Mod: Nova Deus II v1.22 (w/ New Content)

[Wauthan]

The new dragons are hellasweet! I just thought that I ought to be more restrictive with praise, for fear that too much of it all at once might go to your head.

Heh, really should have caught the Sylvania ports. Tend to be a bit narrowsighted when evaluating mods. I'm actually not sure what color that would suit the sphinx. The one you're using is fairly close to the original. Might be that I've easier to envision the present day version rather then how it looked "in the glory days".

Do you make your graphics from scratch or are they based on images from other games?

[zepath]

Wauthan, glad the dragons are well-received with you! At the moment, I am trying to find the right look for a new Dracolich and Carrion Dragon based on them.

Per the Sphinx, I've tried a new coloration for the body and face that is almost identical to the grey seen on my new Sacred Statue art. My intent with the Sphinx was to have it appear, like you say, as it was "in the glory days". It was originally covered with a plaster to give it a smooth surface and painted. Illwinter's Sphinx looks more like the rough, worn monolith that we see today. I'd prefer it to look as glorious as it must have been to the generation who came together to build it.

Most of my images are from scratch. I draw basic shapes freehand while usually looking at a piece of fantasy art. I use a few basic shades of the same color to get the shape of the unit and then use a darken/lighten tool to raise and lower the light levels on the shape to give it depth. Finer, sharper adjustments of darken/lighten and color give it the final touch. I use Paint Shop Pro X for all the artwork and it has a powerful suite of tools for this sort of thing. I'm also a long-time fan of the Warhammer miniatures games and I think some of the techniques for making tiny models come to life with paint and brush translates here.

Only one of my sprites is based on a pre-existing image. The new Sacred Statue is based on an image of a statue of Nike, Winged Victory, that I pulled off a Google image search.

[Wauthan]

zepath said:
Most of my images are from scratch. I draw basic shapes freehand while usually looking at a piece of fantasy art. I use a few basic shades of the same color to get the shape of the unit and then use a darken/lighten tool to raise and lower the light levels on the shape to give it depth. Finer, sharper adjustments of darken/lighten and color give it the final touch. I use Paint Shop Pro X for all the artwork and it has a powerful suite of tools for this sort of thing. I'm also a long-time fan of the Warhammer miniatures games and I think some of the techniques for making tiny models come to life with paint and brush translates here.

Well I for one appreciate your efforts. Me, I couldn't paint a bogbeast even if my life depended on it. In the silly Avatar mod I made for domininions 2 I used some extracted images from old "abandonware" I found on the web. I managed to clean a few of them up a little, and resize them to fit into the game, but I eventually gave up since... well... Lets just say that Windows Paint is sort of frustrating to work with and the bmp to tga conversion didn't work well.

I've attached the images to this post in case you, or someone else, might find some possible use for them.

[zepath]

Wauthan, I remember the Avatar mod! It didn't ring a bell until I looked at the .tgas, but I downloaded it and used it from time to time in Dom 2. I don't have the .dm file any longer, but if you're down for it and can post that file as well I could update and integrate some or all of the pretenders from Avatar into Nova Deus II. I am particularly struck by the two larger, generously-clawed pretenders and remember them being some sort of long-dormant sleeper type of thing in your Avatar mod. Those would be neat to bring back and the art is great for 'em. Let me know.

[Wauthan]

Of course. The file was still loitering in my dom2 folder. Haven't looked at it for quite some time now so it might need a major overhaul.

[Turin]

Very nice work Zepath.

A couple of possible improvements:

1) It´s possible in dom 3 to mod the dragon form magic of the new dragons to have 2 less levels than the human form. Simply add "#magicboost 53 -2" on the dragon form.

2) It would be really thematic for the divine messenger to have a higher mapmovement, right now he seems to be a pretty weak pretender compared to the virtue for example.

3) The risen emperor is vastly overpriced. A lich queen is immortal has better stats, is cheaper and has a higher dominion, so the one astral doesn´t matter. In addition it would be really fitting for him to be a very powerful undead leader.

I really like all the new graphics with the exception of the crone, which looks pretty silly with the pointy hat .

[zepath]

Turin, aha! I knew not everyone was into the pointy hats. Thank you for the suggestions, btw. I had not thought about the magic drain on the new dragons and will impliment that in addition to your other thoughts.