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Colony Wars - March 2014 Updates
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Atomic_Noodles
Defense Minister


Joined: 05 Oct 2011

PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 5:14 am    Post subject:  Colony Wars - March 2014 Updates
Subject description: Even Giant Insects want War too Baby!
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March has been a buggy update for Colony Wars, Literally.

Showing some planned units for the Colony...

The Roach (Alternate Main Battle Unit) ,Scorpion (Elite Infantry) & Pillbug (Suicide Unit)


A Preview of the Standard Main Battle Unit of the Colony the Soldier Ant. Brutish Giant Insects that take alot of damage and aren't pushovers in confrontations.


Hatchlings. Which function as the Colony's Building Survivors and impromptu Combat Infantry.


The Swarm, Slightly mutated angry gnats.

That's all for now... Excelsior.

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Crimsonum
Seth


Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Location: Fineland

PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hmm, the swarm looks strange without a shadow.

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Ickus
General


Joined: 25 Nov 2002
Location: @__@

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nice! Just a few scuttles closer to SimAnt RTS. #Tongue

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Pillbug=Baneling?
I think the graphics could be a tad better. For SHPs the lighting and details on the units isn't that excellent.
e.g. the soldier ant looks like hand drawn using only 3 different shades of brown (bright, normal, dark).

The light setup seems wrong with the shadow directly below the unit and not northeast.

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Ickus
General


Joined: 25 Nov 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Not sure if the pill bug should be "suicidal" I guess more like a rolling charge attack, that can crush things in its path...albeit very sonic the hedgehog or be more like real life that it can "deploy" into its ball and gain some armor bonus or heal itself up?

I also noticed if these are in-game screenshots or taken from Final Alert?

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Atomic_Noodles
Defense Minister


Joined: 05 Oct 2011

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

@LKO Ask Mevitar's rendering method maybe?

In-Game Shots. The Map is 10% Darker or however bright it is when you set the map lighting to 0.9

I've added a shadow to the Swarm just a few hrs ago.

The Pillbug will do a charging roll attack. The Attacks stun vehicles & infantry. The attack will also damage them slightly (5 Attacks on Full Health will make them explode). The Suicide Blast as it'll be how they can really spread out their AttachEffect Stunning (Sticky Guts) is their main usage with the attacks just there to make them even do more damage before dying.

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mevitar
Missile Trooper


Joined: 31 Dec 2010

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 1:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

If Jem will tell me to change the shadows, i will. Otherwise, i don't see why shp units should use a different shadow angle than voxels do.

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Voxel use a fake/wrong shadow, because their lighting is from low southwest and the shadows light comes from northwest.
So usually the wrong voxel shadow direction is ignored and only their lighting used when considering the global game lighting. And in this case with the sun in southwest, the shadow is going northeast.

In addition, if you don't plan to change every other SHP like trees, rocks, cliffs and buildings, then the general lighting is also with the sun in southwest and shadows going northeast.

Another important point i've noticed while experimenting with different lighting setups, you really get the best results with the sun in southwest (or flipped in south east)
Every other lighting with sun directly above the unit or even north/south is bad, because you lose a lot of the lighting details, since the whole unit is from the players view in a mirror-symmetric even lighting.
However the impression of depth on an object is much stronger when you see a lighted and a shadowed side. And this you best achieve with the sun in SW or SE. But since VXL are SW lighted, it's an unwritten rule to use this direction for SHP too.

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Orac
President


Joined: 11 Jul 2008
Location: New Zealand

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 12:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I think that using the vertically projected shadow is fine if the lighting on the unit itself is done in the standard shp manner.  It helps to maintain the consistency between voxel and shp units without losing too much visual information in the process.

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Graion Dilach
Defense Minister


Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 7:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Infantry also use wrong shadow in RA2 and voxel shadow is actually a lot more closer to infantry shadow than to building shadow.

Also stop arguing that voxel shadows are fake, LKO, that's as valid as I claiming SHPs have fake lighting (considering that SHP shadows ain't even rendered by the engine, that actually much more of a possibility).

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"If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more...

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

GD, stop taking everything personal when i mention flaws of voxel (no personal opinion but facts). It's a simple fact that voxel lighting and shadow direction are different.
That you can do the same mistake on SHP is indeed possible, but why do it, when it's possible to prevent it there. On VXL you can't change the lighting or shadow direction (both hardcoded, both not changeable; of course maybe for super elite assembler coder like you, but we are not talking about you).

Infantry can be fixed, vxl can't. Infantry in RA2 were obviously a sloppy work with that ugly black blob under them. So why even use those 2 examples with obviously wrong lighting, when talking about the main game lighting which is still defined by map (cliffs, slopes, tmps), terrain (trees, rocks) and buildings.
GD, the game isn't primarily VXL and then everything else build around them. It's the other way round, so stop getting pissed when i mention facts about certain flaws of VXL.

If you wouldn't obsess over that single VXL issue that i mentioned, then you would have also noticed the other reasons i mentioned, why using SW lighting, NW shadowing is a good choice.

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Crimsonum
Seth


Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Location: Fineland

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Of course you can change the lighting on voxels by placing the normals differently. Use those you normally use for the voxel front on the left side, place the other normals accordingly and voíla, you have a voxel that's lit as if the light is coming from the Nort-West. However, that would be a pretty bad idea in my opinion, as you would see most of the voxel as dark. Also, the shadow is something that's apparently unchangeable.

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Graion Dilach
Defense Minister


Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
[...]

You still don't get what I speak of. I can flip every SHP in the game and flip lighting overall, because only voxels have fixed shadow. If I could have the skill to recreate every SHP, I could easily render everything with voxel shadows and bam, unified.

Actually noone cares about shadow, but I also hate that black blob. It's actually not sloppy tho, and if you wouldn't be a blinded fool, you would also notice it that infantries use color 12 for shadow and shadow only, and changing that to transparent actually looks a lot better than any TS infantry with "right" shadow.

Your points are as valid as mine regarding lighting, they always were, they always will, because of your as-high-as-my-voxel-preference-if-not-higher TS building lighting obsession.

_________________
"If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more...

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