Anyway, terrible pun in the subject aside, I am having...issues...I have been working on my new mod a decent amount (say 30ish hours or so since release of CoD), and most things just don't seem to want to work...at all. I got a couple things to work lovely, and they are awesome and good and make me all tingly inside. But I have something that's as simple as checking for a buff causing a CtD every single time the buff that it checks for is there. And many many other problems. Anyway, this is a small call for help. I REALLY enjoy working on DoD modding. It gives me something productive to do (which for me is a big deal). But with my disability, it can often be REALLY hard for me to focus on words (especially words that are in non-standard English format, like XML code or Spanish, which I used to read very well, but now cannot) for long periods of time and not only am I frustrated by my code not working, I am worried that I am just missing something REALLY obvious. This, in turn, makes me want to work on the project less and less, and is sorta driving me away from something I REALLY enjoy doing. So, TL;DR, if there is a person out there who might be willing to go over my code with me sometime and try to help me figure out what I'm doing wrong, I would GREATLY appreciate it. I don't think I need a lot of time (I hope not) and unless partner A and myself are both stumped after a little while, I highly doubt this needs a lot of attention or a large group effort. And seeing as how the problems are with like 20+ abilities, I don't want to post my buggy, ugly mess here for everyone to see (also because I am not looking for someone to write this for me, just help me figure out what I'm doing wrong). Anyway, thanks for reading this and if you're feeling especially generous of your time, you can usually find me on Steam, DragonDai there too. Just cause I am online doesn't mean I am awake (I do sleep an aweful lot, what with the narcolepsy and all), but I leave Steam running 24/7 to be my messaging service. So if you leave me a message there, I will read it probably first thing when I wake up. Thanks in advance (and thanks in retrospect to all the nice people who helped me with my previous issues with this mod and my previous one).
30 hours? I've been sitting on an unfinished mod for months. Custom monsters, custom rooms, custom items-- and it's STILL not finished. You can't expect to crank everything out all at once, you have to take your time. add stuff as it comes to you. There's no rush. Eventually, you'll have a finished product. Note: This is probably not good advice if you want to base a career on this, or make money doing this.
I tend to forget very simple, yet hard to find things, such as forgeting "/" in <code name="blah"/>, or forgetting "=". Single characters that are crucial to get correctly can be missed quite often. If something's not working for me, I tend to check for syntax errors such as "secondary buff id="3"" instead of "secondarybuff id="3"". Even when I do the check alot of times these single-character syntax errors sometimes elude me. I'm guessing modding becomes increasingly difficult with more additions to the game. Edit: Main thing for me is: If it works, and it's balanced, then it's fine. If something's missing, or a crash, then it needs fixing. If it's a balance issue, I usually let the community decide; yet lately, no one's been checking my mod for balance issues.
Yeah, but Ruigi, you make awesome stuff...I am working on a single skill mod. If I tried to mod like you, I'd be at a single mod for YEARS! LOL And yeah, no...I have a very set schedule because of everything, and I put aside 2 hours in my "morning" for productive activity. The last 2 weeks have been pretty much me staring at/changing and testing the XML file to no avail...like 0 forward progress. I have everything I want laid out, and to the best of my knowledge, it should all work...and yet, it does not. And yeah, Arron, it's all crashes and/or things literally doing nothing at all (or having 1 of 4 effects fire off fine, but the rest do nothing). And yeah, I use the mod validator, but after like the 3rd day (over a week ago) of getting no where, i went thru every line of code by hand...just in case. Today I decided to wait on the actual mod and work on some icons and what not (which is bloody murder...I am a sucky artist LOL). But yeah, it's just driving me up a wall...
I'm an okay artist, but I usually just *hack* the vanilla graphics for my icons. My avatar is a good example. <---- This is where my avatar is. It's the Large Eyebrowed Android with a moustache. And by *hack* I mean do a little bit of drawing, hue-changing, pixel work and smudge effects using GIMP and Paintbrush(Open Source version of MSPaint for Mac)
Yeah, that is exactly what I am doing, but yeah, very slow going for me. Editing pixil by pixil can also be difficult, considering my hands shake. The undo button and me are super friendly. LOL
Making this avatar only took 10 minutes for me. I only do pixelwork on small stuff, like item icons and 32px icons. the rest I use the paintbrush tool(GIMP/PS), which gives a good blurring/blending effect to the image. The pen/pencil tool is for pixel art, and the Paintbrush tool in MSPaint is exactly the same as the pen/pencil in GIMP/Photoshop. Also, Blurring, Smudging, Sharpening, Burn/Dodge, Image Layers and Hue/Saturation change can't be done on MSPaint AFAIK. Edit: MSPaint/Paintbrush is pretty good for Pixel Art, but is a really crappy tool for Photos, Wallpapers, Transparency, and other Large Images.
I use GIMP for all my faux-artistic needs. I haven't played around too much with the blurring, smudging, etc, but I'll have to give it a try, thanks for the tips!
Blurring and Smudging are key to making the image "connect". It smoothes the lines that would otherwise look jagged and super-imposed. It makes the lines feel more "welcome" to the image. Edit: Does my moustache look fake? Or does it look like part of the face?
Here's what I did. First I took the "Male Hero looking right with 100% Health" Portrait, I used the Free select tool to copy my face onto a new image, then changed lowered the Saturation of the "still-selected" image to zero, then I used the free select tool to copy the hero's eyes from the new image, pasted it in the exact same places, changed the hue to red. Then I used the Colour Picker tool to copy the colours for both the outline and the colour of the moustache, then I drew it in. Afterwards, I used the smudge tool to make the moustache look like part of the image. It helps to smudge along the lineart with a tiny pixel offset for best results. Didn't bother shading or highlighting the mustache, and the smudge kinda did some shading for me. For the Drawing in, I used 1px Paintbrush, but I had to go over the area many times to colour in the moustache. The background and the clothes were the only things untouched. Edit: I kinda like how most of David Baumgart's Images aren't too detailed. Some of the lines can be a little rough, and it makes it easier for an artist like me to imitate.
Yeah, you more or less described my process (minus the fancy smudging), I just suck at it. I AM getting better though...it's just gana take me a while to turn out stuff I am happy with.
Tips: 1. Try not to use features that are super advanced and beyond current understanding. 2. Try to experiment with different features just to see what they do. Always remember to Undo when you experiment. 3. To move a selection, first you have to float the selection into a layer, then move it, then anchor it. If you create a new, transparent-backgrounded layer, and anchor into that, you can edit the image without affecting what's in the background. 4. To erase into tranparancy, set your background colour's opacity to zero(the transparent colour) and use the eraser tool. Edit: And 5. When making a new image, create a "lineart" layer, a "flat colour" layer, and maybe a "shading" layer before you start drawing. And remember to draw on the correct layer. this way you can make the background independent of the character, and you can colour in your picture without erasing lineart in the process. Also remember that you can change the order of layers, top being the layer that "pops out" the most(usually lineart) and bottom being the background.
Those are all fantastic tips...Me and the Undo button are Super BFFs already, so yeah, I think tomorrow I will just go mess around with the features your described and try working with layers a bit more.
I would say that adding even more layers is better if you are trying to make the image somewhat detailed, as it is easier to edit something in case you don't like the way it looks if it's the only thing on that particular layer. But thanks for the "tutorial" - maybe it will help some beginners.
