H3SW: General Graphics discussion

Yeah, that's awesome. We will have to add the shadow for it and it can work for v0.8, since we don't have an opportunity to make a complete 800x600 Sorceress townscreen.

Lovely!

I just red 7 pages.. xD

zxcv1234 wrote:

bzzzz bzz?

A bzzbzz in the Soreceress line up? Nahhhh... All the Soreceress's friends are in the good side of he life, the bzzbzz is neutral or evil... But not a good-side creature!
(but I love the look of the bzzbzz, but... Swampy castle will get it!? yay!!)

Swampy castle is in many ways a puzzle While Dervish line-up attained matched creatures and colours finally, Witch will probably receive some bigger changes. I like Bzzz-bzzz, but there is one more wonderful insect to be discussed  



I am working on spells currently. I've got some troubles with finding a proper image for Implosion. Maybe we could use "View all" spell icon and call it "Mass distortion" instead of Implosion?

Implosion (taken from M&M6 )

View All

Mass Distortion from M&M6:

The Mantis is a part of the plan. You can try to adjust the blue one, but in general I had some plans for it. (spoiler - a possible replacement of the Gorgon)

As for the spells and specifically the Implosion, I think that MM6 Implosion icon has some potential for it. I even think that it won't need too many adjustments to fit the style, just try to put the yellow outline and check how it looks in the game first.

I actually had a few more drafts for the spells, but I will present them later.

Mantis seems amazingly powerful. :O
I'd really like to see this creature added as a high lvl creature. xD
I think I prefer the green variants.

My favorite Mantis is the middle one

Uhm wrote:

the blue one have fly's eyes, it's strange (and the body is curved )

Aha, so mantis instead of Gorgon! That could definitely work.
But this means that there are 3 real life creatures in the Witch's line up (of course they're all huge).
Base colours of those creatures are yellow, green and green. Wyvern: green, Lizardman: green.
I actually think this is pretty cool if the upgraded versions are colourful and versatile. and certain species of toads and mantises are in fact very colourful. Since colourful patterns on creatures in nature are very often a sign of poison, this should work out since poison is a trait that suits the witch very well. She would build her castle in a poisonous swamp.

I know you guys don't really care for these trains of thought, because you mostly got your own plans in mind. But I wanted to share this idea anyway, because it makes sense and I needed to type it out

It is always nice to hear some thoughts about the concepts Personally I never been a fan of the Mantis, but I admit it is better than the Gorgon, because of the reasons Orzie has mentioned. I do though think it needs some fixes, because it doesn't look H2 styled to me at the moment, but I am sure it can be

buffkaz wrote:

Aha, so mantis instead of Gorgon! That could definitely work.
But this means that there are 3 real life creatures in the Witch's line up (of course they're all huge).
Base colours of those creatures are yellow, green and green. Wyvern: green, Lizardman: green.
I actually think this is pretty cool if the upgraded versions are colourful and versatile. and certain species of toads and mantises are in fact very colourful. Since colourful patterns on creatures in nature are very often a sign of poison, this should work out since poison is a trait that suits the witch very well. She would build her castle in a poisonous swamp.

I know you guys don't really care for these trains of thought, because you mostly got your own plans in mind. But I wanted to share this idea anyway, because it makes sense and I needed to type it out

You definitely have a point. The blue design of the Mantis is really more balanced and enriches the Witch lineup gamma, correlating with the Lizardman Warrior. Concerning a real life origin - yes, this is the case similar to the original Boar and Wolf (and Scorpion as well). It's more or less tolerable if we remember H4. There is no bloodless solution.

The gameplay value of the Mantis is also higher than this of the Gorgon (if we don't count the gorgon's gaze).

Quote :

Aha, so mantis instead of Gorgon! That could definitely work.
But this means that there are 3 real life creatures in the Witch's line up (of course they're all huge).

I think that there're 4 real creatures currently! Big Angry Cow, giant Wasp, Frog  and a Tree

Bandit adventure map sprite with attack frames

Current situation with the Witch lineup.

The Treant and the Wyvern are currently untouched, but the first 5 is now looking more polished.
I don't feel this lineup fitting perfectly, but this is fixable and just requires more effort.
I also tried to bring Agar's suggestion to life and feature the red dress for the Lizardman just like it was in its MM6 prototype.

Looks great so far. The Mantis looks better, but I still don't find its head H2-ish enough. Also I have thought for a long time that it looks like the new Wyvern head is just put on top of the old one. Some work around the neck would propperbly fix it.

Here comes the Mysticism skill, the one which didn't have a proper design solution.



Now the only thing with the secondary skills left is to fix all icons for the v0.8 beta as much as I have willpower to. I'll update the PSD and make a big post here tomorrow.

Looks great, Orzie. I am glad you found a propper solution for its design

Now this is what we have with the Secondary Skills.
The only thing left is to paste the proper backgrounds. Probably Uhm can do this better than me.

There are a lot of imperfections, but personally I will not touch the PSD anymore before the release of v0.8 because we have other important tasks to deal with.
However, suggestions and fixes are still welcome.

PSD file updated in Dropbox.

Uhm, feel free to use simple Photoshop algorithms to create 32x32 and 82x82 placeholders. They will be blurry, but at least the style will be kept.
v0.9 release should have more updated graphics of that kind.

Current situation with the Knight townscreen background. I started preparing all assets for the final battle and now I must finish the background first, especially the skies which are currently looking crude. The mountains may need only minor refreshing.

Some work with the lake is supposedly required as well.

Wauw, it looks great. You cannot tell where the original screen stopped and what have been added. Very high quality work

Wonderful. It looks so good, that I can't stop staring over and over again, feeding my eyes

Still I must admit that even the grass is far from perfection. What is important is certain nuances, like soft transitions from "standard grass" to "brownish grass", etc. Same treatment will be probably required for the Grass terrain battlefields due to a peculiar texture of H2 grass.

I don't know, even when I am looking at a grass closely, it still seems to be in place. It would be better only if those swans appear together with town hall, not earlier. But probably there would be a problem with overlapping a shipyard.

The swans are questionable too
I suppose, first I should try to make the lake looking H2 enough without them. We can always add and even animate them later.

The reason for this can be explained: for the Knight it's located too close to the Town Hall, while the rest of the screen remains empty, especially in the case of a village. There are only roads intended to connect the Town Hall with a Tent (probably we will leave it as a part of a background because it's simpler to do so) and (probably again) the Well which may have the same attributes. The townscreen looks more filled with the Well placed like that. In H3 there were a lot of objects to fill the space, and their quantity only grew with the improvement of the Town Hall, but we lack this luxury.

Very rough example:

Version after some alterations in recent months)

Looks outstanding! There are, though, some thoughts which I would like to point out.

- Why did you decide to remove the older version of the Magic Guild? Now it looks totally like H3 and makes the townscreen looking more like Conflux.
All of the Heroes 2 mage guilds are made of the same pattern, where similar building blocks are put on top of each other. We simply cannot avoid this rule. Moreover, all of the blocks have rather simple geometry. Your previous version was close to perfection and probably needed to be even more simplified.



Same probably works for the Town Hall, but let's leave it like that.


- The current Temple (Mystic dwelling) doesn't give an idea that it's a temple, unlike the previous versions with the Temple of Baa concept (see above). I also suggest to restore the previous variant.

- Probably, the Pit must be moved somewhere left to fill the space properly. The roads should be adjusted accordingly. Don't forget that there are castles which are not completely built-in most of the gaming time.

So, roughly, it could go like this (probably with the new castle):