Civ 3 Unit FLCs to be converted Part 2

[Caranorn]

Here's the file the script which makespr cannot handle. It might not be exactly the one I used when I got that screenshot, but it's similar enough (the error might occur in a different line).

Some material in that script is obviously unnecessary (5 hotpoints when 1 should be sufficient).

Marc aka Caran...

[Caranorn]

Forgot to attach the file and can't seem to add it now.

Marc aka Caran...

P.S.: I have to put all text files into zip archives to prevent corruption during their short stay in the Mac environment (not sure it happens without opening, but generally the Mac file and porogram ID's get added right away).

[Immortal Wombat]

so with the hotpoints, the script file doesn't want them, and looks for the ANIM block, and without them the idle animation goes onto the wrong tile?

I was forced to comment out the hotpoints lines, but the idle anim went wrong in mine too. I'd drop it completely.

[Caranorn]

Exactly Immortal Wombat. I created a provisory sprite for the bowman. Lets consider it a beta. It has fully functioning movement, attack and victory animations. All with working shadows. I also included provisory targa files in the 3 usual sizes.

I am not happy about the results of the scaling (the targa trick doesn't work after all, the ugly edges reappear once the file is converted to tiff, all other ways I tried get the same result). The only way to improve this I expect would be to correct the edges manually, which is a lot of work. A different percentage conversion might improve this, but I doubt it.

By the way, Attack Animation uses all five facings after all. Leaving the Iddle Animation out works, but such sprites will end their move facing in the direction they just moved into (not much of an issue).

This sprite is probably not quite the right size either, maybe 125% would work too, but not much more. I will have to compare size of original sprites and this through some screenshots.

So, attached is the 1st beta version of the bowman sprite.
(Edit: updated to vs. 0.1.1)

Marc aka Caran...

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Caranorn
I am not happy about the results of the scaling (the targa trick doesn't work after all, the ugly edges reappear once the file is converted to tiff, all other ways I tried get the same result). The only way to improve this I expect would be to correct the edges manually, which is a lot of work. A different percentage conversion might improve this, but I doubt it.

The targas work for me. Im using PSP, i just enlarge it to any size then save it as a uncompressed 72dpi TIF and the edges stay undiluted. Maybe its the program your using. I tried the same trick with irfan view but that merged the edges, irfan is best for viewing afterall.

[Caranorn]

I just updated the bowman_sprite. I added the 1st Iddle Animation frame for each facing to the Movement Animations (as MAx.0 and renamed all subsequent MA's appropriately). This way the unit looks better while Iddle.

I haven't looked into cleaning up the frames yet to get rid of the black lines caused by the scaling.

Upgraded version of the sprite can be found in my previous post.

[Maquiladora]

Ah, yeah i got those black lines on the SE/SW facings, but i went back and did the shadows again on SE and compiled the sprite and it disappeared for some reason.

[Pedrunn]

I will give a good look at it

[Caranorn]

The beta version of the swordsman sprite. It has the same problems as the bowman. I still haven't found a way to get rid of the lines created when scaling up (if we only had 1 background it would be easy).

Marc aka Caran...

[Caranorn]

The beta version of the archer sprite. Problems as described previously.

I also created some clean backgrounds for the 3 types of land tga files (others later maybe) (if someone wants a copy let me know).

Marc aka Caran...

[Caranorn]

The beta version of the mounted warrior sprite. This sprite required no scaling and is accordingly much cleaner then the previous ones.

Marc aka Caran...

[Maquiladora]

Thats fast work. I havent had any spare time lately with mp games, ill try and get abit more done.

[Caranorn]

Well, it's slower then I predicted at first I actually had to do much of the mounted warrior twice as I made a serious mistake and had already overwritten part of the previous step (I had to move all the frames 4 pixel down and the VA frames 2? right, before I determined that I had already beheaded that poor warrior a few times while formating to 96x72 pixels).

Anyhow, I can't guarantee how fast I get sprites done, but I have most steps automated now within photoshop. I could probably have done a 3rd sprite today but felt I deserved a break after 2 Add to that that I have scores of spare time (no longer in college, no job and currently on break concerning my political activities).

I will try to work on 2 more sprites tomorrow (though I technically have a meeting tommorrow evening, not sure I'll go though).

Marc aka Caran...

[Immortal Wombat]

That is so much faster than my efforts. I get bored too quickly

This is brilliant, Caran, keep it up

[Caranorn]

The beta version of the infantry sprite. Problems as described previously.

If there is a use for nation specific WWI-WWII sprites I could relatively easily create a number of variations of this sprite (it's more or less appropriate for the British Army, The US Army and Marine Corps prior to 1942, most Commonwealth Nations as well as a number of minor allies of WWII). Others might be done with some more modification.


Marc aka Caran...

[Caranorn]

The beta version of the cavalry sprite. Due to the different placement of the shadows between Civ3 and CTP2 all mounted sprites as I make them now will be slightly smaller then CTP type mounted sprites. Essentially, Civ3 places a rather large shadow under the sprite, and the shadow counts for the 96x72 pixel size, which means such a sprite will look smaller then regular CTP types. The same, to a lesser degree applies to foot units.

For this sprite in particular, I chose an orange coat colour, I originally intended to use yellow or white but those shades didn't look too good. I expect you could consider this a dutch (or English) light dragoon. I should be able to create a number of colour variations for other countries if there is a use for country specific units. Further variations might be possible too.

