Help freeSiege to rebirth! Artist needed.

[MCMic]

I'm obviously not as good at drawing as the person who did that

That's not a problem, you're good enough.
All icons does not have the same style anyway, they are coming from various sources (Battle for wesnoth, OpenGameArt, contributions, …)

So at least for the knight the icon will match with the sprites ^^

Thank you for helping FreeSiege :-)

A little remark about the animation with a lance, in the old animation the character is bending, I think that's a good behavior for charging with a lance. (your character is too straight, it's ok if the horse is walking, but in the game the horse is running)

[MCMic]

Also, maybe your drawing is a little bit too sided.
Look at the difference between and
The first was too sided, the second one is the corrected version we finally use.

Having a totally sided sprite makes the relief disappear.

[svenskmand]

ahh ok my bad,
I just drew up a possible cavalry sprite, I'm going to attempt to animate it later:
http://opengameart.org/content/cavalry- ... -freesiege

hopefully you could find a use for it

Wow that is really amazing , I cannot wait to see your creativity flow when helping out designing the Constructs faction in OD

svenksmand's logo seems too "glossy" imho.

If you could be more specific, then I can adjust it

[MCMic]

svenksmand's logo seems too "glossy" imho.

If you could be more specific, then I can adjust it

Well, it does not fit the art aspect of the game.
I'd say the game have a rather "realistic" effect while your icon have a childish aspect.
Besides it took me time to understand it was an "S" on the right.

I think the icon for FreeSiege should contain a castle. (or a castle tower)

[svenskmand]

I'd say the game have a rather "realistic" effect while your icon have a childish aspect.
Besides it took me time to understand it was an "S" on the right.

I think the icon for FreeSiege should contain a castle. (or a castle tower)

So you like the castle tower on the left then? (the F) how about the S? Any suggestion how to make it more look like an S while it is still being composed of two siege devices the ballistas?

[MCMic]

I'd say the game have a rather "realistic" effect while your icon have a childish aspect.
Besides it took me time to understand it was an "S" on the right.

I think the icon for FreeSiege should contain a castle. (or a castle tower)

So you like the castle tower on the left then? (the F) how about the S? Any suggestion how to make it more look like an S while it is still being composed of two siege devices the ballistas?

Not really, even the F is not in the right style. It is not "square" enough. The icon of qubodup fit the game style a little better.
It's hard for me to explain this kind of things in english xD
The bricks looks more like water bubbles than bricks, to be short.

I'm not sure the icon should say "FS", maybe a tower castle in the right style with on or several other elements of the game in the front would fit.

[qubodup]

svenskmand: I would abandon the 'construct letters from game-relevant objects' and rather use materials that show what the game is about or make a letter-less icon that shows what the game is about (but in a way that works at 16x16 )

[MCMic]

okay thanks for the gif you sent me, I'll add an extra step between each one when I next have a chance and I'll make it move more, jerky is the right word, je comprends
I'll change the sword to the lance and attempt to do the same to the icon but I'm obviously not as good at drawing as the person who did that

Hum, did not get any news since that post, Scribe, are you still alive?

[MCMic]

I added the animation made by Scribe to the git. I did a dead knight image by modifying it.

Now the game only miss a soldier animation and it will be fully free \o/

[qubodup]

Yay! 100% free soon!

random stuff:
1. Pause button needs to be configurable
2. The cloud's movement seems jaggy. perhaps their position currently is calculated with a positionX=math.floor(positionX) thing? Allow them to have non-int positions and they should move smother. Alternatively: make their movement slower.
3. The 'block' soldier image is already free?

Here's a soldier anim replacement (in the attachment).

It's the combination of
http://opengameart.org/content/sword-sprite and
http://opengameart.org/content/star-fighter-2

Notes:
1. larger in size than the old soldier
2. same amount of fight frames
3. less walking frames, walking frames 01 and 03 are equal
4. I provide png files, you can easily convert them using `for i in *png; do convert $i ${i%png}bmp; done`

By the way. .bmp files are quite a waste of space (and download/upload bandwidth). It would be good if .png files would be used instead for all graphics. This is optimization of course.

[MCMic]

png files can be used for graphics, and you can use transparency in the pngs instead of pink in the bmps.
That's one of the few things I changed in the code of freesiege. :-) (I used SDL_Image in top of SDL in order to be able to use png with transparency)

The soldier block is indeed free. (from battle for wesnoth stuff if I recall correctly)

Thanks for that contribution, I'm gonna try that ingame.

[MCMic]

Yeah, the soldier animation is ok.
I had to reduce it though, but it looks good.
I also took the sprite of the dead soldier from your link.

