Dwarves Aglarond 0.1.2 released !

[jda]

the gatling weapon or organ gun could also be a portable weapon like a catapult but with the ability to morph and unmorph into an entrenched, stationary weapon. I don't like the idea of replacing the original defense tower because it looks really cool for the dwarf faction.

In terms of animation and ingame-mechanics, the gatling gun being portable would indeed solve it all. However... we have the number of units (I'll have to recount the number of units and buildings each of the Dwarf, Magic and Tech factions have) - we do not need to have the exact same number of units but having a very different number may change the gameplay too much (in several ways) for the Dwarf faction to be properly balanced to Magitech.

If you have work for me I'll be glad to accept

Ok then.
There's a small issue with the size of the Worker and Miner units when compared to other size 1 units, specially compared to the Engineer which is promoted from the Worker (hence there should be no size differences there).
So... what I'd like you to do is to scale down the Worker and the Miner models to 0.95 of their current size.
Be warned: This will be hard to do if you use wciow's original .blend files! Here's why:
We do have those files BUT they use a very unusual User Interface. You can load the file with the default "Load UI" button UNchecked but that won't solve everything; actually to be any useful, you'll pretty much have to know how wciow's UI works to at least be able to recover the original armatures. Archmage and me have been having a real hard time working with these .blend, actually what we've been doing is make them "normal" before we do any editing on them.
The best sollution will be to just import the .g3d files to Blender (for each animation), rescale the objects and export them back to .g3d. This will be easier as you can rescale the objects from an imported .g3d without loosing the actual animations (which are stored in the G3D format as shapekeys, not armature-poses; imported .g3d's have no armatures at all). Most other edits will mean you have to delete the shapekeys before doing the edits but rescaling in object mode works fine without that deletion.

So...
1. Import each .g3d in folders units/worker/models and units/miner/models.
2. Select all objects in Object mode and rescale to 0.95.
3. Save the resulting .blend file for the idle animations of both units and share them with the team (post a link to them in this thread).
4. Export each animation (not just the idle ones) to .g3d and post them here.

Thanks.

I wouldn't worry about over powering the dwarves, check out the Tech mk2 faction I posted.

This is an excerpt from wciow's first post in the original Dwarf faction thread:

The ultimate goal of the project is to produce a new faction which is as close to the original Glest in style and quality as I can make it.

That is my goal for this new release (Aglarond) too.

Sorry to say but your Teck mk2 faction is just not standard.
Dwarves Aglargond are being blanced out to the original Magitech.

[wyvern]

I know, it doesn't matter to me but I would still like if the gatling/organ gun to be portable yet entrenchable

[jda]

Technically, the portable/entrenchable gatling gun would be perfectly possible but the Dwarves focus more on the mellee attacks.
The ranged ones we've got are really just because you can't balance a faction to Magic and Tech without them...  
And we already have, besides the Cannoneer, two powerful ranged units: the Flame team and the Bombard (the Skyship will actually have a range 0 attack in which it drops a bomb from right on top of the target, I tested it already and works great! ). There will most likelly be an axe throwing skill added to the Warrior (dependent on some upgrade) on 0.4 too.
I think that's enough for ranged attacks on this particular faction.  
EDIT: It would be cool as a defense building though!  It could replace the current Defense tower or be an upgrade to it (in which case it should not be too different from it. And on this venue... Glest mechanics make it dificult but maybe we'll find a sollution.

On another subject...
Are you going to do the worker and miner rescaling or not? I need to know so there aren't several people working on the same...
Also, admitedly, that is a pretty easy and unchallenging job and not that important either (even though 0.2 won't be released without it being done! ) but I remembered some other work you can do.
You can model (edit models) and texture, can you not?

[wyvern]

the canoneer could morph into the gatling/organ gun and at any rate the dwarves from what I have played have tons of trouble with indians and magic because of their lack of range, the canoneers weak, the bombards against buildings but the rate of fire is too slow to be against units, and the flame teams range is too short. I think the other option would be to have the dwarvish armor upgrades superior, for example they could have research mithril.

