NEW! Units/Sprites/.IMP dumping ground

[eyesodilated]

I am starting a thread to dump the new units I am making if anyone wants to check them out. Right now I am replacing the clone calvary units. First is the Earth Calvary, I replaced the Death Riders with Dwarven Goat Riders.



Here is a regular Goat and the Knights for comparison. I guess they are actually Rams and not goats the dwarves are riding. These are done in the authentic style of calvary unit using the mount system.




Attached is the .zip file with the A and B imps as well as A and B mount imps and H files if anyone wants to try these out yourself- report any bugs here! Thanks

eacav.zip (364.22 KB)

[Boaster]

Nice work, as usual! I'll be looking at the video after work sometime.

[Boaster]

Is the unit all-in-one, or are the mounts separate from their riders?

[eyesodilated]

Oct 31, 2022 16:43:21 GMT -6 Boaster said:

Is the unit all-in-one, or are the mounts separate from their riders?

The mounts are separate from the riders:

The riders are ecava.imp and eacavb.imp
While the goat rams are ecavam.imp and ecavbm.imp.

I made them at the same time so I could mask one and get them to fit together later on. I need to solve my shadow issue as the red shadow color is just as important as the green transparent and will make the line between mount and rider be one of the in game shadow.

I appreciate the kind words, happy Halloween!

[Boaster]

Nicely done!

Goat Riders! What an idea!

I had seen something like a boar rider in Age of Wonders 2, I think it was. It was a hero-type unit. It's been such a long time since playing.

I can only imagine what you'll be doing for Wind Riders.

[eyesodilated]

I really wonder about Air sometimes, you think it would be best to keep them as grounded calvary or to have a flying calvary?

[Boaster]

Nov 1, 2022 7:25:48 GMT -6 eyesodilated said:

I really wonder about Air sometimes, you think it would be best to keep them as grounded calvary or to have a flying calvary?

I like the idea of flying cavalry, but such power from the air I think would be reserved for the creatures. Eagles are strong, yet also weak.

Elven Polar bear rider?

[eyesodilated]

Nov 1, 2022 17:42:17 GMT -6 Boaster said:

Nov 1, 2022 7:25:48 GMT -6 eyesodilated said:

I really wonder about Air sometimes, you think it would be best to keep them as grounded calvary or to have a flying calvary?

I like the idea of flying cavalry, but such power from the air I think would be reserved for the creatures. Eagles are strong, yet also weak.

Elven Polar bear rider?

I think polar bears are the answer- should they be ridden by faires or storm giants 🤔

[Boaster]

Nov 3, 2022 6:27:57 GMT -6 eyesodilated said:

Nov 1, 2022 17:42:17 GMT -6 Boaster said:

I like the idea of flying cavalry, but such power from the air I think would be reserved for the creatures. Eagles are strong, yet also weak.

Elven Polar bear rider?

I think polar bears are the answer- should they be ridden by faires or storm giants 🤔

I would think that being Elven would be fine, to keep the connection between Air and Life, as opposed to mirror unit types.

If it were me, I would make bear riders slow but strong (or stout HP)… this would be handled somewhat by frame rate (like giants).

To me, Elves as the riders makes the most sense.

[eyesodilated]

Potential Calvary Clone replacement units:




 Air Calvary: Elven Polar Bear Riders    Earth Calvary: Dwarven Goat Riders    Water Calvary: Amazon Charioteers    Fire Calvary: Camel Riders/Scorpion Riders               Fire Infantry: Fire Lizards


New Creatures UNITS:



Order: The Bard, Griffin
Chaos: Satyr, Werewolf
Life: Ent, Seraph
Death: Succubus, Jorogumo (Ungoliant, Spider Woman)







Water: Mermaid, Minotaur
Fire: Djinn (Genie), Cerebrus (Hell-Hound)
Air: Harpy, Yeti (Abominable Snowman)
Earth: Leprechaun, Man-eating Plant





EXTRAS: Swamp Monster, Wendigo, Mummy



HERALD CLASS:



Crow, Rabbit, Rat, Fox, Owl, Monkey, Oxen, Rooster, Snake



For new calvary units to replace clones- I am torn between Camel or Scorpion riders for Fire. Water Calvary I want to add a ranged ability perhaps since Amazons and chariots were known for archery. Earth and Air are almost done, shadows and all.

