GLADE Team Project: Dark Magic

[titi]

@modman:  Are you probabaly willing to prepare a rudimentary but startable/playable xml-setup for the whole darkmagic faction?
Or is there already something I missed?
I need it because Its always very annoying to modify magic or domething else to test the models and by this we have something where we can play with .

[titi]

here is the dark elder. I have no working xmls yet ( anyone is willing to do them? )
It has animations for
-attacking(ground)  probabaly I will improve this one, what do you think? Needs some kind of particle splash when hitting.
-attacking (air) should shoot a flash or something like this from his stick
-standing
-walking
-charging ( try this one!! )
-dying

Update( I forgot the link  ):
http://www.titusgames.de/darkmagic/dark_elder/dark_elder.zip

[modman]

Wow Modman nice work with your Wikia and other speadsheet.

Yes, thank you for the complement.  If you think about it, I'm pretty into this project, but in a helpless position, since I can't model/animate, and my texturing skills suck.

yeah man thats really damn smooth

Thanks.  I actually had done another version on my computer, but I was too lazy to go and find it.  So I just redid it; it wasn't that hard because I know Dark Magic well inside and out.  Hopefully, it will help y'all to better understand how Dark Magic works.  And titi, you can see, that because the Dark Mage pretty much requires all that stuff, it will be a late game unit.

@modman:  Are you probabaly willing to prepare a rudimentary but startable/playable xml-setup for the whole darkmagic faction?
Or is there already something I missed?
I need it because Its always very annoying to modify magic or something else to test the models and by this we have something where we can play with .

Yes, I will get on it immediately!  I have already a version that doesn't crash, but I'm not quite sure if it includes all of the models.  I know it has the static Blood Fountain, the static Pain Tower, and it has John.d.h's Divination Crystal.  It also has the Dark Mage, your Sorceress, and now I'll include the Dark Elder.  I used the Barracks for the Oblivion Portal.

Question: Should I try and include the stats I think would be best?  The alternative is just leaving them alone from the XMLs I modified.

here is the dark elder. I have no working xmls yet ( anyone is willing to do them? )
It has animations for
-attacking(ground)  probabaly I will improve this one, what do you think? Needs some kind of particle splash when hitting.
-attacking (air) should shoot a flash or something like this from his stick
-standing
-walking
-charging ( try this one!! )
-dying

Update( I forgot the link   ):
http://www.titusgames.de/darkmagic/dark_elder/dark_elder.zip

Thank you, titi!  I look forward to seeing it ingame.  The charging animation I think I will use; it sounds cool!

Notice: Yesterday, me and Mark co-bought a digital camera.  So now we'll be able to show off my brother (and mine too) original concepts for the units we try (woefully bad; a picture is worth a thousand words!) to describe to modelers.  My brother will post some pictures we took.

[John.d.h]

I noticed for the Dark Elder's walking animation, his staff passes through his leg.  You might want to fix that.  Also, why so many frames?  If you only have keyframes on the first, middle, and last frames, then you can scale the whole animation to three frames and Glest will interpolate everything between just as well as Blender does (try it if you don't trust me) and this can make the g3d MUCH smaller.  You can also leave off the last frame when you export if it's a repeating animation, but I think you know that already.

[Mark]

OK, just like my brother promised,  , I have the concepts.  Some don't fit in dark magic, but are still cool.

Here it is!

Feedback PLZ!

[Omega]

Ah, been away for a while camping. Missed so much. Sorry I can't quite model yet. I am very busy with military, the glest guide, and the mod maker, all well underway. Military is getting closer to completion, but the lack of my textures will slow things down. I had some 300+ stock art of tileable textures and such, all gone. The modmaker is now working in tabs, but still have units and upgrades to go, and I will try to get it uploaded for all those who joined as testers maybe tomorrow? So, I'm afraid I got no time to do the sheol temple. Maybe once I'm done?

BTW: Great model Titi!

