Anyone remembers old artstyle?

[Vyncyn]

Duel wielding is terrible, but throwing pommels on the other hand...haha, deadly as it gets.

Best Reference.


Why shouldn't some people like Li'sar get romanticised? After all she changes sides and should get some sympathie from the player. Her new realistic, cold expression doesn't really inspire it. It's true, the old portrait might be too "perfect-beautiful-princess" and unrealistic, but I think it captures her caracter, storywise, better (though the new portrait lets her look more like a leader). Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, as I grew up with the anemie-ish portraits .

I mean, if you're not a fan, that's the nice thing - you can go sign up for one of those many free-to-play games out there with generic art. There are plenty of them. They're a dime a dozen.

Nobody plays a game just for the art. Wesnoth is the best turn based strategy game and noone is gonna abandon it because they do not 100% like the portraits.

[zookeeper]

However from a ressource perspective we should archive these images in a useable form in case someone wants to reuse them.
Is there some kind of picture archive for battle for wesnoth?

There's no dedicated archive for old portraits, but they should all be accessible from the repository history so anyone could make one. OpenGameArt could be a good place to upload them to as a pack.

[Heindal]

I will see what I can do. But I don't know if it is easier for someone of the developers.

Edit: Found the repository and browsed through the older threads about this topic.
Some community members tried to begin with a collection of all portraits, but eventually gave up.

The older graphics can be found on github, so this is quite good overall archive, but its hard to collect and review them all.
This is the last page of the archive (16th of May 2007), just in case somebody needs it.

https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/comm ... its?page=9

[Velensk]

Why shouldn't some people like Li'sar get romanticised? After all she changes sides and should get some sympathie from the player. Her new realistic, cold expression doesn't really inspire it. It's true, the old portrait might be too "perfect-beautiful-princess" and unrealistic, but I think it captures her caracter, storywise, better (though the new portrait lets her look more like a leader). Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, as I grew up with the anemie-ish portraits .

The old one looked so scrawny I could break her. I find the new one much more attractive.

I have very little sympathy for the old one, though I agree it reflects the way she acts better.

[Addryn]

We decided to buck the trend and hire some people who could actually draw unique and interesting human figures. Weird figures - sometimes ugly figures - but interesting figures, like you'd see in the real world. Ones that get your attention and make you wonder "whoa, what's up with *this* guy?" Ones where you can look at their face and actually see into their soul. This makes us relatively unique, certainly amongst indie games.

I can understand the wish for uniqueness, and I will agree that the new art is very unique and different. However, I do not think that that quality makes something fitting or good (though again, I'd argue the portraits are good, just not fitting). I'll leave it at that, I've already stated what I need to on that point.



I will make an aside bit/comment here though, that is maybe a off topic some. Perhaps its just me being all super-edgy, but I find most people IRL are...bland, even in their uniqueness. I'm not an artist who draws things visually, however I would say that I am an artist in the sense that I practice the martial arts (karate, shooting, fencing, etc) and write in my spare time. These are arts that when practiced correctly still make one evaluate others more carefully, even if it is not as much as drawing or painting would. From that perspective I find many people so absolutely one-dimensional and shallow it is appalling, either that, or their true nature is concealed well. Sheep for the slaughter, zombies taking a stroll, or a wolf in the sheep's clothes/something similar. Rare is it, that even with the unique faces which every person possesses, that I find someone who makes me ponder something more about them; that as you said, has a face which lets me see a bit of their soul and makes me interested in who they are. Even then, when it does happen, its mostly in much older people (50+ years). This is perhaps simply an opinion or a perception though, but one which just causes me to care a little less about the reality/real nature of things in regards to the portraits.

I also often come to fantasy to escape realism, and that may play a part as well in my lack of care for the realism or the generic/non-generic nature of the art. I do not know however, so that is more just personal speculation than anything else.

I mean, if you're not a fan, that's the nice thing - you can go sign up for one of those many free-to-play games out there with generic art. There are plenty of them. They're a dime a dozen.

Without trying to sound to rude - come on, that is absolute nonsense! Fat chance man! I've been playing this game on and off almost as long as you guys have been developing it, starting when I was somewhere around six or seven years old. To be honest I can't even remember exactly when I started it was so long ago. At worst I can just download old versions and play it with my friends, who also still play the game (and who have been in it for a similar amount of time). I've not been on here for that long simply because I'm not a forum person, for a reason stated in a previous post about internet etiquette and such. (I'm also not a fan of the way forums are set up, but that is another matter for another place) My time since registration versus my number of posts proves this pretty well.

P.S.

