tolerable size of sprite monsters

what do you think is the maximum size for a custom monster before sprites no longer pass the willing suspension of disbelief. ive heard people complain about how the spidermastermind is too big for a sprite based monster, tho i've not noticed this in play

I think the Spider Mastermind's size is just right

The biggest problem with the SM sprite is its stupid turbine helicopter street-sweeper corpse.

I think that monsters up to about the spider mastermind's size are fine as sprites. Anything that is atleast, let's say, twice as large as the spider mastermind/cyberdemon should use models instead. Really big monsters just look off as sprites unless they're far away. When you get close to them it looks really weird regardless of whether you use sprite billboarding or not. Just play Armageddon invasion and get really close to one of the giant stone golems that appear in one of the maps and look up at him, you'll see what I'm talking about. He will either look like he's hovering above you or like a giant cardboard cutout, depending on your sprite billboarding settings.

Additional rotations would help out a bit but I doubt you could get much larger. Really, the only thing that ticks me off about the SM - and the arachnotron, for that matter - is its hitbox extending one third beyond its sprite. Earlier on in my Dooming experience I had an autoload patch that "corrected" this issue, not realising that it would botch a whole lot of setups and other edits; thanks for that revelation, Mapgame. Damned turrets.

With spider mastermind imo there is no problem because we all accepted him like that in childhood and now don't feel the need to analyze the sprites. But if another monster of same proportions appeared then yes, many people would probably say that the sprites are too big.

Personally though I have much more problems with stuff like Batman Doom, where all monsters are noticeably taller than the classic ones. You're always fighting giants and it kinda makes you feel miserable if you know what I'm saying.

Anything larger than the SpiderMastermind and you will run into other engine limitations as well, that may produce glitches.

The problems I personally see with Spider Mastermind's size are all gameplay-related, not appearance-related. I think I'd accept whatever super giant sprite-based thing all alright, if it was drawn competently and being good gameplay-wise.

Graf Zahl said:

Anything larger than the SpiderMastermind and you will run into other engine limitations as well, that may produce glitches.

Not necessarily. See this: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing/71482-importing-tall-sprites-to-work-in-vanilla/

I think maybe he was referring to the blockmap stuff.

Width of the sprite is what matters, since the wider the sprite, the further away it gets from its center where it is actually positioned in the level.

I'd cite the cars in Batman Doom as an example of something that doesn't work. But the Spider Mastermind doesn't seem quite so bad to me. Rotation frames can make the problem worse since you get that unpleasant "jumping" between frames as you walk around the object.

scifista42 said:

The problems I personally see with Spider Mastermind's size are all gameplay-related, not appearance-related. I think I'd accept whatever super giant sprite-based thing all alright, if it was drawn competently and being good gameplay-wise.

These also count as glitches. The biggest ine being that a sprite is only processed by the renderer if the sector its center is in is in view. And the larger it gets the higher the chance that the sprite may pop in and out.

128 is the limit because that's the size of one blockmap block. If you go wider, any engine aside from ZDoom will definitely exhibit some oddities because the BlockThingsIterator may no longer be able to catch such a large thing when checking for other actors in the game.

Once in an ambitious corner, I started creating a huge (1280x512) pit-boss, but it wouldn't stay perfectly in its pit, depending on what angle of the screen he was occupying (centre vs edges). Don't have much hope for finishing the swirling Rimstorm, though I'm sure it'd look a menace sweeping through slaughter wads, mopping up aggro.

Soundblock said:

Once in an ambitious corner, I started creating a huge (1280x512) pit-boss, but it wouldn't stay perfectly in its pit, depending on what angle of the screen he was occupying (centre vs edges). Don't have much hope for finishing the swirling Rimstorm, though I'm sure it'd look a menace sweeping through slaughter wads, mopping up aggro.

http://www.monstercute.com/uploads/2/8/1/9/2819457/6534155_orig.png

http://www.monstercute.com/uploads/2/8/1/9/2819457/6390693_orig.png

Looks imposing, reminds me of the Squids from Devil Daggers.