[titi]

@johndh:
Yes I know all these problems and I was also a bit scared when I saw their size. I will have a look at them, but I fear some of them cannot be made smaller.
For the walking animation, I also noticed that, But I thought It was invisible ingame so I decided to keep it as it is. Did you noticed it ingame or in Blender?

[John.d.h]

Yes I know all these problems and I was also a bit scared when I saw their size. I will have a look at them, but I fear some of them cannot be made smaller.

I thought the same thing with some of my units for Sun and Moon, which had animations upwards of 20 frames, but Glest really does smooth them out just as well as Blender does.  I even tried exporting the animation once with 21 frames and once with 3 frames, then opening both up with the g3d viewer to see if I could spot the difference, and I couldn't even tell them apart.

For the walking animation, I also noticed that, But I thought It was invisible ingame so I decided to keep it as it is. Did you noticed it ingame or in Blender?

I noticed it in the g3d viewer, but I think it would take no more than a minute to fix.  I had the same problem with one of my units who was holding a spear, and I just had to rotate it a few degrees to fix it.

[titi]

I corrected the walking animation now http://www.titusgames.de/darkmagic/dark_elder/dark_elder.zip ( download again)
( this error was only visible in the g3d. I missed to insert a key for the staffs bone in the walking animation...

[modman]

I have a working version of Dark Magic, available for download here.  Unfortunately, as for XML editing, that it is a working version is just about the best thing about it.   This means the XMLs are not done.

I'm getting around to doing the XMLs in a bit.

Dark Magic is unfortunately extremely bloated.  The zip is about 39 MB, and unzipped factions are about 40 MB.  I think the unzipped Dark Magic is around 70 MB.

I also took the liberty to edit your original texture on the Dark Elder, titi.  I made it more sepia toned.  I  included yours in the folder as well, just renamed.

[Omega]

OUCH!

That's huge. I'm confused, what caused such a huge file? Military has roughly the same amount of units (probably more done, as I've finished maybe 18 or so units) and is a mere 25MB unzipped, 7.5MB 7zipped.

BTW, the modeling section of the beta blender guarentee learning tutorial is completed. I PMed you.

[titi]

25 mb with sounds ??? Thats really tiny!

But we should not care too much about the size if its not really huge.
What we can do later is resizing the images / reformatting sounds / optimizing animations and so on.
But I think a unzipped size of about 70-100 MB is really realistic for dark magic, because we use more vertices in our models and have lots of them. That's Ok because todays computers are much faster trhan in the beginning of glest.

[Omega]

Well, I use the lowest possible quality I can get without noticing any difference. For example, on a voice, why on earth would I have 312 kb/s bitrate?!? 64kb/s is pretty fine for voice. Only the truly alert and hardcore will notice the extreme marginal difference (I can't) and when you're playing a game... For the main music, it is a ~30s ogg loop at high compression, medium quality, which sounds VERY good to me, at a mere ~500kb, compared to the ~3000kb of magitech's sounds. As well, it is just one faction, and my models are very low poly, with minimum frame rate. Most models are 2-5 frames on average, with the most frames being 8 on the humvee, since I divide the wheel into 8 parts. Turning is the only thing glest's smoothing is not good at.

The largest files are of course my textures, which vary greatly from 256kb to 1mb each (256x256 or 512x512). However, they compress very good.

[titi]

Damn I cannot download from your link modman, whats wrong?
You gave this one, but it doesn't work ( any more ):
( http://download565.mediafire.com/nmbjmy9jtgxg/zmglmldyy5z/dark_magic.zip )
   
I end up on a page with url http://www.mediafire.com/?dark_magic.Connection:%20close
but I didn't see an error message.

[modman]

Sorry, that was because I tried a direct link; Mediafire has been acting weirdly lately, but try the one below.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zmglmldyy5z

//Edit: I felt bad, so just in case that doesn't work, I uploaded to another site:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/ah1dgaf/n/Dark_Magic_v_6_zip

[modman]

Titi, I forgot to mention that the Dark Elder also needs the morphing animation; it morphs into an Alliyp.  If you don't want to do it, I can just use the standing for now.