Well, I was really just using those exaggerations in trying to describe the style I like. In hindsight I guess it comes across as a strawman attack against the old art style, but the point I was going for was more like that I like the plain fact that "chainmail bikini and anorexia" can't apply to the new Li'sar. I didn't mean that it's necessarily what's wrong with the old Li'sar, or that it's what everyone who dislikes the new Li'sar would want to see, only that I find it refreshing in itself that she's so clearly outside that stereotypical box.

Thanks for the clarification.

[pyndragon]

I will make an aside bit/comment here though, that is maybe a off topic some. Perhaps its just me being all super-edgy, but I find most people IRL are...bland, even in their uniqueness. I'm not an artist who draws things visually, however I would say that I am an artist in the sense that I practice the martial arts (karate, shooting, fencing, etc) and write in my spare time. These are arts that when practiced correctly still make one evaluate others more carefully, even if it is not as much as drawing or painting would. From that perspective I find many people so absolutely one-dimensional and shallow it is appalling, either that, or their true nature is concealed well. Sheep for the slaughter, zombies taking a stroll, or a wolf in the sheep's clothes/something similar. Rare is it, that even with the unique faces which every person possesses, that I find someone who makes me ponder something more about them; that as you said, has a face which lets me see a bit of their soul and makes me interested in who they are. Even then, when it does happen, its mostly in much older people (50+ years).

This is completely reasonable, because most people are relatively bland. But Wesnoth isn't about those people, otherwise you'd be guiding your character through trips to get the farm animals shod at the blacksmith. Wesnoth is about people getting put in unusual circumstances and reacting unusually. Liberty is a perfect example — some random village elder on the frontiers of Wesnoth refuses to submit to an oppressive official and fights back against the tyranny, eventually gathering forces to take down one of the strongest fortresses in the land. Just an ordinary guy with a streak of steel brought out by adversity, and that's what makes him interesting.

[doofus-01]

Not really disagreeing with pyndragon, but as for the sentiment here

From that perspective I find many people so absolutely one-dimensional and shallow it is appalling, either that, or their true nature is concealed well. Sheep for the slaughter, zombies taking a stroll, or a wolf in the sheep's clothes/something similar. Rare is it, that even with the unique faces which every person possesses, that I find someone who makes me ponder something more about them; that as you said, has a face which lets me see a bit of their soul and makes me interested in who they are. Even then, when it does happen, its mostly in much older people (50+ years). This is perhaps simply an opinion or a perception though, but one which just causes me to care a little less about the reality/real nature of things in regards to the portraits.

That is something I hope you change your mind about. Even ashsoles have a story, and you may not care about them, but you don't want to underestimate your enemies or lack empathy for those who need it. After all, some of those zombies probably look at you with the same disdain, and where does that leave us?

If the characters in a Wesnoth campaign are bland and the portraits are unique-but-bland and you'd rather have the Walmart smiley face on anime booty, then maybe the writing needs work. Anyone willing to can make suggestions - the suggestions may not get acted upon immediately, but they do get looked at eventually.

[kurt751]

Just my 2 cents worth about the old vs new Konrad & Li'sar portraits.

Having played through "Heir to the Throne" last month, I can say that IMHO neither Li'sar portrait fits the character.
The old one was a cutesy underage girl you wouldn't trust with a bread knife. Going to the opposite, the new one is a steroid-guzzling, ever-grumpy woman much too old and crabby for the person she's supposed to be.
Tell me she's some veteran commander of the army, okay, her portrait fits right in: She has a drill sergeant scowl and visibly more testosterone in her blood than most of her soldiers. But she doesn't look like the young woman I imagined while playing that campaign. The eternal scowl is a big part of the problem, but the "east german swimmer" body shape doesn't help either, especially with the "young" part.

Do I find the new Li'sar portrait bad, or unrealistic? No, definitely no. It's pretty good actually as a picture.
I just don't think it is fitting in this specific case.

(Konrad looks like a young klutz, but that's more in character. I admit I was a little disappointed by him; I mean, you expect a hero of sorts and you get a chinless wonder clinging to Delfador's skirts. Realistic maybe, but hardly epic. )

--

A quick word about general portrait artwork while I'm at it.
I am one of those who hate the Hollywood versions of perfectly manicured cheese-/beefcake adventurers with perfect hairdos and immaculate clothes. It's ridiculous.
On the other hand, the spectator player has to identify with the hero, and given the limited character interaction possibilities of BfW, this goes partly through the portrait. You have to get the player to root for that hero, not just because the scenario forbids letting him die, but because the player thinks the hero is "cool" (or nice, or interesting, or attractive, or reminds him of his dog, something, anything).

That doesn't mean portraits should be pinups, it means the portraits and the scenario hints about the character should both help build a credible multi-dimensional character. Somebody the player tells himself about "I'd like to hang out with that character some more", somebody the player will be sad when the campaign is over and he has to quit him/her/them.
I think in BfW the portraits do half of that work, so they need to be carefully chosen, and not from an artistic points of view, but from a character design point of view.

