Role's Signature Project

[Rolina]

So, for the past couple weeks I've been working on something fun for the forum.  You see that signature thing in my signature?  I've been using that to figure out "Okay, how's this gonna look?"  While I'm still having a hard time getting a hold of the font, most everything else seems to be coming into place.  I've got a good set for the element and fundament sections, I've got some decent bases done... There's only a few things left I've gotta do:

First, Clan Positions.  I need to come up with a symbol for the positions for Leader, Second in Command, Member, and Clanless.  The old image I used just... didn't work.  If you've got some ideas, I'd love to see them.

Second, Fonts.  For character and class descriptions, this is something that's been an issue from the start... nothing really looks right.  So I've been working on getting screenshots for each letter with the hopes of finding someone who can make a font out of it.  Help is appreciated here, too.

As for the rest, I've got it mostly done.  Here's a look at what I've got so far:

First, Element and Fundament symbols.  These were based on the ones used at the DD official site.  Renny over at GSR made the Luna and Sol emblems for me, so if you see him sometime, give him a nod or something, I think he did a good job.  Here they are, in full size.  Now, for the sake of the signatures, these do not represent clan, but rather what you would call your element and fundament.  Clan is referenced in its own section, through the clan position section below the Element spot.

Elements


Fundaments

When shrunk down to their signature size, they look like this:


If you're curious about the bases, they look like this:


These backgrounds are the same ones Clan Rank will be used with.  However, as Sol and Luna are not major clans, they will not be included - so this looks at the 4 primary clans and your position within them.  If you are clanless, the Gray color will be used, along with the clanless emblem.  As mentioned before, clan emblems have yet to be created, so for now an empty one will be used in their place.

Finally, the last one in the lower left corner is your innate field spell.  If you have more than one, let me know which one you want there (ex:  What you're known for, what you use most often, personal preference, etc...)

Now, that's just the four corner images in the sig.  Above those is the DD style profile pic.  Now, I can't make one of these unless you give me an image to work with.  Post a pic of the person you want to represent you, and I'll make a portrait pic for them.  Now, I won't just take anything - it's gotta have a good angle, for example.  If they're looking down, I can't do anything with that.  Also, it can't be a photograph.  They just... don't look right.  If you have a background color request, I'll try to match it the best I can.  The more specific you are (ex: Providing the actual color you want), the better I can match what you want.

In the middle is the character bio section.  For the time being, this will be blank, since I don't have the right font, but I hope that soon I'll be able to put in descriptions as requested.  There are two requests here - keep it clean, and it has to fit.  If I tell you there's a problem with it, it's not something I can just get around, it means it's probably too long.  Try to condense it if that happens.

Next to that are your "stats" and your inventory.  I gave you an example of the stats in my profile in the sig.  However, for reference, I'll go ahead and list all of them here.


For those of you familiar with the rank of "X", it is the same thing as the rank of "SS".  SS is used due to familiarity.  Average stat is considered C.  You are a HERO UNIT.  You're better than average.  However, you're not godlike, either.  I won't accept anything too high, but I will encourage you to buff yourself a bit if you submit something too low.

Below that is your inventory.  If you have specific stuff you want to have in it, just let me know.  Anything from DD I'll toss in there.  Anything that needs creating I'll work on making.

Next up is your classes.  I don't care about stats here.  What I want is the required djinn, the class name, and a VERY brief description of the class.  What the most important thing here is your spells.  On top of that, if you have multiple classes, or even multiple tiers of the same line, let me know - I'll make a bar for each class, and recommend a site to randomize it for you.  Try to follow the same rules that we try to follow with our hacks here.  If you make a new spell, don't bother telling me power or cost.  I don't care.  Tell me the animation and the element - that's what will be reflected!

Finally, at the very top is your quote or slogan.  This will be done in Gold colored Valhalla font - the same as the GS title font.  Try not to make it too long - short, sweet, to the point.  It does not have to be english if you don't want it to, but it can't be random foreign words either.  At least tell us what it means, k?



