"Sivar's Hand" - Kilrathi mod for Wing Commander Saga

Sure, that would be great!

It will be used in two places. A small version will appear in the pilot screen (unfortunately the engine does not allow a very good quality there), and a bigger one in the story PDF.

I have a description for the Kilrathi on my PC, which I will post soon.

Animations are not needed.
 
Ok, here's an example how big the picture is. I have attached Sandman's portrait from WCS, I just converted it from PCX to PNG.

The original picture format is PCX, with a special green as a background for transparency, and it is pretty small: 160 pixels wide, and 120 pixels high.

What I would suggest is drawing it a bit bigger, but keep in mind that small details will vanish when it is shrinked to its target size.
But since I think that it would be a waste of talent to just show it that small I will also include the portrait in the story PDF, like Saga did in the manual (also attached).


And here's the description for my Kilrathi:

The style should be "semi-realistic", so not too exaggerated features or colors. I am aiming for somewhere between the look of the Kilrathi in WC3 and those of WC1. (more like WC3 though) In WC2 they look too much like real cats IMO.

I like this painting of yours, that's how a Kilrathi should look like IMO.
https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/ninjalasketch14.jpg

The Kilrathi is called Ku'rash nar Kur'u'tak, a lesser noble. He should not wear a helmet (or maybe an open WC3 style one so we can see his face), it should be a portrait, perhaps just showing a little bit of his flight suit, a bit of his shoulders maybe. If you decide to draw him with a helmet, please draw an additional version with a dark closed visor, I could use that as well.

Or maybe the portrait is just part of a bigger picture so you would draw him standing (like Sandman in the WCS manual) and I would just cut the portrait from there for ingame use.

I think a 3/4 perspective will look better than a straight one, if you can get the perspective stuff right. I have no clue how hard that actually is, since I am not capable of drawing.

He is still a young Kilrathi, so he shouldn't have grey streaks in his fur or something. His fur should be not too short (perhaps not as long as WC3 Thrakhath's though), in a brownish color, and he should not look too aggressive (no bared fangs or something). If you like to experiment a bit you could try how he looks with some subtle tiger stripes in his fur (like WC3 Hobbes) or something like that. I'm not sure about the eye color, I'll leave that to you.

Here are some pics for reference:
https://www.wcnews.com/articles/wc3kilrathigallery.shtml
https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/SMALLWC3SetPhotoMythicBox1Scan0261.jpg
 

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Glad the project is back up and running! I would be very happy to record some of the Kilrathi and or Human dialogues for ya. I say just send it out to all of us interested and that way you can pick which ones you like the most.
 
Looks like this sounds very good. I hope this mod is more battlefleet action than wc3 and saga's more skirmish based battles since Kilrathi doctrine seems to emphasis on pitched battles and large numbers. I hope you can finally command your wingmen since WC Saga wasn't very good at that. Not sure if I can voice act very well but I would be interested in playing a Human pilot. And please send us a draft of maybe the first mission I am sure most people here will be receptive and maybe we can improve your work.
 
Thanks for your input!
But I'm not quite sure what you are talking about, Saga had HUGE fleet battles, and not a small number of them either.
You can expect a bit of capship action in Sivar's Hand, but to be honest: Those missions are a lot of work, and I created all the missions by myself, so you won't see many of them.
Also huge battles often suffer from the so-called "Battle of Endor Syndrome" which means that the actions of the player basically don't matter. They become increasingly hard to balance if you want to make them fun and challenging. If you want to avoid little tricks like invincible wingmen that is a very hard task.

As for commanding wingmen: During missions in which the player is the wing leader you will be able to command your wingmen.
 
A small update on my part.

Changed the lightning to get a more "Kilrathi" feel in the scene. Also some other small changes here and there like cables on the celling. Redid the geometry on the windows, replaced light textures with actual lights. Don't know if I will keep the floor plating or go with just some textures.

PS: Does anyone get what the bright corner is all about? I think it might not that clear yet.

 
Small update from me:

wcsaga.org (WCSD Home) provides forums and webspace for the "Sivar's Hand" project. The SH team can manage their forums, user groups and webspace independently from the WCSD team.

Welcome to the dark side. ;)

Luke (wcsaga.org admin)
 
And while we're at it:
Work slowed me down a bit last week, but the story progresses. Chapter 9 is finished and chapter 10 is almost finished. I will send those to my editor soon, and then continue work on the last chapters.
I also took a look at some of the missions and made a list waht to include/fix first, so I can get them alpha testable.
With the FTP server (thanks, Luke!) I can also upload stuff now, which will come in handy for testing and/or voice acting stuff.
 
