Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

[John.d.h]

Damn, son!  Those are some suh-weet improvements.

[-Archmage-]

Thanks John! 

Also, wanted to quickly share that I've reduced the triangle count of the Sphinx from ~3600 to just under 2400. Quality of the model isn't lowered much, and besides it's the texturing that looks the worst in my opinion.

(click to show/hide)

I hope to release another beta in the next few weeks. Admittedly, I've been working on another Glest project since the release of this beta, mostly to wait for feedback on this.
I'm going to make some new updates and try to address the things you guys have brought up.

Totally unrelated Titi, but when do you think we might see another MG release? 

[-Archmage-]

Temple has been remodeled and retextured, with an optimized 30 frame wind animation for the new garden(replacing the second obelisk) and the new plant replacing the blocky bushes.

http://imgur.com/a/JZhg8

Snake also has a new selection plane underneath him, and teamcolor has been added.

[Coldfusionstorm]

Name's are names, and should not be changed regardless of translation you never translate names , this can be a little difficult to work with in MG because unit's have VERY generic names, i mean Stickman? (there are others i can't remember right now but i recently translated the entire MG techtree to danish and some of the names were a regular pain to translate(and i translated some names because honestly Stickman is... Terrible ( im properly going to make a thread about names when i get back from work).

TL:DR.
Names should not change in translation , I think names in general should be improved.

[victorj]

Name's are names, and should not be changed regardless of translation you never translate names , this can be a little difficult to work with in MG because unit's have VERY generic names, i mean Stickman? (there are others i can't remember right now but i recently translated the entire MG techtree to danish and some of the names were a regular pain to translate(and i translated some names because honestly Stickman is... Terrible ( im properly going to make a thread about names when i get back from work).

TL:DR.
Names should not change in translation , I think names in general should be improved.

I dont worry about names translated because very words are foreignness in brazil for example: used "surfe" as like that "surf".

[Golkombie]

Is this still going? I'm still waiting for the finished product. 

[-Archmage-]

I was originally banking on MG heading to Steam, and having a larger audience. The lack of news on that, and the emptiness of the forums has made me disinterested.
I have another Glest project on the backburner that is also very well progressed. I would like to get back to these projects, and would be willing to train people in Blender and such so that I have help for other remastering projects. However, there are so few people active on the forum these days, and it takes a lot of time to redo assets and all their animations. It's just not worth the time right now.

If anyone requests, I'll grant them personal access to all my source files for this project. And again, I may try to pick this up again soon, but I can't make guarantees, I'm becoming a busy person.

[filux]

You should know that emptiness is also related with the fact that we quite successfully dropped those kind of guys like e.g.: "I like this and waiting for more. I love MG. + SEO link somewhere in the signature and/or as a website" so maybe you miss for those  .

[-Archmage-]

Decided to sculpt a high-poly for the Sphinx. I'm pretty pleased with the result. 

[titi]

This indeed looks very good!
 

But I still have some concerns regarding high poly and performance  .

[-Archmage-]

Then give the mod a test! 

I've optimized the sphinx a bit more, and my performance tests didn't find much issue. MegaGlest is a mostly CPU limited game in my experience.

Edit: When I said high-poly sculpt, I meant that I made one AND baked it's detail back onto the low poly mesh. It's currently only ~2300 tris.

[kagu]

Steam Happened. 

[victorj]

When released version final of this mod?

[-Archmage-]

Steam Happened. 

That it did! I expect to put out a final release before the year is up.

[-Archmage-]

Update Log for anyone who's wondering:

-Desert Camp Optimized: 400 Triangle Reduction
-Farm: Chicken's Animated
-Obelisk: Redone Destruction Animation(Tri Count cut to 2,230 from 9,310, 65% Filesize Reduction), Vertex Normals Fixed(No more blobby look), and Slight Mesh Update
-Priest: Summoning and Healing Animations Done
-Pyramid: Re-Textured Again, Resolution is 1024 from 512 (Original was 256, super blurry), Vertex Normals Fixed, Slight Mesh Update

Planned:
-Vertex Normal Fixes on Farm and Temple
-Texture Enhancements to Ibis, Slave, and Sphinx
-Update Construction Models for Farm and Temple
-Complete Remake of Scarab
-Various Animation Tweaks
-Texture Palette Tweaks to Align Colors

@Titi: What do you think about making the Scarab high armor melee unit? The Snake and Ibis are already ranged, and the Scarab looks quite goofy currently. Don't worry about the art, I'll be redoing the Scarab either way.

I shall be putting together a before/after album that will appear days before release.

[victorj]

looks good job! Scarab high armor melee unit must get better

[-Archmage-]

More updates if anyone cares! 

(click to show/hide)

Updated Update Log:

-Desert Camp Optimized: 400 Triangle Reduction
-Farm: Chicken's Animated
-Obelisk: Redone Destruction Animation(Tri Count cut to 2,230 from 9,310, 65% Filesize Reduction), Vertex Normals Fixed(No more blobby look), and Slight Mesh Update
-Priest: Summoning and Healing Animations Done
-Pyramid: Re-Textured Again, Resolution is 1024 from 512 (Original was 256, super blurry), Vertex Normals Fixed, Slight Mesh Update
-Vertex Normal Fixes on Farm and Temple
-Texture Enhancements to Ibis, and Sphinx
-Update Construction Model for Farm
-Scarab Modelled and Textured

Planned:
-Update Construction Model for Temple
-Scarab Animations
-Various Animation Tweaks
-Texture Palette Tweaks to Align Colors

[-Archmage-]

I'm pretty much finished! 

Check out the first post for an updated image gallery, and downloads!

I'm calling this update 0.98 because then I have a little room for feedback. 

[John.d.h]

Dang dude, this looks great.  Everybody's been leveling up while I've been gone.

[kagu]

This is just awesome. I hope it gets implemented ASAP.

[titi]

This is much better now with less vertices and the models look eally good.
A problem I see is the snake which is too thin. It looks very good no question, but it will be hard to play. Selection is will be a problem with this and you will often miss one becasue you don't see it in high grass or something like this.

[tomreyn]

Please find backups of the "0.98 Final" (01-06-17) files at

• egypt_remaster-1-6-17.7z
• egypt-source-1-6-17.7z

SHA-256 checksums:
6fb0de5dbdfd6da5763f4d79d0cbda5faee2eae1f50715cb2aa6111eb9f42c47  egypt_remaster-1-6-17.7z
0a7a2affaeef1322dc4f23dd5ee6d5a03e69be3f8a76762de9baf65784864913  egypt-source-1-6-17.7z

Disclaimer: Please note I have not virus scanned these.

[-Archmage-]

With the snake, I traded width for length, but I can see how it might be hard to find. It also does have a selection plane underneath it like you proposed earlier, so selection is no issue.
I'll beef up the snake a tad.

Any other suggestions?

Tom: I'll add your mirrors to the first post. Thanks.

Disclaimer: Please note I have not virus scanned these.

Edit: Snake updated - Considerably thicker, and selection plane follows snake more on movement anim. Will be in next/last release alongside any other suggestions.

[kagu]

Maybe you should provide this as a standalone faction and put it in Game Mods until it gets as default part of megapack.

[victorj]

It's great job Archmage, thanks!