SVN Portraits directories

[thespaceinvader]

I'm not sure about the provenance of the current state of organisation, but I ran into a slight issue with committing the Death Knight portrait - it's a collaboration between Girgistan and myself, but the folders are arranged by artist, of course. I stuck it into my directory for the moment (because i don't know Girgistan's name to make a joint one, and i wasn't sure whether that was the correct thing to do anyway).

I wonder, since we're starting to have a significant amount of portraits available, whether it's worth changing the organisation of the portraits so that they're organised like the sprites, by faction/species/whatever. This would help newer UMC makers who might not be aware of which artists have done which portraits.

Does this sound like a reasonable proposition?

[Turuk]

Does this sound like a reasonable proposition?

I would agree with that. I know that it does take away from giving the artists credit for their hard work as it currently shows the player who has done what, but players have noted that they have to look through the folders each time to find the portraits they need. The increasing number of portraits available (thanks to the wonderful work of the artistic community, which seems to be growing daily anymore) would only add to complicating the system as it stands. The creators would no longer have to look but could specify images/portraits/loyalists/spearman.png, streamlining the process.

I know the argument against this is that it only takes a handful of minutes for the user to go through and find the directory to the portrait they need, but I would think that something that would prove easier for the user might be a step forward.

[turin]

It would still be nice to somehow credit the portrait artists and list who did each piece, though... perhaps a "portrait info file" would be useful, along with the "music info file" I've been suggesting - just a plaintext file listing all the portraits and who painted them.

[thespaceinvader]

A file containing full lists of specific credits for things like portraits, music, animations would be a good idea - the credits are great, but they're massive and unspecific.

[Iris]

I agree with TSI that the current organization is messy and unclear when it comes to joint works. And it kind of bothers me to organize portrait directories by the artists' real names anyway; it is not how it is done in the rest of Wesnoth for other work, and it makes it feel like a random set of contribution stuck there.

Anyway, it would be trivial to add a README or AUTHORS file in a new portraits directory with the list of who made what. And Girgistran (right name?) appears in the SotBE credits with his real name.

[torangan]

I agree, an AUTHORS file is probably better for everyone.

[Boucman]

how about adding it to credit.cfg ?

that's moer or less the purpose of the file...

[turin]

how about adding it to credit.cfg ?

that's moer or less the purpose of the file...

Is it? It seems to me the credits.cfg file is more for giving a list of everyone who contributed to the project and a brief description of what they did, not giving an exhaustive list of who did what piece of art... it would be overkill to show it in the scrolling credits, and I don't really like the idea of including it as a dozens-to-hundreds-of-lines-long comment in the same file as a bunch of actual WML.

[kitty]

just one more yes, the current system doesn't make any sense and has no advantages.

[thespaceinvader]

There seems to be a consensus of this being a good idea, and I've got a credits file worked up (attached) which I think has everything from the current SVN (apart from those in 'other', since with one exception, I'm not sure who did them, and most of them have been superseded anyway, or will be soon) and would go into the 'portraits' directory in data/core.

But what I want to ask is whether there is some way of automating the process of changing over from one file structure to the other, particularly of editing all of the affected unit cfgs... If there's not, I'll see about maybe changing this all over myself, but it is a big job (ALL the elves, most of the loyalists with more coming thick and fast, all the mages... etc etc), and I am prone to human error. And not that good with SVN yet.

Also, would it be a good idea to keep the older, superseded versions? Possibly in resources...

[Cernunnos]

I'm sorry that the following is not totally in the subject, but and only if what was raised by thespaceinvader just before :

But what I want to ask is whether there is some way of automating the process of changing over from one file structure to the other

is correct,

Then, maybe the terrain tiles directories should be changed too, since it begins to be quite a mess over there...

as for an example the data/core/images/terrain directory contains chasm/lava/desert/forest-hills/fog/ some castles/ mountains in cascade/ ice/ windmill... whereas there's sub directories for most other things (or even part of these tiles) to be ordered in...
Maybe a configuration matching the editor groups would go fine?

This is just a suggestion... sorry for not being exactly in the topic but i though it could go in without uselessly creating another one...

Thanks a lot, bye.

edit: well in fact if it has to be reorganized, it would not be the same amount of files to change so i could give a try...

[Jetrel]

Feel free to completely reorganize the portraits. The only reason I'd organized it the way I had at the time, was that most of our portraits were extremely diverse in style, most artists had theirs nearly targeted at individual races, and it was a way of keeping individual accreditation for individual portraits - a bit of data that usually gets lost. Also, there was occasional overlap of multiple artists doing portraits for the same units (both neo and pickslide had done portraits for the orcish grunt line, for example). We weren't sure which direction we were going in, so we wanted to keep both around (we also didn't have the wesnoth UMC dev repo at the time).

Now that we actually have real momentum behind the portrait project, this can all be totally revised. The only thing that would be nice to keep is some lossless retention of that credit data, in whatever form is convenient.

I'm sorry that the following is not totally in the subject, but and only if what was raised by thespaceinvader just before :
...

Then, maybe the terrain tiles directories should be changed too, since it begins to be quite a mess over there...
...

The rule to getting stuff done on a large project like this is: one thing at a time, please.
Terrain could really use a reorganization, but let's not discuss or think about it in this thread.

[thespaceinvader]

I think I've got a new (and working) copy of the portrait directory and units directory sorted with all the requisite images and WML in it (and the file structure set out for the remaining portraits which have yet to be done).

It's gratifyingly full, actually, particularly in widely-used units. The major speaking role that remain unfilled and have noone currently working on them are the orcs (which are my next major project in the planning), the remaining human and the drakes (which i'm sitting on gorgeous sketches for from Girgistan, also waiting to be inked and coloured).

I post to ask if there; anything specific I ought to do in preparation for changing the structures over, or is it as simple as deleting the old portrait directory, adding the new, and updating all the .cfgs?

[Iris]

We weren't sure which direction we were going in, so we wanted to keep both around (we also didn't have the wesnoth UMC dev repo at the time).

And what does my repository have to do here?

thespaceinvader: you should discuss it with ESR so wmllint can be "taught" to upgrade existing UMC to the new schema.

[thespaceinvader]

I've just completed an exhaustive list of portraits so that ER can use WMLlint to make the transfer.

Would you believe that there are a total of 157 portraits on SVN? Of those 110 are transparent/profile duplicates. There are 55 portraits in the canon style, 37 by kitty, 12 by LordBob, 6 by me, and 1 collab between me and Girgistan. There are 47 which require replacement. There are around 200 (at a vague gues based on the 196 unit cfgs in mainline, and a rough guess at the number of those which have female variants and the number which have more than one unit coped with by a single portrait. So we're at least 1/4 of the way there, and as i said, most of the speaking roles are filled.