Unit sprites for Invasion from the Unknown/After the Storm

[Iris]

Also: is that staff picture relevant to any of this?

Feared that question. *grumble*

Here's the answer: I'm updating Elynia's sprites to match the new portrait, which of course came after the last update. There's also the fact that this staff is no longer a generic staff. Extract of the WIP background story for it:

A.1.3. The Staff of Elynia-Niryone

Elynia takes her master's staff, as she says with her last breath that Elynia
has completed her training.

The war ends and the Council of War decrees the dissolution of the Empire of
Wesnoth, and names a new King, Delvhar I. (1091 YW)

The Council also deliberates whehter the Sceptre of Fire should be destroyed or
not. It is clear that it is no longer safe to let humans keep it on their hands,
as Wesnoth has always been extremelly prone to be corrupted and anyone who
wields the Sceptre of Fire is virtually invincible if they know how to use its
power- which Mizenwyn, fortunately, didn't.

Members of the Northern Alliance argue that the power of the Sceptre should not
be permanently rid of, as it proved extremely essential to defeat the Lich.
However, the Council finally decrees that the Sceptre's core must be
dissassembled and completely destroyed. Elynia volunteers to lead and monitor
a group of dwarvish crafters to achieve the task.

After a year, dwarvish experts manage to remove the screen shield and extract
the Ruby from the inside. Elynia is due to throw the Ruby at the lava falls of
the depths of Knalga. However, she neglects to do so and instead pays the
dwarves for attaching the ruby at the top of Niryone's staff, which she wielded.
Finally, she casts a spell to cause amnesia on the crafters.

After convincing the Ka'lian that she completed the original task, Elynia hides
herself away to keep the Ruby out of reach from anyone.

Both the graphics and the story are a W.I.P., but I wonder if the staff is nice enough - it is the first time I draw a staff from scratch. Of course, the colors cause a too great contrast against Elynia herself, so that's got to be fixed. However, I attach the W.I.P. sprite for the curious.

P.S. L4 Anlindë is no longer a Sylph. She isn't even that "faerie" due to her past story anyway. This is the main reason for not having wings.

[Orcish Shyde]

Here was I thinking that elf magic only worked because elves started off 'faerie' and became more so as they delved into their magical powers. I mean, before losing my saves to a dead computer I got far enough to know the spoilerific thing that separates Anlinde from other Sorceresses, but I was of the impression that she'd stopped being influenced by that bit of her past looooong before IftU. OTOH, I wonder if the evasive wording here is really essential.

I think I saw that bit of backstory in a text file somewhere online, recently - a text file that also mentioned Elynia having had a run-in with Gwiti Ha'atel before. Then again I found a lot of stuff that could once have been connected to Gwiti, including a backstory where he used to be a noble in Wesnoth, and a suggestion (years and years ago) that TDH and HTTT(!) might share a scenario when they were both done. That's beside the point though.

Now they're going to be gone anyway, I feel fairly safe in wondering what the point of the modified Loyalists for the Chaos side was in the first place. Were there serious balance issues involved with using the normal Loyalists in IftU? Also, IIRC, the total amount of day & night in the two sun system is still the same - unless you decided to make it even more sadistic for your campaign, which I can completely understand

[Iris]

Now they're going to be gone anyway, I feel fairly safe in wondering what the point of the modified Loyalists for the Chaos side was in the first place. Were there serious balance issues involved with using the normal Loyalists in IftU? Also, IIRC, the total amount of day & night in the two sun system is still the same - unless you decided to make it even more sadistic for your campaign, which I can completely understand

The scenarios [should] have day & night usually arranged in such a fashion that you get the best attacks from the enemy at night. Nonetheless, the introduction of the modified Loyalists was a poor excuse for differentiating them from the mainline Wesnoth time period's loyalists. It was a really bad idea, as many others that I had at the time, and I regret having released so many revisions of the campaign with those quirks.

And, once corrupted by some kind of magic, you remain corrupted by it. That's the theory behind Anlindë and Malin Keshar - whether you can use it for good or bad, is a different subject.

[Orcish Shyde]

Minor detail picking: After a bunch of discussion on its campaign dev thread,the consensus I got was that Descent into Darkness' plot is either the result of Malin being rejected by everyone who should have given him a chance (my theory) or Malin being insane from the beginning - not much him being corrupted by his magic. By teh time he's Mal Keshar, sure, he's been changed forever by his magic - but Anlinde's being forced to use (spoilerific) power is a little less extreme than Malin's committing suicide (while dying anyway) and then reanimating himself with his dying breaths. The only conclusion I can reach from the evidence is that she's still using (spoiler) power, so I'd change her "faerie fire" into an identical "ethereal blast" to hint at this.

[Iris]

so I'd change her "faerie fire" into an identical "ethereal blast" to hint at this.

Haha, I changed that many days ago in SVN, before even having the first new baseframe WIP. Thanks for the idea though, but this is the current state:

L2 (Elvish Ascetic): ethereal zephyr
L3 (Elvish Mystic): ethereal zephyr
L4 (Elvish Avatar): ethereal storm

[Iris]

W.I.P.: Anlindë's unit line, more or less.

