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wesleyjohnson

Sprites not done

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FreeDoom really needs to have some monster sprites instead of those temporaries. It has been said too many times that such and such monster sprite has not been done yet. It is especially bad for the large monsters where the temporary sprite being used does not represent the monster size nor weapons.

We need to make a list:
From memory, so may be wrong !!

cyberdemon:
I cannot remember seeing one in dungeon.
There are a few now, map31 at least.

spider mastermind:
UPDATE: Submitted spider demon by wesleyjohnson, Aug 2010.

archvile:
Currently represented by skeleton, which is not too bad.
It shoots invisible missiles. Are the missiles supposed to be invisible, or are the sprites not done yet ??

revenant:
Did it get resized to the physical height the engine uses ??

demon:
The pink worm. We have gotten used to this now, and it looks
fine, but I have noticed that the engine thinks it is much wider than the sprite being shown. The original was a chunky pink thing with legs.

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My first impulse is that it would be better to have something representative and of the correct size, even if it is a stick figure.

If it is not the correct size, then the player does not know where to shoot. The engine enforces the physical size, so strange effects can happen, like heads in the ceiling. A too short monster is a problem too. You can kill the spider mastermind, without even seeing it, if you know where to shoot. It can kill the player without the player realizing how dangerous it is.

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You might as well add the Hell Knight/Baron, Archvile and Revenant to that list as well. For all intents and purposes they're completely missing too.

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But they are not actual placeholders with a Graphic not Done box on them. Perfecting sprites will be in another release. This upcoming release I am just hoping for a few more.

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I have looked into making a spider demon, but after a couple of days,
I have found that I do not have the necessary tools.
They are probably all DOS based.

I cannot even port existing tools to Linux as the downloads are all
executable, without source code.


Problems:
1. Get current sprite into some format that I can steal the Freedoom palette from it.

2. Get palette into some drawing program and make it work.
The programs usually have their own ideas.

3. After drawing about 20 views and steps, assemble them into a LMP
that can be submitted.
I assume that they are assembled in a LMP. ??

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I suggest using the git repo if you are going to work with sprites. It has all the raw sprite files separated. You can build the iwads quickly to check your work in-game.

Gimp will probably be your main tool to work with sprites. Imagemagick is also an excellent tool. I used it with scripts to make the recolors. XWE in Wine is also great to double check things, not recommended for doing actual work.

Here is the Gimp palette for Doom. Close enough to Freedoom's. No idea how to use it.
http://ftpusers.coffeenet.org/~cato/freedoom/tools/Doom.gpl

Here is my test wad. Should have all the sprites and monsters are behind invisible walls so they can be viewed from all angles.
http://ftpusers.coffeenet.org/~cato/freedoom/maps/FDtest01.zip

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Thanks. I suspected somebody had to have some working files.

After posting, I went on a search and downloaded everything I could find on sprite editing. There is only one package, xwadtools, which is put out by the same people (Majorel, etc.) who did yadex, and is for DOS and Unixes. I ended up with 3 versions of it, but the latest is 4.4.0.
Avoid deutex36 because it is only DOS executables and version 3.6.

Got to get Xforms to make XEW work.

It has about 20 command line tools. Such as deutex, bsp, a bunch of
palette conversion tools (one for gimp). The tools have many authors, and some have been ported.

If you are not using deutex to assemble the wad, then you must be using something similar.
If so, then the sprite file/directory that deutex uses should be adequate. I doubt I can get git access to work in any short time.
Deutex can explode a wad quickly enough, according to their docs.

Deutex has docs on how to extract a palette from existing sprite.
I will also try to get it out of the freedoom wad.
During assembly, deutex will do a find closest color.

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After seeing some of the artwork from FinalDoom, I am thinking that the arachnotron and spider-mastermind need to have mechanical legs (of some kind not identical to the original artwork).
Any opinions on that beforehand ??

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Have been working on Spider demon mastermind.
It has 8 mech legs.
I have front, back and 1 side view done.
It takes about 3 hours per sprite view.

I am using Gimp on Linux X-windows, so I have no interest in any windows programs to do this.

I have considered, seriously, making a 3d model in my other 3D game program and having it draw the sprite views. That would require changes to that program that would take almost as long to make.

Anyone got existing 3D sprite model program to draw sprite graphics that runs on Linux ???

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Have tried to download and compile some 3D tools that might be usable for generating sprite from a 3D model. As usual they have resisted compiling correctly and I got stuck with trying to debug boost library and JAM again.
Am still working on the SpiderDemon but have to consider some other way to make it go faster. I have too many other projects going on to really PLAN on spending 1 or 2 days per sprite view. (3 hours was overly optimistic)

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wesleyjohnson said:

Have tried to download and compile some 3D tools that might be usable for generating sprite from a 3D model.

Doin' it the Lil' White Mouse way, eh? Did you know you can use alt+PrtScn on the keyboard to take a screenshot of the monitor's screen? That way you can then upload an image of what you're working on to an image website. I am looking forward to seeing what this spiderdemon will be like!

