Speculative Graphics Showcase

[fairline]

Wow Catfish, those are stunning

[Palaiologos]

I don't get what is the problem if they are in TOT format.His people gfx(They are from Warhammer: The Dark omen,yes?) worked OK in MGE.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Catfish
What would Nemo, Erwan, BeBro and now Fairline do if they weren't restricted to the 8-bit Civ2 palette?

I should've added Favoured Flight to this list - the 5 best Civ2 artists of all time IMHO.

Originally posted by curtsibling
Please reveal your terrain!

Will do. I found that the terrain released with ToT to be plain ugly - a big disappointment considering the potential available to the artists. The standard game terrains I now use are a combination of ones I've made and ones I've downloaded (why make it again if you don't have to). I suspect that the mountains I used are a slightly lighter version of the ones from your ToT Dictator2 scenario - they are easily the best I've seen.

Originally posted by fairline
Wow Catfish, those are stunning

I might be OK at working on photos and ripped units, but I'm not too hot at making units from scratch. I blame you and your superb units for getting me interested in this stuff again . Anyway, this has been sitting on my HD for too long; it's about time I shared the wealth.

Originally posted by Palaiologos
I don't get what is the problem if they are in TOT format.His people gfx(They are from Warhammer: The Dark omen,yes?) worked OK in MGE.

I don't own MGE so I can't comment on whether or not they work, although I always assumed it used the old 8-bit palette. Yes, they are reduced versions of the character portraits from Warhammer: Dark Omen.

[curtsibling]

ToT should have been the greatest last gift to the CIV2 community from Microprose.

In a way it was.

But if the had made all those additions, and added them to MGE (I am thinking the graphics here) we would have had an amazing legacy.

As it is, I think ToT is still worthy, but I find MGE to be more accessible.

[Arthedain]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
I don't get what is the problem if they are in TOT format.His people gfx(They are from Warhammer: The Dark omen,yes?) worked OK in MGE.

well they work in MGE but you have to resize them and so on. It's a lot of work

ToT is too dark for my taste.. gives me a bad feeling or something hehe and don't like that the menu is in the upper row cause I'm used to that it's to the right in MGE. Anyways, I wasn't meaning that ToT is bad.. I just like MGE better myself

[tanelorn]

I think that the single most important flaw of ToT is the lack of an editor. The day such a utility would come out, it'd be bye bye MGE for me.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by curtsibling
As it is, I think ToT is still worthy, but I find MGE to be more accessible.

In what way? I don't have MGE.

Originally posted by Arthedain
ToT is too dark for my taste.. gives me a bad feeling or something hehe and don't like that the menu is in the upper row cause I'm used to that it's to the right in MGE. Anyways, I wasn't meaning that ToT is bad.. I just like MGE better myself

That's why I changed the graphics. My terrains are now posted in the non-unit graphics thread. You can easily switch the position of the menu to the right-hand-side by toggling the Map layout option in the View menu.

Originally posted by tanelorn
I think that the single most important flaw of ToT is the lack of an editor. The day such a utility would come out, it'd be bye bye MGE for me.

I find it amazing in these forums as to the number of "veteran" scenario designers that still use the scenario editor. Years ago when I first dabbled in scenario design, I took a look at the editor and moved straight on to Notepad - it was quicker, easier and I knew exactly what changes had been made to my files.

Even more astounding is that many people still use it to edit graphics - which is probably why, despite the possibilities created by 24-bit colour, very little has eventuated from the Civ2 community in this area.

[Henrik]

The ones who uses the editors to edit graphics are most likely extremely few.

The editors actually are more simple for some stuff, at most things they are a disaster though...

[fairline]

Thanks for the compliment catfish, although I'm not sure it's deserved Standing on the shoulders of giants springs to mind. For my two-pennorth, I'd put Curt Sibling way up the all-time list of best Civ graphics artists.

You were referring to the health bars in ToT. Check out Mercator's efforts to remove them:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88815

This should be useful for 'units' that represent terrain features and suchlike.

It's entirely possible to make ToT graphically superior to MGE, as your units and terrain show, and it has far greater events capability and the multi-map feature. Come on designers, move over to ToT, you know it makes sense

[Catfish]

Originally posted by fairline
Thanks for the compliment catfish, although I'm not sure it's deserved Standing on the shoulders of giants springs to mind. For my two-pennorth, I'd put Curt Sibling way up the all-time list of best Civ graphics artists.

You're probably right about Curt. He has done a lot of miscellaneous graphics (icons, cities, people, etc) as well as many unit mods in the Nemo style.

Originally posted by fairline
You were referring to the health bars in ToT. Check out Mercator's efforts to remove them:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88815

This should be useful for 'units' that represent terrain features and suchlike.

Health bars can get ugly in ToT, especially when you want terrain units. It's a really dumb design decision by Microprose.

I've seen the Mercator thread before. It applies to sprites, though. I guess terrain could be converted more easily because they don't need to be animated. I've never tried to create ToT sprites - always turn them off anyway.

[curtsibling]

Thanks guys.

I think we all rule.
They fact that we have such a good community for CIV2 on the net is a testament to the greatness of the game,
and the superb dedication of the talented creators and posters right here!

On topic:

My dream would be to merge MGE and ToT into a game with those big graphics,
expanded rules, events and features of both games, and add them into one CIV2 program...

That would be excellent.

[Palaiologos]

Actually my dream is to become Priminister of Greece, but i think a MGE-ToT merging will suffice.

[tanelorn]

That's the kind of stuff that end up in people's sigs and haunt you forever....

[fairline]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
Actually my dream is to become Priminister of Greece, but i think a MGE-ToT merging will suffice.

! My dream involves a Ferrari 250GTO, Kylie Minogue and a large bag of coke, but if you want to dream of being Prime Minister, you go right ahead

This is probably a very sad British thing, but I just love top 5 lists. My all-time top 5 civ2 artists, in no particular order:

BeBro - ancient and medieval units/cities
Nemo - tanks/planes/cities/terrain
Alex - WW2 units, although he could have used more detail
Curt - terrain/cities/shields
Favoured Flight - units/terrain

Then there's my top 5 scenario designers..... I should open a thread

[Palaiologos]

Well if i was Prime minister i would have that Ferrari,Kylie Minogue(or a Greek equivelant), the bag of coke PLUS power.

I second you on the Top5 list.Although i consider your units far better than Alex's he was a sort of pioneer in that area.And anyway i think that modesty too is a British thing.