Unit sprites for After the Storm

[Iris]

Yes i read both, and they doesnt explaing sh*t! If you dont like to write "...pseudoscientific details like this..." you can at least give someone else a chance to do this for you.
(yes I'm mad.)

Well, firstly, please do not use strong words like the exhibit in bold above. That’s not how communication works in these forums (PG point 1b). It makes me really sad when I have to remind people of this kind of thing. And nobody wants to see a sad shadowm.


:(

Now, if you can settle down, keep in mind that I directed you to a past post not because I believe that you are trying to write pseudoscientific descriptions, but rather because it addresses some of the questions you asked about the imps:

[...] but I would imagine that the imps featured in IftU and AtS are the less privileged members of the in-game demon fighters line species, a similar species, or a hybrid (seeing as how they have poisonous saliva but the demon fighters don’t). They are misshapen, less mentally gifted creatures, but they can be just as deadly or even more. AtS E3 sees the introduction of one L4 Armageddon Imp as a Demon Lord on Irdya during the second scenario, so that should be a good indicative of how far they can ascend amongst their ranks given the chance.

All this was essentially decided already for a while (mostly during AtS’ development cycle, as I didn’t really do very meticulous worldbuilding in IftU), so the race description as of AtS 0.9.7 is as follows:

Lesser demons are frequently and incorrectly classified in a separate group of their own. Although they generally lack the magic abilities and intellectual power of their better known relatives, their numbers and raw strength usually suffice to compensate.

I am not too keen about going into deeper detail about creatures that were created to serve as a gameplay design and plot advancing mechanism first and foremost, but what I can say for sure is that all the imps and demons seen in IftU and AtS who do not have the biomechanical trait (that’d everyone who isn’t Zhangor, Elyssa, or Nar-Hamoth) belong to naturally-occurring species from Urvatha and they are not corrupted or artificially engineered lifeforms.

Last time I checked, I was the one in charge of this, not this SMaster person of whom I’ve never heard before.

You know that i was refering to you, right? :doh:

But I am shadowm, not SMaster. If you are trying to abbreviate something you aren’t doing it quite right. Both names have exactly the same length, and the first is more accurate than the second in content and presentation.

(No, seriously, I didn’t change my name just to have everyone address me using my previous name. The ‘m’ means absolutely nothing anymore, and it originally didn’t, anyway.)

[Ranger]

Well, firstly, please do not use strong words like the exhibit in bold above. That’s not how communication works in these forums (PG point 1b). It makes me really sad when I have to remind people of this kind of thing. And nobody wants to see a sad shadowm.

Yes, you're right. I'm not a great writer and I was really trying to write something meaningful in my post and I just wanted to help you a little because I liked your camapigns. I guess that your answer just wasnt quite what I expected.

Now, if you can settle down, keep in mind that I directed you to a past post not because I believe that you are trying to write pseudoscientific descriptions, but rather because it addresses some of the questions you asked about the imps:

Spoiler:

[...] but I would imagine that the imps featured in IftU and AtS are the less privileged members of the in-game demon fighters line species, a similar species, or a hybrid (seeing as how they have poisonous saliva but the demon fighters don’t). They are misshapen, less mentally gifted creatures, but they can be just as deadly or even more. AtS E3 sees the introduction of one L4 Armageddon Imp as a Demon Lord on Irdya during the second scenario, so that should be a good indicative of how far they can ascend amongst their ranks given the chance.

All this was essentially decided already for a while (mostly during AtS’ development cycle, as I didn’t really do very meticulous worldbuilding in IftU), so the race description as of AtS 0.9.7 is as follows:

Spoiler:

Lesser demons are frequently and incorrectly classified in a separate group of their own. Although they generally lack the magic abilities and intellectual power of their better known relatives, their numbers and raw strength usually suffice to compensate.

I am not too keen about going into deeper detail about creatures that were created to serve as a gameplay design and plot advancing mechanism first and foremost, but what I can say for sure is that all the imps and demons seen in IftU and AtS who do not have the biomechanical trait (that’d everyone who isn’t Zhangor, Elyssa, or Nar-Hamoth) belong to naturally-occurring species from Urvatha and they are not corrupted or artificially engineered lifeforms.

