n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

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lea
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n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by lea »

mainline still does not have north and north-east attack animations for drakes with spears, tridents and halberds, while having nice animations for south and south-east directions.

did anybody try to make these missing animations, "frankensteined" or not?
would be happy if anybody can point to any such attempts, however half-baked they might be

"inspired" by discussion in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47999&p=626397&hili ... on#p626397

note to moderators: if I managed to not find another similar topic then please do not hesitate to merge
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
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josteph
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Re: n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by josteph »

Moved to Art Contributions.
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beetlenaut
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Re: n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by beetlenaut »

It was probably never done because drawing a north-facing unit is so hard--much harder than it sounds. (I've tried it.) It has to look very different, but still be recognizable as the same unit. There is no real shortcut if it's going to look decent. It might sometimes be possible to frankenstein a north-facing animation from a similar unit of the same race, but drakes look very different from one-another, and they don't have north facing frames to work with in the first place, so that's not a possibility in this case. It probably would require an art commission to get this done.
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nemaara
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Re: n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by nemaara »

beetlenaut wrote: September 9th, 2019, 3:57 pm It was probably never done because drawing a north-facing unit is so hard--much harder than it sounds. (I've tried it.) It has to look very different, but still be recognizable as the same unit. There is no real shortcut if it's going to look decent. It might sometimes be possible to frankenstein a north-facing animation from a similar unit of the same race, but drakes look very different from one-another, and they don't have north facing frames to work with in the first place, so that's not a possibility in this case. It probably would require an art commission to get this done.
One way I like to try to do these is to "turn" the unit gradually northward. So for some animation frames, I draw them rotating towards north, so you gradually see more and more of the unit's back. Eventually, you should be able to turn the unit enough to get it facing completely north and hopefully see (via the different frames) that it's still the same unit.
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josteph
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Re: n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by josteph »

The Drake Clasher has an attack animation for SE but not for NE (for one of its attacks, at least, I didn't check both). Could it use the NE animation when attacking NE? Not ideal, sure, but would it at least be better than just sliding the unit sprite across?

On the other hand, I think it's the Burner line that uses the S attack animation when attacking N, and that looks odd...
lea
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Re: n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by lea »

josteph wrote: September 11th, 2019, 7:50 amOn the other hand, I think it's the Burner line that uses the S attack animation when attacking N, and that looks odd...
for attacks with very long melee weapons it is worse actually
when e.g. drake enforcer attacks north with a spear it looks like he is striking north-east unit - very counter-intuitive in addition to strange
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
lea
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Joined: October 1st, 2016, 7:25 pm

Re: n/ne attack animations for drakes with spears/halberds?

Post by lea »

beetlenaut wrote: September 9th, 2019, 3:57 pm... ... It probably would require an art commission to get this done.
commissioned art is yet to come so I tried to frankenstein my own. hopefully amateurish quality will inspire someone to do better )
at least it does not look confusing in wesnoth 1.14
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
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