Ancient Lich Development

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Darker_Dreams
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Darker_Dreams »

I don't disagree that bling seems akward for an ancient lich. A lich that's chosen to use it's eternity to focus on material goods, sure, but one that's chosen to dedicate itself to the art of necromancy? no. Then you said this;
axl wrote:and their evil so even if they did they'd probably have it hanging out anyway.
Seriously? Evil = uninhibited? You do realize that in a number of cases those who have done the most evil in the world have had some of the strongest compasses of what's "appropriate." Generally the more you abuse people somewhere the more you have to draw lines on what's appropriate and acceptable to keep any sort of perspective.
axl wrote:*On a separate note the driving force of the Lich should be sadness/despair/anguish in my opinion...
I can see this being interesting once, maybe twice. After that you're talking about making every ancient lich into a stereotype which doesn't have a huge amount of depth.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by artisticdude »

axl wrote: don't think this is appropriate simply because if a Lich has gone past Wealth and Power (as in its presumably reached a stage in necromancy is doesn't need the first and has an abundance of the second) i really don't think its going to bother with bling, or clothes for that matter.

Have you ever wondered why we (fantasy designers/fans) always put robes on skeletons/Lichs/etc? Robes don't protect. And do Lichs suffer from the cold? They're dead so i don't think so. Secondly what do they have to be ashamed of? They're dead...and have no genitalia...and their evil so even if they did they'd probably have it hanging out anyway.
Intimidation. Intimidating as they might already be, they enhance their already frightening display of power and ferocity even further by these additions.

Now don't get me wrong; I'm not saying you should go overboard on this kind of thing. There is fine line drawn between what looks scary/intimidating/powerful and what looks plain ridiculous. But I think having some fluff increases the natural intimidation of an ancient lich, even if it doesn't really need them.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Dixie »

axl wrote:and their evil so even if they did they'd probably have it hanging out anyway.
I think the moment is particularly well chosen for a quote from a pretty interesting link someone posted in the writers' forum last week.

From url=http://www.watt-evans.com/LawsofFantasy.html]Watt-Evans's Laws of Fantasy[/url]
Watt-Evans' Second Law of Fantasy: People are never wholly good or wholly evil, and therefore characters should never be wholly good or wholly evil.
Characters, like real people, should be concerned with other things besides Good and Evil. They mustn't all be just good guys or bad guys; in fact, no one is perfect, eliminating your stereotypical good guy, and nobody thinks of himself as evil, eliminating your stereotypical bad guy. No one thinks of himself as a villain.
That doesn't mean you can't have villains, though. Adolf Hitler didn't think of himself as an evil man; he was trying to make the world safe for the master race, as he saw it, and that was, from his point of view, a very good thing, so that it didn't matter if a lot of people got killed in making it happen. He didn't think of himself as evil, yet I don't think anyone would deny he was a very satisfactory villain.

In bad fantasy stories, though, the villains are often evil for the sake of evil, proudly, arrogantly evil, proclaiming from the rooftops that they are the very epitome of evil, doing evil, rotten things just because they're evil.

I don't buy it. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work for me, and I don't think it would work for anybody else, either. I can't see a real person, even a wizard or demigod, saying to his henchthings, ''Hey, what can we do today that's really rotten?'' Doing nasty, rotten things for power (''What can we do today to make people do what we want?''), or vengeance (''What can we do today to make life miserable for all those people who mistreated me?), or spite (''What can we do today to make everyone as miserable as I am?''), or even for sexual jollies (''What can we do today that's kinky?''), I can accept, but not just for the sake of evil.

And being good for the sake of goodness doesn't work very well, either. Fighting the villains because they're evil doesn't work. For one thing, how do you know they're evil? Fighting the villains because they've harmed people, or threatened to harm people, or might harm people, or just for the sake of fame and glory, I can accept. Even simply out of the personal satisfaction in doing something well, I can accept. But not just because we're good and they're evil.

