[Cosmetic] Battle Scenes

[qwertyhim513]

Hello dear sirs and madams, I go by the pseudonym Qwerty and before you leave this because of the title WAAAAAIITTTT. I just played the first few missions in the first campaign and I LOVE this game already. I do have one slight suggestion to add to the game, which might take alot or little work(don't know how coding works ). It doesn't affect balance or the gameplay in any way, but gives life to the battles in which the units fight in-namely battle scenes. I am not suggesting a cinematic intro to every battle, but a small battle scene that is used by other games similar to Battle for Wesnoth.

Here are a few pics to give you the general idea
Advance Warshttp://www.awesomegames.co.uk/wp-conten ... battle.jpg
Fire Emblemhttp://mybrainongames.files.wordpress.c ... scenes.jpg
Ancient Empires 2http://aimi.ru/uploads/posts/2011-12/13 ... lution.png
Warsonghttp://www.hardcoregaming101.net/langri ... song-2.png<-This one or fire emblem I feel might be the best in my opinion
A Battle Scene for a final mission could even be like this http://xaros429.deviantart.com/art/Fire ... -147784578

I'm not sure how it might work, but you could probably even use the animations already in the game to save time and effort. I just feel that it would add action and much to the games atmosphere. You could even have an option to remove battle scenes if you find them too distracting.

[beetlenaut]

This is quite possible, and not even that hard if you use the existing animations. It's just very time consuming. A few scenarios with animations at the beginning already exist, but not very many because it takes so long to do. The only way this is at all likely to happen is if you take it on as a project yourself. And you could! That's one of the nicest things about Wesnoth. While the bar is very high for getting your work into the main game, many of the people with campaigns on the add-on server are happy to accept any submissions that make their work more interesting.

[Xudo]

If it will be well-thought, it will be good idea.
I don't get: when I will actually see all those animations? It will happen when any two units fight each-other? Or it will be some kind of cutscene?

[firefox]

since qwerty used the fire emblem animations as an example i guess it will be used for every battle.
so the concept could be the following:

when a unit attacks another unit a "battle window" will pop up.
the window consists of two "frames" next to each other, displaying the terrain and the units on it.
then the battle animation is played in horizontal perspective (the unit on the left strikes the unit on the right).
after the battle the window disappears.

instead of watching the battle from the top-down perspective we get to see it close up.

the advantage of this system would be that only one battle animation is needed instaed of 2, 3 or 4.
however it could make the game slower, depending on how fast the windows will appear.
but a small open/close animation definitly makes it look more fluid.

[Xudo]

If it will be used for every battle, then:
1. Number of displayed units should be equal to number of strikes. If they will attack simultaneously, then game might be faster for battles of high-strike-units.
How to draw hero units? Will Konrad actually feature two ninjas around?
Take into account, that "hero" unit frames should not die on battle scene before whole unit dies.
One should improve [unit_type] declaration to support "hero bodyguards" animation. I think it is enough to name existing unit types.
What to do if hero do have ranged attack while his bodyguards doesn't?
What to do to display "touch" attack of Lich?

2. "Battle scene" window can be an improvement of current "choose attack" window. It will show whole picture for attacker and default animation for defender. I think it is good, that there will be no new entities in the game.

3. Scenery for all terrain types and transition should be created too. I think current terrain graphics will not be good in this case.
There is some questions: Are units in water actually on the ships? Or may be shallow water is not very deep?
How to draw units who is a bit submerged in swamps/water/anything else?
Will "forest" feature trees on the battlefield?

4. There will be a lot of new WML for terrains and for units to support this feature.

[iceiceice]

I had vague ideas to make an option where whenever combat happens, the game will zoom in for the animations, sort of like what happens in Civ IV. Since the xBRZ thing was added and there are some other related improvements, it might look pretty good. It would be hard to say without trying it to see how it feels.

Another thing to consider -- there are some features requested to improve the "tunnels" feature in the game. Tunnels let you create a passageway that connects two distant hexes, through which units may move. However the feature doesn't work very well -- there are several bugs reported, it's not possible to make the passageways transmit vision or attacks, only units, and also the implementation is not very good, it will be very inefficient if there are many tunnels in a map.

It's not totally clear what it should look like in the game if two units attack eachother which are far apart but are adjacent because of a tunnel. We could just play their attack animations in whatever hexes they are at, and if they can't be shown on the same screen, only show one of them. But if we had a "battle dialog" it would solve this problem.

[Crow_T]

I like the zoom in idea, that could be cool if done right. Adding these http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 30#p436843 could make it better.

[qwertyhim513]

Wow alot of replies already . Understand before you read this that I'm pretty new to Battle of Wesnoth and know hardly any technical terms. Well, without further ado...

This is quite possible, and not even that hard if you use the existing animations. It's just very time consuming. A few scenarios with animations at the beginning already exist, but not very many because it takes so long to do. The only way this is at all likely to happen is if you take it on as a project yourself. And you could! That's one of the nicest things about Wesnoth. While the bar is very high for getting your work into the main game, many of the people with campaigns on the add-on server are happy to accept any submissions that make their work more interesting.

Ahh... here is my greatest sin. I have alot of free time for now, but I know absolutely nothing about computer or game coding. I have written about 0 lines of code ... so if I am to do this, I would need GREAT assistance. I will be willing to do this, if someone shows me step by step how to do it. Now as to address you second point, I have a question: what are add-on servers?

since qwerty used the fire emblem animations as an example i guess it will be used for every battle.

Correct

the advantage of this system would be that only one battle animation is needed instaed of 2, 3 or 4.however it could make the game slower, depending on how fast the windows will appear.but a small open/close animation definitly makes it look more fluid.

