Mr_Luxury_Yacht
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Joined: 6/15/2019
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Policefreak55
quote:
ORIGINAL: Mr_Luxury_Yacht
Sprites are a bigger issue in my experience.
For actual values, while I get why the developers are striving for accuracy I'm finding for modding it doesn't really make much practical gameplay difference if a value is off by 10mm or 20mm. I've more been approaching it from "Can gun A penetrate tank B at expected ranges?". Research-wise, between Wikipedia, SPMBT, the Steel Beasts wiki, and War Thunder's armor analysis mode I can get things close enough. As long as it's balanced with the rest of the game and seems realistic, who cares if it's perfect?
Sprites though, that's a real hurdle, especially if you're artistically hopeless like I am. Making a sprite from scratch is like, orders of magnitude more work than making several units. I've taken shortcuts because I originally was doing this for just personal use. I dumped sprites from SPBMT (the included utilities make it super easy to do) and modified them to work in AB,and I'm also grateful the devs didn't lock out the DLC sprites for people who don't have the DLC. However, given the first source I'm not sure now if I can do a wider release, even as a non-commercial mod (I've got a pretty complete Egypt/Israel from 1950 to 1995, as well as expanding the US to that timeline. Currently finishing up Russia then am going to move on to Japan). Long story short, I've managed to do that in a couple months on and off in my spare time. If I had to make all the sprites for it though? Probably would be a fraction of the way there.
Hey if a vehicle only has 14-18mm of armor, 10-20mm can be a YUGE difference lol. Then there's also weapons values such as accuracy, ranges, ammo types for all sorts of weapons from tanks to small arms and their effect and penetration values, soldier and vehicle round counts, squad weapon numbers and unit TOEs. I mean if you approach it just from an angle of can A shoot B or throw some infantry in a database that's comparable to other nations for gameplay purposes there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's enjoyable, but to really nail down a proper database takes time and research in my opinion.
Oh for sure it'd be an issue for 14mm of armor, but it's never those cases that are the issue. It's always more modern units with fancy penetrators and weird armor that are the issue since exact values aren't often known.
I just wanted to avoid having to deal with the headaches I see on things like the War Thunder forums, or even here, where people get into pedantic arguments about whether the T-64B's third APFSDS round has 415mm or 423mm of penetration because THIS secret document says the Stalinium Carbide alloy used in the penetrator underwent a different hardening process that provides 1.4% more penetration during winter combat.
I guess my philosophy with the mod I'm making is, a game like Steel Panthers didn't have perfectly exact values, but it was close enough. If I was fine with that then and it felt realistic and balanced, seems like a good track to follow now.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Policefreak55
I am ALSO artistically hopeless lol, I ended up using blueprint vectors as a base to work from and scaling them down to proper dimensions for vehicle sprites. I'm planning on doing the infantry sprites from scratch to give them more period specific walking animations and equipment, but I have ideas of a way to streamline that process.
Infantry sprites look like absolute hell to edit or create compared to vehicles, even for crew served weapons that are relatively simpler. That's why when I made early AT-guns for Egypt/Israel, they all just used Finland's Pak-75 sprites.
< Message edited by Mr_Luxury_Yacht -- 11/15/2019 4:53:09 PM >
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Im a little surprised - 
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