Newb wants to model an Ulfberht

Ya, actually the Ulfberht swords are thought to be made from steel that was imported up from the middle east (which is partially why it is so cool, because that was like, insanely hard and rare to accomplish back then). So if you really wanted to limit the production of these in-game, you could simply make the ore a special ore available only thru either A) Traders/Merchants or B) A special module where your people discover a small cache and that is it.

1 Like

@voxel_pirate: great info, thank you.

@Roughshod: interesting idea with the engraving / runes. That’s actually a really good idea. That would be a good way to have a new crafting event that has low chance to succeed converting a normal sword to an Ulfberht. Or a rune system where you refine minerals & gems with various possible effects. The crowd buff / morale boost idea was to be in line with what you said about officers / leaders having it.

My current plan is to let ideas collect on this thread while I go learn some Qubicle and model the thing.

If we go with the smith engraving idea, would it be a straight up chance to succeed or fail? If you fail, should the basic sword stay the same or be destroyed? Or, would it have a chance to create a real Ulfberht vs. a fake Ulfberht? Shouldn’t be too hard to model a second sword with the + in the wrong place.

Ooh, then you could have the fake sword still boost morale, but maybe nerf it’s durability… maybe even to the point where the fake one can break in battle and if it breaks, the user panics and runs away. Have to wait and see how we get some kind of morale and durability mechanics; whether it’s vanilla or modded.

project creep, haven’t even started yet, hehe. It will be several days before I get the chance to download Qubicle and make one.

I have to make it big enough to spell out the letters when zoomed in. I’m also thinking it should be the tiniest bit bigger / longer, maybe a slightly different color or handle… something to make it stand out from other swords.

Also liking this idea of a source material from traders or from a small, limited module.

Keep the ideas coming people! If we get good ideas that aren’t compatible with each other, we can do a poll after comments stop coming in.

1 Like

All good ideas. It seems like it would be frustrating for the player to lose something they had expected to get when crafting (I don’t know if any Stonehearth crafting has a chance of failure as of now?). Even though that is a lot of the suspense in the NOVA episode!

lol - I really like that actually. A “for show” sword that inspires people but both the sword (and possibly even the wielder) shouldn’t get near combat… it’s all a sham! I like that it isn’t always about +combat damage, gives the game and your mod more depth.

You’ll have to see how it looks and feels in Qubicle, it might be really hard to fit the lettering in there with voxels. You could consider making the model special, and then making a 2D image with the lettering for the crafting screen? Kinda like what the last live stream had in it.

Another good idea.

Also, how do I find the model and the 2D image files of the original sword for comparison / template? Isn’t there something like a skydrive or website that has a copy of all the available game files? I’ve done some forum searches but I’m not finding anything more than rotating gifs…

1 Like

This is where you’ll find all recreated game elements in future, however there doesn’t appear to be a sword on the list…

1 Like

@robbx213 / @Smokestacks … now it does include a file with some weapons from different screens / streams. However, I was too lazy to color them :disappointed:.

5 Likes

Here is my interpretation


the left is just a hint of the name and the right is the full name… I think the right takes up too much space…

1 Like

@lele99 nice… what’s its size compared to the current game person or (what I think might be the) default sword? I’d be interested to put that side by side in my qmo file. I like the one on the left for its pointy-ness and the way you did the channel color.

Here’s several variations.

In doing this, I realized two major things:

  1. There are nearly infinite variations, making it hard to create them, compare them, and pick a favorite. While the final product is exceedingly simple, the process to get there is not.

  2. The limitation of working with voxels affects your ability to replicate. For example, if I want the engraving to show only on one side, I have to go 2 thick. But once you do, everything else starts growing to keep proportions. 1 thick could be good so you can see the engraving from either side while watching units battle. The more I look at them, 2 thick looks a bit silly.

Looking at the SH wiki weapons page, the handle needs to match the default sword’s handle length to fit a character’s hand.

Assuming that is a short sword, the +Ulfberh+t (aka S+oneHear+h or Hear+hberh+ or something else clever) will be longer… I’d say ~25% considering Viking swords seemed to have ranged from high 20 inches to high 30 inches. Blade width will be about the same.

