Help For A New Contributor

[Tamur]

hi all,

Battle for Wesnoth was recommended to me over at totalwar.org. I came expecting a moderately well done project with a couple of glaring problems. However, I find that the game is extremely well executed! I'm impressed. And to find that there are a couple of art fora is even better.

I've developed concepts, portraits, icons, and tile graphics for two NASA-educational games in the past couple of years, and would love to contribute here. However, I'm a bit overwhelmed with the amount of info to sift through.

I searched for but couldn't find some sort of a Beginnning BfW Artist Guide that points out the technical specs (tile size, file format, bit depth, etc), as well as how to set up a testing environment. Where could I find that sort of information?

Thank you,
Tamur

[Shadow]

Hello and welcome.

Well how to start.The wiki perhaps.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Create_Art
Don't know much about Terrain specs perhaps someone else knows more.
For other questions just ask.

[Tamur]

Wow, that wiki page is exactly what I needed. Thanks Shadow!

[Jetrel]

(thanks, shadow)

Wow, that wiki page is exactly what I needed. Thanks Shadow!

The (de facto) art director here - I wrote that wiki page, and please do inform me if there's anything lacking, there.


I think that page covers the "technical specs" (and please do forgive it for being a bit pedantic; a large part of the target audience for it is under 16 years of age), however I have no idea what you mean by "how to set up a testing environment".

For what it's worth, there is no special, proprietary preprocessing or packaging of our game data that we do; our "cfg" data files are simple TXT format files, readable in practically any text program on any platform (notepad.exe and TextEdit.app come to mind), and our images are simple PNGs. The only thing you need to do to add new content to the game is to simply drop them in the appropriate folders (images will need to be referenced by an appropriate .cfg file of the game - for example, unit images will need to be referenced by the unit's .cfg file, which specifies all its imagery, and all its animations).

Practically everything can be learned by editing some of the existing files and seeing what happens. The language that our .cfg files are written in is one of our own design, called WML - it's a tag based language, so a lot of it functions like html - you open a tag, define some properties of it, and close the tag.

WML does have macros, so if you see something like {Defend animation bar.png foo.png}, it's meant to expand into something like:

Code: Select all

[defend_animation]
    [frame]
        image="foo.png"
        duration=50
    [/frame]
    [frame]
        image="bar.png"
        duration=60
    [/frame]
[/defend_animation]

Warning - do not trust that syntax I used above to be kosher.



As for what we'd be interested in having; there are several general areas of the game art:
- We could use additional terrain images; both transitions between types, additional types, and improvement of existing types.
- We could use additional "props" for our terrain (campfires, etc).
- We could use additional animations for some of our sprite images.
- We could use additional portraits, styled after the core portraits used by the humans (spearman, knight, etc).

I'll save further elaboration till after you express what you're interested in working on - it can get into some depth. Others than me can fill in with a lot more info about terrain, if you're interested in that.

[Tamur]

hi Jetryl,

Thanks for your response also. I've been digging around in the cfg files since yesterday and find that the markup language is very clean and straight-forward for the most part, which is great to see. My project for today is to work out the basics on map making and how the terrain tiles are hooked into the engine.

And don't worry, the wiki page is very helpful.

As for what I'm interested to work on -- I've had more experience with portrait and icon work than anything, and do enjoy that. But if this game is anything like the others I've worked on, terrain is always a challenging area just from the volume of work needed, so I'd be happy to help out with that. Props have been fun little projects in my past work, but I don't know how they hook into the engine here either, so I'll go for terrain first. I can do unit design and anims, but I'd rather focus on the static elements for now.

So, I'd be happy to handle portrait work immediately since the WML for those seems very simple. And I will work on learning terrain/props so I can contribute in the (hopefully not to distant) future.

[Shadow]

Well portraits, Icons and units are quite straightforward.

For portraits a pic 205*205 is enough not need for WML and units well it is the same 72*72. I don't touch WML with a long stick. Thank god there are others who know more about it.

The only limitation for portraits might be your art style though (but not a big one).

[Tamur]

The only limitation for portraits might be your art style though (but not a big one).

I can copy styles slavishly with no problem, just so long as I've a good supply of Danablu about. I have seen this be a huge issue with artists who refuse to conform their style to any norms, but no worries here.

As for WML, we'll see how far I get before I pass out

[Shadow]

Mmh we could raise a fund to supply you with Danablu I've got some cents somewhere under my couch.

[gromland]

Hello here

I'm new on the forum although I've played Wesnoth for a while.
Now I'm trying to involve a bit further by creating some artworks as well (items, units, portraits...) and I have a few remarks/questions :

1 - I just read some of posts concerning the style of pictures that are required. I clearly see an opposition between the "painting/drawing" style and the "vectorial" one. As a professionnal of adverstising and commercials, I'm used to that second cathegory.
Therefoe I'd like to know if that kind of style is still welcome or not ?

