WW1 Units

Yanshee · Post by **Yanshee** » November 28th, 2006, 4:09 pm

Hello all !
I've been playing Wesnoth for quite some times now, and have often been thinking about contributing to it. As I'm really interested by World War 1 and have always been deceived not to find games about it, I thought I could try to do it myself for Wesnoth. This is the first time I try to do something like this and I'd like your comments about it, so here's a few units I already made. These are some french and german units, and they don't have shadows yet. I still don't know about their characteristics, it's only a rough try, if someone want to help me out with that, it would be greatly appreciated...

Sabata · Post by **Sabata** » November 28th, 2006, 7:40 pm

They have a strange look, you did them whit what??

Naeddyr · Post by **Naeddyr** » November 28th, 2006, 8:21 pm

They are sweet.

And now they are MINE! Mwah ah ah ah!

*me plays with them in the sandbox*

REMEMBER GALLIPOLLI

Ryorin · Post by **Ryorin** » November 28th, 2006, 10:23 pm

Not bad, the most I could say is that they aren't in the Wesnoth style. Also a bit of differences in stance might be nice, and faces. Aside from that not bad, being your first time and all.

Post by **Thrawn** » November 29th, 2006, 12:31 am

I love the style on them. Even if not "wesnothian", for some reason they remind me of old wooden toy soldiers...the round faces help with that, I'm sure.

I agree, that more variation in poses would be good, but nice start

Post by **Maeglin Dubh** » November 29th, 2006, 4:15 am

Nothing wrong with what you have. If you like, and you give me some more art to work with, I can help with suggestions for characteristics.

But one important question: What is your goal with this? That will dictate what art you need, for the most part, and how much effort you (and possibly others) will have to put into it.

new · Post by **new** » November 29th, 2006, 11:27 am

These germany soldiers are !!!GREAT!!!

. These units need I for my germany map

Yanshee · Post by **Yanshee** » November 29th, 2006, 8:30 pm

Sabata wrote:They have a strange look, you did them whit what??

Well, I have to admit one thing, these are not pixelart units, they're done in Inkscape, in vector. I'm better at vector drawing than pixelart... But I did draw them directly at the right size. I find it easier, as once the unit is drawn, ,it is fast and easy to edit and to "animate", but that's just a personal opinion, maybe I'm just not too good at pixelart to be able to do that fast and easy...

I know they should have more different poses, but I thought I would first try to have some faction playable then improve them afterwhile, and about faces , maybe you're right, I don't know, I like them without face but I'll try to give them a face to see how they looks like. And I would like to create a new era based on world war 1, and I plan to create other countries armies, like Great Britain, Russia... I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how good they are and how to made them work, and still have a lot to learn about creating well-balanced units, so I welcome warmly your suggestions for characteristics Maeglin !

I attached a bigger version of the German infantry so you can see the vector version of it. I also have already done little test of attack animations on the german and the french infantry, I'll post them later as I still have to make an animated gif of them...

I also have a little rough beginning for the evolution tree of the french, and of the germans, but I'm still documenting myself on different types of armies' units. I could post it here, but should I do it or create another thread in the era forum for it ?

Post by **Maeglin Dubh** » November 29th, 2006, 9:04 pm

I'd recommend starting a new thread in the Eras forum for stats, trees, and all that fun stuff.

Balancing will be interesting, with mainly ranged units. Trench daggers, clubs, and barbed-wire maces, along with bayonets, will make things interesting; perhaps even a trench raider line for one faction or the other with only melee weapons and some sort of stealth ability.

But we'll figure that out later.

Naeddyr · Post by **Naeddyr** » November 29th, 2006, 10:35 pm

Yanshee wrote:
Sabata wrote:They have a strange look, you did them whit what??
Well, I have to admit one thing, these are not pixelart units, they're done in Inkscape, in vector. I'm better at vector drawing than pixelart... But I did draw them directly at the right size. I find it easier, as once the unit is drawn, ,it is fast and easy to edit and to "animate", but that's just a personal opinion, maybe I'm just not too good at pixelart to be able to do that fast and easy...

They look awesome, and I'm totally gonna try this when I do a faction myself.

Hm. Could Wesnoth actually support .svg graphics, maybe in the future?

Yanshee · Post by **Yanshee** » November 30th, 2006, 3:04 pm

Ok, here are the little animation test I did on the German and the French infantry. It's only a first test to see how it would look like, so they've been animated very fast...

JW · Post by JW » November 30th, 2006, 3:09 pm

Wow...that really does seem to be quite effective at animating. Each frame looks exactly like it should in its given position. Very nice.

Where is the Frenchman pulling his gun from though?

Multiplayer Scenarios / Campaigns · Post by **Rhuvaen** » November 30th, 2006, 3:43 pm

Yanshee wrote:Well, I have to admit one thing, these are not pixelart units, they're done in Inkscape, in vector. I'm better at vector drawing than pixelart... But I did draw them directly at the right size. I find it easier, as once the unit is drawn, ,it is fast and easy to edit and to "animate", but that's just a personal opinion, maybe I'm just not too good at pixelart to be able to do that fast and easy...

One thing I notice is that they all look a bit blurry - still perfectly usable IMO.

Looking at the larger image I can see why: your shading is very soft and too simple. That gives them a kind of 2D cardboard quality (which by itself looks nice). With proper shading they would look better IMO - with more contrast they could look more sculpted.

In the attack animations, it might be good to have an actual firing frame where smoke billows from the mouth of the rifle.

Post by **Maeglin Dubh** » November 30th, 2006, 4:26 pm

As far as I know, in that era, powder was largely smokeless, so there should only be a brief spurt of flame, with some wisps of smoke.... But no billows, and the unit should definitely not be obscured.

Post by **Baufo** » November 30th, 2006, 4:51 pm

Didn't most guns in WW1 still have bayonets? I have been to a museum of the war of the Karnic Alps between Italia and Austria and all the guns I have seen there had bayonets. But maybe that was just because both sides were very low of ammunition in this conflict.

But of course great work! I like them.

PS: Are you just going to draw infantry or also early MGs or even artillery?