Tips for editing and cutting sprites?!

[Tormentor667]

Well, I am going to create altered doom enemies (via Hexen/Heretic support for ZDoom 2.0) for my TNT3 (this time more than only 1 map and also larger :D).

For this I use original Doom enemies, change colors, intensity, eventually also size, cut from other units from hexen, heretic, duke nukem, bloo´d and strife different parts (head, weapon, shield, armor, torso, legs) and put them together to get an altered doom style unit (nice, isn'T it!?)

Well, now I am new to this aspect of "wad"ing so I'd like to now if there are some things you have to look very close to, so the final actor won't look crappy. :)

This evening (Middle European Standard Time is now 3 PM so I will post it in 3-4 hours) I will post some examples I am working on this moment and which you can comment. BUT PLEASE: Gimme some tips :D

[Tormentor667]

This is what I have done so far:

Baron of Hell Variation

He has darker legs and a "browner" skin (yes, you are right, I like brown :D) Perhaps I'm going to delete his green slime on his hands, make him weaker then the Hell Knight and make the magic shield shoot.

baron of Hell Variation 2


This might look crazy if I finish it :) A Baron of Hell with a ancient helmet :) Neat ;) He could be stronger then the Knight but weaker then the Baron with a special fire (something from Heretic or Hexen, yello version of slimeballs ;)).

Plz comment it.

It is a damn hard work I found out. With makros, you can change the colors very fast in the correct order but it is very hard to make new sprite elements (shield, helmet) fit in its animation so it looks smooth ingame. Any tips?

[ReX]

Nice-looking modified sprites. I too have made modified sprites, and it is a painstaking process. Unfortunately, the cut-and-paste method is the only one I know, and you're already using that method. Nigel Rowand (Enjay001@hotmail.com) has done plenty of graphics and sprites work. You may want to check with him on your question.

By using graphics from Heretic & Hexen you're likely to get the correct size and proportions, which makes the job easier. The Build games (Duke 3D, Blood, etc.) use a larger format for their graphics, so cutting, pasting, and re-sizing them is often not worth the effort. (If you're using the entire sprite from these games in a PWAD meant for ZDooM, then you can scale the sprites down with no loss of graphic detail, but that's digressing from your situation.)

[Enjay]

Nice looking sprites. Very nice.

I think My favourite is the relatively simple approach of the Baron with the sheild. The other one looks good, but because I am used to seeing the Baron with his normal sized head, my subconscious is telling me that somehow his head has been squeezed very uncomfortably into the smaller Heretic knight's helmet. although the sprite itself does not actually seem out of proportion.

Did you know that there are now Zdoom codepointers for use in Dehacked patches that allow you to make a thing invulnerable, and then vulnerable again? I've used this for a few monsters. Could be useful for your shield carrying Baron to raise his shield and enjoy a few moments of invulnerability when you hit him, or as he attacks or something. Of course you could use your sprites to replace the Hexen Cantaurs and get that effect pre programmed. The only problem there being the centaurs do not have many hit points compared to the baron (and there is no way of changing them), so they may seem a bit weak.

[Tormentor667]

Well, I have finished almost all of the sprites of this shield baron now and it is supposed to be a replacement for the CentaurLeader. I won't use it for the normal one because it can't shoot and also has only a few hitpoints. The CentaurLeader needs two loads of a full Supershotgun blast :( but I'm going to use it very often as a foot trooper variation like the imp.

I found out that this is really a "Knochenjob", its german and means something like bonejob, very hard and very time-consuming. It took me now about 4 hours and I am still not finished :( I have to make the baron shoot through his magic shield, I need the defend sprites and the splattersprite is still not that good :(

I'd really like to work in a team with 4 or 5 other guys who work also that hard ;)

Nevertheless, I have now to think about other variations and replacements for the hexen sprites. The real bad thing about it is still the fact, that hexhacked/herhacked doesn't work (are there such programs on the net?).

[NiGHTMARE]

We've already got pages to download textures, music and skins, but the community could really do with some kind of sprites resource site.

