Aldarisvet's sprite whitesmith

[Aldarisvet]

Today I am glad to present new frankesntain portrait, based on Doofus's nothern orc Wanderer portrait. Before that I made a sprite for orcish necromancer based on another doofus's nothern orc - Stalker. I needed portrait for it and found that Wanderer portrait is very suitable for my purpurse. Here is a result.

Not quite what I had in mind when I drew that stuff, but if it works for what you need, then cheers!

I am happy you ok with this

fully animated level0 orc called peon (25 sprites total). Used old animations from 1.4. However, there was no good/suitable animation for melee for 1.4 archer, so I had to do some original work, still it based on xbow melee attack from 1.4.

The attack animation looks a bit odd here, but may be OK in the game (don't get too caught up in making a pretty GIF). If you want to change something, maybe you could make him less flat - give him a butt or second leg?

Actually I tried to give more dinamycs to the sprite (from original one I had)

xbowman-sword-1.png (2.92 KiB) Viewed 12579 times

, I moved hand a bit back, and moved leg a bit front. Could give more scale to both processes but it feared I will not be able to draw it correct. But after some thinking I found what is wrong here. I had myself some years of expirience in fencing in the past and it is clearly wrong when you attacking with left hand and same time pushing forward right leg. Obviously you should push forward left leg, from same side of attacking hand. Because if you moving front another side leg, you turn your hips and your shoulders is in opposite directions in X-like style, so positions of legs prevent you from pulling your attacking hand as far as possible. It is easy to check with your body if you put one leg as far as possible and then try how far forward you may reach with one hand, then with the other. The difference is about 20cm for me, quite much.
However, this mistake exists in many (if not most) attacking sprites, for example, in elvish archer attacks or orcish archer. Not so important for just a game, possibly.

[Aldarisvet]

Now, guys and girls, let us celebrate an appearance of new level0 half-custom unit. Mounted peasant, pleased to meet you!

mounted_peasant.png (2.5 KiB) Viewed 12525 times

7-2 melee
7 mp
20 hp
cost 12
25 xp

[Dugi]

He looks great, I'll use him in my campaign once that he's animated.

Thinking more about him, I wonder if it was typical in those times back then that peasants owned horses. He might have been a stable boy, of course, but that's not a typical peasant. Maybe if he was riding a cow, mule, jackass or pony, it would be more classical. Or bull, that would also be badass. Still, that would be a large change, discarding all your hard work. The peasant was given a horse by a baron who possessed much more horses than soldiers and needed peasants as soldiers.

Hm, that weapon he's carrying, what is it? It might be a sharpened stick, but it reminds a pencil.

[Aldarisvet]

Thinking more about him, I wonder if it was typical in those times back then that peasants owned horses. He might have been a stable boy, of course, but that's not a typical peasant. Maybe if he was riding a cow, mule, jackass or pony, it would be more classical. Or bull, that would also be badass. Still, that would be a large change, discarding all your hard work.
The peasant was given a horse by a baron who possessed much more horses than soldiers and needed peasants as soldiers.

My baron Volgast was relatively poor guy!
Really, It is mentioned in storyline. He could probably be so poor that had no soldiers at all.
Well, and moreover, as has been said, sometimes logic should be sacrificed for gameplay, so I do not care about it much.

Hm, that weapon he's carrying, what is it? It might be a sharpened stick, but it reminds a pencil.

He looks great, I'll use him in my campaign once that he's animated.

Well, in mainline unit called Lancer have no animation at all, just one standing sprite.
However, I just finished attacking animation. Uh, was much harder to create than previous one. Im not going to create more sprites for it, I spent enough time already for modifying just one scenario.

mounted_horseman_attack.png (2.49 KiB) Viewed 12492 times

[Dugi]

Well, and moreover, as has been said, sometimes logic should be sacrificed for gameplay, so I do not care about it much.

With enough narrative creativity, you can explain anything. Volgast may have a side business around horse trading or a hobby at breeding horses (giving the horses with undesired traits to peasants).

Well, in mainline unit called Lancer have no animation at all, just one standing sprite.

I was quite disturbed by this and went public with the replacement of an animated sprite by a non-animated one, Jetrel, the art director, told me that he expects somebody to volunteer and animate it - when I told him that it doesn't happen usually, he told me I am wrong, when I pointed to evidence, he called me a parasite and told that he won't debase himself by replying to me. So if I wrote why it isn't animated, I would probably end up banned.

