Wallpaper for AI War: Destroyer of Worlds.

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.com/wallpaper-for-ai-war-destroyer-of-worlds/



We never really had proper large-scale concept art for AI War until the last month or so.  This is definitely my favorite piece out of all the new stuff, and again this is by Cathrine Langwagen.

[Vacuity]

Is this also related to the new forum background?  I was wondering where to put the appreciative drooling.

I'll drool in this thread then.   Both pieces are very nice!

[Draco18s]

Very drool-worthy indeed.

But I think my backgrounds are going to stay.

Home PC has the Windows 7 Beta betafish because I thought it was so clean and still beautiful.  Laptop has....some dragon artwork, don't know if I can find it off-hand.  Two work machines have (older) "Refresh, Reinstall, Reboot" Tech Support heraldry and (newer) Andromeda colliding with the Milkyway (view from Earth).

[x4000]

Thanks!  The new background for the forum is actually from The Last Federation, but it also works quite appropriately for AI War.

[re4der]

Those backgrounds are nice pieces of art. The one with ..moon?.. crashing with planet is the one I like especially. However, those ships, and arts from steam cards too by the way, do not look like anything I have seen in AIW so far.

[x4000]

However, those ships, and arts from steam cards too by the way, do not look like anything I have seen in AIW so far.

Yep, it's something where we had to take some creative license there to make them look attractive as concept art.  AI War kind of went backwards in that it started from small art rather than starting from large art, so the artist had to kind of make up a lot of details, heh.

[re4der]

But.. I think there are several ships that would look nice on arts. Who would not like to have AI mothership on wallpaper?

[x4000]

True!  There we get into questions of budget, too, though.  Someday!

[Draco18s]

Yep, it's something where we had to take some creative license there to make them look attractive as concept art.  AI War kind of went backwards in that it started from small art rather than starting from large art, so the artist had to kind of make up a lot of details, heh.

I created a sprite generator that did that.

WARNING: This swf is not optimized and right after it draws the 3rd sprite it'll become unresponsive until it resets.
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/pixelships_colors_v4.swf

But yeah, you can see how a couple of predictive scaling algorithms generate what looks like additional detail in the larger sprite.

[Coppermantis]

Those backgrounds are nice pieces of art. The one with ..moon?.. crashing with planet is the one I like especially. However, those ships, and arts from steam cards too by the way, do not look like anything I have seen in AIW so far.

I bought the Golems profile background for a massive three cents out of all the money I made from trading cards, and I'm pretty sure that they're Botnet golems? I wouldn't be able to identify them as AI War, but that doesn't mean that they don't look super cool.

[x4000]

Yep, it's something where we had to take some creative license there to make them look attractive as concept art.  AI War kind of went backwards in that it started from small art rather than starting from large art, so the artist had to kind of make up a lot of details, heh.

I created a sprite generator that did that.

WARNING: This swf is not optimized and right after it draws the 3rd sprite it'll become unresponsive until it resets.
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/pixelships_colors_v4.swf

But yeah, you can see how a couple of predictive scaling algorithms generate what looks like additional detail in the larger sprite.

That is extremely cool!

[Draco18s]

That is extremely cool!

It's based on this guy's original algorithm, but I doubled the original size, tweaked a few rules, and then used the known-information about the black and white model (ship interior/exterior/skin) to be able to scale the bitmap up.  Basically I looked at adjacent skin pixels and figured out what kind of line they formed and then did my best to replicate that line at twice as many pixels, but keeping the line thickness intact.

[x4000]

That's extremely slick!

[Draco18s]

Isn't it?

And it started my foray into procedural generation.  Even have a techdemo for a completely procedurally generated RTS.  Well, except UI elements, of which most/all were placeholder.  But if I were to finish, they'd be prebuilt.  No sense in shuffling up the UI at runtime

But yeah, the space backgrounds, the asteroid foreground harvestable units, the ship graphics...the ship stats.  I've shown it off a few times around these parts.

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/findTriangle4.swf <-- example unit generation
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/interface.swf <-- fixed initial units, but were based off a run of the above

I've learned a lot since then, too.  I should go back to that game sometime and redo it to be more like this TD I've been futzing with more recently.  some examples.  Only need one more core component so I can build towers and it'll feel like its playable.  Still need to do creep generation, code in some components, and some other stuff too.  But if I can spawn towers it'll feel like a game.

[x4000]

Very cool tech!