Page 1 of 2
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:13 pm
by Welly
Awhile back, someone well known (of course I forgot who) completely re-worked the Forest Giant sprites for Piety. Around that time, didn't someone re-work the Myrm sprites, and the fir-bolgs? They were totally different and very impressive. Who made them, and what plugin?
Were there any other re-workings of other TFL units before and after that point that you guys know about, including magma stuff? Like, for Frenzy, I can tell that the zerks and the thrall were incredibly reworked. Essentially, I'm trying to compile the most complete list possible of such units (eventually hoping to grab them all, ask the proper permissions, then make a plugin that changes most or all of the M2 units into them, with a few modifications. Sure it's silly, but I've always wanted to do this, and will be able to begin in earnest once I finally get those Griffin sprites in the mail).
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 4:51 pm
by Floyd is Pink
the forest giants were made my cydonian i think, i used them in my plugins, they were in acts of piety and barbarians valley. myrms i think your talking about are irons myrms? and the firbolgs are the new ones in legend of gorash by creation (cydonian) i think.
i dont know of redone units other than ones uve named, but ive been wondering... iron, will you be showing us the ways of high-resing units? it'd be nice to have everything be high-ressed rather than half of myth. it looks a bit weird sometimes.
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 7:56 pm
by Oroboros
I've always wanted to see the return of the Amazon zerks >:-]
-Oro
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:14 am
by William Wallet
Hey - it ain't a silly idea, it's a damned good one!
I imagine they'd only be reticent to hand over the hi-res bitmaps of the original units if they thought that it'd be in the hands of someone who wouldn't finish it (or worse, someone who didn't know what they were doing).
But yeah, overcome those two hurdles and I reckon they'd be willing to give you a shot.
That's er, my unprofessional opinion. 
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 3:32 pm
by Welly
Oro + Will, what? I have a unit from a hotline server ("Wolf Barbarian") sitting on my drive here. It's new sprites of rather bare legged men wielding large axes. Tell me if this matches the description of the thing you're looking for.
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 3:46 pm
by Oroboros
You've never heard of the Amazon zerks?
Buxom, female barbarian units. Came out as a plugin for TFL waaay back in the day.
I think the zerk plug is available on Grounds for Assault One.
Whoa... THERE'S a time warp...
See if ChrisP can flick you the sprites.
-Oro
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 5:37 pm
by iron
Floyd is Pink wrote:i dont know of redone units other than ones uve named, but ive been wondering... iron, will you be showing us the ways of high-resing units?
You're not the first to ask this Floyd. Some of the hi-res units in Frenzy are new models that I made & animated - the zerk, thrall and myrmidon. Others (fetch, ghols, wights, shades, trow, jman, heron, mort) are not, however for various reasons I'd prefer not to describe how they were done.
Yes there's more to do if all the Myth units were to have hi-res versions. The most important being bowmen, dwarfs, warriors, krids (both kinds) and mauls, and of secondary value are brigands and the individual characters - soulblighter, alric, shiver, the baron and the deceiver.
Some of these could be done using my s3cret method, but most would need to be new models. It took several weeks per new unit, so even if I were still making stuff for Myth it'd be a significant undertaking.
Edited By iron on 1127083145
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 12:07 am
by Horus
iron wrote:Some of these could be done using my s3cret method, but most would need to be new models.
What you mean the s3cret method that involves using bitmaps from pre-indexing and scaling down?
Heron Guard with an extra frame was the giveaway.
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:11 am
by Welly
Oroboros wrote:You've never heard of the Amazon zerks?
Buxom, female barbarian units. Came out as a plugin for TFL waaay back in the day.
I think the zerk plug is available on Grounds for Assault One.
Whoa... THERE'S a time warp...
See if ChrisP can flick you the sprites.
-Oro
I have a readme-less plugin called FeMyth which changes the myth units into females, with the following new sprite collections as named in the tags (not string lists, too lazy to look there):
"female barbarian"
"illusionist"
"paladine"
"priestess"
"trin collection"
As I don't have Sisters of the Blade, I can't tell if these are present there too, but I suspect that FeMyth is simply SotB collections.
