New saurian units

[Talentless]

This thread aims to discuss sprites and animations for new potential Saurian units including:

• Lv3 upgrades of the augur tree.
• Alternative skirmisher upgrades.

You can check the progress of the individual units in these pull requests:

• #6905: new skirmisher alternative upgrade branch. Mixed fighter with some defensive capabilities.
• #6911: level-3 upgrades of the augur tree.
• #6912: optional alternative skirmisher upgrade for campaigns and UMC. Focused on ranged attacks.

Current unit sprites can be found in this add-on.

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Initially I'd like to discuss the sprites of the new augur final upgrades. I feel like it's the least controversial change that already proved quite useful for soon-to-be-official campaigns. The current sprites are not quite simple recolors, but they might need to be a bit more distinctive to match mainline quality. Perhaps a slight pose change or a subtle enlargement of the sprite (similar to Ambusher > Flanker) might do the trick.

[doofus-01]

Judging the level 3 magic saurians by how differentiated they are by testing your add-on in the scenario editor:
- The prophet is good as is. The color and hat make it different enough, though maybe the staff could be a little gaudier.
- I'm less sure about the seer. This is an alternative proposal for the seer - I'm not completely convinced of it, but I think it would be more easily distinguished on the map.

[Helmet]

My 2 cents: if one had its tail curved downward, it would change the profile and make it appear more distinct.

[Talentless]

- The prophet is good as is. The color and hat make it different enough, though maybe the staff could be a little gaudier.

I've used the Flanker's palette for the weapon: golden base, silver tip. Both staves that I've proposed were supposed to match Flanker's general style, since it's the only level-3 Saurian unit for now.

- I'm less sure about the seer. This is an alternative proposal for the seer - I'm not completely convinced of it, but I think it would be more easily distinguished on the map.

The gem on the forehead seems a bit too bright, I'd probably go with something halfway through between our proposed sprites in terms of the headgear. I do like the new pauldrons. I'll try to propose another version this week.

[doofus-01]

My 2 cents: if one had its tail curved downward, it would change the profile and make it appear more distinct.

Yeah, a slight change in pose would help. These saurians do move around a lot, so maybe differentiation can be found in the standing animations as well.

I've used the Flanker's palette for the weapon: golden base, silver tip. Both staves that I've proposed were supposed to match Flanker's general style, since it's the only level-3 Saurian unit for now.

General style seemed OK, I just thought it could go further.

[Talentless]

Yeah, a slight change in pose would help. These saurians do move around a lot, so maybe differentiation can be found in the standing animations as well.

I've changed the tail to face downwards. I will also adjust the idle animations. Defend, magic and melee frames will also likely require some changes.

I've also made the gem and its golden trim a bit darker for consistency with the flanker headgear. Let me know what you think.

[doofus-01]

Looks reasonable to me, though it's hard to tell how significant the tail change will end up being, given the animations and north-facing frames. Looking forward to seeing what you do with those. Thanks.

[Talentless]

I'm attaching a complete set of SE animations for the new Seer sprite (seer-se.zip). I ended up scraping the inverted tail placement to speed up animating process and for consistency with NE pose. Please verify if anything needs adjustments.

seer-se-bob.gif (4.32 KiB) Viewed 43984 times

seer-se.zip

(35.49 KiB) Downloaded 333 times

Also, just to confirm, this is the sprite that I'm using as a basis for NE animations.

seer-ne-bob1.png (992 Bytes) Viewed 43984 times

[doofus-01]

These SE frames are looking good; similar to the soothsayer but not too similar. Maybe a subtle magic halo could be added as a separate layer

EDIT: For "magic halos", I'm thinking some sort of sparkling aura for the healer and staff-to-hand lightning for the offensive unit. These would not be part of the sprite image frame, they can be added later.

[name]

I just want to say I hope the Seer and Prophet sprites can be ready in time for 1.18. They really add a lot to both multiplayer and singleplayer, and feel like some of the only advancments still sorely absent from the game.

[Talentless]

Took long enough, but I did finish these NE frames. See the pull request.

[Refumee]

Maybe I am late to the party.
I really like this sprite and the animation.

I got another idea for it.
Why not using it for SotA as unique saurian sprite for Vendraxis?

[Talentless]

You mean this new sprite? It's not up to me of course, but if anything I'd prefer to go ahead with the replacement and use the current seer sprite for the campaigns.

[beetlenaut]

Why not using it for SotA as unique saurian sprite for Vendraxis?

It's not up to me either, but I assume my vote counts for something. I would prefer using it as intended, and giving Vendraxis a level-3 advancement.

[Talentless]

Don't know how I missed this before, but undead saurians lack a lot of the animations. I can't imagine how death could stop saurians from bobbing.

zombie-saurian-standing.gif (3.44 KiB) Viewed 24595 times

I did a basic standing animation for the Lv0 zombie saurian. To match the mounted zombie and cat, I made 7 frames with the second frame repeating at the end (i.e. [1~7,2] in WML). I tried to do some subtle robe animation as well, but it's difficult to make it smooth without it looking off or barely noticeable. Let me know if it needs any adjustments or if you have any comments regarding the robe movement, doofus-01.

EDIT: Max pointed out that the elbow on the left of the sprite seems to be disappearing in some of the frames, this is because the current base image that I used for animation has this large straight line as the arm outline. I added an outstretched elbow in some of the frames to make the forearm movement seem more natural. I could look into changing the base arm slightly on the frames where the forearm is not raised if you think it's necessary.

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If I'm understanding WML correctly, my only worry is that the frame length is hardcoded in the standing animation definition:

Code: Select all

    [standing_anim]
        [filter]
            #included are the base unit and variation="mounted" and "cat"
            [not]
                variation="ant,bat,beast_rider,boar,bug,drake,dwarf,falcon,fish,goblin,gryphon,horse,rat,sand_scorpion,saurian,scorpion,serpent,spider,swimmer,troll,wolf,wose"
            [/not]
        [/filter]
        start_time=0
        [frame]
            image="units/undead/{BASE_NAME}-standing-[1~7,2].png~{IPF}({ARG}):[580,980,600,430,350*2,420,720]"
        [/frame]
    [/standing_anim]

Seems like a large delay between each frame that doesn't really fit more dynamic movement like saurians' bobbing. For comparison, saurian idle macro (and the gif I attached) has a delay of 200ms between frames. Should I attempt to parametrize the UNIT_BODY_WALKING_CORPSE_GRAPHICS macro with customizable animation length, or do an override specific to the saurian variant?

EDIT: Also removed custom stats from here, turns out they already have modified defenses/resistances in game and I missed it.