Unit Appearance Diversity

[ulfgur]

Here's something, (baisically how I create "new unit animations"). Could you not copy and paste a bunch of sprites (after asking )
from campaighns ??

I dont exactly know how many sprites there are out there, but elvish campaighns generally use these. As for humans, I do stuff like give a footpad the shoes of a elvish archer.



ulfgur.


ps:I have skimmed all of the posts here, but I may have missed something. PM me if I typed anything stupid.

[Turuk]

ps:I have skimmed all of the posts here, but I may have missed something.

Frankensteining was already mentioned. You cannot just copy and paste parts in, you would have to still attach all those parts, do a bit of fiddling to make them fit in with the sprite (as not all the sprites are built the same), animate those new parts....

[ulfgur]

I just realised this morning that another stupid thing was said by me. On my computer its easy. new mac. My dad was a graphic desighner, until recently, so Iv'e got the latest version of photoshop to use. I have no idea what everybody else is using , and for all I know it could be paint.

Note: paint is horrible. its really hard to get individual pixels and you can only undo 5 times, you can only zoom in to 800%


ulfgur

[thespaceinvader]

Note, GIMP is free and open source. We tend to use a mixture of that and PS here.

[ulfgur]

Interesting, interesting..............

[TheMastermind]

dudes, i think you just doubeld the numbers and efforts. let's think about it.

now days spriters do all the sprites in one big peice with every thing, let's take it step by step.

let's say that first we start small. every unit type got it's body (gear, clothing, hat and more).
every unit will have a transperent hole where the head should be (it can work for caped units too if you'll just think about it).

now, for every race we will have a lot of heads that their units will share, really it's more a cut - copy - paste job to do.
cutting the heads of the units we have now, saving them in a diffrent file and heading a couple more (that dosnt have to be complety diffrent, some cut - copy - paste game of beard, hair and face, which can by itself be made to parts).
a small code that synchs the head position and walla! we have a singel uniform army with diffrent faces

and dont overestimate the work, doing a face wont take you as much as doing a full unit, so you dont have to be that of a superman.

[thespaceinvader]

Won't really work, I'm afraid. The face which works on one unit simply wouldn't fit on another. They're not all at the same angle, nor do they all maintain the same level of detail.

It's all very well to talk about it, but until someone puts their pixels and code where their mouth is and DOES something about it, all it is is talk. It's easy to say 'all we need to do is 'x'', but that doesn't make 'x' a workable idea.

You might just as well say we should make the game 3D - it would only require making a few models and textures, after all. Or making it an FPS - it's just a little engine rewrite, after all.

[Turuk]

dudes, i think you just doubeld the numbers and efforts. let's think about it.

Dude, as TSI pointed out, it's not that easy. Maybe you should try reading the whole thread first comprehensively and understanding that the idea that you suggested was mentioned already. And was already pointed out as not possible given the reasons that TSI outlined again.

This thread is now under soft-lock. Until someone actually does the work to put effort to their words, do not post any more "discussion."