EDIT: Oh, you're using Linux... I use windows so I have no idea how linux works, sorry.

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I am still stuck in a loop of this tool needs this library, which will not compile without errors. Using GIMP for now. Do you know of any 3D model to sprite tool, for Linux, that does not require two or three libraries to support it, for Linux.

Is that screen-print for windows or Linux?

I do not have the png files with me here, so here is verbal desc.

Spider Demon:
Swollen tick body on 8 mech legs.
Torso centered on tick body, with four arms, two of which operate the gatling gun mounted on tick body front.
Large power box on tick body behind torso.
Two eyes on short stalks sticking out sideways.
Armored mask on head area.
Four short orange stalks on top of head area.

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Seriously, calling Vader to this topic. He's produced some amazing original content for things like KDIZD. His "terminator", satyr or chaingunner would be great. I think he's also working on a few more.

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Scuba Steve said:

Seriously, calling Vader to this topic.

I'm not so sure that would be the greatest idea. First of all, Vader has a spriting style all his own that clashes with the FreeDoom style. In greater detail, look at freedoom's graphics. Notice how they are made in Fredrik's (or whoever made the art for FreeDoom) style of art. Then compare that to Vader's style of art. Vader monsters set in a completely Fredrik environment would look silly and tacky. Plus, calling Vader to every scene like that is a little fanboyish. Besides since when were you, Scuba Steve, interested in FreeDoom?

Unless you can get Vader to draw Fredrik-style, we're better off getting wesleyjohnson to hustle up and seeing what he's doing or even getting Fredrik himself to get up off his ass and make moar freedoom.

EDIT: FreeDoom's style of monsters does not look very hellish, they are more alien-like. Please keep that in mind when making monsters for freedoom.

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I think some critters from Harmony, scaled-down so as not to be hi-res, and with some clean up to make them look less photo-of-clay-model-y, could work well in FreeDoom. They do fit the alien mutant aesthetics.

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I would agree with that. Aren't a lot of the FreeDoom monsters based on clay models anyway?

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For those that want to see what the spider-demon (that I may be working on one of these days again) looks like, I have uploaded a zip file with PNG files.

See incoming/johnson-spid-v4-1-PNG.zip

I still cannot figure how to put a PNG in a forum message.
So, I zipped them up and uploaded them to incoming.

The file incoming/v4.zip is a mistake, and I cannot delete it or rename it.

Comments please. Please do not wait until I have made 16 views of this
before saying that you hate it.

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The idgames archives?

For this kind of things, it's better to use a dedicated host like DRD Team.

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The graphic style is quite different from the other Freedoom monsters. Also, the posture of the monster lacks dynamism.

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I like it. It's interesting, and certainly better than no monster at all.

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Sorry, my first reply has gone missing, I shall try to repeat this from memory.

Yep, cannot read incoming site now, used to be able read files.
ftp://free.doomers.org/incoming/

I saw that the revenant has got the black spider look already, so I went with something different, a sea-born creature that was adapted to land with mech legs.

Could use more details, and comments. Much easier to change now than later.

Does the spider-demon really need to be a spider ??

What is the consensus for a black spider look for the spider-demon
or can be as different as the cacodemons and barons are different from the id-games versions?

Does the spider-demon need to be a spider-mastermind, with a swelled head and brain showing?
I can swell the head some to make it more brainy, but I prefer the metal mask instead of brain showing (who goes into battle with their brain showing, really) ?

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The whole point was to make things not look like id stuff. The only thing a spider mastermind needs is a really big size and to shoot a gun really fast. Or two guns. We are not trying to just copy id stuff.

The size of the sprite and its method of attack are the only things that cant be changed.

Its sounds are also not done. You can make pretty much any big monster that shoots gun/guns and create your own sound for it. Or sounds can be made to fit the monster.
Does not even need guns, if its attack is passable as creating tons of instant hit damage.

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Not being able to read the FTP is by design, not accident. (For a short while you could read it. That was by accident).

If you could anonymously write files and anonymously read them, anyone could use the freedoom FTP drop to distribute anything. Which is not ideal.

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The engine will shoot bullets from a particular spot on the sprite.
It is best if the new sprites shoot from the same spot, or else there can be weird side effects, like the view of the gun being blocked, but a creature out of the line of fire getting chewed up.
Having the gun barrel at the same height as the original is important as that cannot be adjusted with offsets.

Some of the demons throw fireballs, but notice that the fireballs come from a particular spot on the body as if they were lauched.
For some the current creatures it looks like the fireball is just launched from the belly because there is no matching motion to suggest anything else.

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Catoptromancy said:

Darknation has said these can be used. Sprites just need cutting up and improvised for missing frames.

Those sprites don't have any rotations. While they could be used as-is (look the same from any angle), imho that is not good enough for FreeDoom when all the other monsters have them.

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