Lord's Of Magic II Concept Art - Assets Unreal 5 Engine

[eyesodilated]

I might do some asset dumps here soon, this is the Order Knights and by extension the Water Knights:

[Boaster]

Nicely done!

[eyesodilated]

I changed my Water Thief to try and accurately reflect the in-game sprites used and a render shot in the game manual as well which seems to have a cape. I am almost done transferring her into the Unreal Engine and may upload some gameplay soon, however school just started for me again. Although I started with an African model, I am still having issues getting the skin color darker and have reached out to meistermurloc on tips for tweaking skin color, it might be easier to do once I am in Unreal engine. I left the drape on the front of the skirt so there is more mesh for the physics to work with, but I may get rid of it. Also, not too sure how plausible it is for a stealthy thief to have such shiny clothes I just thought it looked good with the lighting. Anyways hope to dump some more soon and have a rudimentary gameplay setup in UE4 or UE5.

[eyesodilated]

Another small batch of assets dumps:

2D map of Urak collected from game screenshots:



Used this map to create a 3D globe of Urak:


And this is a render I recreated the book from the opening cinematic:

[eyesodilated]

Been working on Water city etc, ignore the fact the city is level 1 but the mage tower and sacred temple are level 3.

[tommyg]

Aug 27, 2022 6:02:01 GMT -6 eyesodilated said:

Oh wow you’ve been busy, these are great! I'm not sure whether you're looking for critique, as I see these are in various stages of WIP. You have a good start with the order knights, though they need more metallic textures on the armor, they look a little like plastic to me. The horses look good, and appear very solid and chunky, which is how I'd expect a cavalry war horse to look, but there are some texture wrapping issues going on. I know you've stated these are water cavalry, but actually they are Orders Cavalry units. Sierra got lazy or ran out of time when it came to Calvary units, so we are missing genuine Calvary units for Earth, Air, Fire and Water. If there was ever I remake, I'd love to see some unique cavalry units for the elemental faiths. For water, maybe a lizard man riding a serpent? Or an Amazon female warrior on a lizard steed, there are tons of options you can go with.

The Amazon thief looks great! Obviously shes not black like in LOM but definitely looks less Caucasian than before. I used to paint oil color pictures using traditional painting techniques, skin tone is so hard to get right especially if it's a skin tone you are not used to capturing. I like the metallic effect you gave her outfit, but there's something not quite right about it, I think it's because it's hard to see what material it is. It shines like metal but it also looks like cloth, maybe try giving it a chain mail texture for more realism? But I like her dagger, looks very ornate which goes with the water theme, and the pleats in her skirt are impressive.

The water city with the sky and setting looks amazing, those kinds of scenes would work great for a new LOM introduction cinematic.

So you clearly know your way around Unreal Engine 5, if there was a LOM sequel Unreal5 seems the best choice of engine to work with. How advanced are you with it? I'd love to see some working engine footage in U5, at this early stage that would be more valuable than 3d assets, in my opinions, you can just use place holder graphics. Anyway, nice work and excited to see more!

[eyesodilated]

Yes, I am always looking for critique! I do like how Sierra/Impressions tried to tie the duplicate clone units into the lore- like the Order Calvary are Knights who got enchanted by the Amazons but in the middle of battle it can get really confusing especially with the Chaos/Fire Calvary and the Earth/Death Calvary.
I am constantly torn between different projects but a big one on my list is to get unique calvary into the original game for the elemental faiths. Adding new sprites is tedious but worth it, unfortunately when adding the new sprites, I have to be very careful with the math on the image size of the sprite frames. While this can be overcome somewhat by calculating the canvas size of the dimensions. But when adding "mounts" the one pixel offset margin of error here and there really adds up. So, a normal calvary unit is actually two separate sprites put together using the imp mounting system. Thats why the steed runs off after the calvary unit dies- there are some work arounds for instance making a new calvary unit that is one sprite instead of two so that the mount/steed dies with the unit or to trial and error the new mount into place. Also, if I change the mount and the calvary unit on top to both be brand new sprites I can frame them at the same time then painstakingly remove one from the other creating two sprites that match perfectly.

This is the ideas I am working on now for new calvary:

• Earth- Dwarfs on Rams (I saw it in the Hobbit movie, and it looked cool)
• Air - I will take any ideas someone has- I like the idea of them having a grounded calvary maybe fairies riding polar bears or yaks?
• Water - I have been messing around with giant crab riders
• Fire - I was leaning towards some kind of Scorpion riders

Also, I have a chariot I am working so some of these calvary can be pulled rather than ride ontop, just ideas. I am totally open to any changes or requests.

