The warrior cometh …

I'm finally releasing the early Beta of the HeroMachine Warrior Mini for you all to play around with. You can find the page here; I hope you'll let me know what you think of it, preferably in the comments to this post, but the site's Contact Us form and my email are also fine.

It's going to be buggy, so don't be shy about letting me know what you find broken or what you'd like to see work better. Let me know if something is confusing, or doesn't work how you'd expect it to, or if something strikes you as counter-intuitive, or pretty much anything else you think about it.

Hope you all like it!

85 Responses to The warrior cometh …

  1. Ballin' Boy says:

    one thing I found was when you click the arrows to scroll through, if you go past the iteams it’ll be blank and won’t let you go back to the items

    Is there a way to type in the rotation rather than having to try and work it out, cause the dial is kinda sensitive

  2. Ballin' Boy says:

    wish the turtle vest was in
    trying to see if i’ll get used to that clear button or not

    those wings are cool and so are the shin guards next to the boot from the post which is also cool

  3. DJ says:

    http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f374/Deemanboy24/?action=view&current=warrior1.jpg

    My first creation with this wonderful app. So far I haven’t found really any thing buggy about it. I would like to be able to enter numbers on the rotation dial so that it automatically rotates to that angle.

  4. Ballin' Boy says:

    sometimes when you try to mask a weapon it fits in the hand, but it disappears in other places too

  5. TheNate says:

    That clear button is kind of counter-intuitive. It worked fine with Hero Machine, why not stick with that system?

    But I liked how the color names came up.

  6. DJ says:

    TheNate- The clear button like in HM would be very hard to use on here due to there being the option of multiple items per a category.

  7. Rj MCd says:

    Jeff this is just a prototype right? i would like to see some capes and half of tops and leggings like you have in hm 2.5 and bb was right the scrolling is buggie

  8. Kaldath says:

    I think This application needs some background nothing fancy just the basic one found in the standard HM 2.X background or the ones found in Shakti Warriors. Secondly Giving the size of most of the weapons I think you need make the character creation window Wider so the weapons actually completely show in the picture.

  9. Kaldath says:

    forums.ugo.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=54942&d=1226292527

    here is my first creation with this mini

  10. Kaldath says:

    The Briefs/trunks in the legware do not work

  11. Rj MCd says:

    opps i just noticed you have one cape πŸ˜‰ i love the parts you have so far πŸ™‚ i wish you could keep the skeliton jaw and steel half mask from 2.5 i love you work ever sience the first verson of Hm πŸ™‚

  12. Kaldath says:

    Here’s a quick example of using a insigna item to create other things then insigna’s .. introducing Fission: http://s285.photobucket.com/albums/ll49/Kaldath/?action=view&current=Fission.png

  13. Jeff Hebert says:

    Great work on the insignia stuff there Kaldath, very cool.

    TheNate, DJ nailed it, I can’t just have “clear” because you can have more than one item in each slot; I wouldn’t know which one you wanted to delete.

  14. Jeff Hebert says:

    On the clear thing, I could probably do something where holding down the SHIFT key or whatnot would delete an item instead of selecting it. I’ll look into that.

  15. Fabien says:

    I think this will be a good think you can personalise the textures with the line color. There will a great improvement.

  16. Fabien says:

    I have constated a bug. It is impossible to put an insignia on a headgear.

    Another reflexion : with features like duplication and flipside i think it”s not important to distingate right and left items.

  17. Jeff Hebert says:

    @Fabien: I’m not sure what you’re seeing with the insignia and the headgear, I was able to do so with no problem. By default the insignia layer is below the headgear layer, so I had to Layer Up the Insignia until it was on top, but otherwise it worked fine.

    I thought about doing away with the left and right division and it’s something I’ll have to consider more carefully with HM3. It’s more work for the user to have to manually flip and position each element to make it fit, as opposed to me doing it for them ahead of time.

  18. DJ says:

    I also noticed that sometimes if you have duped items when you do the layer it moves both items up/down. Maybe change it so you have a cursor selection like with the clear function.

    While Kaldath was finding ways to use the Insignias in other ways I was seeing how I could use other items to create insignias.

    http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f374/Deemanboy24/?action=view&current=warrior2.jpg

    His insignia is made up of belts.

    Another option I think would be good is something like a “sticky” option where you can attach clothes,hands,weapons and stuff to a body and adjust them all at the same time instead of trying to scale each one.