I push that on the git as soon as I finish to add this new resources to the licences info.

[MCMic]

Okay, I have pushed on the git.

FreeSiege now is officially fully free.
Here are screencast of before/after :

Before

After

[svenskmand]

Ubuntu PPA? Pushing it to Debian?

[MCMic]

Hum, I'll start by trying to do an aur package
I don't do Debian/Ubuntu packages, it seems complicated.

But I first need to do a source archive and a linux binary one.

[qubodup]

Test first!

I think there's some bug with the dead soldier possibly. Forgot to git add something?

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/qubodup/src/git/freesiege/freesiege
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
d'après le fichier de config, sound =0 et fullscreen =0
[New Thread 0x7fffed94c700 (LWP 25672)]
[Thread 0x7fffed94c700 (LWP 25672) exited]
[New Thread 0x7fffed94c700 (LWP 25673)]
9 units:golem(1 combis)/druid(3 combis)/soldier(6 combis)/marion(3 combis)/knight(3 combis)/ram(4 combis)/plant(3 combis)/dragon(1 combis)/veteran(3 combis)
[New Thread 0x7fffeeb77700 (LWP 25674)]
sound disabled!!
error loading spritesprites/units/soldier_cadaver.png in /home/qubodup/src/git/freesiege/sprites.cfg:26
13 anims:dragon_fly(4)/golem_fight(3 frames)/golem_walk(2 frames)/hand(1 frames)/knight_running(4 frames)/plant_fight(4 frames)/ram_fight(3 frames)/ram_walk(4 frames)/skull(1 frames)/soldier_fight(4 frames)/soldier_walk(4 frames)/veteran_fight(5 frames)/veteran_walk(6 frames)
42 sprites:any/back_pattern_selected/back_patterns/background_back/background_front/ball_unit/castle/cloud/cursor/dragon/dragon_cadaver/druid/druid_unit/explosion_unit_a/explosion_unit_b/fire/flame_unit/flower/frame/golem/golem_cadaver/knight/knight_cadaver/lifebar_border/logo_free/logo_siege/magic/marion/plant/plant_unit/plant_unit_cadaver/ram/ram_unit_cadaver/soldier/steel/sun/title_castle/title_foreground/title_sky/veteran/veteran_unit_cadaver/wood
requesting non collection sprite soldier_unit_cadaver
requesting non collection sprite soldier_unit_cadaver
requesting non collection sprite soldier_unit_cadaver
requesting non collection sprite soldier_unit_cadaver

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x000000000043d02d in Sprite::draw(float, float, float, float, float) const ()
(gdb) bt
#0  0x000000000043d02d in Sprite::draw(float, float, float, float, float) const ()
#1  0x0000000000469440 in Soldier::draw() ()
#2  0x0000000000451f0b in BattleField::draw() ()
#3  0x0000000000459062 in GameScreen::display_game(SDL_Surface*) ()
#4  0x0000000000439689 in main ()
(gdb) q
A debugging session is active.

   Inferior 1 [process 25669] will be killed.

Quit anyway? (y or n) y

ps: yeah, looks like the old cadaver got removed but the new didn't get added (png file?)

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

 COPYING_ARTWORK                   |    1 -
 README                            |   16 ++++++++++++++++
 anims.cfg                         |    4 ++--
 anims/soldier/fight00.bmp         |  Bin 7614 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/fight01.bmp         |  Bin 7614 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/fight02.bmp         |  Bin 7614 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/fight03.bmp         |  Bin 7614 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/walking00.bmp       |  Bin 2430 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/walking01.bmp       |  Bin 2430 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/walking02.bmp       |  Bin 2430 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/walking03.bmp       |  Bin 2430 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/walking04.bmp       |  Bin 2430 -> 0 bytes
 anims/soldier/walking05.bmp       |  Bin 914 -> 0 bytes
 anims/veteran/fight00.png         |  Bin 2434 -> 2376 bytes
 anims/veteran/fight01.png         |  Bin 3213 -> 3115 bytes
 anims/veteran/fight02.png         |  Bin 3090 -> 3004 bytes
 anims/veteran/fight03.png         |  Bin 2500 -> 2458 bytes
 anims/veteran/fight04.png         |  Bin 2826 -> 2765 bytes
 anims/veteran/fight05.png         |  Bin 2468 -> 2416 bytes
 anims/veteran/walking00.png       |  Bin 2969 -> 2903 bytes
 anims/veteran/walking01.png       |  Bin 2685 -> 2625 bytes
 anims/veteran/walking02.png       |  Bin 2817 -> 2746 bytes
 anims/veteran/walking03.png       |  Bin 2996 -> 2934 bytes
 anims/veteran/walking04.png       |  Bin 2775 -> 2718 bytes
 anims/veteran/walking05.png       |  Bin 2776 -> 2707 bytes
 sprites.cfg                       |    2 +-
 sprites/units/soldier_cadaver.bmp |  Bin 2070 -> 0 bytes
 units/knight.h                    |    2 +-
 units/soldier.cpp                 |    4 ++--
 units/soldier.h                   |    4 ++--
 units/veteran.h                   |    4 ++--
 xcf/ball.xcf                      |  Bin 810 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/cloud.xcf                     |  Bin 6695 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/knight_walking.xcf            |  Bin 38629 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/lifebar_border.xcf            |  Bin 1501 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/lifebar_element.xcf           |  Bin 2117 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/loading.xcf                   |  Bin 51256 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/plant.xcf                     |  Bin 7721 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/plant_attack.xcf              |  Bin 20908 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/soldier_fight.xcf             |  Bin 9275 -> 0 bytes
 xcf/soldier_walking.xcf           |  Bin 11530 -> 0 bytes
 41 files changed, 26 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)


