Why has no one tried adding frames of animation to the monsters?

[xenphor]

I know there are additional frames of animation for some of the weapons in doom and they look pretty good. I thought it would be even better if frames of animation were added to the monsters as well. As it is now, many of them seem to only have like 2 or 3 total frames so obviously the animation is very choppy. I would assume with today's modern hardware that having 2d sprites with much smoother animation would be possible. It would be even better if the animation were at the level of, say, 2d fighters like Street Fighter 3 or Mark of the Wolves. I think the impact would be tremendous, if not in doom then maybe some other game. The choppy animation is pretty much the only thing about doom that harms the experience for me.

[Gez]

Weapons have a relatively small set of sprites.

Monsters have a large set of sprites (arch-vile alone has more than 26 frames of animation so they ran out of letters for them and had to use frame keys like [, \, and ]), there are a lot of them (nine weapons total, but seventeen monsters, not counting the Wolf 3D/Keen easter eggs), and finally there is only one angle from which you can see the weapon sprites but for monsters you have to make five or eight sets to account for all rotations.

The most complex weapon is the supershotgun, with 8 normal sprites and 2 flash sprites. Most weapons have only four sprites total. But let's keep this as the upper bound for weapons:

9 weapons * 10 sprite frames * 1 rotation = 90.
17 monsters * 29 sprite frames * 8 rotations = 3 944.

So if you want to add smoothed/interpolated frames for all weapons, you'll have an upper bound of a hundred new sprites to make, which is already a lot; but if you want to do the same for monsters you'll have an upper bound of four thousands, which is a whole order of magnitude above.

[Rayziik]

What about sprite mirroring? That would cut the number by a significant amount, about 40% or so I would imagine. But I guess a few thousand frames is still quite the task.

[xenphor]

Hm that's too bad because I think the overall effect would be much more impressive than any of the other graphical mods out there.

[wesleyjohnson]

I suggest 3d models at that number of frames.
The code could have a number of vertical and horizontal angles.
It could cache rendering at various angles, and mipmap at distance.
Descriptions of action sequences would be model movements and texture substitutions instead of full framesets.
It is not a simple upgrade of the Doom sprite rendering.

[phi108]

Sgt Mark IV make a thread about this at ZDoom, a great walking pinky can be found near the last page, though only from one angle:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35723

I prefer smoothed animations over HD sprites, as animations feel closer to the originals than HD interpretations are, with the exception of one HD pinky sprite that Vader did I think.

[xenphor]

That looks good. Being able to preserve the original sprites is better than going to 3d models imo. Now just think about a pinky with this animation http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/File:Elena-ts-stance.gif I'm sure if the doom community pulled together, they could make this a reality.

[wildweasel]

xenphor said:

That looks good. Being able to preserve the original sprites is better than going to 3d models imo. Now just think about a pinky with this animation http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/File:Elena-ts-stance.gif I'm sure if the doom community pulled together, they could make this a reality.

The thing is, Elena's sprite is entirely rotoscoped from an actual Capoeira performer. The sprites had to be drawn on top of the person performing the moves, which meant that the artists that worked on Street Fighter III had to drastically simplify her design, and she could not have a costume nearly as elaborate as the other characters.

[xenphor]

Well thats okay. I would settle for a regular Ryu sprite http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080324054746/streetfighter/images/c/cd/Ryu-ts-stance.gif

[bcwood16]

To do this properly would be a big undertaken and to be honest would likely be more effective and worthwhile going the 3D route.

However, many people just simply love the Doom sprite route and no matter how good a 3D model is it will never be a replacement. Due to this, maybe a smoother animation sprite set would be cool - having saying that, if people prefer the original sprites, maybe they prefer the way they move.

Im thinking the smoother monster sprites may look a tad odd....not sure, would love to see one completed monster to see how it feels in game.