New magical units I listed 2 extra for each faith. Some could be champions & other creatures. Not sure how well each creature fits into LOMSE so I am open to suggestions/critique. For instance, Order has no women, so I made Bard a woman. Bards are intricate to dungeons and dragons fantasy setting but do they work in LOMSE? She can cast spells and melee attack. I have some animations for Ranged attacks too. The Griffin, is it too close to the already existing Gargoyle? Or is it historically a more Chaotic creature? I have a Sphinx or a Revenant (think Aragorn from LOTR) ready for Order too. Is the Leprechaun too cheesy? 

Herald Class? This would be a step up from a Scout Class... maybe stronger, faster and able to cast Magic spells or do Ranged damage? I threw these in to complete the animal Zodiac that was halfway present already. I have some idea how to divvy these out. Rats for Death since they bring plague. Rabbits for Life since they are sign of fertility. Crow for Order and Monkey for Chaos. Foxes have been known to spread Fire; the Owl is a snow owl for Air. Earth has Rooster or Snake since the former cannot fly and the latter is stuck to the ground. Water has Oxen because they spend alot of time near rivers in real life. Also I have the Minotaur as Water on the other list because Posiedon the god of the Oceans created the Bull that lead to the Minotaur- this is part of my Water Quest, Legend of Urak but that is another post!

what do yall think? All the models are rigged and ready to animate, shadows fixed. Most are original creations the rest come from SketchFab. Happy New Years guys!

[Boaster]

All of it looks really good! In fact, too good for LOMSE! I'm sure pixelation will help with that part though.

Love the swamp monster. That takes me back to Swamp Thing! hahah. Such a bad, yet memorable movie.

[eyesodilated]

Haha yes I remember the Swamp Thing movie, definitely inspired by that and the Marvel Werewolf by Night which featured the Man-Thing variation.

First thing is first is the Clone units- I may chronicle the methods I use here to help me remember but also a guide for anyone who might follow. Perhaps they can see something I don't that will help streamline the process. One of the main problems is the game is older and computers are almost too good. When I add the pallet to the sprite images the Red shadow is getting blended into the sprite, same with transparent Green. I have solved this by compositing. The green is background, and the red shadow is foreground and all three images get put together after adjusting the pallet and then applying the pallet right after they are joined. This increases the work/time by about 300%. I am currently looking at solutions for this.

I also mocked up a Gorgon, or Medusa, that I forgot to add here. Not sure which faith that would fit with. Death seems good, Earth because the Stone spell maybe Chaos? 
I am going to get working on the clone units, might change Water to have more of a spear since the chariot puts the rider far away. I also want to go back to the Catapult unit I was tinkering with. IDK if it is too machine oriented for LOMSE, but along with the catapult, maybe a trebuchet, siege tower, battering rams and a trojan horse? These would have terrible movement points for realism.

I will also be off of school this semester; well, I have a few days to decide but I am burned out plus my lease is up in 6 months dont want to deal with finals while moving. Should make some progress on all this.

[tommyg]

Wow so many new units! These could really give each faith more uniqueness. I’ve listed some feedback below

Air Calvary: Elven Polar Bear Riders - Looks beautiful and a good cross between eleven riders and air style units. Can't wait to see what these look like in game!

Earth Calvary: Dwarven Goat Riders- Looks like a perfect fit for Earth, nice job!

Water Calvary: Amazon Charioteers - I assume this unit will just have one chariot rider per battalion? As the chariots are quite big so the usual 3 units per battalion could look abit clustered. The horse and rider look good, but the armor looks Ancient Roman inspired, when I haven't seen any ancient Roman visual influence on the Amazon units already in game.

Fire Calvary: Camel Riders/Scorpion Riders : It's hard to get a good look at the scorpion rider from that angle, but I love the Persian feel to the armor!

Fire Infantry: Fire Lizards : Looks good, but I think the red color could be toned down somewhat, and the tail made smaller.

Order: The Bard, Griffin - very nice model! I could see this being a creature summoned at the Great Temple, maybe as powerful as the Spirit Warrior unit.
Chaos: Satyr, Werewolf - Both of these fit very well with the Chaos theme, but I would make the Satyr more furry and wild looking!

Life: Ent, Seraph - Both of these could work though maybe reduce the Christian elements of the Seraph design with ones from nature. I'd replace the halo with a crown of leaves and flowers, and if possible replace the feathered angel wings with the butterfly wings from the Pegasus Life unit.