Spoiler:

But I am shadowm, not SMaster. If you are trying to abbreviate something you aren’t doing it quite right. Both names have exactly the same length, and the first is more accurate than the second in content and presentation.
(No, seriously, I didn’t change my name just to have everyone address me using my previous name. The ‘m’ means absolutely nothing anymore, and it originally didn’t, anyway.)

That explains a lot. Althrough not every engineered race has to be biomechanical. Actually I imagine that if our enemies are really that advanced as they seem to be they would have little problem reshaping livin flesh like we rebuild our machines. This might be relevant.. In that case all those biomecchanical horrors are just needed to convey how our enemies are inhumans and terrible. Something Strogg-like i immagine.

[Mefisto]

Sorry for long delay in posting. Quite a few things happened, I've got a lot of work in Real Life, new computer and new GIMP which drives me crazy. Fortunately the data was not lost, especially the graphical projects, I just didn't have time to sit on them properly. I'm asking if reimagined imps are still needed? I redone my previous designs of Minors and Imps and then I proceed to Blood and Gut-Wrencher. The texture on these last two are still not finished but you can see the idea. In the first column are original pictures, in the second redone sprites "naked", in the third with boils and roughness added (not finished yet). The fourth and fifth columns are not important.

[GunChleoc]

I like them! The boils look to me though as if they are glowing. Maybe reduce the saturation somewhat or make them a bit darker?

[Iris]

I redone my previous designs of Minors and Imps and then I proceed to Blood and Gut-Wrencher. The texture on these last two are still not finished but you can see the idea. In the first column are original pictures, in the second redone sprites "naked", in the third with boils and roughness added (not finished yet). The fourth and fifth columns are not important.

Hm.

Their heads seem too flat and/or short, especially for the first three levels, and the L2’s (i.e. third row) torso seems too small for its large limbs. Not sure if this is just because I can’t avoid comparing it to the original, which is slightly bent forwards instead. The horns barely stand out in general. There is also something about the shading that bugs me, but I am not really sure what it is.

</nonartistopinion>

***

Well, since you brought back this thread from the dead, I might as well report on the demons renewal project from a few pages back. At the end I used artisticdude’s last version and changed various things before proceeding with the other units that he did not provide. The comparison follows.

Old:


New:


They do seem generally smaller because I actually drew the originals without keeping track of dimensions and proportions. These are the versions circulating in production releases of AtS (0.9.6+) and EoC (1.2.0+) at the moment and I’m just posting them here for historical reference. I’m not really likely to work on them again* given that propagating every single change for the base Demon unit line to everyone else—taking gender variations into account—takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of time and energy**. I know because I already had to do that three or four times. Grr.

* Although suddenly the Errant Executor (bottom left corner) seems awfully small compared to the L3 Warrior right above it. GRRRRRR. Not that they ever appear together in-game; they aren’t even technically part of the same unit line.
** That said, I might look into retexturing the Zephyr’s wings at some point in the future once I’m done revising someone else’s feathery wings.

(Below are the original blurry thumbnailed attachments. I decided to cheat and hotlink the full versions above to avoid having to host them elsewhere. You don’t need to open this spoiler.)

:

[Crow_T]

I feel Mefisto's sprites could use more contrast and perhaps some more color shifting, eg the left hand green group could maybe benefit from some purples in the shadows, it'd be a good experiment.

One strange thing about the Demons are the belly-buttons, I always assumed demons were spawned, not born. Pregnant demon ladies? Mia Farrow in Wesnoth? I think both sets, old and new, have strong features and weak features, not sure one is an 100% improvement over the other.

[Iris]

One strange thing about the Demons are the belly-buttons, I always assumed demons were spawned, not born.

All of these demons are naturally born.

[Mefisto]

I've been working on sprites of imps till yesterday. That was before your comments so I just carried on what I started. The progress so far is shown below. For palette I used some colours from artisticdude's demonic line and some from old minor imp pictures. I wanted to create more gradual luminosity ramp and experiment with hue shifting. I'll start tweaking and fine tuning them when I have basic shapes defined.
As for small heads - no problem. When I finish the last imp I can do some frankensteing. BTW, units l0-l2 now have smaller heads than in the beginning, because of comments that then the heads were too big. It looks like I need to do some retro-frankensteining. Thanks for critique anway. I was afraid that because of this long hiatus my work became obsolete.

