Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 On 4/19/2020 at 11:02 PM, Flix said: Southern Humans (Bengaresh) are done. I really love both sets of these project portraits; they show such personality and for the most part, each one is vastly different and display their individual style. I don't know how you find the time to do all that you do for Sacred 2, the mods, patching and still find quality time with your guitar. You are simply amazing, Sir Flix! Thank you. 1 Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 21, 2020 Author Share Posted April 21, 2020 5 hours ago, Hooyaah said: I really love both sets of these project portraits; they show such personality and for the most part, each one is vastly different and display their individual style. I don't know how you find the time to do all that you do for Sacred 2, the mods, patching and still find quality time with your guitar. You are simply amazing, Sir Flix! Thank you. Wonderful! That means the project is having its intended effect: to inject a bit more of the "RPG" experience into the game, by giving the NPC's some character and flavor. I believe my portraits will be a little more lighthearted/high fantasy compared to the (very awesome) gothic baroque ones Dax is preparing for Sacred 1. I think this will suit the slightly different tones of each game well. Re: time, I believe it is the most precious thing we have. And like many others I now have an abundance of free time now considering recent events. I also firmly believe that I've been oversleeping most of my adult life. By reducing nightly sleep from 9 hours to 6 hours, I've nearly eliminated my issues with chronic migraines, brain fog, and daytime malaise. And of course that's three more hours of productivity. Link to comment
Dax 478 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 Great portrait collection again, Flix! I am a bit jealous. Glad to hear that you get your migraine under control! 1 Link to comment
gogoblender 3,042 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 2 hours ago, Flix said: I also firmly believe that I've been oversleeping most of my adult life. By reducing nightly sleep from 9 hours to 6 hours, I've nearly eliminated my issues with chronic migraines, brain fog, and daytime malaise. And of course that's three more hours of productivity. Really? you can sleep 9 hours? Thats so healthy, no? However if reducing sleep is helping with the migratines, spendid. I had them chronically when I was younger, and can appreciate how painful those hours are And that makes this project even more appreciated gogo Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted April 21, 2020 Share Posted April 21, 2020 An average sleep phase is around 90 minutes and shouldn't be interrupted. So 6 hours have 4 phases, should work fine. Sleep labor measured me with 81 minutes for a phase so 324 minutes, nearly 5 and a half hour. Wife wanted to know if I have below average or way above average phases, so I visited a sleep laboratory. A 6 hour sleep is too long for me, trying to do it results in head aches. 1 Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 22, 2020 Author Share Posted April 22, 2020 Supposedly more sleep is always better, for muscle growth after working out, for metabolism, regeneration, healing, etc. But quality of life before was so poor with all the headaches that I'll take my risks. So I used to get 9 hours most nights, now it's "only" 6. Only downside so far is it's a little harder to get out of bed, but so long as I time the duration of the sleep to multiples of 90 min. as Chattius mentioned it's not so bad, and I actually feel much more awake and alert during the day. Before it was like I couldn't really shake off that sleep feeling until at least halfway through the day. 1 Link to comment
dimitrius154 612 Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 40 minutes ago, Flix said: Supposedly more sleep is always better, for muscle growth after working out, for metabolism, regeneration, healing, etc. AFAIK, what matters is the 0 a.m. to 4 a.m. interval. That's the 'effective' sleep duration. Link to comment
gogoblender 3,042 Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 On 4/15/2020 at 6:47 AM, SANGEL said: @Flix Perhaps we could use a generative nerual net to create more of those portraits provided you can lead me to a place with lots of those icons. I'll train the model and give you the generated portraits to choose from, heck we could actually animate the portraits with some in-painting techniques. I guess some of those portraits may not be perfect, but I guess that since you are such a great artist, maybe be you can give them a little polish. PM me if you wanna work on this project. I missed this... really?? Neural net...animated portraits? gogo Link to comment
Popular Post Flix 5,116 Posted April 22, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 22, 2020 Neural nets... it's an interesting prospect. I suppose if I'm ever unable to find what I'm looking for it could be worth trying. I rather like the "hunt" for art and then manually tweaking the pictures as needed. Speaking of which, I think this next batch was the most fun I've had yet. There are so many talented artists out there. Orcs are done! New: Old: 3 Link to comment
gogoblender 3,042 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 These orcs are especially interesting. Love the nuance and range you have displayed here... always a great race to have played with... my favorite from Blizzard You've done something new, and created great new collective portraits You're right... Brady Bunch has never looked better With Covid here... I'm even wondering if something like this could be done with my own family pics ^^ gogo 1 Link to comment
Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 Flix, where did you locate these portraits? They are so similar in style and so well-suited to the game! 1 Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 3 hours ago, gogoblender said: You've done something new, and created great new collective portraits You're right... Brady Bunch has never looked better With Covid here... I'm even wondering if something like this could be done with my own family pics ^^ The program I use to create the gallery is called IrfanView, a simple but powerful image viewer. It has a "Thumbnails" function that will arrange a group of images in a grid and then export to a single file. Very useful for this project. I had looked at other collage-making freeware but nothing else came close. 2 hours ago, Hooyaah said: Flix, where did you locate these portraits? They are so similar in style and so well-suited to the game! Google image search. The magic is in the way Google will suggest other similar images when you click on one. If you click on a red orc, Google will suggest about 10 other pics of red orcs. Click on an orc in the Warcraft style, it will show you more orcs in the Warcraft style. And so on. So you sort of travel down these avenues, each click refining exactly what you want with a little more precision. If you end up somewhere not useful (like Orc cosplay) you can backtrack a few steps and follow a different "path." So all you need to start with is a good keyword search, then you just explore the results. 1 Link to comment
Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 23, 2020 Share Posted April 23, 2020 Google keyword search results are amazing and they historically have tweaked their algorithm once or twice daily. It's is really amazing what one can discover by just asking the right questions. Although, these portraits may not have been native to Sacred 2, I'd like to see them as an option (mod) that could be added for they who don't want to add the Enhanced Edition but love your work on the portraits and want them included as a part of the game. Thank you again for what you do! Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 3 hours ago, Hooyaah said: Although, these portraits may not have been native to Sacred 2, I'd like to see them as an option (mod) that could be added for they who don't want to add the Enhanced Edition but love your work on the portraits and want them included as a part of the game. Thank you again for what you do! It should be no problem to make this possible. 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Flix 5,116 Posted April 26, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 26, 2020 Some more results from the past few days. Goblins: Ogres: Kobolds: Trolls: Du'Rach (Desert Folk): Stone Guardians: 3 Link to comment
Popular Post gogoblender 3,042 Posted April 26, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted April 26, 2020 Firstly all these new pics are a ferocious and lovely read When you first mentioned stone guardians I was thinking that this was going to be impossible and wondering how you would angle in with images ...but you found pix that gave me that feel of these creepy desert bad guys. On another note ... I feel like the Sacred 2 devs did a really really good job with the kobolds and goblins and wanted to just mention it again. I feel that the new images you have painstakingly hunted up are relevant and worthy choices and that the original ones actually hold up... a myriad of details that I just know when you brady bunched them all together do I notice. This is a great journey for us Flix gogo 1 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 26, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted April 26, 2020 On 4/16/2020 at 9:58 PM, Flix said: Hm, I briefly experimented with this, they seemed too blurry. I suppose I could revisit the idea and try applying a sharpening filter first. The portrait size and position in-game is apparently defined in the various xml files in skin-xml.zip. For example you may not have known that Merchant and Runemaster portraits are off-center from the frame (Blacksmith is ok and provided the template for correction). The error is not noticeable with vanilla portraits because all portrait edges (except bottom) are transparent. The overlap only becomes apparent when switching to fully opaque square portraits like I have. Accordingly I'll have to package some corrected xml files with the portraits. Flix, if there are any particular portraits that still appear a bit grainy, you may want to perform a reverse image search (with TinEye, for example) and find instances of the same portraits, some of which may be of a higher resolution. The current portraits seem fine to me and I work on a large (42") monitor with the display res. set at 3840 x 2160. On an unrelated note, there is a conversation here at GOG about Sacred 2 Gold and a comment about the Community Patch. I just thought that you might wish to weigh in. 1 1 Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 26, 2020 Author Share Posted April 26, 2020 1 hour ago, gogoblender said: On another note ... I feel like the Sacred 2 devs did a really really good job with the kobolds and goblins and wanted to just mention it again. I feel that the new images you have painstakingly hunted up are relevant and worthy choices and that the original ones actually hold up... a myriad of details that I just know when you brady bunched them all together do I notice. Yeah I probably came out of the gate swinging a bit too hard with criticism of the original icons. Though many portraits are poorly framed, the monsters themselves are top notch, and somewhat unique on top of that. Orcs, with no pupils and large fangs on the top instead the bottom. Goblins with flat nose, big eyes and relatively smaller ears. Searching "hobgoblins" actually yielded the best results for replacements. Kobolds that are nothing like the little lizard people from D&D lore. Some of the more traditional goblin and gnome pics were used since they were most similar. Long and lanky trolls, incredibly tall and thin, without the wild hair, bulbous nose, and huge muscles that so often appears in depictions. I'll be taking a break from the portraits for this week, to work on getting the mods ready for release. I've been hitting it pretty hard and a break will be nice. Link to comment
Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 26, 2020 Share Posted April 26, 2020 You deserve some respite after all of that work, my friend. Thank you for all you do; the game would not be the same without your work, especially on the Community Patch. There is a topic at GOG regarding Sacred 2 and the Community Patch here. It might be good if a few of us weighed in on the discussion. Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 26, 2020 Author Share Posted April 26, 2020 1 hour ago, Hooyaah said: You deserve some respite after all of that work, my friend. Thank you for all you do; the game would not be the same without your work, especially on the Community Patch. There is a topic at GOG regarding Sacred 2 and the Community Patch here. It might be good if a few of us weighed in on the discussion. Thanks for the tip. Not sure I really have anything to add there. Seems like the player got the info he needed. Link to comment
Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 26, 2020 Share Posted April 26, 2020 There was a member there suggesting other games because the Community Patch contains elements some might not like. That may be true, however, I feel the vast majority would prefer the patched version, as it incorporates (in my opinion) more of what the developers originally envisioned, but were not included, chiefly due to time and financial concerns. 1 Link to comment
gogoblender 3,042 Posted April 26, 2020 Share Posted April 26, 2020 7 hours ago, Flix said: Yeah I probably came out of the gate swinging a bit too hard with criticism of the original icons. Though many portraits are poorly framed, the monsters themselves are top notch, and somewhat unique on top of that. Orcs, with no pupils and large fangs on the top instead the bottom. Goblins with flat nose, big eyes and relatively smaller ears. Searching "hobgoblins" actually yielded the best results for replacements. Kobolds that are nothing like the little lizard people from D&D lore. Some of the more traditional goblin and gnome pics were used since they were most similar. Long and lanky trolls, incredibly tall and thin, without the wild hair, bulbous nose, and huge muscles that so often appears in depictions. I'll be taking a break from the portraits for this week, to work on getting the mods ready for release. I've been hitting it pretty hard and a break will be nice. I love what you just wrote... like you broke down into formulae what we're seeing and why its so satisfying. I love this Portrait project, I feel like I get up and close with my favorite game's denizens re break, heck yah! Beach do? gogo 1 Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted April 26, 2020 Author Share Posted April 26, 2020 59 minutes ago, Hooyaah said: There was a member there suggesting other games because the Community Patch contains elements some might not like. That may be true, however, I feel the vast majority would prefer the patched version, as it incorporates (in my opinion) more of what the developers originally envisioned, but were not included, chiefly due to time and financial concerns. Looks like that was two different people, one of them warning that CM Patch oversteps its bounds at times, which it does. A different guy seems to just be listing games that are in his opinion better than Sacred 2 generally. What I did was just simply drop a link to the complete change log for the Community Patch, as well as mention that the typical "complaints" about the Patch can be reversed. People can decide for themselves if they want it. My days of trying to make people agree with my mod choices are over. 1 Link to comment
Hooyaah 2,800 Posted April 27, 2020 Share Posted April 27, 2020 15 hours ago, Flix said: Looks like that was two different people, one of them warning that CM Patch oversteps its bounds at times, which it does. A different guy seems to just be listing games that are in his opinion better than Sacred 2 generally. What I did was just simply drop a link to the complete change log for the Community Patch, as well as mention that the typical "complaints" about the Patch can be reversed. People can decide for themselves if they want it. My days of trying to make people agree with my mod choices are over. As anticipated, there was a response with a very verbose list of complaints. Is it possible to have a Patch that only fixes the memory leak issue and any other crucial changes? It's an unfortunate fact of life, but one cannot please everybody all the time. Link to comment
dimitrius154 612 Posted April 27, 2020 Share Posted April 27, 2020 My apologies, can't help myself, 1 hour ago, Hooyaah said: Is it possible to have a Patch that only fixes the memory leak issue and any other crucial changes? . No. Link to comment
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