teh 3D thing (yet another Zdoom question)

[Captain Red]

Ok, bear with me...

For Zdoom:
Lets say (as an example) I wanted to give one of the doom tree sprites 3D, in the same way you view the monsters from 8 different angles, I want o give the tree 8 angles. Now I know this can be done, (it was done with the nazi sprites in TNT2.wad) but I can’t work out how...

[Fletcher`]

tre2a1 -front view
tre2a2a8 -left front and right front views
tre2a3a7 -left and right views
tre2a4a6 -left back and right back views
tre2a5 -back views

or

tre2a1 -front
tre2a2 -left front
tre2a3 -left
tre2a4 -left back
tre2a5 -back
tre2a6 -right back
tre2a7 -right
tre2a8 -right front

[Captain Red]

so if I just add the graphics to the wad, they will appear?

[Fletcher`]

Yes.

[Cyrez]

also note that Zdoom supports 16 directions now rather than the old 8 so it would look like this if you wanted all 16 in a DECORATE.lmp

tre2A1
tre2A9
tre2A2
tre2AA
tre2A3
tre2AB
tre2A4
tre2AC
tre2A5
tre2AD
tre2A6
tre2AE
tre2A7
tre2AF
tre2A8
tre2AG

[Gokuma]

Oh cool (About 16 directions with ZDoom).

Also I think you can mix it just about any way where the second frame/view is a mirror of first.

For example:

skela4d6 (will be skela4 and skeld6 will be this mirrored)

misla7a3 (rocket is opposite of the usual a3a7)

[Cyb]

Yes, sprite frames are and always have been dynamic, even with doom.exe (though there were still other issues to be worked out when including new sprites for doom.exe maps). The format of sprites works fairly simply:

XXXX(n#)*

Where XXXX is the four letter name of the sprite (HEAD is the caco, TROO is the imp, PLAY is the player etc etc) (n#) represents the frame name and viewpoint. So the first frame is A, second is B etc etc. The viewpoint is the angle you see the sprite at. 1 is the front view, 2 is view from slightly to the left (45 degrees), 3 is from the left, 4 is 45 degrees behind to the left, 5 is directly behind, 6 is 45 degrees to the right, 7 is directly to the right, 8 is 45 degrees to the left from the front. (keep in mind those are the thing in question's right and left, not on the screen, I like to make it more complex :P).

On top of that you can have frames mirror each other. So making a sprite XXXXn2n8 will use a mirror of the sprite used for viewpoint 2 of frame n for viewpoint 8. You can reverse that so XXXXn8n2 will use a mirror of viewpoint 8 for sprite n when viewpoint 2 needs to be used. You can also (I believe) mix in any way you see necessary, so for instance you could do XXXXn1n5 which would use a mirror of viewpoint 1 (front view) for viewpoint 5 (rear view). I haven't tried it yet either, but you might even be able to pull some crazy shit and try something like XXXXn1(n+1)5 which would use a mirror of viewpoint 1 in frame n for the rear view in the next frame. In fact, the arachnotron sprites in doom2 do that very thing (the first frame is named BSPIA1D1 which means that a mirror of the sprite used for the front view of the trons in frame A will be used for the front view of frame D.

And on top of that if you use the format XXXXn0 where XXXX and n mean the same thing, that sprite will be used for all the viewpoints no matter where you stand. All the decorative sprites, weapons, powerups, ammo and dead/dying sprites use this method. It is possible to make death frames that are not the same from every angle (at least it should be) though I've never seen it.

So anyways the point of this lengthy post is that you can add 8 viewpoints for every sprite (16 with zdoom, should you desire) due to the fairly open ended nature of how doom uses sprites (I assume this was so developers could add in new frames easily without having to alter the source and also for shortcuts, ie the arachnotron).