The handle seems flat and narrower than the blade.

The most appropriate pommel seems either lobed or pyramid. It seems the pommel is about as wide as the blade. The hilt is either barely there (as wide as the pommel) or just a bit wider.

I tried some different lettering. I personally like the +H. I expect the 2D crafting icon to spell out whatever it’s ultimately called.

I also tried some different blade widths. Wider than the default didn’t look right. But I do like the wider runner look by making the middle color wider than the edge colors.

And I went brown handle just for a splash of color vs. black. I also made the metal a bit bluer to distinguish it from the regular sword.

Simple yet effective. Helped me learn Qubicle and some of the keyboard shortcuts. It’s amazing how much more comfortable I am with Q in just a few hours.

Also, I think the abilities and crafting of the item are the real meat of this idea, but I’m open to suggestions to put some tiny details on it, alter a color slightly, etc. Of course, I have even less of a clue how to do that and will have to wait for either the Beta or gasp 12 more months…

2 Likes

Variations
Ulfberhts.qmo(13.9 KB)

My favorite of those variations so far
Hearthberht.qmo(2.5 KB)

P.S. Anyone know why my GIF isn’t rotating more than 90 deg? It did when I rendered it and it does when I open in on my PC. I can see other rotating GIFs on discourse just fine.

I had the same problem with the gif… not sure what I did wrong…

I like your edge outline better than the default shading. I think by using a lighter edge than the middle, it also gives it some softness so it appears a bit more rounded. And I like the little bit just above the handle before starting the slightly darker channel color and then the inlay.

2 Likes

my swords are always huge!!

1 Like

That’s what she said! wah wah.

2 Likes

@robbx213 & @Lele99 Regarding your .gif-files. In Qubicle’s “Render Settings” you can change the “Frames Per Rotation” and “Animation Delay”. By changing this values you can influence the resulting .gif-file. Try something like 100 frames and 10 as delay.

On the swords I also think that the shorter version with the hint of a name might work better. If you want to compare your creations with the sizes of other weapons, just take a look into this thread and download the weapons-file.

2 Likes

These are some good looking swords, plus a really nice analysis of the process you worked through to make them.

I like the shorter versions a lot more, I suppose the lettering is more of a suggestion “in game” since the camera will be so zoomed out normally it won’t be possible to see beyond a few squiggles.

Yeah it really moves along well once you get over the initial bump of loading it and figuring out a few things.

3 Likes

agreed… while you can always pack in more detail in a model, you have to be mindful of how it will “read” when at the typical viewing distance…

still, an impressive array of swords, and something i dont think we’ll be lacking in the mod department… :smile:

2 Likes

@SteveAdamo I was wondering though… Just like Chathulu(spelling) was made bigger in the game… can our swords be made smaller to match the correct size of the workers?

Yes. Go look at the relative sizing thread it’s all about stuff like that, should be near the top as is fairly new.

But I think I saw somewhere a post referring to the devs recommending to model as small as possible to begin with and scale up when needed. @voxel_pirate did an example of this with a boat, where it looked weird at first with 1-thick walls but scaled up and manual polished it was 2-thick and looked much more “Stonehearthy”.

Also @voxel_pirate if you want to include the Hearthberht.qmo on that collection page I’m cool with that.

@SteveAdamo about how far away will we typically be? Are the YouTube demo vids a good representation of where we’ll typically be viewing from? If so, I think the +H will be ok, but agree trying to spell anything out will probably just look like a squiggle mess, especially as the sword is moving around being swung.

Well, I guess now I wait for beta to see what sort of crafting and stat mods I can do. In the mean time, maybe I’ll go model a cow (euphamism for modeling random stuff). Bart Simpson - “don’t model a cow, man!”

if you watch some of the live streams, where @Tom is modeling, he will often zoom out to see how his current work will “read” in game… i would say its a “standard” RTS type distance/perspective…

but, as far as we know, you have complete control over how far you can zoom in and out of the environment… :+1: