mostly Saurians

[Midnight_Carnival]

I opened this thread to remind myself of the other things I said I would do since I'm quite busy now.
I hate saying I'll do things and then not doing them!

My attempts at portraiture have me attempting to dislocate my jaw and bite out my own throat. I thought I'd annoy you with this instead.

I'll just dump my attempts at sprites here ok?
I was working on a Saurian Campaign (weren't we all?) called Phoenix Empire, the storyline is still posted somewhere, and Quite apart from that, I used to love the Modified Classical Era, and Made my own Era of Gravitas based on this. I discussed re-releasing a MC Era with somebody, if anyone is still interested in that i have a few sprites and naturally loads of ideas.

Here's one of those tree thingies (well, it's not really that much of a tree, more of a grass actually) of my Imperial Saurian faction for the PEmpire campaign.

Saurian_tree.png (36.9 KiB) Viewed 4913 times

Later on they get normal Saurian units. The Assassin and Chameleon I stole straight out of MC Era because they were so great, I included them in my tree, but they are not my images! Not that it really matters, since my images are largely frankies anyway... The Spectre Lizard I also stole, but I at least had the decency to redraw the images (only finished one image and one attack frame so far) I also want to make the heroes: Tzarak, the bold Saurian Proconsul who becomes Dictator and finally Emperor (but see the plot [wherever the hell that is]) Ezarra, his sister, the Saurian Sword-mistress and some old guy who's name I forgot who becomes starts out Quaestor and becomes Senator, then Censor and of course the Cybil.

I also had to include my Dark Elven Geisha, from the Era of Gravitas I wrote, because she's well pretty.

dark-geisha.png (1.5 KiB) Viewed 4913 times

Any comments, criticisms, queries, contributions, sarcastic remarks, off-topic comments, flaming, trolling, racial or homophobic slurs, pornographic attachments or character assasination attempts would be more than welcome thanx.

Oh, one more thing: If anyone posts "good luck with your campaign" you owe me a beer.

[thespaceinvader]

Don't use pure black. Even the darkest blacks IRL are not #000000. Using it just looks wrong. Check out the mainline Assassin to see how black is done.

[Leid]

I am creating a Saurians Faction and, when I see your Saurian sprites... I feel jealousy

They are awesome !!!!
Congratulations!!

(One of mines are my nick image hehehe )

[Hulavuta]

Leid: It's called an avatar, "nick image" doesn't really make much sense IMO,

Midnight_Carnival: I like your revamp on the Specter Lizard. BTW the Assassin and Specter are from the Marsh Era, (did MC mean that? Disregard this if it did.) originally.

[johndh]

A Janissary leveling into a Gallowglass? Say whaaaaaat?

The sprites themselves are pretty cool, though.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Midnight_Carnival: I like your revamp on the Specter Lizard. BTW the Assassin and Specter are from the Marsh Era, (did MC mean that? Disregard this if it did.) originally.

I think Modified Classical Era and Marsh Era were done by the same guy (?) Well anyway, I stole them.

I am creating a Saurians Faction and, when I see your Saurian sprites... I feel jealousy

They are awesome !!!!
Congratulations!!

(One of mines are my nick image hehehe )

Don't envy me, send me your sprites (unless you want to keep them to yourself), I may frank them to hell and back, but I'd really apreciate them. Also if you have ideas for new Saurian units I'd apreciate them too.

BTW The historical inconsistency is explained in the unit descriptions ...sort of

[Midnight_Carnival]

I've been working on the portrait thing a bit, drawing the clothes. Do you have any idea how difficult it can be to draw cloth?

Anyway, I'll post it one day to much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth no doubt.

For now some more work on the Saurians I did quickly:

Saurian_tree.png (40.7 KiB) Viewed 4697 times

The Janissary, Gallowglass and Imperail Guardsman need a lot of work since they currently look tacky, and then their's still the animations Special thanks to Leid who's sprites I butchered for frankenpieces used in the production of some of the units you see above.

The Gallowglass' axe I also think I need to change, I want it to still look bronze, but shorter and somehow more brutal, also I have to draw the G'Haman hunter, not sure what he'll look like, but he fights with a steel mace (stolen from Humans) and a razor-sharp obsidian-edged war-boomerang!

My imagination is malfuntioning at present.

Also, the pure mat black (which could theoretically make someone invisible) I won't change it on the Assassin and Chameleon becuase those weren't my sprites -hoping that their creator will feel inclined to change them- and also because there are a lot of animations, but with the ones I drew which use bits of them, I'll change the black (I don't draw that many animations anyway) Just one more thing to fix.
Wesnoth and OCD go hand in hand... perhaps the one causes the other

[Midnight_Carnival]

I badly need to distract myself again
appologies for the fourm-abuse.

I thought IF I ever get free time again, I'd work on the Remodified Classical era first before trying my Saurian campaign, this is because I have to relearn WML, and I think it would be simpler to write an era thingy than a campaign.

It's based on the Era of Gravitas (which I made but it wasn't good enough) to show anyone, which in turn was based on the Modified Classical era (my favorite).

The concept behind RC era is simple: Most of the factions are "pure", for want of a better term, thus Dwarves don't have Outlaw units and Drakes don't have Saurians. There is the Outcast faction (from MC era, only I gave them Ogres) which has Outlaws and Saurian units, I might add Goblins too. I wanted each side to have at least two of the following:
-a unit which heals
-a unit with leadership
-a unit with poison
-a unit which illuminates
-a level 0 unit (for the panda!)

I had no ethical problem stealing units from campaigns, etc... so if it looks like your unit, chances are it is yours! Just took the ones I liked, and the ones which allowed things to stay balanced.
You've seen some of my Saurians, here are my additions to the Dwarves and Drakes with short notes:

Gdwarves.png (29.23 KiB) Viewed 4555 times

Obviously need to do some work on some of them, may also make the housewife level 1 instead of 0, oh, and that's not a mirror in her hand, that's a fryingpan That was the Dwarves' healing unit, but she only gets the +4 healing. Dwarves are very strong, but expenisve and didn't have a many units with good specials, I was going to steal that witness guy, but he didn't work. Prospectors have fire + impact attacks, very good against undead. Engineers have piercing and magical bomb impact (was going to make it melee, but they could just lob it)

Gdrakes.png (27.73 KiB) Viewed 4555 times

the Emberflys are not drakes, but tiny wyverns who can only grow to about the size of a dog, they are clever, but not really intelligent they have ilumination and poison tail. They were very useful. I don't like the graphics I did for them though. I remember someone posting a wyvern, perhaps I could base the new one on that. The Firefly is bigger and has fire like a Drake, but fairly weak, still illuminates and poisons. Like the Dwarves, the Drakes in Gravitas were strong, but unblanced because the other sides had lots of fancy units, even with the Emberflies they were at a disadvantage, so I originally gave them Mermaid Intiates, but why, how? I made the Drake Friar, turns into the Drake Sage. A weak spellcaster unit with a magical impact "air fist" attack (couldn't draw a suitible icon for that), the sage gets basic healing and a cyclone attack, but not much advance in terms of HP or melee damage.

Do you have suggestion for my units or their graphics? If you can make suggestions for the RC era (point out units I sould steal), I'll aprecaite that too, but I can't do much on it right now. Just fiddled with some of the graphics today.

[wesfreak]

A lot of the sprites seem to be a bit blurry in places, like the nose of the drake friar, the face of the emberfly and most of the dwarvish hats and helmets. (there are also a few stray pixels floating around.)

One suggestion for drakes is to change them into Arctic drakes, with a small recolour and a few fire as well as cold units, and give them a 30% fire and 30% cold resistance but keep the arcane weakness. That should make them much more durable. Alternatively, you can use a drake alchemyst (with an arcane attack, a cold potion and some healing (one already exits, but I can't remember from where)) and pygmy drakes, with 60% -70% defence, with an impact weakness (because they're small flying units) and to make them otherwise similar to saurian skirmisher in terms of hp, cost and damage (but not damage type).

[homunculus]

just wanted to see what your geisha would look like with more saturated shadows, and got this (i guess i might as well post it):

dark-geisha-saturated-shadows.png (1.38 KiB) Viewed 4446 times

might not look pale enough for a dark-elf anymore, though.
reminds me that i have some half-completed drawings myself.

chameleons for saurian assassins : ))

[thespaceinvader]

NO PURE BLACK. Or even colours close to it. It looks bad, and makes the sprite as a whole extremely difficult to read. As a general rule, going any darker than the Human Assassin is something you want to consider VERY carefully, then more than likely, not do.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Thank you.

homunculus - I love what you did to my geisha. Now you can fix all my sprites... No, I'm joking. Any help, recolour, redrawing, new versions or suggested units would be treasured. (but avoid pure black or thespaceinvader will get you) I'll put any I can't use in the Extras folder where I put units that would mess up the balance or ones I need to work on some more.

wesfreak - I know. The bluriness bugs me, but like I said, these were just quick compilations, fixed my old sprites (if you think these are bad, you don't even want to see them) and posted to stop myself going crazy and also to have something to live for after my accademic work is done . I'll go over them with 100% opacity stuff, and defrank them slightly, especially the sapper, he looks like something out of southpark.

As for the Frost Drake idea. I like it, but might not use it because to me Saurians are kind of Frost Drakes. In my Imperial Saurian campaign, the protagonist's sister Ezara magically transforms into a Frost Dragon. Damnit, now you're making me want to do work on that while I have to sort all kinds of other stuff out!
Anyway, if you can find the Drake Alchemist that would be great!

Any suggestions, critique and contributions will be greatly apreciated, just sad that I can't implement them right now
Most flattered that people are taking an interest in my attempt to make an era.

-Peace and Blessings.

[homunculus]

@ tsi & carnival

well, yeah, slight tweaks to the robes, hair and team colors were a careless accident on my part, because i just wanted to experiment with skin color.

to make it more obvious:

dark-geisha-skin-recolors.png (6.69 KiB) Viewed 4353 times

1 -- the original from the first post in this thread (looks bit muddy imho, although i must admit that kind of skin color does exist in real life).
2 -- a dark-skinned version with more saturated shadows that i like best, but that seems to be an orc rather than an elf (which is good imho, because my top secret and probably bit unrealistic dream is to make some... gruntess sprite some day).
3 -- a lighter version where the most saturated midtone is used as the deepest shadow.
4 -- a less than fully saturated shadow under the chin (and a few other pixels).
5 -- the darkest shadow recolored the same as the saturated midtone (gives the most impression of almost glowing warmth and liveness imho).
6 -- same colors as a mainline elf (looks ok in the original but imho bit muddy on this sprite, maybe because of the dark hair).
7 -- a mainline elf (afaik, those are being remade, so maybe it is already outdated).

i think 2 and maybe 4 look best, but i am still in the beginning of learning spriting, so i might be mistaken.

ok, maybe i was getting too much in depth with it now.

as for the chameleons, i think i am a fan of the idea.
the chameleon could, for example, have a special that hides the chameleon on the terrain where it started the turn.
because afaik it takes some time for a real chameleon to adjust the skin color to the surroundings.
as for gameplay the chameleon would not be disadvantaged on maps with unsuitable dominant terrains like the elvish ranger is disadvantaged on non-forest maps.
and if it turns out that 'end the turn on terrain where you want to be stealthy next round' will introduce even some minor unique pre-planning, imho that would be great.
there might be some problems with storing the terrain where the chameleon started the turn, though.
maybe it would get down to 'some extra wml is needed to make this unit work correctly'.
anyway, i wonder if the original author already has some plans for the chameleon special, and if so then what would it be like?

if you meant it when you said you wanted more drawings, here is something to crit:

chameleon.png (1.44 KiB) Viewed 4326 times

[Midnight_Carnival]

I did mean it, I also meant it when I said I was busy as a firefighter in hell, so sadly I missed it.

I alway post something like "I love it", or "it's great", which makes it sound insincere. All I'll say is that since you clearly drew it from scratch, and since it is original and good, it represents a level of sprite I'd be wholly unable to emulate or even aproximate!

I'm taking it home with me, better not try to stop me. Ok, can I use it in my campaign and era? it could replace the Saurian Cameleon (which is a good sprite, but has too much black) could you do a Saurian Asassin to go with it? becuse currently it doesn't look like the present Asassin (also a good sprite [one of my favorites, and no disrespect to whoever originally drew it], but again, too much black) would turn into that. I'm hoping to sometime next year deluge this place with tons of material, maybe get my campaing and era going.

[homunculus]

i took a lot of liberty at interpreting the chameleon line, so i thought they would be chameleons from birth.
some chameleons can grow horns, so i thought that the lev 2 could be with horns and lev 1 could be without.
maybe changing gender upon levelup is less extreme than changing species?

updated chameleon with upgrade (no shadow and no tc yet):

chameleon.png (1.38 KiB) Viewed 4116 times

horny_chameleon.png (1.36 KiB) Viewed 4116 times

actually the chameleons being green like the rest of the saurians might not make much sense, or does it?
maybe they should be gray with tc stripes or maybe their whole skin color could be tc with some darker stripes.