smonica

Well, that gives you about a week and a half to get them all done j/k... did you want to at least get a start on them? That would be sufficient. Just let me know so we can plan around what you will work on, so as not to duplicate efforts. -Monsh

It's a big enough task that we could use additional help with characters, so if you are keen enough with photoshop you're welcome to work with us. I've isolated a few photo instances of imperial uniforms in varying poses, so as long as we can find appropriate heads to work into the image we should be fairly well on our way to getting the imperial officers completed. Scathane: if you want to start work on the New Republic minor characters that would be ideal. Trejiuvanat: please let me know which characters you are presently working on (or have completed). I am just about done knocking out the NR major character images, and have an image of Thrawn done. Does anybody have any toughts on a pic for C'b? The obvious ones are LotR shots of Christopher Lee, or Ian McKellen - but there are other's I'm sure...Ideas? The Rest of the Team: please check in to let me know you're still alive I know that Kardde was otherwise occupied with school, and will be returning soon. Tsunami was going to work on Ship cards...update? Laforge: you have not indicated what you prefer to work on - troops cards are up for grabs - are you interested? -Monsh

Just a note to the RR Team: I don't make a habit of checking the other forums (like the RebEd info for instance) so if you post messages there which you direct towards me, don't expect to see a reply. If you need something from me, put it here in the RR forum, PM me, or email me. I put together a summary of the technique for creating the RR character pics from photos. You can view the information here: http://smokingfrog.net/conversion.php Please note that this is NOT a card creation tutorial, but rather a photoshop tutorial for converting photos to something more in line with the game. Scathane: what type of cards would you like to work on?

Heya Team, First of all, an apology: I am truly sorry I've been out of the loop lately, but things in RL got out of control and in the way of my play time. I'm back and ready to get this project moving again. I've been catching up on the forum topics, and I'm glad to see that there has been a vibrant dicussion as to character composition. As is apparent, there are a lot of viable characters for the New Republic side, but substantially fewer for the Imperials (at least characters worth including) which leaves us in the position of most likely including some less-than-noteworthy characters for the Empire. As most of you might remember, it seems like LucasArts was faced with the same problem, and went with the same solution. I was impressed with the list that Trejiuvanat put together, and with some expanding on the Imperial side, most likely from the additional information posted by TK421, we should have a go. I'd like Trejiuvanat to work with me on the character cards. If anybody else is interested in working on characters - keeping in mind that it will be a laborious task - please contact me ASAP. I am of the opinion that we should create more cards than needed, as I assume some of them in the end won't "fit" with the overall look. As to style: Everyone seemed receptive to the "modified photo" style that I demonstrated on Harrison Ford and Christopher Lee (http://smokingfrog.net/cardstyle.php), so unless someone on the Team has an alternative I suggest we go with this for the characters. It does require a fair bit of work, and I'd be happy to share the PhotoShop technique with any of you interested in assisting with the art work. If anybody does have another idea as to style, please throw it on the table ASAP so that we don't try to change direction mid-stream down the way. Characters aside, we do know that the fighter-class choices seem clear. I'm assuming that these will be far easier to accomplish than the character cards - the same can be said of capital ships. As soon as we can confirmation on the Capital Ships, we should be able to wrap these up fast with some 3D-renders. I have 3DSmax and almost every available Star Wars mesh so this should be fairly simple. Does anybody else on the team have a 3D software package? If not, I can tackle these - but ideally I'd like to primarily focus on characters myself. To my knowledge, there has been no major debate as to Special Forces cards...the ideas put on the table were: New Republic Guerillas - New Republic Special Forces - Page's Commando's Infiltrators - Alpha Blue (Possibly - Infiltrators don't exist in the timeframe) Bothan Spies - Slicers - New Republic Intelligence Longprobe Y-Wing - Recon X-Wing Galactic Empire Espionage Droid - Same (New Pic & Stats maybe) Noghri Death Commandos - Same (New Pic & Stats maybe) Probe Droid - Same (New Pic & Stats maybe) Commandos - Same (New Pic & Stats maybe - Change name to SpecNav Forces possibly) Who wants to get working on Special Forces? I'll discuss Troops and Facilities as soon as we sort out the primary tasks above The members of the team should have received this via email as well, please let me know if you think you are on the team and did not receive it. -Monsh

The link should still be fine...I jsut checked it: http://smokingfrog.net/conversion.php

