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Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 4:25 pm
by AK_Brickster
CastleLord wrote: To Josh and AK_Brickster. What faction is the main one? did we settle on the Teutons in blue? or some other faction?
Yes, Teutons in blue. Josh is going to be doing Persian war elephants, so I would look at what other units the Persians feature, unless Josh is going to do everything for that civ. We also discussed having a couple of other civs with units roaming about, especially a scout unit, so maybe you could look into doing some of those. I don't think we are planning on having any buildings other than the Teutons' stuff.

So far, things that are spoken for are:

Teutons (Blue)
Buildings: Castle - Jordan (AK_brickster)
Units: Teutonic Knights - Jordan (I think I can do these. We'll see if people like what I come up at next SeaLug meeting)

Persians (Red)
Buildings: none planned
Units: War Elephants - Josh (JoshWedin)

Green would be an easy color to do a third civ in if it's just going to be units, since the new Dragon Knights' green is a good match for that. Buildings will be difficult because dark green is not a common color yet.

As for relative scale, CastleLord can probably confirm these since he's got access to the game (my copy is lost somewhere), but I'm going to guess these dimensions are about right:
40x40: Wonder (maybe 44x44?)
32x32: castle, town center, market?, university?
24x24: barracks, stables, archery ranges, blacksmith, monastery?
20x20: farms, mills, docks
16x16: houses, mines, lumber camps
8x20: gatehouse
8x8: Towers, corners of walls
4x8: Wall section
4x4: stone/gold resource pile
(Please edit/add to as needed. These are just my best guesses)

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:42 pm
by Sir_Darc
This has suddenly inspired me. I'm going to build one of the smaller units, probably a farm or house, based on the in-game images. I'll do it tonight and get a side-by-side comparison for tommorrow.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 6:39 pm
by CastleLord
AK_Brickster wrote:
CastleLord wrote: To Josh and AK_Brickster. What faction is the main one? did we settle on the Teutons in blue? or some other faction?
Yes, Teutons in blue. Josh is going to be doing Persian war elephants, so I would look at what other units the Persians feature, unless Josh is going to do everything for that civ. We also discussed having a couple of other civs with units roaming about, especially a scout unit, so maybe you could look into doing some of those. I don't think we are planning on having any buildings other than the Teutons' stuff.

So far, things that are spoken for are:

Teutons (Blue)
Buildings: Castle - Jordan (AK_brickster)
Units: Teutonic Knights - Jordan (I think I can do these. We'll see if people like what I come up at next SeaLug meeting)

Persians (Red)
Buildings: none planned
Units: War Elephants - Josh (JoshWedin)

Green would be an easy color to do a third civ in if it's just going to be units, since the new Dragon Knights' green is a good match for that. Buildings will be difficult because dark green is not a common color yet.

As for relative scale, CastleLord can probably confirm these since he's got access to the game (my copy is lost somewhere), but I'm going to guess these dimensions are about right:
40x40: Wonder (maybe 44x44?)
32x32: castle, town center, market?, university?
24x24: barracks, stables, archery ranges, blacksmith, monastery?
20x20: farms, mills, docks
16x16: houses, mines, lumber camps
8x20: gatehouse
8x8: Towers, corners of walls
4x8: Wall section
4x4: stone/gold resource pile
(Please edit/add to as needed. These are just my best guesses)
I would say the wonder fits quite good.
here's a pic:
Image

I'll keep updating with more pictures soon.

CastleLord

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:21 pm
by AK_Brickster
I got my copy of AoE2 up and running. I'll try to contribute some screenshots in the future as well.

David, where you at?

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 7:34 am
by SEdmison
Sir_Darc wrote:This has suddenly inspired me. I'm going to build one of the smaller units, probably a farm or house, based on the in-game images. I'll do it tonight and get a side-by-side comparison for tommorrow.
Yeah, what I'm primarily concerned with is that sometimes when doing stuff in small scales (like minifig scale), you're actually limited most in terms of what you can express by the smallest items in the scale. That is, if you want a minifig to walk through a door, that door needs to be at least 3, more realistically 4 bricks wide; if the wall in which that door sits is supposed to be, say, 5 times the width of that door, you can fudge things a bit and get that building down to maybe 16 wide instead of 20, but you probably couldn't get it down to 12 wide. These are numbers pulled out at random for discussion, not from a particular building, but I want to make sure we're confident about the scale as we build both small buildings and large buildings, and that we can be expressive enough to make the buildings distinctive-looking and full of character.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 3:53 pm
by Shadowviking
Minifigs are just badly proportioned. Don't be afraid to use 2wide doors if you need to!

This sounds very promising, I don't think I can commit to taking part, but I'll be looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with! :)

Oh and you're all making me want to bust out AoE again. If I do and fall even more behind on homework, I'm blaming all of you. ;)

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:37 pm
by Fraslund
Sorry I have been neck deep in a massive project rollout as well as interviewing for a job switch so I have been somewhat out of it. Some amazing ideas and I love everything I have heard so far.

I agree with Josh's idea of bare chested villagers. It will be harder, but once you see a bunch of half nekkid lumberjacks bringing piles of wood to a towncenter you will know exactly what you are looking at.

As far as size my original thought was for the huge structure (Castle, Wonder, Towncenter, Market) I was originally thinking a 48x48 base plate in size with surrounding landscaping that would easly intergrate into terrain. I was thinking 32x32 for smaller structures and also on a 32x32 you could do a couple of houses as well. I might be thinking too big on the scale, but that was my original thought.

