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Doom Marine

Looking for a new melee weapon

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I'm looking for a new melee weapon, something like a hammer, axe, knife, or sword. Should still look and feel "Doom".

 

Example found while Googling https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=15908&start=375:

 

image.png.2c305fd5d6a82592042e3695914b4ca1.png

This axe is too clean, if the author made it more gritty and included more animation frames transitioning from horizontal to vertical, it would be perfect. 

 

Other suggestions?

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You could create a visually degraded version of the axe if you would prefer it to be closer to stock Doom weapons in terms of sprite quality, you could create a limited palette or just convert between formats until it’s “lossy” enough. I’ve done this before but usually in reverse to try and clean things up or give them a more uniform palette.

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I want to do a more primitive version with just wooden stock and without the rubber handle, a khaki full plastic handle version with UAC logo and blood decals. I will also do a little bigger sprites to work with weapon sway, which will include transition frames from holding the axe to swinging it. Maybe during this weekend.

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9 hours ago, Doomkid said:

You could create a visually degraded version of the axe if you would prefer it to be closer to stock Doom weapons in terms of sprite quality, you could create a limited palette or just convert between formats until it’s “lossy” enough. I’ve done this before but usually in reverse to try and clean things up or give them a more uniform palette.

I would if I felt confident enough to do it. 

I don't think I have the artistic eye or know-how to do what you described... anyone want to help me?

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Okay, so I saved the PNG as a bitmap and then imported it into XWE. It is now in Doom's palette, very very little loss compared to the PNG so it's essentially still the same.

 

AX.zip

 

There is an interesting way in XWE (and probably Slade) to get a bit of extra degradation, if you think it's necessary. You can change the palette being used from Doom to, oh say, Duke Nukem or Dark Forces using the tabs at the top. Do this, then import the image, and you will notice the colors have been remapped with some loss. You can then export that image, switch the pallet back to Doom, and re-import the image once again. Now it will be in Doom's palette but will have been degraded somewhat. There are about 20 palettes to pick from in XWE so I won't try and find the best one as it will take a while, but hopefully this will get you where you want to be.

 

Though, for whatever it's worth, the axe looks quite good even with the "too clean and nice for Doom" thing it has going on.

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maybe darken the whole sprite.

 

axe is absolutely the best choice imo. it was in the iphone game and quake 1. no doubt.

Edited by Mk7_Centipede

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4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

the axe looks quite good even with the "too clean and nice for Doom" thing it has going on.

 

Agreed. The axe looks nice. I don't think much change is even needed.

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4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Okay, so I saved the PNG as a bitmap and then imported it into XWE. It is now in Doom's palette, very very little loss compared to the PNG so it's essentially still the same.

...
Though, for whatever it's worth, the axe looks quite good even with the "too clean and nice for Doom" thing it has going on.

 

Maybe because it was already converted to DooM pallete and tested ingame?

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lol are you being sassy with me or something? Doom Marine provided a PNG and I converted it to a Doom-palette bitmap and was pleasantly surprised that there was no loss.. is that bad?

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Guys, I MADE that sprite set. It was already converted to DooM pallete and it was said in the original thread. It was made from scratch to be like that and it was tested to fit DooM style.

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You did a good job with it, I don’t see why me converting it to bmp seems to have you a bit riled up though. I didn’t check the original thread, I simply converted it to bitmap since PNGs don’t work in the majority of source ports out there. Additionally most PNG Doom graphics don’t use the original palette so I was pleasantly surprised that this sprite did... I was expecting there to be some loss (which is what Doom Marine actually wanted in his original post) but there wasn’t any since it was already properly palettized. And then I was like “oh that’s cool”.

 

Why the sass? I’m guessing there must be a miscommunication here or something.

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4 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

Guys, I MADE that sprite set. It was already converted to DooM pallete and it was said in the original thread. It was made from scratch to be like that and it was tested to fit DooM style.

Thanks for creating it, you will be credited of course.

 

... would you still have a non-cutoff version of the rightmost sprite? I play with 16:9 and had to omit that one frame.

 

... I know you mentioned in the ZDoom thread that it worked well for you, but for development flexibility, it would be nice to have that sprite intact so the modder can decide the cutoff themselves.

Edited by Doom Marine

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I uploaded upgraded sprite sheet with 3 more variations, some more frames and some extensions which can be useful when animating the weapon. It's again converted to DooM palette and than saved as transparent PNG. Since if you are using custom weapons, you are using sourceport that can use pngs anyways, I don't see why you would ever want to convert it to bmps (which can be done in 2 clicks in SLADE anyway). Mediafire host shows it as jpeg, but it lies.
The cutoff is there because that sprite is supposed to be on the edge of the screen when using 16:9 aspect ratio. I extended it a little, but the render is getting distorted by perspective beyond that point. It should be enough for 16:9, since my working render is 16:9 plus a buffer anyway.

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21 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

I uploaded upgraded sprite sheet with 3 more variations, some more frames and some extensions which can be useful when animating the weapon.

I like what I see. The red axe is most appealing and fits in with DVII's red theme.

 

21 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

The cutoff is there because that sprite is supposed to be on the edge of the screen when using 16:9 aspect ratio. I extended it a little, but the render is getting distorted by perspective beyond that point. It should be enough for 16:9, since my working render is 16:9 plus a buffer anyway.

It's better than before, but I use 16:9 and still have problems with the cutoff.

Let me help you understand where I'm coming from as a modder:

 

DVII is Boom-compatible, so the assets are designed around the 320x200 HUD, here's my workspace in SLADE:

 

image.png.6bcaaadb4b6ec8b82353fb942bf1575a.png

The axe orientation for me, is designed around the 320x200 HUD!

 

image.png.35336fce652f361c1565c78bb9209c2f.png

Here's the montage of desired orientation in Photoshop, 320x200.

 

doom22.png.9b01d44b2d4734cf8fbeddda27631491.png

Given the specs above, here's what it actually looks like in-game, 16:9...

Given that I'm orienting the Axe around the 320x200 HUD standard, the cutoff is unusable and I still have to omit the above frame.

 

21 hours ago, NeoWorm said:

I extended it a little, but the render is getting distorted by perspective beyond that point.

It's okay to have distortions at the periphery. Furthermore, things are hyper-distorted when you go Ultrawide. The render is planned around 16:9 I understand, and I use 16:9 as well... but think about the cutoff in Ultrawide, like 21:9! The right-most sprite is not future-proofed at all, and the second reason why I didn't include it.

 

Fact of the matter is: I as a modder would MUCH rather have distortion than... see above...

 

Even if you plan the cutoff for 16:9, you can't predict how the modders will implement in what situation, mine for example!

I'm a content creator too, I created many assets for DVII, I adhere to the policy of when solving for X, solve for N as well, whenever possible.

In which case, the optimal design for any weapon set should be generalized to M:N perspective ratio where M can be >>>> N.

 

My humble suggestion: implement the full render of the rightmost frame, and let the modder decide if they want to keep it... or where they want it cut off.

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