Avian Faction portraits and sprites

[orangebox]

As much as I said I'll be in hiatus, I just felt that I needed to draw a little. So I did a little progress on my kingfisher portrait lol. Addressed the problem with the hair (it was a really lazy and minor adjustment, hope it suffices) and changed the face a little (She looks old, somehow - when avians are supposed to look really young most of the time). What's left to finish now are the lower body, the wings and the spear. The wings are going to be really hard to render ._. Had a blister just for doing that much XD Maybe I could simply crop off most of the bottom half :9

[lipk]

Also, would someone be kind enough to actually try and put it together for one unit (specifically the Kingfisher, since it has the most complete animations) to test it out?

I'd be kind enough if you posted the PNGs

[orangebox]

What size do they need be? I don't know which frames are necessary or not necessary either.

Here's the motherload.

Edit: reuploaded it. The previous one still has bits of the old green background.

Edit 2:
Also, I found the problem with the shadows in the flying movement animation. Apparently I made the head bob but I did not line the frames accordingly (I lined the head to the same position at every frame, which I should have lined the shadows instead) However, it does look less appealing somehow with the frames slightly adjusted appropriately... What are your thoughts?

Side by side for comparison.

Old one with the shadow inappropriately shifting about

Animate-KFflightmove.gif (29.07 KiB) Viewed 3965 times

New one with the frames repositioned

Animate-KFflightmovev2.gif (29.1 KiB) Viewed 3965 times

[Sapient]

The portrait is lovely. It looks very close to the official Wesnoth portrait style.

[lipk]

What size do they need be? I don't know which frames are necessary or not necessary either.

Here's the motherload.

Edit: reuploaded it. The previous one still has bits of the old green background.

I mean separate, transparent background pngs for each frame. As much as I admire your work, I still don't want to spend time with cropping compilation images like that (especially since I currently don't have a mouse). The images should be either 72x72 pixels big, or, if the image doesn't fit, 144x144 pixels (but then make sure to use the middle 72x72 area as a base, since that part will be aligned to the hex).

[Crendgrim]

The images should be either 72x72 pixels big, or, if the image doesn't fit, 144x144 pixels (but then make sure to use the middle 72x72 area as a base, since that part will be aligned to the hex).

Actually, have a look at the drake images. They have all kinds of sizes, and they do even have non-square sized images.

[orangebox]

Thanks for the support sapient!

I think I've sorted them out (with references in the unit folders). I hope they are labelled correctly and framed appropriately lol

Also, they are all facing south-eastward. I think the game can manage the frames to flip to the west direction, right?

[lipk]

Here you go. Extract it to your add-ons folder, and then a scenario ("Avian faction test") should appear in multiplayer, where you can fight some orcs with your kingfishers. They currently use the drakefly movetype.

The coding is not 100% perfect right now, but it's good enough to give an impression. If you want your avians to stay in the air, navigate them to a water hex.

[orangebox]

Hmm, I'm not seeing it somehow D;

I extracted it to my desktop, then cut and pasted it into the add-ons folder. However, in multiplay it doesn't show up.

I have also tried extracting it straight into the add-ons folder. Doesn't work either.

[Crendgrim]

The directory structure should look like this: (hoping that this doesn't vary for different OS)

Code: Select all

.../data/
  add-ons/
    Avian_Faction_Test/
      images/
      maps/
      scenarios/
      units/
      _main.cfg

[orangebox]

It does, but it doesn't show. Odd? I've still only have Default and Age of Heroes era.

Scratch that. I found it. It wasn't an era XD

Edit1:

It works! It works! I'm so happy ;x; I'm actually smiling as I play it. I guess it's the first time seeing my assets in a game Thank you very much lipk!

Seeing as how the attack animation worked, I think I might be switching the spear attacks from pierce into a blade when on ground. Reanimate it into a slashing attack instead of a thrusting one.

[lipk]

Not sure if it's necessary to rework the animation. I tweaked the frame offsets to resolve the unit piercing under/above target issue, and actually it looks pretty good. It'd be probably a good idea to spend your precious time with creating north and south attack animations instead, because those can't be produced from the current one with whatever coding tricks

EDIT: by the way, I see two problems with the current frames: firstly, the shadows are opaque and secondly, the unit moves too much horizontally, which, combined with the auto-offsetting of melee attacks makes the sprite partly cover the enemy.

[orangebox]

Yeah the shadows are of the wrong color too. I have no idea how to make them slightly transparent either. And for the second part, it's my fault for forgetting that in wesnoth, units cannot attack to the left or right, only northeast/west or southeast/west. Which is why I am considering of changing the attack animations to a slash when grounded and a pierce when flying.

Post 2:
Might be because of the buffed HP for the kingfishers, I actually won without their specials XD

[Crow_T]

orangebox, are you still using mspaint for sprites? Try http://www.gimp.org/ it's pretty awesome, 2 great things: One, in view>new, you can open the sprite in another window so you can have a zoomed-in view as well as a normal size view. Also, in filters>animation>playback you can check your animations. Pretty slick stuff.
Plus it supports layer transparency, first select your shadow, then edit>clear, then use the bucket tool to fill it with a 50% opaque color.

[francophone]

It was 60% opacity: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Creating_Shadows_Under_Units
But perhaps it is no longer the case; the tutorial is not updated (besides the purple became black).