Mod: UnitGen 0.04 - Automatic recoloring!

[elmokki]

What's common with all these sprites? They were generated by a computer program with relatively easy to use settings even for non-coders!

Randomocalypse is cool and all, but this is something that a) gives potentially more balanced stuff, B) potentially gives more thematically coherent nations. The thing just is, it needs a lot of graphical work and that's not something I'll be making all by myself fast.

http://nikita.tnnet.fi/~elmokki/unitgen/unitgen004.zip contains a basic software able to generate sprites from defined race and pose files.

What order does it render stuff in?
1. Cloak's back side
2. Base sprite
3. Legs
4. Shirt
5. Body armor
6. Cloak's front side
7. Bonus ranged weapon
8. Melee weapon
9. Offhand IF it is a weapon
10. Hands
11. Helmet
12. Offhand IF it's a shield
13. Overlay

New tiers can be added in by requests.

Also note that everything except the unit in the pictures should be transparent. Not black or white or anything else.

So yeah, comments, new graphical stuff or whatever is warmly welcome.

[elmokki]

Added mauls, hammers, flails, morningstars and cosmetical shirts.

[Foodstamp]

Incredible . Does it create the attack frames as well?

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

Incredible . Does it create the attack frames as well?

No, though that will be added eventually if I have the motivation to keep on working this.

Though seeing how attack frames are shown for a split second at a time it isn't a too bad solution to just use normal frame moved up a couple of pixels to left for an attack frame (not my idea.)

I'm aiming to move all the hardcoded data to external files later today which should allow anyone to create poses for attack sprites, things that pose can't do and obviously other races!

But yeah, like I said, the current OP is just a quick whipup to show what's possible relatively easily.

[elmokki]

New version includes actually runnable UnitGen. It generates 64 sprites, 32 humans and 32 C'tisians. It's mostly something to try to get people to play with and make whatever things for this.

[elmokki]

0.02 added. Race definitions changed slightly by making base sprite an item too (ie there could be multiple of them, this is mainly for mounted units) and overlays added (stuff drawn last). Also #globaloffsetx and #globaloffsety for item definitions so you can change all weapons to match correct positions easily.

Mounted units added and definitions for those should showcase new stuff fairly well.

[Edi]

Very, very interesting tool. Thank you for making this.

A suggestion:

Make the program treat normal text lines as code and lines starting with # as comments. That way it's easier to see what's code and what's comment. And it will also be compatible with CoE3 conventions, if we do get modding in there.

[elmokki]

0.03 adds two major features:

1. support for larger than 64*64 sprites
Base sprite determines size of a sprite. There's not much more you need to know really.

2. automatic recoloring of recolorable items
It would be tedious to make dozens of versions of all colored shields, standards, pants, shirts etc, so now the program can automatically recolor parts of a sprite. This is handled by item command #recolormask which can either take argument self (uses it's own image) or a path of another image.

The recolormask is recolored to unit's defined color (randomly generated for preview) and drawn on top of the item. All current recolormasks contain only shades of gray (red, blue and green are all equal), but this is not mandatory even if generally recommended. If you make your recolormask have more red than other colors, every single recolored item will be slightly more red etc - might be useful for rare situations.


0.03 also showcases the features by changing most of current items (Jingasa and Samurai armor are exceptions at least) that had multiple versions of coloring to automatically recolored and by adding cave drakes (128*64 base sprite) and pegasus riders (128*128 base sprite).

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Edi

Very, very interesting tool. Thank you for making this.

A suggestion:

Make the program treat normal text lines as code and lines starting with # as comments. That way it's easier to see what's code and what's comment. And it will also be compatible with CoE3 conventions, if we do get modding in there.

I prefer using Dom3 syntax at least for now, but this is really a simple thing to do later if I change my mind.

[elmokki]

0.04 adds the race -> pose system.

Basically each race will have x poses which can be defined to support specific roles (twohander, shield, dualwield, pole, mounted, mage, priest, archer, crossbowman and whatever you want to invent that isn't there already). This'll be used to make generating nations easier soonish when I reach that part.

Basically though poses are what used to be races and races are lists of poses.