H3SW: General Graphics discussion

I can't think of a better solution currently. I support your idea with the small houses based on 1st level dwelling, and think that we can proceed with your iteration of the townscreen. The only thing that will need to be done is further adjustment of the houses to make them look a little more unique. Also, I am still pretty unsure about that square road thing I once designed, it looks pretty rough and it doesn't give any clue how we are going to make the roads when the City Hall is not built yet.

With your idea I've got another one concerning all townscreens. To make the addition of such element as inactive houses on the townscreen looking a little more legit, I suggest forethinking about all 8 factions in advance.
The main points are:

- Adding several inactive buildings based on (or at least inspired by) 1st level dwellings in exterior;
- Thus filling the space nicely because original townscreens were never meant to be expanded;
- Thus also giving the player a hint about such a big number of level 1 creatures available for hire each week.

To be honest, 50 peasants available for hire each week in Heroes 2 from one single house looked a little strange in my opinion. So that I generally support your idea, and also suggest thinking about same possible solutions for other factions. The only current problem is the Warlock's townscreen where we don't have another cliff to put additional smaller inactive caves to (probably all of them must be on the background). Probably, we will require Agar's help on this piece with adding new 3D renders.

I have been working on the miniature for the new Medusa Queen by Ragoon. What do you think?

Medusa:

Medusa Queen:


2X:

Very good job Albe, I like it!

I'm posting two frames from attack anim if you would like to improve it further (make it more similar, although it's not necessary imo)



Things like blue bow string or arrow details etc.
Will you make animated version for it? It's 2-4 frames if I remember

Thanks, Ragoon. Those will be useful for me I might change the bow string if it looks good in blue. I don't know if I can improve the arrow to be more precise. Just 1 pixel might make it too big. I plan to animate it myself and make its attack sprite, where these pictures also will come in very handy

You can simply open any gif from animations thread in most of graphic programs and it'll show you every single frame If they're not looking pretty that's probably because of gif optimalization option. I'm sure you can find a way to deoptimalize them (in GIMP it's just 1 click in filters > animations > deoptimalize)

Some quick fixes. What do you think? Personally I think the blue string looks okay, but the arrow is too big.



2X:

Good job I think that blue string + smaller arrow looks best.

I agree with Uhm on the matter. I would also love to see the bow edges varied in the way like the full-size version is. Currently it resembles Elf's bow too much.

Thank you for your input!

I tried to make the bow a bit more curvy and a pixel shorter. I also tried to implement the curvy top, but it isn't easy when it is such a small detail. Any suggestions for improvement?



2x:

This new version isn't an improvement imo. Not much has changed and bow is still not right.
My suggestion:

Before - After


x2


Fixed double elbow, shorter, golden bow and blue fletching + longer arrow tip

It looks great Ragoon. I am going with that one, if there is no further suggestions

So, what draws the most attention for you here?
I know it's far from perfect, but I have a strong feeling that the v0.8 beta must be released in near future.

For me it's still the roads around the statue which stand out completely and don't complement to any other townscreens having roads.

I would actually say the building in the lower left corner. It looks a bit weird, what is it actually? Other than that I got no complaints only cheers! It looks amazing, but I highly agree that we must really focus on getting v0.8 out soon - that means no time for "new" stuff and finishing the missing and most important stuff. Is Feanor around at the moment?

My list of changes: (Also small edits town hall's darker side)

PNG:

I like your road better, but not the other changes.

why?

Ragoon wrote:

why?

I can try to explain it, but it is of course a very subjective thing, so don't take it personal please I don't see why you would rather want an bald field rather than a lush/grown one. I find the tower (Crossbowman dwelling) looking washed out and pale, I don't see why you want to change it. The roof on the city hall tower looks unfitting compared to the rest of the roof. I also don't think the water needs to be more saturated, it always have looked a little different from the ocean on the map for instance and that is no problem to me.

Yes, half of the suggested fixes concern the original graphics, not ours. Former Captain's Quarters is what the Outpost (Crossbowman dwelling) currently is. If fixed, it stands out too much because all the area right to the castle is shadowed, but the Outpost isn't anymore. I agree with Sir Albe on the matter of water, too. The roads near the Mage Guild/Cathedral are unchanged from classics. The fix may have been legit if improved to the level where the road is clearly visible though. It is still useful.

I do appreciate the fields fixes however, because the green field brings too much brightness for that part of the screen. The road colors are mostly chosen right, too.

The tower top of the City Hall cannot have the same pattern as the ones from the Cathedral because of the perspective distortion. The brick lines cannot be present at that angle. The only possibly required fixes there would concern lighting. I do appreciate some fixes on the shadowed side of the City Hall, however.

Now, what troubles me the most is not the color scheme of the road square, but its shape. In fact, this solution feels much more natural to me and this has been already the point of argument in this topic. It also fills the right area better (still would require fixes though):




P.S. feanor is currently looking for job, but we'll see how things will go in June. For now, we can use the txt file to assign all missing creature specialties (starting from the Barbarian if I recall correctly) to continue with the testing.

I dont know how roads will be added in the game (as a part of other buildings? or will be there from the start?) but I think that it would be a good idea to have a straight line from armory to the town hall and add second line with cathedral apperance only. And round road with statue :p

In fact, the complexity here is that only some of the roads are shown on the completely empty townscreen, and this was another reason to consider the road triangle.

The square was meant to appear with the appearance of the Statue, which is in turn appearing only with the City Hall (+2000 monies per day). I still want to use your suggestions somehow and probably find an option which would satisfy the majority.

The new roads technically are part of the buildings just like Uhm's proposed inactive houses, and they are not active either. So, they appear as background objects, just like the Statue. We still can make the Statue clickable though, as a part of the City Hall.

Well, I'm almost 100% sure that the townscreen/roads will be changed and tweaked after v0.8 so I don't see the point of doing it perfect (and satisfying for the most of the community). It's good as it is right now :p

Okay guys, this is how it looks in-game:

Spoiler:

All buildings added except Brotherhood of steel. Still need to prepare animations of Castle, Docks and fixing flags and roads. Otherwise - it's ready.

Update: Only docks and boat animations are left to do. Will we have Brotherhood of Steel and Lighthouse or something else instead?

Uhm wrote:

Will we have Brotherhood of Steel and Lighthouse or something else instead?

Fortifications instead of Lighthouse..somewhen.
No opinion about Brotherhood, I think, we certainly should discuss special buildings sometime.

I really think we should leave that discussion for later. For now I think we should stick with the H3 buildings and effects when we can't use H2 buildings (it doesn't make sense for the fortifications to increase the movement on sea). Also Feanor I gathered a list of programming related bugs in the excel file called "Bugs in current version of H3SW". It contains general bugs, but also still some creature ability bugs. Feel free to update it when needed.

I'm not against Brotherhood of Steel the Sword , and I think we can actually discuss its design. The current one is acceptable for the beta, so if we won't come to anything, it's not as critical.

What's pity is that I cannot reach the most actual townscreen files: when I use both the UpToDate folders, the townscreen is still old.
UPD. Updated town_coords.ini, but it of course doesn't solve the townscreen graphics themselves.

Nevermind, I've found it. I think it will be better to place the graphics in the UpToDate folder: they will be only slightly improved with the course of time. I'm starting to fix the houses, town hall and I'll still try to design a fancier road scheme so that Uhm will be happy.


P.S. We really need to do something with this situation. I'll ask feanor about it.