  19. Jeff Hebert says:

    @DJ: The Layer Up and Layer Down function works on all the items within a slot first, and then moves the entire slot and everything in it up or down.

    So let’s say you have three different items in the Insignia slot, and you want to move the one on the bottom to the top. Hitting Layer Up will move it from 3 to 2, and hitting it again moves it from 2 to 1. Once it’s at the top of the stack in the Insignia slot, hitting Layer Up again will move all three items, still in the same order you ended with, above all the items in whatever slot was above it.

    With HM3, I could probably work it to where items aren’t loaded directly into slots, they’re all just slapped onto the same main layer. But I don’t know yet if that’d be a good or a bad thing.

  20. Lyogi says:

    Since you can’t do the old clear button, could you add an undo button that would delete the last item placed? This would allow for quicker testing if an item looks right when dupe is on.

  21. The Icedaemon says:

    I am somewhat irked that one cannot have leggings tucked into boots covered partially by leg armour, but other than that, this is nice. Face making, for one, has improved immensely, though obviously adding individual facial features would be nice (if only to have a nose to tape onto the mask, or a special set of glowing eyes above all ect)

  22. DJ says:

    And since its the Holiday season(or so the stores tell me)

    http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f374/Deemanboy24/?action=view&current=SANTACLAWS.jpg

    His hat is from the glove section.

  23. Luke says:

    i think another good feature that could be added to this or HM3 when it comes out if to have the upper body separated from the legs, so that you can add extrs legs and so on

  24. Jeff Hebert says:

    @Luke: Yep, that’s the plan for HM3 — separate head, torso, upper arms, lower arms, hips, upper legs, lower legs, and feet. Ideally you’ll be able to work with all of those just like you can with the separate head, body, and hands of this Warrior Mini.

    It makes trying to design cohesive Tops and Legwear problematical, but I think it’ll be workable.

  25. Luke says:

    Ok Jeff, thats good, couldnt it be like Matching sets like the gloves in HM2 where you tick a box and the parts that natch that top appear?

  26. Jeff Hebert says:

    Yes, that’s possible Luke. Not sure we have time to get it into this Warrior Mini, but it’d be nice to have in HM3.

  27. Fabien says:

    Have you planned a female template and components for the warrior mini ?

  28. Collex says:

    I would like a half circle insigna. So I could do this: http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/reboot.jpg

    Apart from that, sometimes the scale circle would get out of his place and into the character screen without me touching it ou without changing the scale. Why?

  29. tristan says:

    it looks great but i think you need some more thingsd from hm 2.5

  30. Jeff Hebert says:

    No female template is planned for this, for reasons which will become obvious once the associated contest is announced.

    Collex, you can get that effect by choosing first a circle insignia, then dupe in a square one. Click on the square one, click the Mask, and click the circle. The square should now get masked out by the circle and you can position them both so that it looks like two half circles.

  31. DJ says:

    Jeff- I was looking at the name function and it doesn’t seem to work. It may just be me being stupid and not figuring it out though.

  32. DJ says:

    That really should have been feature instead if function. Sorry about that.

  33. Jeff Hebert says:

    DJ, you’re right, it’s just a placeholder for now.

  34. DJ says:

    Alright. That’s what I figured but just making sure.

  35. Kaldath says:

    Been Playing around with the Application and here is an example pic to show that with a little creativity you can get a Tiny bit of pose-ability out of the applet.

    http://s285.photobucket.com/albums/ll49/Kaldath/?action=view&current=Eron.png

  36. Jeff Hebert says:

    Neat, how’d you do that Kaldath? I can’t figure out how you got the regular arms blanked out.

  37. Kaldath says:

    simple I just deleted the entire body and rebuilt it using a sleeveless top and tights

  38. DJ says:

    Kaldath-You are a MASTER with heromachine.

    On a different note-Can you please hold another patriot contest? With this I can create some really awesome ones πŸ˜€

  39. Whit says:

    I discovered you can make some really crazy monsters with these features, like this one:

    http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=10r639w&s=4

  40. Rj MCd says:

    doh jeff for somereson i thought this was hm3 but its just a place holder till you get it done πŸ™‚ silly fanboy that i am

  41. Level says:

    Pretty neat. http://i494.photobucket.com/albums/rr310/LeVaJe/Balance.jpg

    Bug: The briefs don’t seem to work.

