Regarding invisible gnomes: I like the idea in theory, and it fits. However, I don't really like the way the game handles invisibles – I wish there were some levels of stealth that meant that you couldn't see them until they were close (as in, adjacent), another where they were invisible until they were in battle, a third where you can only see them when they're 2-3 squares away, and a final 'magical' invisibility that all invisible units currently enjoy. I will add that the gnomes enjoy 9 new units already, and that the illusionists should be interesting opponents. :D I did add a Free Man spy unit which is invisible, but except for the kinds of abuse that can be done with invisibles, it's not winning any battles. Rather, they'll be taking advantage of the fog of war system Implode added.
Regarding Bee People: This should be quite cool Lubricus. I had some vague thoughts about a counterpoint to the Klackons, and I find it interesting that you went virtually the opposite direction. Cool -this means I can still do it lol. I imagined the Klackons to be the more sentient of the two, and the two would despise each other because the Klackons were a slave race that escaped the draw of hive-thinking. I'm also considering an avian race to cover the flying thing, but they're a bit down the list, and only if I make a 3rd plane. Too many flyers in one area...yikes.
By the way, I was sure that good old Latin from the scientific classification of bees would help us. I was wrong. Apoidea? Hymenoptera? I mean, Hy Men would be funny, but...wrong lol.
Looks like a well-developed concept and description that make mine look a bit fluffy. Wait, mine ARE a bit fluffy. Balance is for later :D Oh, and I had a good laugh at the gnolls raiding them for honey. Furry punks.
Re elliott20 and his heroes: I too have thought about heroes. The trick with heroes is that they're MORE work than normal units lol. You have to specify more complicated attributes and draw a MoM-friendly pic of them. Still, heroes make up such an important part of the game, that I fully support as many heroes as possible...in the full range of awesome and somewhat bumbling. I'm honored that a goblin hero was the first to be mentioned. I'd be glad to have Bdoken lead my troops. The Sapper is an interesting hero idea. Especially if he can build roads. Genius.
Looks like you guys are running into some graphics snags? I figured out what little I know through this thread.
http://www.roughseas.ca/momime/phpBB3/v ... &sk=t&sd=a
Don't confuse the graphics xml with making graphics – it only assigns graphics to things in game. Or rather, unless Korenn saves our butts, you add them, somewhat pain-stakingly, through the graphics xml.
1) On the downloads page of the main MOM IME site you can find the graphics extractor that converts LBX files to .BMP. I don't mean the editor. It'll explain what's up in regard to those. It's called LBXExtract utility v1.2, right at the bottom:
http://www.roughseas.ca/momime/downloads.html
2)Get a program you like for doing graphics. I went through a bunch of DOS programs, because I'm into DOS emulation. After trying 8-9 different programs, I started using Ultimate Paint, which is free (and windows based). It's extremely simple and has a lot of good choices for this kind of work by default. It opens those tiny pics to full size, starts you off with a 1-pixel brush, and it can handle 12-15 windows before slowing down my sluggish laptop. How perfect is that? You'll get the hang of it pretty quick. There might be a better solution out there. I wonder what the MoM folks used...
3) Think about whether or not there are any similarities in what you want to draw and what MoM has. Then go and find it. This takes more time than you think because most OSes by default handle images of MoM's size poorly...you may have to open up and zoom before you know what's what, and there are THOUSANDS of images. I used halflings as the basis for my first goblin - so I went and found them in the folder I had extracted the LBXes to. So I copied all the halfling spearman frames, recolored one, and shaped it until it was the way I wanted. Even if there's nothing similar, the scale is immensely helpful – you'll know about how tall the drawing will be, you'll know where it stands on the ground, and most importantly, which direction and animation you're currently working on. To better organize my files, I actually made folders with each race as I went through the LBXes, and another folder for larger images. I may need to go get buildings too.
4) Copy the .BMP files from the extracted images to a folder that you're working in. Open up the direction facing you, or whichever you think will be easiest to think about first. Draw away. Each direction has a numeric ending:
000 – This is the walking/riding/slithering/movement animation frame for this direction.
001 – This is the default – the unit stands at attention facing this direction
002 – This is an alternate walk animation, like, the other foot. Used for flying. Can be used creatively to work with the attack as well.
003 – This is the attack frame for that animation
Make your hero or unit come to life in all 32 directions.
5) When that's done, you can make the overland image by finding the overland extracted images wherever you extracted them from the game. They're positioned a bit differently, so find a similar one and work your mojo similar to the above. This time it's only one frame, but it's an important one. If you're doing a race, you'll also need a farmer, rebel, and worker for each one (and it may be possible to have other civilian types). Those are also somewhere in the extracted graphics. Be patient in finding them, as there are a LOT in there.
6) A note about color – there are 3 specific shades of green that the game turns into Wizard colors – you can use them for flags, tabards, and whatever else. The extractor makes a lot of extra files showing these. Open up a high man swordsman and look at his clothing for the 3 shades. Another shade is used for shadows in floating creatures and horses. Finally, good old 00FF00 Fuscia...you'll be staring at quite a bit of that. It's transparent. An advantage we have here is that we can use ANY color we want other than these 5. I generally make a palette of color choices on the first frame I make. For every color you want, make 5 or so shades of it, from darkest to brightest so that you can mimic the surprisingly detailed MoM artwork. I don't think I've seen more than 5 shades of a color on a unit. This is helpful especially when you're doing recolor work of any kind. Start with the brightest and work your way down as you replace colors...if you get lost, replace the darkest color and meet in the middle. Have all of these shades available in on your first frame, and continually select from it as you make your other frames for speedy color management. While you're on this, sometimes it can help to have 'items' copied here too...for example, I copy swords and spears over to get the color progression right as I animate them.
7) One convention you should note is that virtually every unit in the game has a black border. It doesn't need to be a specific color of black, but know that it's an important visual offset to separate the unit from the rest of the world. Some magic effects will add colorful layers on top of this, and if you've got a black border, your units will fit right in. Also note that the black border doesn't extend to the soles of the feet by convention, so that they can appear to be on the ground. It also doesn't appear on a few select things that would be aesthetically wrong. Like, a black cape doesn't need a black border. One last note about this, the black border isn't a 'part' of the image...by which I mean the sword gets a black border all the way around - our eyes will see the sword better because of it rather than seeing a 3 pixel wide huge sword. I basically mean that the border goes AROUND, not IN the unit. You'll see plenty of examples of this as you look around the images you extract.
8 ) At this point consider yourself done for now. I do not recommend doing any major work in the graphics or server editors, as your work could be rewritten with each version of the editors. It would be good, however, to do enough work there to see a few frames in action for yourself. In the last stages, you'll bring the unit to life in the server xml, but that stage is simple and fun (...keep backups lol).
9) PM me and I'll try to answer any questions you have.
I've read that some of you are doing building graphics. Use the same concept I've written here – find something similar in the MoM graphics for scale and position with the graphics extractor and draw a few frames over it to get the right position and scale.