Im not going to create more sprites for it, I spent enough time already for modifying just one scenario.

Well, a defending animation would be enough but well... Maybe I'll make it. He deserves it too much.

EDIT:

Hm, I think that I haven't reached your level of quality.

mounted_peasant_defend.png (4.2 KiB) Viewed 12459 times

[Aldarisvet]

Uh, today I finished painfully long, pixel-by-pixel recolouring of my battlemages and shadow battlemages.
The story is as follows: I wanted in my campaign to use some mages with swords, something like shadow mages from Liberty. Unfortunately, I do not like sprities of rogue mage line from Liberty at all. Dispite, as I know, current version is something like third version of them. My main hero was going to be Shadow Mage, so I needed perfect sprites with full animations. So I made sprites based on Apprentice Mage from DiD for level2 and frankentained it with Silver Mage for level3.
Later I understood that I need to recolor sprites. Firstly, to make them look differently than Mages and Silver Mages. Secondly, to make them corresponding to my hero portrait.
The result is below.

[GL_Network]

With gimp, you can select all pixels of the same color and fill them all with your chosen color by using shift + left click.

I hope this tip saves you enough time to make more of your awesome sprites.

[Aldarisvet]

With gimp, you can select all pixels of the same color and fill them all with your chosen color by using shift + left click.

Thx for advice, I know about gimp but never installed it, get used to paint.net. I suspected that such simple feature must be realized somewhere. So now I know it is definetely exists at gimp.

Well, a defending animation would be enough but well...

Ok I did it myself with same quality, based on horseman defend-1 animation.

mounted_peasant_defend.png (2.73 KiB) Viewed 12337 times

Also I put my cfg .file here (already tested in-game). May be 12 gold for 20 hp with 7 mp and 7-2 without charge is too much price, but for my scenario its quite suitable.

[GL_Network]

I would suggest adding the Charge special to the unit, especially if you are worried about its price. Gaining charge means the unit becomes squishier on attack when he levels up.

[Aldarisvet]

I would suggest adding the Charge special to the unit, especially if you are worried about its price. Gaining charge means the unit becomes squishier on attack when he levels up.

No charge = less temptation for save&load. Also I deliberately make this unit costly, so in my scenario 4 would be no sense to recruit them from start, as it was with Horsemans.
Horsemans and Lancers are good versus berserkers, so that was the role for them at scenario 5 (not that you just go and kill Gryphon leader with them). And versus Berserkers the role of save&load much less imortant because the more rounds of attacks are passing, the more the final result is close to median probability.
Soon I will update my campaign with Mounted Peasants and recoloured Battle Mages.

[Aldarisvet]

Hi everyone!

In my campaign there is level1 white mage that I called Healer Mage. I invented it for my main heroine called Solaevin and used it in Chapter I. All that I was able to guess at that time I was creating Healer Mage from White Mage is to change the form atop of White mage staff. But in Chapter II I gave a player an ability to recruit Healer Mages. In a crowd of that mages a player could probably be confused and could not differ clearly Healer mages from White mages. So today I got an idea, that Healer Mage should have a book in his hand as level1 Mage do. So below is a result of my work, not much of work actually of course Also there was a problem that when Healer Mage/White mage attacks in melee with a staff he can not hold the staff with both hands and the same time to hold a book in a hand. But I got that it is ok not to show a book in the moment of attacking with staff, because many units (elves for example) attacking with a bow do not have a sword in the sprite image at all, and same on the contrary, when attacking with a sword, their bow mysteriously disappears.

healer_mages.png (18.35 KiB) Viewed 12207 times

[Aldarisvet]

I remade animations for Velendar with a staff and also added 1 more level. So in chapter I Velendar can advance from level0 to level3, his staff can grow from Nightmare staff to Terror staff.

velendar.png (33.6 KiB) Viewed 11722 times

[Aldarisvet]

Fast level0 ghost franskenstain based on 1.0 wesnoth version wraith and resized current one head. Possible name 'Minor ghost'.
cost 10
HP 9
MP 6
XP 15
2-3 melee (arcane) (drains)
2-3 ranged (cold)

[beetlenaut]

I made a level-0 ghost too, and called it a Spook. (It has similar stats, and is in The Founding of Borstep campaign if you want to see it.)

[ForestDragon]

yeah, i seen it, but i have to admit, Aldarisvet's one looks more ethereal