So here's the gist.  If you want a siggy made, I can work with you on making it.  If you have some suggestions for symbols and stuff, they'll be much appreciated.  If you even have suggestions to make it look better, I'll look at those, too. ^-^

[Rolina]

Okay, gots some updates!

Found the font.  It's here:



I've also managed to rip (sort of) a few different icon types.  Here's the defaults:

Ability
Item
Menu
Djinn (set)
Djinn (standby)
Djinn (recovery)

I'm also in the process of getting color selections for them...










I've also changed the Djinn display for the classes to, well, be a djinn-icon.  A big one, but one nonetheless. :3



So, that's where I'm at now.  I'm currently working on finishing those colors up working on some new mock ups.  I've got the in between one posted below, with a comparison to the old one.  I've got someone else working on the font, though if you can help with it as well, that'd be freaking awesome.  All I need is a size 8 pixel font, so if you're able to whip up the .ttf, then you'll be my best friend forever.

For future reference, here's the old Alpha Version:

[Aile~♥]

Whoever makes the font, slide it over this way, too, would ya?

[Rolina]

Well, the plan is to share it with everyone.  Once I've got it, I'll test it to make sure it does what I need it to do, then I'll simply post it here for others to take and share.

[Aile~♥]

Heh, I figured as much. I just really wanted to say that.

And I was just checking. Can't be too careful, y'know?

[Rolina]

The trick here is to find someone who has a font creator.  The ones I found online to try and do it myself?  They want you to pay 40 bucks before you can even save your file.  All of that progress, for nothing.  I was really, REALLY pissed.

[Aile~♥]

Role, if you did the rips yourself, can you get us the PCs' sprites from the mid-battle character swap screen? We need emotes for the DD cast.

On that note, the emote bubbles might be nice to have, to.

[Rolina]

I did not, sadly.  It's actually crazy tough to find much of anything in DD - sprite rippers have had a hard time with it.

Edit:  Here are the updated Element and Fundament icons:



And for the ToK: 

[Aile~♥]

Who did the font rip for you? Could you recruit them to find the PC sprites?

(Shouldn't it be easy enough to find them with a Memory Viewer? That's what people do when extracting models for Brawl hacking, and what Sala and Teawater do for GBA hacking.)

Anyway, if I know anything from what Atrius said, the whole damn game short of the boot-up sequence is compressed, and it's all crunched together really weirdly (probably they did it the way a .zip file or a really full flash drive does and just stuck it in the smallest space it could fit in.)

[Rolina]

Aye, if sprite rippers knew how to do it, they'd have done it already.  Your best bet is emulator + printscreen - that's how I got those icons.

Anywho, I'm working on redoing the stat icons, using the menu icon rather than ability.  Here's the newest version:



(old stats listed for comparison)

Also, I know one of you wanted rank X instead of SS, so here's that for comparison:



Let me know which one you guys prefer.

[RagnarokEmissary]

Oh, those icons are pretty nice. I prefer X to SS, myself. X just looks cooler to me.

[Rolina]

Working on tweaking stuff some more.  Here's some new icons, simply because I like them better than text:

HP?
PP
Attack
Defense
Magic
Resist
Agility
Luck?

Only thing left is to figure out how to represent health...

Not sure on Health and Luck.  Might change HP over to being Luck, and fiddle with luck and call it health... what do you guys think?

[leaf]

I think it makes more sense for hp/pp to have similar symbols since they're both stats that have a maximum and current value. Luck should be like... idk. A feather or something?

[Rolina]

Using this for luck now, hopefully it does much better at getting the idea across.

Beta Siggy:




What do you think?

[Griever]

Nice work so far >_< you seem really into this.

I also like how you took the light like symbol to be HP and the other one as PP .. most games or "themes" have HP as a red bar or circle.
Luck represented as a 4-leaf clover .. I read somewhere that it represent luck so that's a very nice representation.

For the clan position ... why not make it simple like I for leader and II for 2nd in command? Something like the military do with stars and such. Or maybe use some modified djinn icons for it? A djinn with I, L or 1st on its stomach (belly) and a different djinn icon with II or 2nd on its stomach (belly) and it would be also smaller in size.