[jda]

First and foremost, I modified my last post after you posted.   But it doesn't really address waht you posted so here goes:

the canoneer could morph into the gatling/organ gun

Yes, I actually thought of it myself before you said it. However... that would be a new unit (like the Battlemage upgrades to the Archmage).

and at any rate the dwarves from what I have played have tons of trouble with indians and magic because of their lack of range,

Yes, every faction should have their strengths and weaknesses. Balance is important but a little slack can make it interesting too, specially if it makes the faction strong against one type of foe but weak against another. This by itself sets the dificulty level you may choose to play at. E.g.: Dwarves vs Tech = Moderate, Dwarves vs Magic = Hard.
This said, I'm far from happy with the current Dwarf faction's balance.  

the canoneers weak, the bombards against buildings but the rate of fire is too slow to be against units, and the flame teams range is too short.

Again, the stats will change (I'm thinking particularly of the Cannoneer) but I'm not sure how yet (I'm testing a bit but not focusing on this right now).
The fact the Bombard is good against buildings but not so much against units I consider a good thing. However, I am considering giving it a wider splash (currently 1, might become 2) which would make it more powerful against a group of units, but don't count too much on it!
The Flame team's abilities I place somewhere in between the Battlemage and the Archmage (admitedly closer to the Battlemage) in terms of damage, range and cost. And do remember the Dwarves gather resources much faster than the Magic.
Also, again, on 0.4, the Warrior will have a ranged attack, though quite short, about range 5 or so.
The skyship, not being ranged, will have a very powerful attack on ground-targets and will have the "protection" of the air (not so important against most ranged units but does make a difference). Coming in 0.4 too.
Finally, the Dragon slayer is a mean anti-air ranged unit. And its range is already greater than that of the Dragon or the Airship (well, if it isn't in 0.1.1 yet it will definitelly be on 0.2 ). Also, I made it much weaker than it was in Gimli and that was a mistake. I'm boosting it back up on 0.2, on several levels.

I think the other option would be to have the dwarvish armor upgrades superior, for example they could have research mithril.

Now that is a great idea! I'm talking about the mithril.
See, the problem is our mellee units are the first ones to be produced so we can't really amke them too powerful right from the start, we must upgrade their power instead. That's why the mithril is such a good idea (the Dragonscale armour doesn't upgrade anything, just allows you to produce Dragon slayers; this upgrade will have a different impact on 0.4, and might actually be "replaced" by a new building, but won't affect other units). :thumbsup:
On the other hand, adding a new late game strong melle unit (even stronger than the Dragon slayer's mellee attack) would definitelly win my heart a lot easier. But... I still have to count the units and see if it fits, yeah; I know it takes less than a minute to do this counting but it's just not relevant to 0.2 yet.

Speaking of 0.2... what do you say about the work?
Do you want some or not?

[wyvern]

Sure I'll take any work but don't count with beautifull models as I'm an amateur

[jda]

Great!

For 0.2, we're working mainly on unit/building sizes (not so simples as it sounds!) and textures/team color.

For sizes, I'll just quote myself, in case you missed it:

There's a small issue with the size of the Worker and Miner units when compared to other size 1 units, specially compared to the Engineer which is promoted from the Worker (hence there should be no size differences there).
So... what I'd like you to do is to scale down the Worker and the Miner models to 0.95 of their current size.
Be warned: This will be hard to do if you use wciow's original .blend files! Here's why:
We do have those files BUT they use a very unusual User Interface. You can load the file with the default "Load UI" button UNchecked but that won't solve everything; actually to be any useful, you'll pretty much have to know how wciow's UI works to at least be able to recover the original armatures. Archmage and me have been having a real hard time working with these .blend, actually what we've been doing is make them "normal" before we do any editing on them.
The best sollution will be to just import the .g3d files to Blender (for each animation), rescale the objects and export them back to .g3d. This will be easier as you can rescale the objects from an imported .g3d without loosing the actual animations (which are stored in the G3D format as shapekeys, not armature-poses; imported .g3d's have no armatures at all). Most other edits will mean you have to delete the shapekeys before doing the edits but rescaling in object mode works fine without that deletion.

So...
1. Import each .g3d in folders units/worker/models and units/miner/models.
2. Select all objects in Object mode and rescale to 0.95.
3. Save the resulting .blend file for the idle animations of both units and share them with the team (post a link to them in this thread).
4. Export each animation (not just the idle ones) to .g3d and post them here.

Thanks.

