Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

[ChaosRider]

You should make more stuff like this and add it as optional to mainline era. If game hoster agree then on map you have placed such a ship on which units terrain defense is like in castle or other one type (just change under this image terrain type).

[Wussel]

lol nice try. the hull parts would have to replace the reling patches. Not the other way around.

http://www.admiraltyshipmodels.co.uk/ac ... lding.html
I found this link about old teak wood for old ship models!

http://www.flexiteek.com/
and the real thing in new for sale!

I agree that the floor I came up with is probably to white. Mavbe only good for an elvish vessel. However using the transparancy mode I could come up with virtually everything inbetween. So if you really thing the original is to reddish, please let me know.

About the sails and rigging: I would say it need some shading and texture. It looks a lot 3d right now. Would be nice if doofus would have a look at it.

If we go into a more terrain style approach a lot of different ship sizes could be realized. I did some rough testing as said before. Have a look of what I am talking of:

[beetlenaut]

Here you go. The hull in your format.

The hull piece has transparency for the part under water, and the railing piece needs to match it. I don't have any time to mess with this right now.

So if you really thing the original is to reddish, please let me know.

It would probably look nice 10% or 20% lighter and maybe less red, but if it gets too light it would not match the rest of the wood. I am not saying your color in inaccurate, but it just doesn't integrate well with the rest, and I don't think it would look good to have the whole ship that light. Like you said, it might be fine for elves though.

About the sails and rigging: I would say it need some shading and texture. It looks a lot 3d right now.

I don't know what you mean. Did you mean it is 3D and 3D is bad? Or did you mean to say that it is looks 2D? If you think the shading is bad, feel free to fix it.

If we go into a more terrain style approach a lot of different ship sizes could be realized.

If you don't care about the masts and rigging, it looks like this would probably work fine. The rest of the ship took a long time.

If you are going to do this kind of work with this, you would probably find the original layered files useful. They are in GIMP format, but you can probably convert them if you need to.

[Wussel]

Hi, 3d like in 3d-art. Meaning three dimensional graphic using polygons and such. It is not bad, but very often missing structure and shades. Best approach would be to have an artist to paint everything a 4 times bigger and scale it down.

About the rigging. My main concern is the use of pitch black for the ropes. But it is still awesome.

Lets focus on the task ahead. You want the hull with the transparency. No problem you get version number 7. You want the relevant railing patch fixed accordingly. I can do that for you.

I guess that is all for now. Messing with the floor is not essential. You want everything from the same wood no problem. I would actually go down with the bow of the ship more if the canvas size would be bigger. Could you elaborate on that option?

And the corner which would be nice to include

Are you having your xcf files in quadruble size? (Instead of 1x1 double side length 2x2)

[Wussel]

I tried to work on the riggings and ropes a bit. Basically I put a 0,4px line on top of the black ropes. That gives a bit a ropelike structure due to the pixel effect by itself. I cut of a few corners of the sails too. If you want it just tell me. I post 2 more reference picture for isometric/wesometric ships.

You can see the bow, I am talking of.

You can see light color ropes, more depth in the sail shading, light color shipfloor, more structure etc.


A bunch of interesting links:
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_p ... PN=0&TPN=1
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_p ... =7836&KW=a
http://mikeschley.com/128067/1267978/ma ... taway-maps
http://amarynceus.deviantart.com/art/En ... -261666361
http://dashinvaine.deviantart.com/art/S ... -300043853
http://ogami3d.deviantart.com/art/Ship-311491158
http://www.fantasticmaps.com/tag/tall-ship/
http://nautarch.tamu.edu/class/316/khufu/

[Wussel]

Small update: I tried a version where I removed all the ropes between the masts. I just left the main ropes going to the hull from each mast.

The benefit would be, that the masts could be placed separately and thus the ship could be longer or shorter. I would love to have latiner sail options for the bigger masts too.

I did do some experiments on a teamcolored hull. It works and looks reasonable. However I am not aware how to use teamcolor on terrain pieces code-wise. That would probably be more nice for that pirate campaign: The Altaz Marineer. (In multi player). There are constant battles between to ships.

The ship looks great if you put 2 ships together with a space of 1 deep water, too.

It is still amazing that beetlenaut did all this for just 2 scenarios in an otherwise terrific campaign.

I would actually like a set sail function. Changing the sails to open. Hopefully the Altaz Marineer can be ported to 1.12. Would love to see more ships.

[beetlenaut]

ship--hull.png

The units and other images that stick into the water have a fuzzy waterline, so ship--hull.png should also. A sharp water line looks out of place. (I actually tried that first.)

Are you having your xcf files in quadruble size? (Instead of 1x1 double side length 2x2)

No. I gave you the same drawings I used.

Basically I put a 0,4px line on top of the black ropes.

That looks very nice, but not finished. There is still a lot of rope wrapped around the masts and more holding the sails. The thinner lines now look too dark in comparison, and the rope in the deadeyes looks different too. I used black because it was easier.