[woodmouse]

I think the last one's legs look weird. I dont' know why, but they seem to be in weird angle.
But I love them! (not the legs, I mean, the sprites. )

[Zaphod]

I think it's because the legs are too long, not angled weirdly. The Mystic's (the one in the center, correct?) right arm also seems an infinitesimally bit too long; it looks like if she let her arm fall normally, her fingertips would be below her knees.
All that said, I wish I could make/mod sprites like that.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

The legs aren't too long. The weird look is because she's not standing on her legs. She's flying and the legs are dangling freely. With that in mind, it looks good.

[KingdomAmericaCMG]

The legs aren't too long. The weird look is because she's not standing on her legs. She's flying and the legs are dangling freely. With that in mind, it looks good.

yes true, the problem i see is maybe the shadow is too close. move the unit up a little from the shadow. It looks like its not completely above the ground but on the tip of the toes.

[kitty]

all three look pretty cool! i like your designs!

aside from the already often enough mentioned strangeness with l3's legs (i think the thighs are too short and she should float higher), i find the way the arms overlap her cape in the l2 sprite slightly awkward - she looks like she had bat wings...




and yes, i'll get around to continue working on the portraits, but not sure how soon...

[Sleepwalker]

Very cool sprites . I don't have anything to add except maybe a suggestion on the third lvl sprite;

EDIT: Oops i meant the fourth lvl sprite.

Have you considered placing her legs tighter together? It might give a greater impression of control over her flying ability. It's nothing important, if you like it the way it is that's good. (I probably think so because most superhero characters that can fly do it that way).

[Iris]

Just for clarification, the leftmost sprite is L2, and the rightmost, L4.

Very cool sprites . I don't have anything to add except maybe a suggestion on the third lvl (sic) sprite;

Have you considered placing her legs tighter together? It might give a greater impression of control over her flying ability. It's nothing important, if you like it the way it is that's good. (I probably think so because most superhero characters that can fly do it that way).

I like the current placement. It is different enough to what I'm used to (Shydes and Sylphs).

i find the way the arms overlap her cape in the l2 sprite slightly awkward - she looks like she had bat wings...

Meh, of course. I have to fix that amongst other things. That was a quick 2-minute draft.

[Iris]

I just finished fixing Elynia's current melee attack animation frames so that they match the newest baseframe, based upon Kitty's gorgeous portrait. They have been commited already, though only 5 of them made it to the 1.10.0 Interim Release. Not a problem anyway, that release is a test one and you won't see it in the add-ons server, you shouldn't play it, etc.

I also commited an all-new ranged attack animation that I quickly put together for replacing the old animation that was a mangled version of the melee attack sequence.

Click me.

So it took me one year and a few months to get Elynia "quite right". Unsurprising; at the beginning, I had no spriting practice, and did not have much ear for criticism. By now I have received enough criticism in the different areas on which I work for Wesnoth that I could write a book with it. Nonetheless, checking this evolution scale from the "prototype" Elynia (who was nameless back then), um... what can I say... The left-most baseframe is a frankensteined one, but all the others at its right contain one or more major parts drawn from scratch; in fact, with each iterator, I drew more components from scratch. The "1.10.0-svn" revision(s) are based upon a handful of recommendations from Jetryl. The most noticeable quirk on the entire timeline is the overall shape of the legs. Let alone speak of the animation frames' legs... they tend to look like gigantic socks, something that I have read from third parties already in earlier revisions.

The newest sizes are based upon the Elvish Sorceress and human Great Mage (female), in contrast with earlier versions in which my reference was either the Elvish Druid or Shyde. There must be some clue that she's a L4 with just looking at the sprite (although she isn't a L4 for- oops, spoilers).

The 0.4.x-0.9.x iteration received an edit from Wayfarer. The latest iteration didn't receive edits from Kitty, but she redesigned the dressing.

There's a zeroth "interim" iteration that never made it to the forums - I actually frankensteined it by the start of 2006 before creating a completely new frankenstein (first revision) by the middle of 2007. This scale also reflects the unit_type naming across the time. The invisible zeroth revision was named "Elvish Star", from the UtBS Desert Star; my first motivation for renaming it was a topic in which a guy was asking something about Desert Elvis (sic) , but I never made up a real name until most of 2007 passed. The name "Elvish Arcanemaster" leaked to the campaigns server in the 0.0.x (concept test) versions, as an unused unit. The rest is history, and, although I still look for a better name to replace both "Lady of Light" and "Sylvan Faerie" (spoilers!), nobody, not even native English speakers, has suggested me anything better.

Now that Elynia is mostly graphic-complete, I am focusing on Anlindë again. I don't think I'll be able to give her proper animations for my release deadline, so I may either make one-frame placeholders, or none at all. That after I finish cleaning up the baseframes.

EDIT:

Foo.

anlinde-mystic.png (2.7 KiB) Viewed 4892 times

EDIT2: <posting after kitty's progress in the portrait thread. hahaha, i couldn't be less. :-p>

EDIT3: I also commited some revisions to the Demon line to SVN, and a less broken Blood Imp:

Bloody imps.

imp-blood.png (1.78 KiB) Viewed 4879 times

[kitty]

interesting to see this development! and quite an improvement over one year - especially the legs!

sorry, i've got nothing constructive to say...