Abandoned factions

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Trayanee
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Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

I was recently looking for something on old add-on servers and found some interesting factions which are not part of any actively developed era and seem to be either unfinished or just not ported to 1.12/1.13. I am wondering doing something about it. Given their maintainers are inactive, is it ok to port them to the new version of course with proper credits given? I mean, if these are on the add-on server, it should be all GPL right?

For example a Draugr faction in this era has some nice sprite art:

https://units.wesnoth.org/1.10/Skyrim_E ... 20era.html

I am pretty sure the era name is a trademark infringement and the units would need english names too, but otherwise it is definitely a quite distinct undead faction and I would say its worth recovering.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Pentarctagon »

I would at least try to make an attempt to contact the creator(s), but yes, everything is under the GPL for for 1.12 add-ons server and older.
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Bitron
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Bitron »

Oh my, these are awesome! I was recently asking about new factions, but I guess old factions would work just as fine.
If you have not intended to recover them yourself, I'd be glad to do so!
Trayanee
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

Thanks for the license info. I will try to contact the creator for permission and update the faction. It should be a nice WML practice for a newbie like me.

@Bitron: Yes, they really look good. I am terrible artist myself so I was looking for some abandoned factions with nice art, which are worth recovering. Btw: your Vilkai faction looks great!
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Bitron
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Bitron »

@Trayanee: Thank you. :P
I thought the exact same thing about me when I startet with the vilkai era and actually I still concider me as a bad artist. But I got lucky with some of my frankens and maybe you will, too!
Trayanee wrote: It should be a nice WML practice for a newbie like me.
Alright, i'll leave it to you then. (:
Good luck with the reviving!
Trayanee
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

So a little update here. I got permission from the original creator to update the faction and have slowly started. So far I have:

1) Made the faction work for 1.13 - easy, only minor changes.
2) Playtested.
3) Tried to correct some out of sync anims.
4) Since all files, names,attacks and IDs are in Italian, I am in the process of translating everything to English, which will take some time - hello google translate :).

Now about the faction itself. As the linked 1.10 era name suggests, it was originally heavily inspired by TES: Skyrim. As Sykrim is a registered trademark I will drop the era name completely from all files. However I am not sure about the faction/unit names. I dont mind the name Draugr and its definitely not a trademark, but its still heavily bound to Skyrim and also as wiki suggests some unit names are exactly the same. I would rather have the resemblence be less obvious. What are your suggestions?
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Bitron
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Bitron »

It's probably supposed to be a tribut, not a ripoff. So, personally, I would keep the names as close to the original as possible.
Trayanee
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

Bitron wrote:It's probably supposed to be a tribut, not a ripoff. So, personally, I would keep the names as close to the original as possible.
Thanks. I have tried to have the english names of units as close as possible to the original version.

So far all names, attacks and IDs have been translated to english as well as filenames of units and corresponding images. I have tested most recruits/attacks/advancements on 1.13.8 and everything seems to be working without major faults. A few of the animations need to be adjusted as they are either too slow or out of sync or have wrong offset/relative position. I have already made several easy tweaks but some things need more time. I wont be uploading it to the add-on server until I find at least one more recoverable faction and add it so I am just attaching the ZIP archive with current progress here. Should anyone have spare time to provide improvement suggestions or find out, why attack animation of Phantasmal Summoner doesn't show at all, If he doesnt hit, please let me know. Its probably something with multiple IFs and ELSEs, but I need to study WML guide more to find out how nested conditions work here. I am going on a vacation for two weeks next saturday so more updates like descriptions and po file with original italian names will come later in July.

All credit for Draugr faction design/coding to be given to Master_bepps and everyone, whose work/help he used while creating it.
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Trayanee
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

As I suspected, most of the higher quality factions continue to be preserved in some shape or form on the current wesnoth version so my scavenging quest is getting harder. However I found this era on 1.6 http://units.wesnoth.org/1.6/C/Hammers_era.html It contains two interesting factions Imperium and High Elves, both of which are a little dated when compared to current sprite art, but still not completely out of place. Opinions anyone? :)
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Temuchin Khan
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Temuchin Khan »

Trayanee wrote:As I suspected, most of the higher quality factions continue to be preserved in some shape or form on the current wesnoth version so my scavenging quest is getting harder. However I found this era on 1.6 http://units.wesnoth.org/1.6/C/Hammers_era.html It contains two interesting factions Imperium and High Elves, both of which are a little dated when compared to current sprite art, but still not completely out of place. Opinions anyone? :)
Those look good, on a quick glance.

You might also find the Battle for Meridia factions interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=30754

Did anyone ever make more unique Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs than the BfM team?
Trayanee
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

Temuchin Khan wrote: You might also find the Battle for Meridia factions interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=30754

Did anyone ever make more unique Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs than the BfM team?
Thanks!. I am aware of Battle for Meridia. It looks really unique and great overall. In fact its so good, it is out of the scope for me, but it definitely deserves to be finished and some campaign based on it to be created. Its setting is also probably relevant to the discussion about maps, which I have seen in Bitron's topic.
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Aldarisvet
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Aldarisvet »

Trayanee wrote: For example a Draugr faction in this era has some nice sprite art:

https://units.wesnoth.org/1.10/Skyrim_E ... 20era.html
From my point of view only Sacerdote del Ghiaccio looks good enough to be close to mainline quality.
https://units.wesnoth.org/1.10/Skyrim_E ... accio.html
Flying lich, not a bad idea.

Unfortunately, other sprites from there are too stright and not very successful recolours/frankens of mainline units.
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Trayanee
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Re: Abandoned factions

Post by Trayanee »

Aldarisvet wrote: From my point of view only Sacerdote del Ghiaccio looks good enough to be close to mainline quality.
https://units.wesnoth.org/1.10/Skyrim_E ... accio.html
Flying lich, not a bad idea.

Unfortunately, other sprites from there are too stright and not very successful recolours/frankens of mainline units.
I definitely realize some sprites are not that good and overall nowhere close mainline quality, but to me the faction looked worth preserving.
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