The female barbarian units above have conical helmets with horns. Oro, ChrisP, or perhaps anyone know if these are the same mentioned by the other posters?
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:16 am
by Welly
Floyd is Pink wrote:the forest giants were made my cydonian i think, i used them in my plugins, they were in acts of piety and barbarians valley.
They were actually by Ken Hodgman (Mormith), which he created for his classic Keep Across the River for m2.
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:34 pm
by Graydon
The reasoning on why he wont is beyond me, but since Iron won't answer on how HE high-resed units, I'll put up my theory/method, which I know has worked for numerous textures that I needed to be TINY but as detailed..
This is all assuming you have Photoshop. You take your image and put it into RGB. Next go to Image Size and change the dots per inch (DPI) from 72, to 144. Say your original bitmap was 100x100 pixles. It should now be 200x200.
You can play with the new image in RGB to get the best effect in terms of sharpness and contrast (but it's important to note what you've done so you can apply it in a batch to every bitmap) Next is the important bit- Now you can see a unit that looks similar to the one you had before, except it's larger, looks clearer, and has a DPI of 144. Go BACK to Image Size and _uncheck_ 'Constrains Proportions' and then type 72 back into your DPI slot. Even though 'CP' is turned off, the pixle size will change automatically. While ensuring your DPI is at 72, change your image pixle size to 200x200. You hit OK, and the image should lose no details than those it just had at 144 DPI.
Presto - Now you have a 72 DPI 200x200 bitmap of your unit. You'll probably have to create a new index table for these new frames, but once you input them back into amber, you can use them. All you have to do to make them look great in game is change their object tag size. If the unit was originally 100x100 pixles tall, and had an object size of 1.00, the new 200x200 image will need an object size of 0.50, to produce the same sized (but high res) unit.
Hope that helps...
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:58 am
by Oroboros
Er... Just to clarify Gray's idea of resolution...
Resolution = base unit per standard length. Dots vary in size - print dots are way smaller than screen dots for instance. High quality print graphics tend to hover around 300 dots per inch (dpi). So if you take an inch and divide it up into 300 spaces, that's the size of your dot.
Screen resolution tend to be between 72 and 120 dpi.
Gray wants you to quadruple the size of your image - double the number of pixels across, and down. But when Gray asks you to change the dots per inch from 72 to 144... That may or may not quadruple the size of your image, depending on the software used and what settings that software has. If you're using Pshop and your "Constrain Proportions" option was UNchecked initially, and you entered 144 in the box that said 72, you won't get any difference... until you printed the image out, and wonder why the hell your image shrunk.
So, to generalize things (as you may be using free/shareware like Graphic Converter, GIMP or a number of other tools) try this way:
Take a look at the number of pixels across your image has, and double it. Take a look at your vertical value and double that. Then, using whatever software you have available to you, stretch your existing image to the new image size. Perhaps entering the numbers will do it for you, or perhaps all that will happen is your image will now occupy 1/4 of a larger image space, and will need to be stretched to fit.
Edit it. (Sharpen / contrast / re-touch / whatever)
Then, find the resolution / dots per inch / pixels per centimeter / potatoes per furlong setting, and set your image to 72 dpi without re-sizing it.
I think everything else Gray says is on the money, but I suspect you may need to add a color table indexing step to further prepare your sprite for gameplay... But I'm not sure on that one.
GL,
-Oro
Edited By Oroboros on 1127214059
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:22 am
by William Wallet
Hang on, what would be the point? Isn't that just upsizing and downsizing?
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:36 am
by vinylrake
The units listed in the FeMyth plugin are all units from the SotB solo campaign.
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:24 pm
by Welly
vinylrake wrote:The units listed in the FeMyth plugin are all units from the SotB solo campaign.
Gotcha. SotB has been sitting on my worlds CD since.. well since the day I got it.
Are any of the women on it those Amazon berserkers mentioned by Oro and Will?