  42. C. Yusuf Mumaz says:

    Actually, since all the items can be moved around and you can have more than one item per heading, the “select item” clear option is better; otherwise, you may end up clearing all the items in the category.

    Other than the problem with the items page turning blank after scrolling more than two pages, this is a good start. Hope to see more soon!

    I still can’t figure out how to pose the arms and legs. Any help here guys?

  43. Jeff Hebert says:

    I can’t get the item scroll bug to appear, it always loops back around to the first screen again. Is everyone seeing it happpen? Which categories of item does it happen with?

  44. DJ says:

    http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f374/Deemanboy24/?action=view&current=Camobackground.jpg

    I’m showing the possibility of making backgrounds without having it as an actual option. If you can guess how I did it you get a cookie. πŸ˜€

  45. MontanaPlayer says:

    I’ve had the scroll bug hit on all the options

  46. Jeff Hebert says:

    For anyone who sees the scroll bug, can you post what browser and what Flash Player version you’re using?

    Thanks!!

  47. DJ says:

    Also I’d like the report a bug in the hand patterns. When you try to put a pattern on a hand it creates a huge square block instead. (which I used to make the above background)

  48. Jeff Hebert says:

    Shoot, I hadn’t thought about the hands, DJ. It’s a consequence of the way hands are different from other items in that their mask covers everything but the interior part of the hand instead of the whole hand itself. Not sure how to get around that … hmmm ….

  49. DJ says:

    Is there any way you could make the pattern more like a regular color?

  50. Jeff Hebert says:

    There’s always a way to do most anything, but not given the way I did the rest of the program, no.

  51. Level says:

    I get the scroll bug in FireFox 3 and IE 7 both with Flash 9.
    It only does it on sets that do not have a full second page, for example it happens in Insignia but not Headgear.

  52. Jeff Hebert says:

    Thanks Level, I appreciate that. I am using FF3 on MacOSX and don’t see that happening at all. When I right-click on the movie and select “About Flash Player 9” I get version 9,0,124,0 from the Adobe site. Which version does it show you as having?

    I am also wondering (if you’re willing) if upgrading to the Flash Player 10 fixes it? And are you on a PC or a Mac?

  53. DJ says:

    I have Adobe 10 and I haven’t got the bug.

    I am a PC user and my browser is FF3.

  54. Level says:

    I tested with XP and Vista. The exact Flash version was 9,0,124,0, after updating to 10.0.12.36 I no longer get the bug, and I found out there is a third page in Headgear.

  55. Jeff Hebert says:

    Cool, thanks fellahs. I’ll have to see if I can figure out what changed between those releases to make it happen, or try a different way of paginating.

  56. Dale says:

    I think I’ve solved the “Clear” problem. Click on “Clear”, then when the dialog box appears, don’t click on “Close”, just click on the item with the red “x” cursor and it will be cleared.

  57. Kaldath says:

    Hey Jeff, I was wondering if you could add a button that would allow you to duplicate EXACTLY the item clicked. So if you wanted an exact copy of say the circle insignia at the same exact scale and rotation instead of having to manually resize a second circle you simply activate the button and click on the circle you want and poof another one appears ready to be placed where you want it.

  58. Jeff Hebert says:

    Not a bad idea Kaldath. Maybe a “Clone” button, and I could use an Anakin Skywalker icon :-p

  59. Joshua says:

    Jeff, many thanks to you sir. This “Warrior-Mini” applet is indeed sweet. I have, as well, encountered the bug on some of the item slots going blank when I try to return to the screen after scrolling back to them. Other than that, I can’t wait for the new items ready to be unleashed by fertile (…maybe a lil’ deranged) imaginations.

    P.S.– Thanks to this applet, I present to you, Corporal Jeff Herbert of the 101st Airborne DIV, 502d PIR. Not entirely historically accurate, but enough so to march into Berlin and wrangle Hitler to a surrender!
    http://img523.imageshack.us/my.php?image=101stcx7.jpg

  60. Jeff Hebert says:

    Thanks Joshua, nice job on the pic! I like the way you duped and rotated the belts to make a nifty shoulder harness setup too, very cool.

  61. DJ says:

    Another good feature to add is the ability to latch one item on to another so that you can move multiple items together for like the hands and body attached so you can move/shrink/rotate them together.

  62. Jeff Hebert says:

    @DJ: That’s definitely something I am planning on at least trying with HM3, a next-level grouping sort of thing. A sample hierarchy (with each level being movable along with everything under it) being Hand-Forearm&Upperarm-WholeArm-Torso.