2 - If so, where should I submit them (as well as my items and units samples) ? Here on the forum or somewhere else specific ?
If not... Too bad, as there are many things to do with that kind of pcits.

3 - I'm not sure I'm on the right thread for this, and I beg your pardon if I do wrong.

4 - At last, I apologize for my english as I am not, you have understood, an english native and I hope you are at least able to "get my point" ! :)

See you soon around

[Thrawn]

Hello here

I'm new on the forum although I've played Wesnoth for a while.
Now I'm trying to involve a bit further by creating some artworks as well (items, units, portraits...) and I have a few remarks/questions :

1 - I just read some of posts concerning the style of pictures that are required. I clearly see an opposition between the "painting/drawing" style and the "vectorial" one. As a professionnal of adverstising and commercials, I'm used to that second cathegory.
Therefoe I'd like to know if that kind of style is still welcome or not ?

2 - If so, where should I submit them (as well as my items and units samples) ? Here on the forum or somewhere else specific ?
If not... Too bad, as there are many things to do with that kind of pcits.

3 - I'm not sure I'm on the right thread for this, and I beg your pardon if I do wrong.

4 - At last, I apologize for my english as I am not, you have understood, an english native and I hope you are at least able to "get my point" !

See you soon around

As one of Jetryl's many minions, I think these will be his answers.

1. Cel shaded "vector" style is still accepted. Although if I remember correctly Jetryl wants at some point more painterly work, if we got someone do do a bunch of vector portraits of a similar style to the works of Jason Lutes (the human soldier/outlaw portraits) they would certainly not be refused.

2. Making your own thread in this section would be recommended. This section if for work on official game related art, so here would be proper.

3. Posting here was okay, I guess. Doesn't matter now

4. You write wonderfully. Don't worry.

Hope to see some of you work soon! If I made any mistakes, Jetryl will correct you, I'm sure.

[gromland]

I will follow your advice(s), Thrawn.

However, even if I'm eager to contribute the way I can to the game, I'll first make the effort to become more familiar with the forum before creating my "own" thread ;)

Thanks a lot for your reply anyway, and see you soon for sure !

[Jetrel]

1 - I just read some of posts concerning the style of pictures that are required. I clearly see an opposition between the "painting/drawing" style and the "vectorial" one. As a professionnal of adverstising and commercials, I'm used to that second cathegory.
Therefoe I'd like to know if that kind of style is still welcome or not ?

Images in this style are very welcome:
http://img94.echo.cx/img94/9520/lancer8mc.png

Images in this style are also welcome:
https://webspace.utexas.edu/woojs1/Wesn ... Esanoo.png

Do whichever you like doing and can do well. We're trying to build separate, complete libraries of both kinds, since campaign authors might prefer one or the other to match their works against, and since we artists of wesnoth are a bit divided in what we ourselves prefer to see and to draw. Also since we're GPL, and these things might be useful to other free games. I've personally made both kinds.

2 - If so, where should I submit them (as well as my items and units samples) ? Here on the forum or somewhere else specific ?
If not... Too bad, as there are many things to do with that kind of pcits.

Post them here, in the "Art Contributions" thread - if the thread gets noisy with user-posts, we may move it to the "VIP-only" "Art Development" forum, where only people actually contributing to the game can post.

"Art Workshop" is for people to work on their own things which aren't for the core units/story/characters; add-ons like people's own races, portraits for characters in their campaign, etc.

[gromland]

Images in this style are very welcome:
http://img94.echo.cx/img94/9520/lancer8mc.png

Images in this style are also welcome:
https://webspace.utexas.edu/woojs1/Wesn ... Esanoo.png

Greetings Jetryl.
Thx for your answer and the infos. I'm taking my marks in the communauty at the moment :)

I'm not really addict to the first kind of art to be honnest... And I actualy have some troubles to read the second.
But no worries anyway, I'll submit some of my works and you'll state.

See you !

[zookeeper]

Images in this style are very welcome:
http://img94.echo.cx/img94/9520/lancer8mc.png

Images in this style are also welcome:
https://webspace.utexas.edu/woojs1/Wesn ... Esanoo.png

The second style is only used in UtBS and EI though, so it wouldn't make much sense to use that style for new core unit type portraits, but it's fine for campaign portraits (at least assuming they fit in with the campaign portrait style of that campaign). Just to clarify in case it wasn't clear.

[Darth Fool]

The second style is only used in UtBS and EI though, so it wouldn't make much sense to use that style for new core unit type portraits, but it's fine for campaign portraits

Uhm...not according to what Jetryl said...

Do whichever you like doing and can do well. We're trying to build separate, complete libraries of both kinds, since campaign authors might prefer one or the other to match their works against, and since we artists of wesnoth are a bit divided in what we ourselves prefer to see and to draw. Also since we're GPL, and these things might be useful to other free games. I've personally made both kinds.