This excludes religious or patriotic crusades, of course, which are often based on ''We're good, they're evil,'' but where in fact neither side has a monopoly on either. In crusades, the characters can think they're acting purely because they're good and the other guys are evil, but only in a very weak story would they be right.
This resumes my thought very well: Ancient Lich are not just evil. Plain evil makes no sense. Rather, it has warped values or something, and it seems evil to us, but he certainly doesn't consider itself evil and with every night says "okay, what really bad things could we do just to piss people off"? Certainly it has a deeper motive.

And while your thought on what the deep character of an ancient lich should be is pretty plausible, I don't see it as being the only one at all. And the whole ancient lich concept is being reworked anyway, seeing how most of them aren't even that ancient.

Also, what artisticdude said.

And for the record, I'm not particularly a big fan of your lich portrait (to each his preferences). Why would it need a big-ass sword, if it has kick-ass draining arcane touches anyway? It's jsut gonna slow him down. And I'm not a big fan of the whole meaty stuff burrowed from other creature either. Flesh ought to be rotting and would probably just be in the way anyway, so why bother? Plus, bones have some kind of a clean, pure and dead aesthetic I can imagine liches aiming for, while flesh is just all drippy and stuff.

Anyway, just my opinion :) Sorry for being so offtopic.
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Kraus
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Kraus »

I think the robe/bling thing is passé and useless particularly for this character. A Lich is the ultimate stage of necromancy, I don't think it bothers with clothes of human trivialities. Bling should only be applicable if it has a super magical necklace or ring (not that it would need them anyway) but just caking it on doesn't make any sense to me.
Particularly for this character, no, and I hope I wasn't implying that too much. :) However, generally I could see liches bringing bling with them, especially if it's magical. Even if they do change their physical body, it is still a body, and needs protection, and extra power from rings and such is never wasted. Ancient liches are super powerful, that is mutually agreed, but never would I skip a chance to reserve my powers to something more important by using magical artefacts, or other gear, in more trivial settings.

The need of extra protection is visible in your lich also. As you said, liches shouldn't be too self-assured not to carry weapons or wear protection; thus the claymore, and gauntlets. And even if they have/don't have any real purpose, sometimes it's better to go with the rule of cool. ;) Your points remain valid and noted, however, even if they are not always to be followed by letter. Many of these things could be argued, but that would have to be done case spesifically, since every lich is unique, with their unique stories. I'd figure there aren't too many ancient liches in the world.

As for the extra hand issue, TSI wrote the general fluff for liches in the first post:
The only certain constant is a human skull, the one piece the Lich always retains from its original body, and usually at least one pair of hands, for the casting and preparation of spells.
So yes, hands are needed, and overall TSI's idea did not tell liches are actually corporeal, or live in an astral dimension. They definitely (by what I understood) need a body.

The idea of sadness in lichs' stories is a good one, even if once again too spesific to be general enough, in my opinion. It, as said, will get as boring as your usual powerhungry conqueror lich (just for the sake of it in most cases, to add) if repeated too often, but as a concept it's great. I would love to see this written out, and written well - every idea can be written either bad, or good. It hasn't been written at all yet, though. But, once again, it seems that while doing these concepts uniqueness is going to be the main idea, and (almost) everything could be argued. Maybe these ideas just should be finalized in the portrayer's mindset first, and then just carried out, as long as the idea fits the general description of an ancient lich (which seems to be rather vague at parts).
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by thespaceinvader »

I think I need to have a chat with jet about the methods to use for this before we go too much further. Specifically, to clarify whether we try to make every Ancient Lich unique in sprite and animation as well as portrait, or whether we go for a single generic sprite. The artist and gamer in me prefers the former, the practical person dramatically prefers the latter.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Kraus »

thespaceinvader wrote:I think I need to have a chat with jet about the methods to use for this before we go too much further. Specifically, to clarify whether we try to make every Ancient Lich unique in sprite and animation as well as portrait, or whether we go for a single generic sprite. The artist and gamer in me prefers the former, the practical person dramatically prefers the latter.
Or a few generic sprites? Ancient liches won't be seen in multiplayer anyways, and not a single campaign right now (as far as I know) play with the idea of unique liches. So, for future campaigns using liches it would be nice to have a few generic liches, whereas the current campaigns' stories would need a revamp if the new lich concept would be adapted to them.

