, with a lot of the same equipment visible.
Pop Quiz: What unit is this?

See?

Really, directional frames and animations will be a huge factor in making the game look better and more polished.

[Blarumyrran]

if there was an option for turning them off, it would be grand indeed.

[irrevenant]

Pop Quiz: What unit is this?

Hmm, not sure. It looks like the Elvish Fighter, but looks too broad in girth. Is it a human fighter unit of some kind?

See?

I see that the quality of the implementation makes a huge difference. If the art is poor (or even adequate) then it works poorly. Whether it works okay when the art is great remains to be seen.

if there was an option for turning them off, it would be grand indeed.

Seconded for an option to turn it off for the standing frames. It should still be used for the attack frames even with the option off though.