    Kind of like in the HM3 rotate test thingie, where you can choose to rotate the forearm and the hand goes with it, or the arm and the forearm and hand both go with it.

  63. GreenBat says:

    I developed a Green Goblin-like air rider from shoulder pieces.
    http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/UNTBat/Hero%20Machine/rider.png

  64. Kaldath says:

    I love the versatility of this application , not a huge fan of the actual pose however. Anyway here is another example of stuff you can do with this program … http://s285.photobucket.com/albums/ll49/Kaldath/?action=view&current=ThePatriotIII.png … Used a combination of belts and insignia to make the red and white stripes.

  65. DJ says:

    Kaldath- Even though you won the contest don’t you wish this was around then?!?

  66. Kaldath says:

    It would have been nice, but I can’t make my winning character with this program ,, at least not yet. The Warriors Mini doesn’t have any hoods and I haven’t figured out how to make a hood from the other items yet

  67. the creator says:

    I love this,got busted using it at work by my teamleader, who promtly asked for the link,….
    it would be cool for HM3 maybe to have tatoos for the whole body and not just the chest

  68. Fabien says:

    A too permitting to associate two items would be useful.
    For example, if you create two insignias, you cannot apply a mask to the two. You can duplicate the body or the top to apply but the result will be better if you can associate items in a same layer and apply the mask.
    Il suppose this tool will be other uses.

  69. Jeff Hebert says:

    Nice Green Goblin sled there, GreenBat!

    Although I think the actual drawing of the figure is good, I’m not super thrilled with him just standing there either. But, with all the flipping and rotating and such, having him at a three quarters angle would not work at all. Hopefully once you can rotate and move body parts in HM3 it’ll be better.

  70. GreenBat says:

    Jeff,
    Is there any application to group things together and then duplicate like what I did with the stars on the chest of the attached Americomando2.
    http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/UNTBat/Hero%20Machine/Americomando2.png

  71. Jeff Hebert says:

    I don’t have that functionality built in, but it could be done. There are a lot of implications to this whole duping thing that are going to take some thinking about, I’m glad we’re having a chance to test-drive it on the Mini before going full-bore with 3.0.

    Nice character, btw!

  72. Kaldath says:

    Jeff If you can add a single straight arm either to the tops of the backplane that would be awesome. It would allow you have have one arm straight and the other bent buy building the body from tops, backpane items and legware, that way you have a bit of a custom pose. as it is now you have to have both arms bent or both arms straight adding that single straight arm item would allow a pose similar to that in HM2.X

  73. Fabien says:

    On the scaling tool, a button “keep proportion” would be useful.

  74. Jeff Hebert says:

    @Kaldath, you mean straight kind of like in that DaVinci drawing of the figure with the arms and legs rotating out?

    @Fabien, good idea!

  75. Jeff Hebert says:

    You know, I still only have one item in the Body slot. I could add all the spare limbs and limbless torsos and such in there so you could literally build your own body out of pieces. Kind of macabre, but interesting.

  76. Kaldath says:

    well when I mean straight I mean like the arms are on the regular body template, but the more arms and leg poses you can come up with the better in my opinion

  77. Kaldath says:

    Just Curious if you are going to put out a second Beta with all the new ideas and bug corrections before you do the final release ?

  78. Jeff Hebert says:

    Not sure yet, Kaldath. Probably another iteration of the beta version, but the timing is getting pretty tight, they want a full launch very early in December. It just depends on how fast everything goes.

  79. Joshua says:

    Y’know, I do have an odd question, maybe a pseudo-request for you, Jeff: Is there any chance these applets will be released for download? In the event a person’s access goes down and he just wants to fire an applet on up and design away.

  80. Jeff Hebert says:

    Doubtful, Joshua — they’re built for advertising clients who pay to have them produced and put online. Without the online traffic aspect the clients wouldn’t be interested in them, if that makes sense.

    Now for HM3, I don’t know, we haven’t gone into that yet. It’s a different beast, since it’s not client-specific and is completely UGO’s to do with as they like.

  81. DJ says:

    I like Kaldaths idea of having the arms separate kind of like how you have the hands. Right now the separate hands doesn’t work to well because if you move them to much they don’t fit right on the arm.

  82. Will says:

    It’s pretty cool I hope you will add seperate Face parts insted of only useing full faces it will be cool to see what you add