I have some commercial licenses that I splurged on for my people models via Daz 3D which has saved me time from modelling humans from scratch but I have painted myself into a corner so to speak. I need to figure out these shaders Daz uses when I bridge over to Blender then to Unreal. Apparently, Daz uses UberIray skin shaders and these also have different material outputs for both the render engines in blender, cycles and eevee. I am trying to find a way to fix the skin tone issue and it seems to be a shader problem where I need to switch to a principled BSDF but I haven't got it to work in Blender or Unreal. However, this is the same model uploaded to Mixamo where I get many of my animations for free. As you can see the model's skin tone looks much closer to the original sprite's artwork when in Mixamo:


  



That brings me to the next issue, I am torn between the simple original art style of LOMSE and adding more detail for the Unreal remake/tribute. The plastic comes from mixing in the original RGB values from the sprites in game. I probably should just use that as reference and make it shinier and metal like. I really want to get Substance 3D when it has the sale for one time purchase since I cannot handle another subscription service. But yes, if I am going to unreal engine, I need to make the full jump and commit to a more realistic style.


Architecture and environments are easier to get looking nice since it is kind of a science more than art. I am just a beginner in Unreal engine, but I have got several of the LoMSE units I made into a map. I may make a video soon.

I really appreciate the feedback thankyou!!!

[tommyg]

Well, it's good how Sierra tried to build a lore backstory behind the elemental cavalry clones, however, I suspect this has more to do with necessity rather than an intentional design/lore choice.

With regard to the mounting system, I always thought it was strange how the mounts were always perfectly fine after their rider gets murdered, and just wander around the screen aimlessly for the rest of the battle. Does the mount system mean you could potentially put any rider sprite on top of any mount? Or am I over simplified the process? It sounds fairly complicated from what your saying.

Earth- Dwarfs on Rams - Looks amazing, Dwarf Ram riders were clearly the way to go!
Air - I will take any ideas someone has- I like the idea of them having a grounded cavalry maybe fairies riding polar bears or yaks? - I'm not sure whether bears would go well with the whole air theme, as they are meant to be fast but squishy, bears look too strong and imposing, same with Yaks. I was thinking maybe Fairies riding Dragonlings, so a smaller, more immature version of the air dragon legendary unit perhaps, which can't fly properly yet.
Water - I have been messing around with giant crab riders - Crab riders definitely fit the theme but, crabs are extremely ugly to look at compared to the Amazon Champions. But then I never understood why the amazons are allied to the Lizardmen anyway, unless they're also enthralled by the Amazons charms. I was thinking maybe Amazons riding Panthers but perhaps thats too similar to Chaos and their Tiger riders, so considering I can't think of a better idea then Crab riders might be the best option.
Fire - I was leaning towards some kind of Scorpion Riders - Scorpion riders would look awesome and very in keeping with Fires aesthetic!

In relation to LOMs original art style, I don't actually think it is "simple" or cartoony at all, the art style is fairly gritty and theres clearly been an attempt at detail and realism, considering it's a fantasy world. Especially if you compare it to the cartoony look of some modern fantasy games like World of Warcraft. LOM is as detailed as it could be considering the graphical limitations of games back in the 90s.

Art style if very individual and I know some people prefer that cartoony look, but I see so many games these days with a simplified graphic style, and it starts to look childish and immersion breaking. It's hard to imagine a fantasy environment as a living and breathing world if it looks like Teletubby land, that may sound harsh, but I am certain that if Siera were to make LOM in 2022 they would go down the detailed, realistic route. Though I understand many smaller indie developers chose that cartoon style because the detailed option is so much more time and resource intensive.

[Boaster]

Scorpion Riders, yeee!

Crab Riders, that might work pretty good. Or like those Half Spider, Half Woman succubus types?

[tommyg]

Nov 11, 2022 14:58:27 GMT -6 Boaster said:

Scorpion Riders, yeee!

Crab Riders, that might work pretty good. Or like those Half Spider, Half Woman succubus types?

Well, I know what you mean but I wonder if succubus creatures will look too demonic for Water faith, which is meant to be aligned with good. Succubus may work for fire.

Unless you could explain Water using demons through the lore, in the same way theyve explained the order cavalry. Though there are already unanswered questions surrounding the Water faith backstory.

I always wondered why human Amazons were allied to Lizardmen, but cant see any explanation of their relationship in the manual. As there are no lizardmen champions I wonder whether they are subservient to the Amazon women,perhaps enslaved. Also, where are all the Amazon men?

[Boaster]

Amazonian Boar Hunters?

Boars are wild, though quite earthly. Tusks to boot.

Give them short spears for throwing, possibly, along with spears to stick-it-to-em in melee?

Or, have them wield axes.

Just ideas.