Are you going to do the worker and miner rescaling or not? I need to know so there aren't several people working on the same...
Also, admitedly, that is a pretty easy and unchallenging job and not that important either (even though 0.2 won't be released without it being done! ) but I remembered some other work you can do.

Also working on the sizes is ElimiNator. He's resizing the construction and destruction models for the buildings I resized on 0.1. That was what you could do. But he already told me he'd do it so...
BUT you can do something else:

* Aglarond 0.2
<snip>
      . Team color on buildings. There's none on: farm, foundry, rhinox pen, stronghold. Try and add some. At the lack of more inspired/original solutions, go for "dwarven straigth banners" along the sides or corners!

So that's your job: Add something to those buildings' models to put some team color on, and texture those additions including the addition of team color.

Once you do this and ElimiNator does his part, Archmage animates a few models (most will be re-animated only on 0.3) and I do my own too... I think everything will be ready to finally release 0.2.

Special note on the Stronghold:
This will probably be the hardes to teamcolorize as it is very unique and does not have a single vertical wall. But it's way cool, so please make an extra effort to try and find an elegant sollution for that one.
Also, when you're at it, resize it vertically, it should be a bit shorter, maybe a Blender square shorter (but just shorter, not smaller on all dimensions!) or so.
Thanks.

[wyvern]

I'll see what I can do though texturing is not my strong point I'll start now

[jda]

For the texturing, if all you're going to do is banners, you might as well copy their textures from the Warriors' Hall or the Defense Tower.
For painted teamcolor on stone, you can check the Observation balloon. But I wouldn't paint on the walls too much myself...
Still, you're free to experiment, if you like the final result, we probably will too.

[wyvern]

Thanks for the encouragement and advice I'll need it.

[ElimiNator]

OK, here is the fixed textured goat:

[jda]

It looks truelly awesome!

But ... where's the .blend? 

BTW, did you get to talk to Archmage about the anims yet?

[ElimiNator]

It looks truelly awesome!

But ... where's the .blend? 

BTW, did you get to talk to Archmage about the anims yet?

OK, here is the fixed textured goat: <<<<<

[jda]

LOL. Sorry. 

Thanks.

[-Archmage-]

Nice texture Elim!

Are going to take a whack at the anims or should I?

[ElimiNator]

Go head, But if you don't want to I will. 

[-Archmage-]

I'm kinda busy right now........so........I probably won't do them for a while, so...........you can do them if you want.

[jda]

As long as someone does it and it's done well... 

@ Archmage
So... I guess you won't have time to animate the Dragon slayer nor the Outrider, huh?

I'm still working on the Dragon slayer:
- Battleaxe fully textured.
- Added a cape model. Only partially textured.
- I haven't touched the dragon staff's texture yet.
- After all that is done, I'll add in you Engineer armature and do the vertex assigning.

The Outrider's halberd is textured however (that was a very easy fix). And it already has the armature you did for it (though I might use two bones for its head instead of just the one it has now). So it's basically ready to be animated.
I was supposed to have a go at it first but you can pick it up while I work on the Dragon slayer if you want.

Thanks, guys!

[-Archmage-]

As long as someone does it and it's done well...  Cheesy

@ Archmage
So... I guess you won't have time to animate the Dragon slayer nor the Outrider, huh?

No, I'm holding a small gap open for this stuff.

- After all that is done, I'll add in you Engineer armature and do the vertex assigning.

Just use Bone Heat, it seriously does a great job!
It does of course screw up sometimes, like everything, and you need to test bones after using bone heat and fix any problems, trust me, it's faster and better than manually assigning everything.

The Outrider's halberd is textured however (that was a very easy fix). And it already has the armature you did for it (though I might use two bones for its head instead of just the one it has now). So it's basically ready to be animated.
I was supposed to have a go at it first but you can pick it up while I work on the Dragon slayer if you want. Wink

I might be able to start today, no guarantees..........
But first I need the .blend and the latest texture.

[jda]

@ Archmage
So... I guess you won't have time to animate the Dragon slayer nor the Outrider, huh?

No, I'm holding a small gap open for this stuff.

- After all that is done, I'll add in you Engineer armature and do the vertex assigning.

Just use Bone Heat, it seriously does a great job!
It does of course screw up sometimes, like everything, and you need to test bones after using bone heat and fix any problems, trust me, it's faster and better than manually assigning everything.