Off topic: anybody else finds GIMP 2.8 annoying? I've got it together with Mint 14 Nadia and I disliked it. In my inaptitude I installed GIMP 2.6.12 via WINE because I was afraid that after uninstalling 2.8 I won't be able to install earlier version. But the version 2.6 I installed for some reason doesn't recognize any formats but XCF. So now I use GIMP 2.8 to import images in PGN, save them in XCF, than work on them in GIMP 2.6 and then I finish I use GIMP 2.8 to export the final pictures to PNG. It's crazy. But at least I will finish my second project, after tropical foliage. Many more awaits conclusion yet.

[beetlenaut]

These are quite an improvement over the originals, so nice work. I do think the "decorations" on the level-3 make its face a little hard to read. I would suggest leaving off or toning down the green slime(?) so the face can stand out more.

[Crow_T]

Off topic: anybody else finds GIMP 2.8 annoying? I've got it together with Mint 14 Nadia and I disliked it. In my inaptitude I installed GIMP 2.6.12 via WINE because I was afraid that after uninstalling 2.8 I won't be able to install earlier version. But the version 2.6 I installed for some reason doesn't recognize any formats but XCF. So now I use GIMP 2.8 to import images in PGN, save them in XCF, than work on them in GIMP 2.6 and then I finish I use GIMP 2.8 to export the final pictures to PNG. It's crazy. But at least I will finish my second project, after tropical foliage. Many more awaits conclusion yet.

I agree in that I dislike the new brush sliders and the dynamics controls, they are very annoying. I will probably end up installing Ubuntu 12.04 on a partition to *hopefully* use 2.6 again- building 2.6 in Ubuntu 13.04 just isnt happening.

[beetlenaut]

the version 2.6 I installed for some reason doesn't recognize any formats but XCF.

GIMP uses external libraries or plugins to save in formats other than XCF. There might be some DLLs you could install that would enable the same functionality under WINE.

[Mefisto]

GIMP uses external libraries or plugins to save in formats other than XCF. There might be some DLLs you could install that would enable the same functionality under WINE.

I know. I used the same installer which I used to install GIMP on my computer at work, under Windows 7. It works there and it worked on my previous computer which had Windows XP. Just for some reason on my laptop under WINE for some reason doesn't see libraries which it has. Nevermind. I've got some colleagues who hopefully will help me to install this program in a proper way.

Back to topic. I'm slowly approaching finish. Below is the recent state of my work. As you can see the Armageddon Imp is still not finished but needs only some tweaking. The sword of course is not finished too. But at this state I wanted to stop and hear your opinions. I also made some experiments with palettes: the first one is a palette I'm using now, the next one has some magenta shades (can enable TC), the next is the same as on the sword, the next is some bronze-metallic (rather impractical), the next is using the reddish shades brought from the original armageddon imp and three last ones are variations of palettes of bodies of original imps. I don't know yet how they would look ingame. Need to do some experiments with debug mode.

On the next picture I made some frankensteining, I mean I replaced the heads of imps of lower levels with the heads of units of higher levels. In case of level two I decided to make a hybrid head combining original lvl2 head and current lvl3 head. I think I lie modified sprites for lvl 1, 2 and 3 and unmodified sprite for lvl 0. But this means that I need to make another head for level 4, larger than previous (more in size of head of original lvl 4). But first I would appreciate some feedback.

[Crow_T]

Not that it makes a difference, but I find col 1&2 to be the strongest, followed by 11&12. Maybe 1&12 to separate the species.

[Mefisto]

I have had a flow this weekend. I finished lvl 4. I had to remove the tail because it couldn't fit into a hex and still be visible. Slightly reworked a sword. I decide to stick to already used palette and not introduce new colours just for one small thing. It's easier to recolour if needed. But I couldn't help and I did two variants: with smaller heads and with bigger heads. I like bigheads more but it's up to viewers to decide.
Edit: and how they look ingame (debug mode)

[Mefisto]

OK. I hoped I would get some feedback. I made some minor corrections - lost pixels, palette modifications, slightly changed the head of armageddon imp to make it more distinguishable from gutwrencher. I consider the work finished.

EDIT: I just realized that I never wrote that I used to use shadowm's Wesnoth-RCX for different palettes testing. I find it incredibly useful. Even if he doesn't like my work I just wanted to thank him for this neat tool.