Death: Succubus, Jorogumo (Ungoliant, Spider Woman) - the Jorogumo definitely looks like she could have crawled out from Deaths great temple! The only suggestion I'd make is to change her hairstyle perhaps, the needles in that beehive style hair give her a somewhat anime appearance.

Water: Mermaid, Minotaur - The mermaid looks nice, but how would she move on land? If not already animated, I'd take inspiration from the way Warcraft Nāga units move on land, by slithering their tail but keeping upright. You could even make her a Siren and give her the Possession spell from Order.

Fire: Djinn (Genie), Cerberus (Hell-Hound)Cerebus looks like a great fit for a fire themed legendary unit!

Earth: Leprechaun, Man-eating Plant - The Leprechaun looks very cheesy to me, with his waistcoat and top hat. I feel like he should walk around at the end of a rainbow with a pot of gold

Overall a promising lineup of potential new units and clone replacers, I hope the above feedback is useful, though I admit some of my suggestions could be hard to implement.

Have you considered replacing some of the not so good quality sprites with nicer modern ones? For example, Death's Vampire unit and the Life's Dryad unit look pretty bad in my opinion, even for a 1997 game. If you ever have time, they could do with a makeover.

[eyesodilated]

Yes, I was thinking of making the chariot smaller, like the Egyptian style kind as opposed to this cart-looking type. I am probably going back to the drawing board with the Amazon calvary, it was Greek inspired unit I made for the Legends of Urak Quest I have been working on. I will probably revert to what the Water Warrior champion already looks like. For the Siren I think I will use Naga movement, I've been working on the Mermaid so long and the movement is what stumps me. I think a slithering scoot might work best.

I like the Life Seraph advice; I made her more nature based and changed to a Pegasus style wings to keep in tradition. Also changed her staff to be more wood like since the game manual suggest that elves do not like using metal that much. Also made the Satyr furrier and gave him a flute. I will continue to work on these here are the changes:






Also, the Leprechaun I will use the Swamp creature instead. I could make replacements for the Dryad; I had a Nymph design that ended up being too close to the Dryad. In fact, growing up it took me years to realize what the unit actually was. Hopefully next updates I'll have some actually finished units ready

[tommyg]

Jan 12, 2023 10:40:15 GMT -6 eyesodilated said:

Hey sorry for the slow reply, so in regard to the water chariot, there's nothing wrong with the model, it's just that it doesn't fit particularly well with any other water units, so other than the fact it's ridden by a woman, there's no other design factors which mesh well with waters unit roster. I think you either need to tie in it with the Amazon or lizard men design. So either a lizard man riding an amphibious sea monster mount, or if you go down the Amazon route then have her armor similar in color and design to the water champions

The seraph looks great and I love the butterfly wings, Life is one of my favorite faiths, so I play them a lot, I would definitely field this unit! In terms of giving her an army role, maybe she could have the ability to cast heal? And shot 1 spirit arrow per battle, or have her shoot spirit arrow looking missiles. Last bit of advice would be to change the hair color to a blonde, as it just fits better with their other units. The hair looks really detailed, is this a high poly model?

Any visual change you can do to the dryad would be an improvement on the standard LOM unit, but it also doesn't help that the Dryad serves no purpose on the battlefield, being as she is inferior to the Elven Archer. But this is a problem with a lot of the Wizard Tower units, most of the time they aren't worth getting.

[tommyg]

So how's this going?

The new additional units would be cool, but honestly I’m more excited for the unique cavalry units you're designing, this is rally what the game needs. Is it possible to download this as a mod and incorporate this into Booster's GS mod?

[eyesodilated]

Apr 1, 2023 14:54:59 GMT -6 tommyg said:

So how's this going?

The new additional units would be cool, but honestly I’m more excited for the unique cavalry units you're designing, this is rally what the game needs. Is it possible to download this as a mod and incorporate this into Booster's GS mod?