So, a couple of unique and generic liches for the future could be good, but campaign developers should have a say shat kinds of liches their campaigns include, and sprites should be made according to their stories. This is, if it is really needed... :) Honestly, how many ancient liches are there in campaigns as it is? And is the basic lich being remodeled?

But yeah, that's just me speaking.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by axl »

axl wrote:Seriously? Evil = uninhibited? You do realize that in a number of cases those who have done the most evil in the world have had some of the strongest compasses of what's "appropriate." Generally the more you abuse people somewhere the more you have to draw lines on what's appropriate and acceptable to keep any sort of perspective.
I have to stop making flippant comments :( You're right it wasn't key to my point and i shouldnt have wrote it.
I can see this being interesting once, maybe twice. After that you're talking about making every ancient lich into a stereotype which doesn't have a huge amount of depth
I was under the impression this would be a unique character or at least not something you see in many campaigns considering how powerful its meant to be. My bad. I guess we'll find out when the character is fleshed. I wasn't trying to impose one way of seeing an Ancient Lich, just an idea imho. :)
Why would it need a big-ass sword, if it has kick-ass draining arcane touches anyway? It's jsut gonna slow him down.
I explained my reasoning behind it but that makes sense too.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by thespaceinvader »

I can think of... at least five ancient liches featuring in campaigns: Malifor and Ro'Arthian in NR, Mal Ravanal in TEI, Mal Keshar in DiD, Mal M'Brin in TSG. I'm certain there are more. They are more common than you think, suffice it to say. The basic Lich is not being re-done.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Kraus »

thespaceinvader wrote:I can think of... at least five ancient liches featuring in campaigns: Malifor and Ro'Arthian in NR, Mal Ravanal in TEI, Mal Keshar in DiD, Mal M'Brin in TSG. I'm certain there are more. They are more common than you think, suffice it to say. The basic Lich is not being re-done.
The two in NR I remembered, but I can't recall the others being that characterful I identified them actually as that ancient... I think I'll have to have another look at them.

But, especially with NR and it's (in my opinion) great and unique story, the liches should be (if they were given new graphics) discussed with the author of the campaign, an illustrator and a pixel artist to get them really right. This consumes resources, I know, but it might get a bit offending if the arch nemesises of campaigns were to be changed dramatically without asking for campaign writers' opinion. Especially if they were made more unique.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by artisticdude »

Kraus wrote:But, especially with NR and it's (in my opinion) great and unique story, the liches should be (if they were given new graphics) discussed with the author of the campaign, an illustrator and a pixel artist to get them really right. This consumes resources, I know, but it might get a bit offending if the arch nemesises of campaigns were to be changed dramatically without asking for campaign writers' opinion. Especially if they were made more unique.
But mainline campaigns are directly under the control of the current maintainers. Some of the original writer/creators of the mainline campaigns aren't even around any more anyway.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Deusite »

Malifor, Ro'Arthian, Jevyan, Muff Argulak (TRoW, no dialogue), Mal Ravanal, Mal Keshar and Mal M'Brin. I think that's all of them, having just checked, and Mal M'Brin appears as a plain old Lich in the Bandit branch, so he's not very 'ancient'.

Unique sprites are... nearly not impossible. :Awesome:
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Valkier »

God it's nice to have the internet again. Sorry I've been gone for so long folks, I've been surviving on a cell phone connection for about a week now. Suffice to say, not a lot of posting or art has been done. Things are quieter now, so I should be able to get back in to production.

As for the raging debate: I guess I'm considered the designer of this project? I don't know that for certain so don't quote me. In any case, here's my thoughts on it at the moment.

It was brought up why Liches need robes and whatnot. It's not armor and blah blah. Later on it was mentioned that my shadow lich looks too ghostly, after saying he would like to see a lich that has forgone a body. I think we can see the irony in these statements, so I won't mince words on the subject too much. The answer to both however, is interest. If I were a lich, being as practical as I am in my personality, there are two things I would do. First, I would find the most unassuming look I could. In a world where naked skeletons are assumed to be powerless slaves, you'd have a good bet that I'd be naked right in the middle of that horde, plain and terrible. No extra limbs or symbols. Just my boney frame hiding unlimited destructive capability.

