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fraggle

Medikits shouldn't use the Red Cross emblem

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Fixed minor visual inconsistencies in the existing new medikit, made a berserk pack version, and did a new stimpack.

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Neat. Maybe replace the green with red on the berserk back, so it's a white cross on a glowing red background? It'd differentiate it more from the medikit.

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Comparison shot:



I think the red one is really bright and saturated. As for the green one I'd have to play the game with it for a while, to get used to it, to know if it's not distinguishable enough from the medikit at a glance.

Either way, thanks to Fredrik and Sodaholic for making these and so on.

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I could darken the red on that some.

By the way, what would you people think of everything else using a red background with a white cross? It just doesn't look right not being red to me, medical supplies in video games have always traditionally used red. (there may be some exceptions to that, but the most common one by far is red)

Again, I will stress my point that we should be aiming to keep things as visually similar as possible to how they already are. There are (unwritten) standards in place, and we should not try to deviate from them for the sake of it. Not only for visual reasons, but for gameplay too. It would probably take people some time to get used to the green, plus, it seems more like it would be poison to me.


If not red, then I suggest blue instead. It seems much more healthy to me.

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I like the green, and I also like having the berserk pack use a different color to better distinguish it ingame. And, really, red is the only color that makes sense for berserk, considering the screen tint.

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Sodaholic said:

I could darken the red on that some.

By the way, what would you people think of everything else using a red background with a white cross? It just doesn't look right not being red to me, medical supplies in video games have always traditionally used red. (there may be some exceptions to that, but the most common one by far is red)

Again, I will stress my point that we should be aiming to keep things as visually similar as possible to how they already are. There are (unwritten) standards in place, and we should not try to deviate from them for the sake of it. Not only for visual reasons, but for gameplay too. It would probably take people some time to get used to the green, plus, it seems more like it would be poison to me.


If not red, then I suggest blue instead. It seems much more healthy to me.


Personally, I think I like the green better than the red, and my thoughts on the alleged neccessity to stay visually comparable to the original Doom have been spewed around enough so I won't repeat them here. (Well, at least I hope not. :P)

Blue is poorly represented in the Doom palette though, and will probably look terrible in bad lighting. Aside from that, I personally can't see it as a 'health color' the same way that I see red and green.

If anything, I think the whiteness and square shape of the health supplies is more visually significant anyway.

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Mithran Denizen said:

Blue is poorly represented in the Doom palette though, and will probably look terrible in bad lighting.

If anything, I think the whiteness and square shape of the health supplies is more visually significant anyway.

Blue doesn't look too bad in the Doom palette, it will simply fade to gray. Not much different than red fading to brown, I think. (saturated color turns to dull roughly related color in both cases)

Regarding visual significance, I think that the secondary color is equally, if not more important, as it is the highlight and focus of the graphic, whereas the whiteness of the box is more of a background. Color obviously stands out more than grayscale, due to it's saturation.

As a side note, I think green is more appropriate for armor (yeah, there's the blue armor, but really, everything else armor related is represented with green)

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You should shorten the height of the crosses so that when they're aspect ratio-corrected they appear in the right proportions (reduce by 17%)

I prefer red; the berserk pack is much harder to distinguish with green. Perhaps reduce the brightness?

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If anyone would like to try the game with the green berserk box, please look at the latest daily build. I will put in the red one in a day or two, but I just wanted to offer the opportunity to those of you who can't or won't build your own :-)

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Another update. I decided to change the green into blue, the red on the berserk has been darkened, and it has been vertically scaled down a little bit to compensate for the 5:6 ratio of the pixels.

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Yeah, I think that blue looks awful. I still say green health items and red for the berserk is the best way to go. Not that it's a big deal either way.

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Sodaholic said:

...to compensate for the 5:6 ratio of the pixels.

The aspect ration of doom is 5:4, not 5:6.

Your medikit and your stimpack are very good. I like the green ones but the berzerk pack looks like the swiss flag but it doesn't go with any other color and it's awful with green.

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Are you sure about the aspect ratio? Vanilla Doom's resolution is 320x200, or 8:5. However, since Vanilla Doom was played almost exclusively on 4:3 monitors, most art was made with the assumption that the output pixels would be stretched to fill the screen. To compensate for the vertical stretching by 4:3 monitors, the art was stretched horizontally by 20%. This is because the pixels drawn on the 4:3 screen weren't square (1:1). The ratio of the pixels (not the screen) was 5:6. To correct for this in your art, you have to draw it with the inverse ratio (6:5, or 20% wider).

All of these numbers are related:
video buffer ratio * display pixel ratio = display screen ratio, or
8:5 * 5:6 = 4:3

Really the only number here you need to know for creating art is 6:5, because that's the width:height ratio in your graphic editor (or anything that displays square pixels) of something that appears square in Doom.

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In the game, graphics get stretched 20% horizontally compared to what we see in a desktop window, so they have to be a bit flatter than their target appearance.

Blue looks bad, too deep, compared to green, I think, aside from ditching the real life "first aid" reference. If you feel red looks too bright there, you could try using the red fist you had drawn before for the berserk pack, which was a cool and creative idea, instead of a square with a cross, as it didn't seem to stand out so much in red, and leave the green squares with white crosses on the medical items.

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Okay, just made these. Color changed back to green, minor detail changes on the medikit and stimpack, and a new fist for the berserk.

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Those new red ones are really ugly. But the old one (with bright white cross) was nice. No opinion about the green stuff, other than it's better than blue. The red/black/white combo creates a nice Gothic DM flavor.

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I think the sprites in the last post are ideal.

P.S. Probably the background for the health packs should be red, too, and the berserk pack should have a darker background so the fist would be more visible.

Kinda like that.


I mean, it's still easily recognizable as a "object with something red on it", and some real-life medkits use the white-on-red cross to avoid trademarks.

Also, these red things on the berserk pack are gone here -- yet another way to differentiate.

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I like that! I've taken the liberty of modifying that a little. Instead of black behind the fist, it uses the darkest red shade in the palette. the definition of the end of the pinky finger was enhanced. And the crosses use pink instead of grey (looks better, imo).

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What's the obsession with making all three the same color? Leave the green health items and use red for the berserk-fist sprite.

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myk said:

What's the obsession with making all three the same color? Leave the green health items and use red for the berserk-fist sprite.

I actually have always preferred that the health items be red, and the berserk wouldn't fit with any color other than red too. I honestly don't like having the health items be green or anything else, red is what is most familiar to me for medical supplies.

It was red to start with, and I don't think that should change.

EDIT: More changes. Modified the fist some more, flattened the cross on the stimpack some more and added some red things around the corner of the red box on the stimpack.




EDIT 2: Did even more editing to the fist, the thumb looks much better now. Also, the red dots around the corners of the stimpack have been modified just a little, looks better. EDIT 3: Very minor change to the red stimpack dots again.

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myk said:

What's the obsession with making all three the same color? Leave the green health items and use red for the berserk-fist sprite.


Because most of the medkits I've seen usually have white-on-red as the color scheme. If it wouldn't break the looks, I'd probably even suggest the all-red medkit.

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Perhaps we should add a poll to the thread with the following options?

*H (medikit and stimpack) B (berserk)
*Green cross (medikit and stimpack) Red cross (berserk)
*Green cross (medikit and stimpack) Red fist(berserk)
*Red cross (medikit and stimpack) Red cross (berserk)
*Red cross (medikit and stimpack) Red fist(berserk)

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