Hey! The last few weeks been crazy- all my spare time has gone into trying to fix the hotspot issues with LOMUT that allows new sprites into the game. ozz brought to my attention his discovery of the. imp structure in Hex editor, which is a revolutionary approach to fix this once and for all! I did make a Seahorse calvary I was messing around with and even had it in my game before everything happened. But I was thinking of gathering approximately a dozen or so new sprites into a single modded game. You would just save the 4 original MPQ Libraries to a backup folder and copy and paste the 4 modded MPQ that have all the new units and creatures. Because I am adding new things but not covering my tracks it can get messy as it affects tables for other units possibly, I add them in at the end of unttype.gs but sometimes I put them with their Faith groupings. The MPQ Editor definitely gets glitched and I have to make new file list every time seems to fix it. I have the new calvary units for each faith on different mpq folders. This is the seahorse rider unit still needs death animation. The Siren is an analog to the Giants of Fire Air and Earth also missing death animation. Also Siren is done in with camera in real perspective I forgot to switch to orthographic. I will make a new post for a Blender tool and files to facilitate making IMP files, also a place to discuss things like lighting and angles. Any way that's another post but I would appreciate the input later. Here the video of Seahorse rider:

[Boaster]

Nice boobies (on the portrait). I'm a fan of those and your good work.

[eyesodilated]

Haha yeah this test game was the same one from where I modded almost every portrait and experimenting with coloring them. I desecrated my wizards library too as those images are standard 4:3 can handle alot of info. I wish there was a way for the map tiles (.lbm) and building screens to run sequences like .imp do- like instead of clicking on the building and seeing a static shot of the Mage Tower, maybe we can call an .imp file like some of the iface sprites are on the building menus. But now the same pic of the Mage Tower we can animate like a .gif- 

Do you think we can call the b-sprites onto the menu for buildings instead of the static iface sprite? since its in the units\imp\ folder then the Game may play the standing sequence (Or fly as flying units are the only in game example of "idle" standing animation, you could add more sequence to XX-stand-XX-000, XX-stand-XX-001, XX-stand-XX-003.pcx for instance. But you would be doing your idle animation EVERY TIME you need to stand which is why I have created sprites that use fly instead of stand but adjusted .gs unit file to make unitype land. It still lags so your cape looks cool blowing in the wind as youre locked in hitstun. Anyway maybe we can create custom b sprites for the buildings call them to replace the staic .lbm portrait?

Does this seem feasible? I can not even find my brand new sprites in buildings. I have alot to learn I may order another GSM as its on one of my old computers, but ill go to the GSM page for that request. I need to brush up, this game is very sensitive to changes. Lately my MPQ cant read the list files but probably because I am ADDING in things instead of replacing them?

Im gonna also post the add-on for Blender soon, it will help anyone create sprites. Getting them to work 100% is another thing.

[tommyg]

Apr 14, 2023 12:25:50 GMT -6 eyesodilated said:

Hey! The last few weeks been crazy- all my spare time has gone into trying to fix the hotspot issues with LOMUT that allows new sprites into the game. ozz brought to my attention his discovery of the. imp structure in Hex editor, which is a revolutionary approach to fix this once and for all! I did make a Seahorse calvary I was messing around with and even had it in my game before everything happened. But I was thinking of gathering approximately a dozen or so new sprites into a single modded game. You would just save the 4 original MPQ Libraries to a backup folder and copy and paste the 4 modded MPQ that have all the new units and creatures. Because I am adding new things but not covering my tracks it can get messy as it affects tables for other units possibly, I add them in at the end of unttype.gs but sometimes I put them with their Faith groupings. The MPQ Editor definitely gets glitched and I have to make new file list every time seems to fix it. I have the new calvary units for each faith on different mpq folders. This is the seahorse rider unit still needs death animation. The Siren is an analog to the Giants of Fire Air and Earth also missing death animation. Also Siren is done in with camera in real perspective I forgot to switch to orthographic. I will make a new post for a Blender tool and files to facilitate making IMP files, also a place to discuss things like lighting and angles. Any way that's another post but I would appreciate the input later. Here the video of Seahorse rider:

Oh wow, I love the sea horse riders! Not so keen on the lack of clothing, but I admire their confidence, tits out, charging straight into the enemy like that !

A MGQ mod that we could use just to try out the new cavalry units would be great, then, maybe once we have all 4 of the cavalry units working and polished, you could give them to Mantera and he could include them in his mod. While his mod fixes extensive issues with the game it's limited in its reach on the visual side. I think a fix of Manteras GS mod plus your new sprites (with hopefully my new portraits/item icons as well [Laugh out Loud]) would be the apex of LOMSE modding.

With regard to Blender, have you created a Blender plugin yourself then to facilitate the creation of 2d sprites from 3d assets?