But this draws a problem. First off, it's boring looking. For character design, practicality is not always beneficial. Especially in the case of Wesnoth, it is nigh impossible to do in the first place. The reason for this is that all portraits must be made to look like they are talking. They can look angry, vengeful, whatever WHILE talking, but it limits the amount of demonstrated power you can place. Further more to this, we get a very limited view of each character portrait. Now if we were to start adding demonstrations of said power to story art we'd be in a much different scenario. Then we can make the portraits as plain as we want and use the story art to get everything else done. The problem here is that Wesnoth scenarios, from what I have seen, seldom have interludes where something is happening. A lot of what I have seen involves a lot of traveling and talking, with you doing the fighting yourself in the campaigns. This makes sense from a gameplay standpoint and I condone it, but there again, we are limited as artists. It means to give the idea of how powerful these characters are we need to rely on the writing.

But back to my point about practicality vs. flashiness. We need to be able to clearly define who and who is not special in the art. We have to. Short of what I mentioned before, it's just standard practice to make the special characters look special. And whether you or I agree with it doesn't matter either. The fact is, if people want normal looking suits of armor with normal looking characters fighting naked skeletons and stuff, they'd read the bible. Fantasy art as we know it would also cease to be, since artists are artists in order to release creativity and show people their visions. Take that away, and you just made the job a pain rather than a pleasure.

So how COULD we make this work? Well we'd need to reinvent the image of Wesnoth entirely, for one. We have flashy characters. If we want to go to a practical level in order to make the extraordinary moreso, then we'd need to restart the artwork from the ground up and remove all traces of flash. No armored skeletons, no armored ghosts, Liches are just naked skeletons, etc. But we can't, or rather won't, so we are best served by working with what we are given within the lore and go from there.

I find it funny that we started with this broad open concept and people are so incredibly interested in narrowing it down now. It's like we opened a restaurant catering to multiple elasticities and preferences and now everyone has decided we should only serve hamburgers with various condiments in order to add diversity. But by doing so, you're taking away potential innovation here, and it's sad to see it head towards that end.

Intimidation. Fear. Aggressiveness. These are words I feel we must keep in mind when designing an ancient lich. They did not get power just so they wouldn't have to use it. They attained power so that they could ruin someones day on a whim. These creatures are also far from stupid. What better way to get the upper hand on someone than to make your very presence throw them off balance? The most skilled warrior in the world is reduced to useless if they are in awe or terrified of what they have to face. To that end, garb and form should be designed so. Have a dragon head, or the heads of nobelemen on their side. Have a gem on a necklace with the wailing souls of those they have slain inside of it. Make them look like they are unapproachable due to whirling blades or something all around them. It's all the same really. It's only impracticable decoration when it has no potential purpose. Remember, the romans would put plumes on their helmets in order to create the illusion that they were taller than the enemy. It served no fighting purpose in itself, but it certainly made their enemies think twice.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

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thespaceinvader wrote:I think I need to have a chat with jet about the methods to use for this before we go too much further. Specifically, to clarify whether we try to make every Ancient Lich unique in sprite and animation as well as portrait, or whether we go for a single generic sprite. The artist and gamer in me prefers the former, the practical person dramatically prefers the latter.
Given that it's more of a community project than a dev project, I don't see the amount of work as much of an issue. I, for one, am pretty up for it. If we count Mal Keshar we should also count Sothian, since both reach Ancient Lich by leveling, but that still makes only six, plus a generic or two.
Last edited by A-Red on August 26th, 2010, 10:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by Thrawn »

It's a community project that needs to make sure it's in line w/ dev ideas, which is why tsi wants to get in touch w/ Jet. Otherwise, y'all might end up doing work that ends up not being productive. Makes sense to me ^_^
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Re: Ancient Lich Development

Post by A-Red »

Sure. I understand why there needs to be a meshing of ideas. I just don't think the *quantity* is a problem.
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