New Nation - MA Ossiriand - complete

[Executor]

I've completed the nation. It is based on ancient Slovenian mythology and is sort of a cross between EA Marverni and LA Bogarus.


http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...topic=319&st=0


Nation info>

Strengths:
- Good diversity,
- Summonable sacred cavalry, sort of,
- Some unique stealthy troops,
- Several situational, but very devastating summons if used correctly
- Healer mages
- Some mages can predict bad events

Weaknesses:
- Lightly equipped troops,
- Very weak priests, only holy 1,
- Good mages are capital only
- Sacreds are decent, but capital only,
- Banishable mages,

[Soyweiser]

Looks nice. I have one piece of comment, the handle on the axe unit attack sprite looks a bit short.

(The summons also look like a different style than the normal units, don't know if that is intentional, if it isn't the summons could get a bit more contrast).

[llamabeast]

Looks very nice - I'm looking forward to it.

Some small comments on the sprites (which mostly look really good):

The commander holding a bow seems to switch which hand is holding in when she fires. Also generally archer attack sprites have the bow higher (looks a bit like she's firing into the ground). However I wouldn't spend much time on this as attack sprites are only seen briefly. Some of the base-game ones are quite nasty!

The girl with the bats looks awesome!

For all the soldiers with shields, the change from shield to tunic is hard to see, making the sprite slightly confusing. This can be partly fixed by changing the tunic colours a little. However, the main fix is to do shading on the tunic. The bit of tunic near the shield will be slightly shadowed, so you can have the tunic getting steadily darker as you get near the shield. Then the shield will be suddenly lighter and the transition will be clearly visible. I find that sprites look very pleasing when you have a *lot* of this kind of shading - much more than you'd expect you'd need.

Generally my shading procedure goes like this:

- Select a load of pixels extending some distance from the source of the shadow. Make them slightly darker (e.g. in Gimp go to Brightness/contrast and reduce the brightness).
- Select a smaller set of pixels. All of them should be ones you selected before, but don't go so far from the shadow source. Make them darker.
- Repeat with an even smaller set.

Although this looks involved it doesn't take long and gives excellent effects. Of course with smaller areas it is probably easier to just draw the shadow pixel by pixel. This is quite possibly a case where it's small enough to do that in fact. But I hate keep on changing the colour I'm drawing with, so I often do the method described above even for tiny shadows.

I like the colouring on the soldiers a lot. I think you could do with darkening the orangey bits on the shoulders just slightly, particularly for the fourth one down. Is he wearing gold? I've found gold has to be much less bright than you'd expect. It's virtually brown. Similarly the gold band on the horse's foreleg is just slightly too bright I think.

The top summon has a slightly odd pose with his arms. Or rather, I think his right arm (left of the sprite) looks like he's holding his shoulder very high. The left arm seems to have some kind of long grey bit on it?

The second summon down is quite confusing to look at - but maybe it's deliberate? I think the white bits could be a bit less bright.

The third one looks very cool. I think you could increase the contrast on his tunic. In GIMP, just select the pixels of his tunic and increase the contrast (in Brightness/contrast - you will probably have to change the brightness too as it tends to make things overall brighter or darker when you change the contrast). However this will also have the effect of increasing the saturation of the colours, which you'll then need to separately decrease.


Some unnecessarily detailed comments there - I am quite a perfectionist on these things I think. But as they stand these are very good sprites, and exceptionally good for a first mod. Very much looking forward to release!

[llamabeast]

Oh - for the dragon attack sprite, try raising its body by a few pixels, lowering the head, and bringing the tail forward. Then do some repair work to make it all connect together nicely again.

You can also try to tilt the body. To tilt something, select say the front third and move it up a pixel, and the back third and move it down a pixel. However it takes care not to give nasty result and because of the wings being there I'd say this isn't an ideal candidate.

Anyway, overall I'd say the attack sprite will be fiddly, but shouldn't take too long.

By the way how did you make the dragon sprite? It's bigger than the Bogarus Zmey sprite if I remember correctly. It's very nice.

[Executor]

Ah, thank you for you comments Llamabest, good catch on the bow. I just started the sprites yesterday. I thought it would be best to make some general looks for the units and offer them for comments before I go into details. I've already changed some of the above.

The dragon actually is the Bogarus Zmey, chopped of two of it's heads and added the firebirds tail. Drawing the second wing was rather tricky I must say. The other sprites didn't take very long to make, unlike the dragon, so I'll leave him for last probably.
I still have at least 15ish units to make at least.

The first summons is supposed to be a vampire. It should look like a very old man, the grayish bits should be his decaying body, though he needs a bit finer fixing.
I've also complied his second form just now, a werewolf with his raggedy clothes still hanging.

The second summon, the horseman, I had no idea how to make look good.
It is supposed to be a horse with a man growing out of it's back, not an actual rider and it looks more like a fully kitted black knight.
It changed it a bit now, added a little banish, greenish look, tho it's far from perfect yet.

I'm rather proud of the third summon, it's a despicable old hag with chicken legs, long claws and horns, and the bat mage also.

I'll add the new sprites tonight, and the fixed once also.
Any comment good or bad is appreciated.

[llamabeast]

You just started yesterday?! That is really impressive then!

I wonder if I am exceptionally slow at making sprites...

[Executor]

I've added some new sprites, and did a bit of fixing on the old.

The old version of the sprites is still attached bellow.

[llamabeast]

Haha, new sprites look awesome! Lots of scary things! That big bird is so creepy.

The zmey seems to have a lot of speckles in his background. Is that deliberate?

[Soyweiser]

Saw the new bird. Didn't sleep... thanks...

[Thanatus del Dragos]

I would give advice...but my sprites are awful. I am the one that needs advice.