Thundercraft's Medal Pack

[Thundercraft (OP)]

Here is a pack of medal images I put together. I lost count of the hours and days I put into this. I started working on it back in 2013, but I never quite finished. Recently, I decided to finish it, as viruses and failed hard drives have cost me dearly (and again, recently).

Why do it? The originals came in a variety of sizes. Some looked almost identical. Quality varies from good to poor. And while a few have ribbons, most don't.

What bothered me most, though, was how many of the medals had obvious human or Earth origins. Some had human faces, Earth animals such as horses or lions, or political symbols such as a maple leaf or a hammer and sickle. Some just had terrestrial symbolism or were easily recognizable. Human or Earth symbols may work if that's the kind of empire your playing. But some play as non-human races, too.

Aurora's original medals range from 105x105 to 260x260 pixels. I've standardized them to either 250x250 or 260x260. And every last one of them has a ribbon.

Most importantly, I reduced signs of terrestrial origin. I also reduced the occurrence of words and characters, especially English. But if you look closely you will find a few.

You will recognize some. Indeed, some are the originals that I added a ribbon to or altered in some way. And some are from Marski's Soviet Era Medals Pack. But many either come from the depths of the 'net, are modified, or are otherwise medals you've probably never seen.

There are 87 medals in this pack in .JPG, for a total of 931 Kb uncompressed or 909 Kb in the .ZIP.

One last thing: I have (most of) these in .PNG, if anyone wants higher quality. I also have about 11 MB of various medal images that I collected or put together to make this pack, including at least 43 high resolution ribbons that are ready to use and numerous higher resolution medals. Send me a PM if you want them to make more medals.

BTW: If you want to know where a particular medal came from, I might be able to say. But then again, I might not.

Preview images:



Edit: Package updated with slightly touched-up ribbons.

[nadia911]

Thanks !!!! Great work 

[ExChairman]

Nice!! 

[Thundercraft (OP)]

Update: There were a few ribbons which bothered me because the color(s) were too bright and the vertical stripe(s) looked too sharp (painted), rather than looking natural. So, I reduced the saturation and blended/smoothed the edges. The medals changed:

M003
M027
M059
M064
M065
M068

For the record, there were 16 downloads of the old pack.

BTW: Any comments on the medals themselves? Is there a medal you particularly like? Or, perhaps, one that you don't like?

Personally, my favorites are:

M023
M015
M062
M008

M023 was not actually a medal. But it looks great as one. And I could imagine it as alien.

I like the uniqueness of M040 and M058. The latter is supposed to be an ancient Greek design.

My least favorite are M085, M086, and M087. I was uncertain whether I should include them. But, I imagine there may be a few non-human cultures which have some cross symbolism of some sort.
M087 may be a pentagram (and not too fancy a design, at that), but it is primarily a star, which the majority of the medals includes.

M002 is actually an Olympic medal. But the scratch pattern design looks alien to me.

Some of the color choices may seem odd. But this is the future. And different cultures and alien races may have different outlooks on certain symbols or colors.

Also, I don't think there's anything wrong with having so many with stars. A star shape would not be unique to human culture. I think it would be a common symbol used by various races, considering the significance, particularly among those who are now star-faring.

Granted, the shape itself is not accurate as stars are all spherical. It arose from the distortion of light when observing a star, which has to do with the biological structure of our eyes. But, again, that's probably common.

PS: I was working on flag and race pic packs, perhaps even a planet pack. But it's a lot of work.

[Garfunkel]

Thanks, these will be useful!

[MarcAFK]

I just remembered you mentioned you wanted to start on a planet pack, well I've just about finished a modified version of Tarran's old planet pack from here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5732.0;

[IanD]

Very nice work, but is there any chance of the '39-45 campaign stars, Defence and War medal in this quality?
Regards
Ian

[Thundercraft (OP)]

The image host which I had used to show what these medals looked like got shut down. But I managed to re-upload the images to a new host.

Very nice work, but is there any chance of the '39-45 campaign stars, Defence and War medal in this quality?

Honestly, I'm not that knowledgeable about medals or military matters. Though, obviously, you're talking about WWII era medals.

I did a Google search for "campaign stars" and "Defence and War", though some of that gave me mixed results. Are you referring to the British medals issued for various theaters of war, such as Africa, the Pacific and the Atlantic? From my search, it looks like the medal, itself, on most of these look very similar to each other, aside from each having a different ribbon color/pattern.

[idefelipe]

Are this medals compatible with Aurora C#?

[Thundercraft (OP)]

Are this medals compatible with Aurora C#?

I'm not sure as I haven't tried Aurora C#, yet. But what I've read suggests that it's a bit different. At least, I see that Aurora C# also allows custom images for ribbons in addition to medals. And most of those ribbon and medal mod packs for Aurora C# include a CVS file and say "CSV ready". Apparently, this allows the automatic assignment of ribbons and medals... I think.

I do plan to release versions of this and my other image pack for Aurora C# at some point.

In the meanwhile, you could check out the Image Enhancements area of the C# Aurora > C# Utilities sub-sections. That's where the image packs for Aurora C# can be found.

[Aloriel]

While these medals look *amazing*, I suspect that they are not C# compatible. C# medals are ribbons, not technically medals.

[Black]

I never tried using bigger medals in C#, but Marski was using bigger medals in his C# game: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10763.0 so if the format is correct for Aurora C# it should work.

[Sebmono]

Yeah non-ribbon medals will definitely work

[Aloriel]

Nice! I may just have to switch to medals....