Meaning that IMHO the ugly vs. sexy discussion misses the point: If the character needs to be sexy or ugly, (s)he has to be sexy or ugly, but this choice is not an artistic one, it's a character design one.

[Gyra_Solune]

I personally don't think it's important for the player to identify with a certain character in a campaign. It's most important that the individuals therein make sense in terms of motivation and reaction. I'm not of the opinion that it really even works, to have someone see themselves in a character, since a) you're going to have a lot of different people playing your game, who hold different values, and b) it means you end up not giving the main character who drives much of the plot any particularly interesting flaws or dilemmas for the sake of other people who wouldn't believe themselves to have those flaws. The idea that the hero has to be You has certainly led to a great influx of totally uninteresting protagonists whose names and appearances are utterly forgettable, and that is certainly not what you want.

Of course then I also think that having this discussion about Heir to the Throne is sort of moot since I don't think it's all that interesting of a story and if there's any campaign I'd argue as being a really good introduction to the setting, it'd be Rise of Wesnoth, which does a lot of really nice things despite relatively simple and straightforward characters (and of course starts at the very beginning of Wesnoth's founding). Descent into Darkness is also really lovely and you certainly couldn't argue that frustrated screw-up Malin Keshar is supposed to be someone we're meant to confide with, but he makes a really good protagonist since he's exactly the kind of person the orders of dark mages sucker into their schemes.

[beetlenaut]

Since a lot of this discussion has been about HttT, it's probably worth noting that the dialog is/was supposed to be rewritten to make the two main characters seem a little older. The new portraits were designed with that in mind, so it's not surprising if they look a little out of place. I don't know the current status of that rewrite though.

[kurt751]

I'm not of the opinion that it really even works, to have someone see themselves in a character, since a) you're going to have a lot of different people playing your game, who hold different values, and b) it means you end up not giving the main character who drives much of the plot any particularly interesting flaws or dilemmas for the sake of other people who wouldn't believe themselves to have those flaws.

The magic of cinema (or games) is that you can root for a character who isn't at all like you, and potentially/usually doesn't share the same values either. If (s)he is compelling enough.

It's like meeting someone in Real Life. If that person is interesting enough and doesn't annoy you, you might make a friend (or at least spend an evening talking to), even if you don't both agree on everything.

The idea that the hero has to be You

Nobody said that.
At least not me. Sorry if I made you think this. I guess it's the "identify", indeed a bad choice of word.
I'm only saying you have to feel for the hero, for else you give a damn about what happens to him/her and you end up only going through the motions.

Of course then I also think that having this discussion about Heir to the Throne is sort of moot since I don't think it's all that interesting of a story

Well, people were discussing the portrait of Li'sar, so it's hard to avoid talking about HttT.
Especially since it's an introduction campaign all newbies (and thus everybody playing BfW) has played once.

[Gyra_Solune]

honestly it's not that great as an introductory campaign considering its length and that South Guard and Orcish Incursion do a lot better in tutorials but that's radically off-topic!

I dunno I very much like Konrad as an awkward kid who stumbles a lot before having the character of a king and that certainly makes for a good character arc, and I very much like Li'sar as a gruff, hard-line military lady whose primary story is having to deal with breaking loyalty to the crown and working with filthy rebels. I don't think they need to be particularly attractive for either of those purposes and in fact I very much like how the art style isn't all that glamorous and instead depicts people who are more ordinary in attractiveness who obviously wouldn't have makeup and are dressed more for function over style. The temptation is ever present to draw really pretty, appealing people for the good guys and ugly, scruffy people for the bad guys so it's interesting how the humans in particular don't follow that paradigm! Outlaws and peasants and nobles alike all are prone to not being super pretty because it's the equivalent of like the 1100s and your appearance is the last thing you worry about.

[Wesnother]

I liked a lot those old portraits, they were manga-like and i love manga.

[Yomar]

Same here, I began to play this game because I found the drawings very charismatic, fitting very well with the game graphics. (I guess they also helped the game to be "lighter").
Yes, now maybe they are better, but I was disappointed when the new ones began to replace the old ones, I just don't liked the new style, it could be great for some RPG, but I never felt it adapt with the in-game graphics style.

[Wesnother]

I would think people expect something more like this in regards to her character- http://marfrey.deviantart.com/art/Warri ... -515495430 (its what I could do with a very quick search for "warrior princess" on deviantart, so its what I got. There are probably better examples out there that better express what I mean.)

Yeah, that portrait would be perfect, I would simply love to see it in the game.

I would have preferred if the those cartoonish portraits would have been improved, instead of making those new ones used now.