If it ever happens, I'd definitely submit a lot of decoration sprites to it :)

[Ichor]

You can use Dehacked to make both Centaur types shoot. Since the Slaughtaur fires twice and uses a separate frame for each shot, you can take one firing frame and reference it to the Slaughtaur, and the other firing frame you can reference to another monster. Throw in a code pointer for a different projectile, and you should have two types monsters with the Centaur shield that can fire two types of fireballs (or just one if you want). The Slaughtaur replacement would fire only once though.

Oh, and there is a program like Dehacked for Heretic and Hexen. One is called HHE 1.1, and the other is called Hex 0.84f.

[Enjay]

Dehacked cannot be used to affect Hexen monsters.

The links to HHE and Hex are useful, but not in this case where the mod is for Zdoom which doesn't support HHE or Hex patches.

I'm almost certain what we are talking about here is the Zdoom ability to spawn enemies from any of Heretic/Hexen/Doom(2) into any one of those games by virtue of the fact Zdoom2 supports them all. Tormentor667's CentaurLeader Shield Barons will replace the CentaurLeader, but will be used in a Zdoom Doom2 level (spawned via scripting) so Zdoom compatibility is essential.


Using the Barons as tougher-than-Imps foot soldiers sounds good BTW.

[NiGHTMARE]

Imps with shields would be good too :)

[Ichor]

Maybe you could give the Imps the Centaur sword instead.

[NiGHTMARE]

Heh, I just remembered another creature I never got around to finishing, a red coloured combination of Hexen's Chaos Serpent and Stalker:

http://uk.geocities.com/nb_nmare/demna1.bmp

(you'll need to copy and paste the url into your address bar)

[Tormentor667]

Well, a sprite resource site would be really great... maybe I have another nice job now :) (a bit of php coding and mysql and users are able to upload their own sprites to a huge archiv *g*). Nevertheless, you can get enough decorations to create numerous megawads but there are still not enough unit sprites and that sucks :(

About the HHE and HEX Dehacked files, I have submitted the following topic to the zdoom forums but unfortunately, in this moment, the forums aren't available.

It is a request to include different dehacked patches for one game in one map. You could for example name the DEHACKED lumps of Heretic and Hexen different (HEXHACKED and HERHACKED, whatever) and so ZDoom recognizes which things to edit. This would make life easier, it really would :(

Nevertheless, /me continues work on his Shield Baron :P Also it is time to invent a new and better name... "Shield Baron" sucks :D

[Tormentor667]

About my Shield Baron, this is the status of the moment: (for Baron -> Centaur Replacement)

Walking Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
Hurting Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
Shooting Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
Scratching Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
Defending Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
Normal Death Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
Swort Replacement Sprites: [color=green]Done![/color]
(the sword, which falls on the ground in the splatter sequence was replaced with a barons arm)
Splatter Sprites: [color=red]Unfinished![/color]

As you see, almost everything is finished except the Splatter Sprites :( Mine look shitty because I tried to combine the death frames of the baron with the splatter frames from the imp like Enjay, but as I said, my version looks shitty. Has anybody some good tips for me to make a nice and "doomish" splatter scene?!

**EDIT**
Why does vB code not work?!

vB code is ON

[Tormentor667]

Today I created two new enemys, both looking very nice :)

One is a altered version of the cacodemon. It is dark-grey and everything blue and green on the sprites became red, looks very evil now. It is supposed to be a replacement for the Heretic Disciple :) Unfortunately it doesn't have a lof of energy.

The second one is a altered blood spider which fits now perfect in the "Maulotaur" role :) You surely will like TNT3 :)

[NiGHTMARE]

You're right, the color tag doesn't work. It's probably to prevent people from abusing it.

[Tormentor667]

Well, then Doomworld should edit the vB Code template and delete all the codes which don't work. Otherwise it's a bit stupid.

PS: In this moment I finished my last monster, it is a "Imp-Mummy" Hybrid :) Acts and looks like a imp (justt grey instead of brown because nobody likes my brown maps *g*) but shoots and dies like a mummy from heretic (I just changed the shooting sprites, added a yellow border and made it light) with the flying orange soulhead and the grey soul which fades away when the mummy dies.Looks nice! Now I just have to make a nice story for this soul-imps ;)

Next part is map editing.

Nevertheless, thx for all your help and tips in this thread although I didn't need it actually!