If you are talking about game slower in terms of lag, perhaps it would be a better idea to not add it in. If you are talking about game slower in terms of gameplay, perhaps there could be an option to speed it up or even not have battle scenes.

I had vague ideas to make an option where whenever combat happens, the game will zoom in for the animations, sort of like what happens in Civ IV. Since the xBRZ thing was added and there are some other related improvements, it might look pretty good. It would be hard to say without trying it to see how it feels.

Never played Civ IV so I couldn't give an opinion. Also, what is the xBRZ thing?

If it will be used for every battle, then:
1. Number of displayed units should be equal to number of strikes. If they will attack simultaneously, then game might be faster for battles of high-strike-units.
How to draw hero units? Will Konrad actually feature two ninjas around?
Take into account, that "hero" unit frames should not die on battle scene before whole unit dies.
One should improve [unit_type] declaration to support "hero bodyguards" animation. I think it is enough to name existing unit types.
What to do if hero do have ranged attack while his bodyguards doesn't?
What to do to display "touch" attack of Lich?

2. "Battle scene" window can be an improvement of current "choose attack" window. It will show whole picture for attacker and default animation for defender. I think it is good, that there will be no new entities in the game.

3. Scenery for all terrain types and transition should be created too. I think current terrain graphics will not be good in this case.
There is some questions: Are units in water actually on the ships? Or may be shallow water is not very deep?
How to draw units who is a bit submerged in swamps/water/anything else?
Will "forest" feature trees on the battlefield?

4. There will be a lot of new WML for terrains and for units to support this feature.

There will probably have to be a new sprite for heros, or use make the sprite of the hero look like a regular unit but larger??? As for your third point, if you ever played advance wars and had infantry attack from a river, I think you will understand my answer. If you haven't, Advance wars had I think a "shading" layer for when infantry were in the river. I can't find an example on google to show you ...They even had Forrest images. Also what does WML stand for?

Another thing to consider -- there are some features requested to improve the "tunnels" feature in the game. Tunnels let you create a passageway that connects two distant hexes, through which units may move. However the feature doesn't work very well -- there are several bugs reported, it's not possible to make the passageways transmit vision or attacks, only units, and also the implementation is not very good, it will be very inefficient if there are many tunnels in a map.

I just started Battle for Wesnoth so I don't even know what tunnels look like so you kind of lost me there. If you are saying that when a unit is attacked from a tunnel, you can't see the attacker, you could always have one side of the battle screen stay black, but have the other side have units take damage.


After some considerations, I think Advance Wars or Ancient Empires 2 method might have to be the way battlescreens have to implemented if they ever are added. The reasoning behind this would help with the transition of units attacking from different terrain and also when range units attack melee units. That is unless someone is willing to do what warsong did with a transition for every terrain which while it does look nice, would take forever.

What I mean with advance warshttp://playwhatyoulikesrpgreviews.files ... .jpg?w=808
Example Advance Wars Backgrounds http://postimg.org/image/pdw8giwvb/

[Xudo]

Your idea is quite good and new here. I can't recall anything similar. More than that, there is a new wesnoth development cycle starts, so chances of accepting are high.

You could try to start from WML to learn programming. When you grasp basics, you can continue with c++. A lot of people did this way here.

If you are talking about game slower in terms of gameplay, perhaps there could be an option to speed it up or even not have battle scenes.

I have meant terms of gameplay. Instead of watching 4 consecutive animations of attack, you will see 4 simultaneous animations.

You can get examples of xBRZ here.

The actual idea of tunnels should be discussed in special thread. I don't see any problems with tunnels from battle scenes. You take attacker's terrain, defender's terrain and make some "magical"-looking blurring between them.

Background like in Advance Wars can be a default solution for terrains without transitions.

The problem with submerged units is shown on this picture:

Problem with submerged units.png (19.43 KiB) Viewed 7656 times

You can't use single terrain image for whole battlefield in case of submerged units. Though, you can use default terrain graphics for ground and add only "sky" graphics.

[beetlenaut]

It seems like I misunderstood what you meant, so WML by itself won't be enough to create it. I can define the technical terms for you though.

WML: Wesnoth Markup Language. It is the code used for creating scenarios and campaigns. It is not very difficult to learn. (This project would require C++, which is a normal programming language, and usually takes years to get good at if you're starting from scratch.)

add-on server: The main menu of BfW has an option called "Add-ons". If you click it, it will connect you to our server which holds hundreds of campaigns, scenarios, maps, and other content created by BfW players (for which they mostly used WML).

xBRZ: A program for scaling up sprites so they still look decent at large sizes. Later versions of BfW will probably use it for zooming in, and it could have other uses too. Like this idea. Xudo linked to a thread about it.

tunnel: This is a term from WML. If two hexes are connected by a tunnel, you can teleport a unit from one hex to the other. (Teleporter probably would have been a better name, but it already meant something else.) It looks like whatever the map's creator wants it to, and probably won't be called a tunnel on the map. You currently can't attack a unit through the tunnel, so I'm pretty sure tunnels wouldn't be a problem unless this changes.

[iceiceice]

One of the feature requests I referred to was here: https://gna.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=19682

[Xudo]

One important thing: day-night cycle is important in this game. Sky should not be always "blue and sunny". Each time of day should have it's own "sky picture".

[firefox]

when i was browsing the core data to search for images and icons for my add-on,
i stumbled upon theese nice time shedules:

ToD-day2.png (20.49 KiB) Viewed 7585 times

ToD-day3.png (18.89 KiB) Viewed 7585 times

ToD-day1.png (20.57 KiB) Viewed 7585 times

ToD-night.png (19.21 KiB) Viewed 7585 times

i think they would be perfect for this.

[Xudo]

Those pictures are good, but they are too small. If we use xBRZ algorythm to them, we will get giant stars. Don't forget about UtBS shedule too.