I never did try bone heat as I'd read it... sucks. But I'll give it a go then.

The Outrider's halberd is textured however (that was a very easy fix). And it already has the armature you did for it (though I might use two bones for its head instead of just the one it has now). So it's basically ready to be animated.
I was supposed to have a go at it first but you can pick it up while I work on the Dragon slayer if you want. Wink

I might be able to start today, no guarantees..........
But first I need the .blend and the latest texture.

Blend and textures: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9454d43357b12a907432d3c9683f450abb5893385e12e4ecf1940a51b339e393
The two bones I mentioned for the head, in case you're interested, would be one for the neck and another for the head itself. I thought of this when you said the attack anim as John.d.h proposed (where the rhinox would turn sideways) might look like it was dancing. If the rhinox keeps looking at the target all the time through the anim (thus needing to rotate the head quite a bit) I think it will look more intentional (as oposed to "free spining", as if it were dancing ).

[-Archmage-]

Quote
Quote
- After all that is done, I'll add in you Engineer armature and do the vertex assigning.

Just use Bone Heat, it seriously does a great job!
It does of course screw up sometimes, like everything, and you need to test bones after using bone heat and fix any problems, trust me, it's faster and better than manually assigning everything. Wink
I never did try bone heat as I'd read it... sucks. Tongue But I'll give it a go then. Wink

I'm guessing Omega said that.........he doesn't know anything about bone heat, I learned how to rig using bone heat, and then later how to manually rig.
Sometimes but not often Bone Heat can do a terrible job in which you have to manually assign, but it takes 0 seconds for bone heat to automatically rig a model, and considering the chances of success, it's quite worth it!

Quote
Quote
The Outrider's halberd is textured however (that was a very easy fix). And it already has the armature you did for it (though I might use two bones for its head instead of just the one it has now). So it's basically ready to be animated.
I was supposed to have a go at it first but you can pick it up while I work on the Dragon slayer if you want. Wink

I might be able to start today, no guarantees..........
But first I need the .blend and the latest texture.
Blend and textures: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9454d43357b12a907432d3c9683f450abb5893385e12e4ecf1940a51b339e393
The two bones I mentioned for the head, in case you're interested, would be one for the neck and another for the head itself. I thought of this when you said the attack anim as John.d.h proposed (where the rhinox would turn sideways) might look like it was dancing. If the rhinox keeps looking at the target all the time through the anim (thus needing to rotate the head quite a bit) I think it will look more intentional (as oposed to "free spining", as if it were dancing Laughing ).

Ok, I might get to it sometime today, but no guarantees(as previously stated)...

[ElimiNator]

I allways use bone heat, works great! I still need to manualy fix it sometimes but not often. 

[jda]

I never did try bone heat as I'd read it... sucks. Tongue But I'll give it a go then. Wink

I'm guessing Omega said that.........he doesn't know anything about bone heat, I learned how to rig using bone heat, and then later how to manually rig.
Sometimes but not often Bone Heat can do a terrible job in which you have to manually assign, but it takes 0 seconds for bone heat to automatically rig a model, and considering the chances of success, it's quite worth it!

Yes, omega does say that on his guide but I've seen it in other places too, including non-glest related ones.

Quote
The Outrider's halberd is textured however (that was a very easy fix). And it already has the armature you did for it (though I might use two bones for its head instead of just the one it has now). So it's basically ready to be animated.
<snip/>
Ok, I might get to it sometime today, but no guarantees(as previously stated)...

That's alright, I'm pretty sure you'll have it done before I get to hand the Dragon slayer over to you anyways.

I allways use bone heat, works great! I still need to manualy fix it sometimes but not often. 

Ok, I'll try it.
BTW... on "manually fixing" bone-vertex assignment... when I do that, I just select every vertex for the concerning bone from scratch. Is there a way to see and edit the vertex currently assigned (assign new vertex and remove vertex from group)?
Thanks.

[John.d.h]

I usually use weight painting.  It gets the job done pretty well.  Envelopes can be pretty decent as long as you tweak them.

[ElimiNator]

Is there a way to see and edit the vertex currently assigned (assign new vertex and remove vertex from group)?
Thanks.

Yes if you are in edit mode you can:

Press "Select" to select the verticys that that bone uses, and you can probably find out what the other buttons do.