Also, what was the reason again for Skorpio's tower not replacing the 3d-ish one?

PS: why not use the wood menu selection bg in all other menus as well?

[MCMic]

Thanks, I forgot some files, it's fixed.

Because I liked the 3D-ish tower, I chose it.
What was good about Skorpio's tower was the several state of damage, but:
- There is no code to handle that
- It would screw up the displaying of druid (the guy that launch canon-balls)

I don't use the wood menu selection in the main menu because it's not large enough, main menu items have really different width and it would be weird to have a huge wooden bg on small items, no?
And doing a wooden bg with changing width seems complicated.

[svenskmand]

Yeah I agree with qubodup, Skorpios tower is awesome, you should add it

I can make a Ubuntu package and put it in my PPA if you like?

[qubodup]

Because I liked the 3D-ish tower, I chose it.

You liked it better than Skorpio's? That's fair I suppose, since you're organizing the efforts to rebirth freesiege. (Thanks a lot for that by the way!)

I suppose the common thing is to make all menu items have equal button dimensions (example: WoW) and give them different backgrounds/visuals for normal/hover/clicked. This is not simple though.

Another thing: converting all bmp to png would mean a file size reduction from 7.7MB to 1.2MB in sum of image files size.

Steps to replace bmp with png files in freesiege (no whitespace in file names, phew!):

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

find . -name *bmp > bmpfiles
while read line; do convert $line ${line%bmp}png; echo $line done; done < bmpfiles
while read line; do git rm $line; echo $line removed; done < bmpfiles
while read line; do git add ${line%bmp}png; echo $line png added; done < bmpfiles
rm bmpfiles

Open animations file and README in vim and use

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

:%s/:bmp/:png/

and sprites cfg and use

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

:%s/\.bmp/\.png/

PS: I have no idea what Marion does.

[MCMic]

Hum, I wanted to try to use png files with transparency, converting to png while keeping this ugly pink thing is kind of a non-sense.
I'm still gonna do it, you've convinced me with this disk-space (and bandwidth) economy thing.

Thanks for the bash code.

[qubodup]

I figured out why the clouds look so painful: It's the frameskip, which should be set to 0 and the min cloud speed should be set to 1 or less.

Is the frameskip used as performance enhancement?

[MCMic]

No idea, this is not part of the code I modified.

[qubodup]

[...]I'm hoping to give this project a new start.
I'm not sure if I'll spend a lot time coding or not
[...]I'll continue to try and correct bugs that are found.

[...]The images are non-free
[...]The music is non-free and need to be replaced
[...]The images need to be coherent

So about 1.5 years after this enhancement project, the images and music are free.

Once the game is in more repositories, more players might lead to more willing contributors.

MCMic: at the top of this post, I quoted your initial aims. Are all of them satisfied? Or is there something to be done? Are there new aims?

Before getting the game into repositories, I would like to suggest that we make one last effort for creating an attractive icon, as these are used as the first impression. Example: Ubuntu Software Center.

MCMic: do you have an idea for an icon? Does anybody else have any? Suggested icons so far have been:

[qubodup]

Ah, I came up with quite a simple solution ^^

[Julius]

PS: I have no idea what Marion does.

It covers the screen so that the enemy can't see what pieces to move next if I remember correctly.

Oh and cool that this has finally worked out... always nice to see something "finalized" where you contributed some clearly visible part