//EDIT

Titi, did you test out Dark Magic? What did you think?

//EDIT

I was thinking it would be a good idea if the Acolyte did not morph into the Dark Mage, but the Dark Mage was produced by the Sorceress.  This would prevent the AI from morphing while they have resources in their possession.  What do you guys think?

[Omega]

I personally am against using the sorcerer to summon the dark mage. It doesn't make sense in my opinion. A monster I would understand, but  a (considered) human unit? Unfortunately, it looks like the polls may be against me. Meh. The AI morphing with resources in their posession is no big deal. Its because every worker unit harvests resources until the computer decides what to do with it, wether to build, repair, or morph.

Up to you though.

[titi]

I will (hopefully) have some time this  evening to do something. What about the missing buildings? Is there any concept Art ?

@modman:
I will add a morphing animation for the Dark Elder too ( we will see if we use it or not ).
 
And sorry, I didn't play it yet, those vbros packs are stealing my time  ....

[modman]

I personally am against using the sorcerer to summon the dark mage. It doesn't make sense in my opinion. A monster I would understand, but  a (considered) human unit? Unfortunately, it looks like the polls may be against me. Meh. The AI morphing with resources in their possession is no big deal. Its because every worker unit harvests resources until the computer decides what to do with it, wnhether to build, repair, or morph.

Up to you though.

I turned to the Sorceress because I just didn't want the Acolyte to morph.  Maybe it could be produced by the Sorcery Runes?  That would seem more natural...

I will (hopefully) have some time this  evening to do something. What about the missing buildings? Is there any concept Art ?

The buildings I am missing are the Sheol Temple, the Divination Crystal (because it could be improved on a bit, and it needs build and die animations), and the Oblivion Portal.  The concept art is on the first post, but it would be cool if you would do the Oblivion Portal.  I don't think the concept art is there, so I will try to snap a picture of it with my new camera.

I will add a morphing animation for the Dark Elder too ( we will see if we use it or not ).

We will definitely use the morphing animation when you make it...

[Mark]

I would say units carrying resources without releasing them is a big deal.  And how do you figure only beasts can be summoned?  I voted for produced by sorceress, because of the AI issues.  Besides, with the latest version of the techtree the sorceress is pretty useless.

[John.d.h]

The concept art is on the first post, but it would be cool if you would do the Oblivion Portal.

How many versions do we need?  We already have two! (the one I made and the one Mark made)

[modman]

The concept art is on the first post, but it would be cool if you would do the Oblivion Portal.

How many versions do we need?  We already have two! (the one I made and the one Mark made)

I didn't get the g3d, only the blend...

Oh well, Mark already made his own Oblivion Portal, textured, exported, and everything.  I think its fantastic, and even better because it's his first g3d model you guys have seen (I think).

[John.d.h]

Oh well, Mark already made his own Oblivion Portal, textured, exported, and everything.  I think its fantastic, and even better because it's his first g3d model you guys have seen (I think).

Oh, spiffy.  I hadn't seen it since it had been textured.  Is it animated as well?

[ElimiNator]

Just a quick question, why are we making Dark Magic wen there is all ready magic?
And who is the sezar?
We should make roman.

[modman]

Oh boy...

Dark Magic is a faction of Magic.  When there was a civil war in the land of the Magics, the ancient knowledge was forgotten.  One of the groups, Magic, decided to try and find the knowledge again, while Dark Magic was learning new spells.  The new spells all took on a darker, more sinister tone.

Or in short, because I want to make Dark Magic.  And anyways, I'm pretty sure I said before that the community can decide the next faction to do, but only after this one is completed.

Oh yea, and how is the Sheol Temple coming along, Elimnator?  Are you still working on it?