I would actually like a set sail function. Changing the sails to open.

That would cover a lot of the deck. That's why I drew the sails furled instead.

I would actually go down with the bow of the ship more if the canvas size would be bigger.

I know the bow should slope up, but you would need to do that without raising the deck. The deck is 22px above the normal unit base position already, and it can't really go any higher. You would have to raise only the railing and the hull, so it will be a bit difficult. Give it a try if you want. It might look a lot better.

You want everything from the same wood no problem.

No, it might look better if it was lighter. I just said not to make it a lot lighter. Maybe 20% or so.

[Wussel]

I was under the impression that the castle deck got 24 pixel elevation. The front got less. I get you a picture.

I was thinking about making the front more round actually. However it does not add much value to this ship. But it would do a lot for a generic ship terrain.

For your ship drawing more transparant under water front would be realistic. The transparant part should definetly not get fuzzy. The reason is the same than what they were speaking about the unit shadows.

About the ropes: I would get rid of all the ropes between the masts. Just keep the main side ropes. If you want ropes: take a light color, take 0.5 pixel and make them bend (or round, not straight).

Here is a ship shape I would go for if aiming at a terrain style for different ship sizes. Masts would be needed for different width of the ship. Separated masts could cover different ship length.

[beetlenaut]

I was under the impression that the castle deck got 24 pixel elevation. The front got less.

Whatever it is, it's already as high as it can go.

The transparant part should definetly not get fuzzy.

Maybe I wasn't clear. The water line can be sharp, but the hull needs to get more transparent as it goes deeper. That is what the units and water villages do, so that is the Wesnoth standard for submerged objects.

I would get rid of all the ropes between the masts. Just keep the main side ropes. If you want ropes: take a light color, take 0.5 pixel and make them bend (or round, not straight).

*I* am not doing anything. Like I said, I have very little free time. Also, ship ropes are pretty much straight because they are very tight. There is no reason to get rid of the ropes between the masts unless you are trying to make a more scaleable terrain. The ropes make it look more like a proper ship, and I would actually add more ropes if I had time.

Here is a ship shape I would go for if aiming at a terrain style for different ship sizes.

I hope you finish that project. It would improve a lot of UMC scenarios. But, you are on your own.

[Wussel]

I finished messing with your ship. here is the final version. I had to replace a few.dots. with *asterix* in the terrain code. I did change the placing of your details more symetrical to the centerline. I changed the stairs to wesometric, but I kept the perspective of the trapdoors. The opening animation of the trapdoor would neet some attention now.

The transparancy goes frome 60 to 40 in case you asked for that numbers.

I made the crow nest smaller and the stairs bigger and added an extra sail instead of the small crow nest. I patched up almost all the files. So if anybody wants it please ask.

Argh: just saw that the front mast is definitly north of the center line.

[Wussel]

Last and final update. Moved the frontal masts to the perceived middle line. Worked the trapdoors as well. No more things to do here. Tried a few things which did not cut it for me.

[beetlenaut]

OK, but I really don't see how removing details makes it better. Your ropes look nicer, but half of them are gone, and I don't want that. My first crows' nest was this small, but then I realized it should look like a unit could fit in it. I also put the trapdoors in the middle originally, but units looked like they were floating when the trapdoors were open. This seems to me like I would be going back to an earlier version of mine when it had fewer details and didn't work as well.

However, your hull is much better, especially in the back, so I will use it. First, I need to fix two things though. The water line exactly matches one of the planks, which looks awkward, and the transparency won't currently match the transparency of units that might be submerged right next to it. When I have time to fix these issues (which might be a while), I will put it in. I might make the deck a little lighter too. Also, your stairs are nice, but they won't match the ones coming up from the lower level, so I might not use them.

[GL_Network]

Hi beetlenaut, I just found out a bug in the scenario "Abandoned Outpost". Recalling bats in this scenario causes out-of-synch problems in the replay (I sent to you the replay file so you can see for yourself). I don't know exactly what causes this bug, but this seems to be related to the transferal from SotA bats to normal ones.

I am still using the version 1.0.2 of the add-on, so I don't know if the most recent version has the bug or not (since I saw no report of this bug before, it probably does).

[beetlenaut]

Recalling bats in this scenario causes out-of-synch problems in the replay.

I'm sorry about that, but it's an engine problem. As a content provider, I don't have anything to do with saving the replays, so there is nothing I can do to fix it. You did tell me you named the bats though. They used to lose their names, and possibly that's the problem. You should try the new version of SotA and see if it still happens. If it does, you can report it as a BfW bug on gna.org.

[gfgtdf]

I took a look at the code and this is indeed a known engine bug: creating unit on the recall list will cause OOS if they are recalled in the same scenario. I don't know whether there is a bugreport for this on the tracker yet.

You should work around this issue by giving the unit manually a id. In this case you could maybe just use the id of the old bat (id=$bats[$i].id) to fix this problem.