Hey Agi

Another advantages for the Fiction Viewer i am currently working on: 1) the player can select 2 different font sizes in Extras Menu and 2) the player can change the text width in 5% steps between 40% and 100% in realtime .

This, plus the other advantages i have done since 2013 can maybe help you to decide for presenting the story IN the game, not outside. ;)

Selecting font size in Extras:
screen0732.jpg

Change text width directly in FV:
fv_realtime_text_width_change.gif
 
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Hey guys!
Another week full of work (not much on Sivar's Hand unfortunately, but hey, there's a few days left to do something).
Last weekend I finished chapters 9 and 10 and sent them to my glorious editor. I am not exaggerating, if you look at my script it looks like a 10 year old wrote it. After editing it looks like a 10 year old wrote it, and then a real writer came and tried to save it.

I am a bit stuck on chapter 11. (I wanted to make a funny joke here, involving a hint at bankruptcy, but as it turns out I am not funny.)
No, the real problem is: I will hate that chapter. Something dramatic happens in the mission before it, and of course the characters will have to react to that during that chapter. So every time I write a few sentences I feel they aren't quite adequate, and I go back to reading heartwarming stories about cats on http://lovemeow.com/
Long story short: I have to finish it, I know that. Maybe I will go to some remote place and finish it there, like, a hotel in the mountains for example, where I have nothing to do but check an old boiler from time to time so it doesn't explode. That would be great! What could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps I'll write a story about that.... Oh wait. Dammit! :D
 
"Glorious", eh? I don't think I've ever been called that before...

Haven't started going through the latest chapters, sorry to say. Been participating at a Software Carpentry workshop they held here at the library these last two days. I came away with a much better understanding of GitHub and a deep-seated disappointment that, once again, I haven't learned SQL (last topic in the workshop and they took too long confusing all the people I work with by doing advanced level stuff in Python). As a result, WCRPG has suffered this week a bit as well, but hopefully things will return to normal tomorrow.
 
Take your time, the results are absolutely worth it!

And hey, if you want I can do that SQL workshop with you, I work with Postgres and MySQL every day. :)
And remember little Bobby Tables: https://xkcd.com/327/ :D

Concerning GitHub.... Git and GitHub rule. Like the svn I am using, but more accessible.
 
Here's another update from me:

Chapter 11 is finished, more or less. I will make another pass though, it is far from perfect yet.
I will start with chapter 12 this week, which is going to be the final chapter, after the last mission.

However, I had an idea which I am not sure to follow or not follow. I'll get to it in a minute.

As of now there are 11 missions in the Sivar's Hand campaign:
M-01 to M-10 with an additional mission M-06a. I know it doesn't sound much, and I guess y'all will be able to play through it rather quickly, but those missions are a lot of work if you don't want them to be repetitive.
M06a was added after the other ones were done, because I had
- an idea for a mission a bit different than others
- a nice bit of story to tell, so I could add-in another chapter after it

When I am not working on something else for the mod (sometimes I don't have more than half an hour of time so I can't really write on the story or do real work on the missions) and I have the time for it I am going to make a concept (mainly some notes and playing around a bit in FRED) of another mission I would like to add between M-08 and M-09.
If the mission idea I have turns out to not be fun I will ditch it and add the story bits to the chapter before. If it turns out to be fun, I will add the mission and its own (small) story chapter.

Also I will try to finally install a WCS+ dev build and try out all those cool features.
The only thing that bothers me about that is that it makes installing SH a bit harder, since the player would have to install two packages to get the maximum Kilrathi experience.
But maybe Luke can provide me with an installer that installs both WCS+ and SH (provided that both will be finished at roughly the same time).

That's it for now. :)
 
Mate, no need to think a upgrade to WCS+ is complicate:

  • Replace the classic "wcsaga_sse2.exe" with my own.
  • Put "_wcsplus_patch.vp" into WCS folder.

With this 2 steps you can play the original WCS:TDD with WCS+ environment and you can also test SH with it. Then you can add WCS+ features to your mod, but you don't must. The only thing you "should" is to draw a button in the mainhall for the extras menu, so the players have access to the WCS+ settings.

You "can" also integrate the content of the patch VP to your own mod. So at SH release you need simply to distribute your SH mod and the WCS+ engine. That's it.

Later i will provide you with an installer, no problem. I also will make an installer for our own WCS German project. But i have done and i will do further all things the right way. So an installer is an "nice to have", not an "must to have" to install our own project or to upgrade to WCS+.
 
Began the next go-through with proofreading yesterday - I'm hoping to have everything caught up before the week's out. Will let you know.
 
Thank you! I stalled a bit myself (again) but this time I have a better excuse (a new family member arrived a month ago :) ).
Sivar's Hand is still progressing, I am still working on the last chapter.
 
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