Will see if i can find something to help with the font but don't count on it >_< I haven't done something like that before.

[Rolina]

Well, I can't use military style insignias because not all clans are militaristic - some are civilian run.  It needs to be something that's a bit more universal.  I tried using a crown to represent leadership earlier, but it kinda looked ugly.  In my icon/sprites thread, I've got all the spells and items listed, so if you wanna go in there and tweak them yourself that's fine.  We don't have a strict color palette for this, 'close enough' will do just fine.

[Rolina]

I'm just gonna leave this here.  This is just the initial test of the fonts - it turns out, there's TWO fonts used for the encyclopedias!  The one I provided in bold is the name, but the other text is different entirely.



But yeah, thanks to Dave over at GSAR.  WHY IS THAT PLACE DEAD WITH SUCH TALENTED PEOPLE?!  Honestly, the place looks really nice, too.  We're still not quite done yet, I'm gonna see if we can get some more accurate lineheights, as there was a lot of editing involved in tweaking it properly, but for the most part it's worked really, really well.  I'm almost to the point that I can start making these for everyone!

[Rolina]

Okay, got Misery's done as requested... but!  He asked me to tweak something - the stat bar.

The way I've been doing it has been:

Top Row Physical
Bottom Row Magical
Order:  Vitals, Offense, Defense, Misc

The stat rank is next to it.

His suggestion is to have them all in a line, and have their stat ranks be below it instead.  Compare his to mine, and tell me which one you like more:





Also, I tweaked the spacing on the encyclopedia part.  Do you guys prefer the even spacing, or the spacing where the first line of the description's a little closer?



I've also got the Balanced, Weak Sol, and Weak Luna affinity icons done.  If you're asking what that is, well...  I'm lazy, so I'll just copy paste this from another forum.

With the introduction of Fundaments in Dark Dawn, we have an interesting little conundrum: How to integrate the now-canon light and darkness.  I've got a little suggestion as to how to do this...

As we all know, the elements come in a variety of forms.  What causes this?  Well, the answer can be quite simple - the influence of the fundaments.  When we boil it down, the elements have three forms, though their skill with and shape of each form differs from element to element.



However, while people in their base nature only can use one element without the aid of djinn, this is not true of elemental forms.  Take Ivan, for instance, who can use both Lightning and Wind.  As a general rule, an adept can only use two of the three forms of an element.  This is due to varying strength in the affinity of the fundament that the adept has.  This also influences their skill in both Benedictions and Maledictions.

For those who don't know, Benedictions are your basic good effects, such as healing and buffs, while Maledictions are just the opposite - harmful effects like ailments and debuffs.



This is the basic rundown of the system.  As you can see from my signature, I'd be a Lightning Specialist - and that is indeed shown in my base class' spell selection.  So long as we have a decent guideline to follow, it should help to keep things consistent, which in a larger scale thing such as Clan Wars is generally a good idea.

So, let me know what you think about it.

- Strong Sol Affinity Icon
- Weak Sol Affinity Icon
- No Affinity Icon
- Weak Luna Affinity Icon
- Strong Luna Affinity Icon
- Balanced Affinity Icon

So yeah, it's all about which aspect sets you want to use - and you can use up to two.  I've got an icon for each combination, so take a gander at which two groups you wanna use for the elements (alternatively, if you wanna specialize in one instead), and that'll determine what your fundamental affinity icon to be used is.

[Shinigami]

Personally (as previously stated in the c-box):
I prefer the layout of the status icons on Misery's signature, but the spacing on that of yours.
The half- affinity icons could do with improvement...

[RagnarokEmissary]

I prefer how the stat icons in Misery's are all in a line. Makes it look kinda neater. Also, who made his face portrait? It's awesome.

The half icons look a bit weird to me.

For the weak Sol/Luna affinities, why do you not make one half of the sun/moon icons "normal" and the other half kinda faded out a bit?

And for the balanced affinity, what about making an icon of an eclipse? Would that work?