Marc aka Caran...

[Pedrunn]

Caracorn,
I have just seen the units and they look amazing.

Notes:
Essential:
1) They are not good located. The move path line should be in their foot. In the way it is in their chest. You should elevate the graphics some more to make it stand exacly in their tile.

Not that much important
2) They should be a little bigger. Not much. I guess increase the size 10 % would be perfect. But i am afraid this is not possible since this will decrease the quality of the graphic too much

3) The edges look a bit odd but doenst seems to be that much of a problem.

The swordsman running is so cool . All sprites we have the units just walk

[Caranorn]

I discovered another problem which I forgot to mention. This is once again the missing hotpoints in the script. The Victory Animations also appear in the wrong spot. Has anyone ever managed Victory Animations that work correctly? I expect we could do the scripts without, but...

Maybe someone is able to either discover what's wrong with our scripts, or else (if the scripts are fine) fix the makespr utility? Finding a way to decompile CTP and CTP2 sprites would be interesting as well.

Marc aka Caran...

[Immortal Wombat]

use the hot points. without an idle animation it shouldnt affe ct them

[Caranorn]

Pedrunn, all Civ3 sprites run (looks good for cavalry and some others, but really undignified for hoplites and such

I will adjust the hotpoints if the sprites look to be in the wrong spot. Currently I indeed took the middle of the sprite as default.

If I increase sprites any more I will be cutting the shadows all the time (currently I cut a few pixels of shadows on occasion). Unless we can use sprites larger then 96x72 I see no way to do this (or else drop the shadows alltogether, alternatively create new shadows but the easy way won't be similar to either the CTP or Civ3 way).

Yep, the edges come from scaling, I hate it myself, but see no easy way to get rid of them (correcting all manually wouldn't even be foolproof as all depends on the background).

Marc aka Caran...

[Caranorn]

Immortal Wombat I tried, (Attack and Movement uses them anyhow, I'll be adjusting those settings to place the sprites as Pedrunn recommended), but the Victory Animation still gives me the same old line error if I include it's hot points.

Marc aka Caran...

[Immortal Wombat]

I think you can make sprites bigger than 96*72. Didn't BlueO do some 120*90 ones? You can try it at least, with a test sprite and altered script.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Caranorn
but the Victory Animation still gives me the same old line error if I include it's hot points.

Odd lines I had something like this in some city sprites I made, make shure that you don't have a pixel on the edge without pure black alpha or that a shadow uses one of the edge lines.

-Martin

[Caranorn]

I'll try a larger sprite sometime today (just a conversion of a so far non scaled sprite). I actually already tried to do this, but this ain't a good day for me as I did a lot of sloppy mistakes and had to restart twice already.

At least in theory it should be possible to go beyond the 96x72 size. But I recall reading somewhere it was not possible (but whether that was among the official material or somewhere else is another question).

Marc aka Caran...

[Caranorn]

Okay, I finally got to test the larger sprites and it indeed works. I created a simple 120x90 version of the previous cavalry sprite for the test. I'm not sure whether larger sprites are possible, but it shouldn't matter anyhow as this is more then enough.

I also determined by how much horse units should be scaled from Civ3 to CTP2. 115% seems to be about right (hoof to headgear of horse archer compared to hoof to helmet (minus crest) for cavalry). Whether that will look clean is another question. At least I won't have to worry about cutting some part of an animation to fit the old 96x72 sprites. A side effect of the scaling up is of course that the sprite files will be larger (roughly 1.5 compared to 100% civ3 size, that's a bit larger then the average CTP2 cavalry sprite, but not much, more alpha I expect will reduce this too).

I still haven't bothered to modify the hotpoints to better align the sprites to the tiles (as you can see from the attached picture).

Marc aka Caran...

P.S.: I also went to take another look at foot sprite sizes. I expect I'll decide from unit to unit whether it's worth increasing teh size a bit more. 125% would be closer to CTP size, but I'm not sure it's worth updating my existing sprites. That would also mean the foot sprites would be using a basic size above 96x72. If as I assume sprite disc space is related to all the non alpha contents of the graphic files this won't be an issue, else I feel the files will become too large.

[Immortal Wombat]

dp

[Immortal Wombat]

which tile is the middle one in? I think those hotpoints do need altering

[Caranorn]

Yes I know, quite a bit They are all supposed to be on one line. I just changed the sprite size for that test and left all else be (bad enough for the normal size, but once i scaled it hotpoints were seriously out of wack).

Marc aka Caran...

[SMIFFGIG]

I think the cavalry in the middle is a tiny bit too big compared to the CtP2 one that is on the right + if he was a tiny bit smaller (which i think would look perfect) he would graphically look better too.

If u dont see what i mean just look how big the horse is to the cavalry archer on the right and then look at how big the horse rider is, there both a little too big IMO


EDIT: Im not saying it graphically looks bad cause it looks bloody great and also the size difference isnt too bad either, just that if it was smaller it would look better in two ways, 1. not scaled as much so looks better quality 2. Same size as CtP2 hose units.

[J Bytheway]

I seem to recall Faded Glory saying that he reduced resyncs in MP games by making sprites smaller (or something like that...). So big sprites might be bad news, or I might be remembering incorrectly...