The one thing I would say about color is the Dragon Knight with the checkered BP, Green cloak, and bucket helmet looks almost exactly like the teutonic knight from the game. I can throw a pic up and you will totally see what I mean. The one way we can easlily get around this is simply change the color of the cape lol.

Also I agree on focusing on 1 civ, but one thing we could do is have an enemy tower on the edge of the map. I always hated when someone would drop a tower right next to my lumber workers, or miners before I had any siege capabilites lol.

As far as age, Castle is fine. I live the architechture of the imperial age buildings and having paladins which were my fav unit, but im not scared of some castle age goodness!

One other thing is it would be hilarous to have the edges of the moc be black tiles in circular pattern surrounding the edges of the display. ( I think someone mentioned that?)

I am working on a town center just to see if I can pull it off. I am down to do any other building. Also the great thing about this game is there can be multiples of any building.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:48 pm
by Fraslund
Also found this lastnight. Its a widescreen patch for AoE2 that will allow various widescreen resolutions. One guy posted that he was able to get 1920x1080 on his 42inch Plasma!!!

http://widescreengamingforum.com/node/12090

It looks like it works to varying degrees, but some have had success with it.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:56 pm
by Fraslund
The other thing that is tough as well is even though my fav civ was the teutons, I like the look of the western european buildings a bit more. On the plus side, the Eastern European buildings all have reddish roofs which is quite easy to grab bricks for; Especially the taller double convex bricks for towers.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 7:04 pm
by AK_Brickster
Fraslund wrote:As far as size my original though was for the huge structure (Castle, Wonder, Towncenter, Market) I was originally thinking a 48x40 base plate in size with surrounding landscaping that would easly integrage into terrain. I was thinking 32x32 for smaller structures and also on a 32x32 you could do a couple of houses as well. I might be thinking too big on the scale, but that was my original thought.
Just want to reiterate Josh's earlier point that we're limited to 6 - 32x32 plates deep. Unless you want to have a long, skinny layout (which wouldn't look much like how you'd normally see the game, which is more or less a square) I think it might be advisable to try to use the scale that others have suggested, which is 32x32 for castle/town center, then scale down from there. We can certainly explore your scale, just wanted to throw that out there so you're aware of it.
A 6x8ish layout is going to get taken up pretty quickly if the buildings are too big.
Shadowviking wrote:Minifigs are just badly proportioned. Don't be afraid to use 2wide doors if you need to!
Agreed. The figs aren't really scaled to the buildings in the game, either.

Also, a fun idea in line w/ your enemy tower thought would be to have a black area w/ a scout running thru, leaving an explored trail behind. He would be lying dead with an enemy tower having killed him. (The enemy tower would be the only thing visible, surrounded by "fog". Those who have played can probably visualize it.)

I want to keep my BrickCon castle assembled for a little while so that my nieces and friends can see it when they come over, and then I'll take it apart and start working on a mock-up for the Teuton castle, probably in the next couple of weeks.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 7:15 pm
by Fraslund
the 32x32 scale castle does make much more sense and actually keeps in line with the scale of the game i think for the most part. The size of the tables is a good point which i dont think I was visualizing initially. Also from a sheer brick standpoint that is much more reasonable. I think I tend to go too big on my projects anyways lol.

That scout idea sounds brilliant! I love it.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 7:19 pm
by Sir_Darc
So, I was going to get something done with this, but I got a little distracted. Anyway, tonight I'll try again.

I think the scale is fine. The buildings don't need to be minifig scale, as was said before, because in the game they're not to scale anyway. Actually, that makes it easier, at least I don't need as much brick to try this out.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 7:27 pm
by Fraslund
Sir_Darc wrote:So, I was going to get something done with this, but I got a little distracted. Anyway, tonight I'll try again.

I think the scale is fine. The buildings don't need to be minifig scale, as was said before, because in the game they're not to scale anyway. Actually, that makes it easier, at least I don't need as much brick to try this out.
I am hoping to as well and im with you. This scale is much more reasonable for this project.

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 3:40 pm
by AK_Brickster
First, I'm hoping to find time to build a prototype Teuton castle in black - since all of my gray is still tied up in my BrickCon castle, which I haven't been able to bring myself to disassemble yet - sometime this week. That way, I'll be able to figure out the proportions of everything before I actually start building it.

Secondly, I got AoE2 up and running on my laptop, but "printscreen" screenshots aren't working out for me. When I paste into paint, it's all just a big purple and black blob. Anyone have any tips for me? I don't have a lot of experience in the screenshot department.

Thanks! Hoping that some of you who were going to work on other builds find time to do so as well so we can go over them together at the next LUG meeting. :mrgreen:

Re: BrickCon 2012 Collaborative Project: Age of Empires II

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:37 pm
by Memsochet
AK_Brickster wrote:First, I'm hoping to find time to build a prototype Teuton castle in black - since all of my gray is still tied up in my BrickCon castle, which I haven't been able to bring myself to disassemble yet - sometime this week. That way, I'll be able to figure out the proportions of everything before I actually start building it.

Secondly, I got AoE2 up and running on my laptop, but "printscreen" screenshots aren't working out for me. When I paste into paint, it's all just a big purple and black blob. Anyone have any tips for me? I don't have a lot of experience in the screenshot department.

Thanks! Hoping that some of you who were going to work on other builds find time to do so as well so we can go over them together at the next LUG meeting. :mrgreen:
If you are running Vista or 7, there's a new application called Snipping Tool which if it's a windowed application you can use to capture parts of your screen. We use it at work all the time.