Thank you to everyone who volunteered for the Card Team. The following people comprise the Official RR/TC Card Team: Monsh - Card Leader (monsh@smokingfrog.net) TalonNemesisKarrde - Assistant Card Leader(nemesiskarrde@insightbb.com) Trejiuvanat (jastorga@mail.com) Tsunami Lord_La_forge (nobunaga@freemail.hu) Scathane Tsunami & Scathane, please provide me with an email addy so that we can keep in contact. Now, as for assignments... If you have a preference as to what cards section (Characters/Capitals/Fighters/Troops/SpecOps/Defense) you are best suited for, please let me know. I'll expect each of you to EMAIL me as soon as possible so that we can begin to sort out areas of responsiblility. I would like to establish a consistent look for the cards, so I'd prefer keeping one person on each major category - so give me a few of your top choices in order of preference. Additionally, if you'd like to work on the statistical aspects of the cards, state that. I will most likely handle Character pics to start with, but anyone with suffient graphic skills is welcome to contribute. I'll be assembling a small "home page" for us to gather our work. btw...If any of you have PHP programming knowledge, I could use a small script to allow us to rate/vote on candidate cards. As soon as I have the main ittinerary worked out, we can get down to it. Right now, it is most important that we all keep up with the forum chatter about which ships/characters/etc will be included, and start finding base-pics to modify for the characters -Monsh

Yeah, some of the features are a bit exagerated, but for the scale it works pretty good. My intent was not to mimic the original style of the pics, but rather to create something uniquely ours. This is also another good reason not to use the pics from the New Essential Guide to Characters, not to mention that all of the characters are not present in the book, and as such we'd have a difficult time trying to match the style of the other pics (my assumption). As an example of what we could do for the characters that don't really have a photo to start with, I worked over a celebrity pic to create a potential image of Thrawn... Please don't start shooting me mail about this-or-that being wrong with the pic/graphic - It's just an example NOT a final image. btw... if any of you can guess who the pic started as (it is a celebrity) I'll give you a cookie -Monsh

Actually...I used the paint daubs filter to break up the photo-like look, then applied a smart blur (both values were variable depending on the original photo). After that, I used the blur, smudge, and airbrush tools until I was happy with the final product.

Although I didn't take the color table into consideration for that example, the conversion to the table is easier than most realize. if you check the link again, I've included converted versions of both Dooku and Han. The Rebellion-sized pics were converted to the color table. As you can see, you do loose a bit of smoothness, but overall the transfer isn't bad at all. http://smokingfrog.net/conversion.php -Monsh

The conversion of a photo to something a bit more cartoonish is pretty straightforward, albeit time consuming, with photoshop. Here's a quicky I did just to see what's involved. It's worth noting that this is the first time I've tried to do this, so for all I know there could be a better way... http://smokingfrog.net/conversion.php -Monsh

I am a proponent of the prison fleet system, particularly in the later stages of the game. Early game I find a certain value to using the Prison Planet system, as it tends to lure other future-captives hoping to free their comrades. As soon as I have sufficient numbers of captives I load up a slow-moving tug and proceed to tansverse the galaxy between secure planets... it works for me, but everybody has a different take on this

I am a proponent of the prison fleet system, particularly in the later stages of the game. Early game I find a certain value to using the Prison Planet system, as it tends to lure other future-captives hoping to free their comrades. As soon as I have sufficient numbers of captives I load up a slow-moving tug and proceed to tansverse the galaxy between secure planets... it works for me, but everybody has a different take on this

Okay, that's two so far: Trejiuvanat & SWARMER - the latter of which was a given Other interested parties should post here as well. -Monsh

Alrighty, it seems like it's time to get to work here, so my first order of business will be to assemble the team. I know that some of you chimed in on the other posts about being interested, but I thought it would be best to consolidate the information in a single post. First a note on qualifications: 1. You should have a comfortable skill level in some graphics application -Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or similar... I do not consider MSPaint as a viable tool 2. A solid knowledge of Rebellion (obvious, but worth noting) 3. Some experience with modifying cards is a plus. At the very least you should have played around with RebEdit. 4. Are willing to put in the effort to meet deadlines and make this endeavor a qualified success. If you feel that you meet the qualifications, and are interested in joining the team, then post your info in this thread. Please include a brief run-down on your qualifications in the post. On Feb 25th I will officially announce the team and begin designating tasks. I look forward to getting this thing off the ground! -and please, call me Monsh

I have to agree on some points being made... particularly the issue of late game battles involving 100+ fighter groups. As Masterdom pointed out, there is a disparity in having so many fighters in a single battle... however, Rebellion was never designed as a dog-fight kind of game either - that aspect was left to games such as any of the TF games or XWA. If you're talking about being able to place characters on fighters, they would have to include some kind of parameter to limit it to only 1 character, and to disallow special forces - otherwise you'd have Interceptors with a dozen people/spec.ops running around the galaxy. Another point to remember is how easy it is to lose a fighter in combat (at least in RebI) - and as such you'd be losing characters/pilots left and right. I would like to see a limitation put on the numbers of characters and spec ops that a given ship could hold though (I can't really see how 50 units of noghri could hang out in a lambda shuttle), as well as a limit on the number of fighters a planet could realistically support w/o carriers present. I can't help but think that trying to incorporate dog-fighting into RebII would detract from it's essentially strategic nature... special missions might be a viable option though, particularly where the Death-Star run is concerned. -Monsh