Blasphemer discussion

[Cacowad]

Currently, it is in the experimental branch. i do not follow anymore freedoom's development since the "czars", so i would not know what happened. The spritework is excellets and really fit Blasphemer, but if for whatever reason wereknight want to pull them off, i will oblige (but i sure hope he does not).

[Danfun64]

Czars? What are you talking about?

[MrFlibble]

This:

 

[BethOfDeath]

I spent some time over the weekend going through and fixing some sprite offset issues. I believe I've gotten all the changes for the monsters and weapons written back into wadinfo.txt, and a couple artifacts adjusted too.

 

Unfortunately, this is not complete -- there is no way in SLADE I can find to write out current offsets to a wadinfo file, so every change had to be copied over manually. Still, given that my life is about to become a bit harried again in the next few weeks, I wanted to push the fixes out to the world while I can.

 

Known issues caught after packaging, and since written to wadinfo on my end:

• the TRCH sprites should have offsets 12, 59 for the first and 12, 58 for the other two... unless the extra row is cropped off the top of TRCHA0
• EGGC?0 sprites should have offset 6, 20
• EGGM sprites should have offset 6, 9

I included a patch in the 7zip file for a horizontally-bobbing "firemace"'s offsets, to roughly approximate how a weapon so long and held by a chain, yet firing large ammo, might jerk around to match the spread. It's slightly rough if you pay more attention than one can in combat, but I feel it's good enough for now.

 

If I might make a suggestion? STFFB0 being flipped and then rotated to match STFFA0 better, then STFFA0 being switched, may result in a much better animation look. STFFB0 is cut off such that in widescreen it's clearly missing part of itself. The offset I used is already set to make it look good only flipped and rotated, without the switch, so there's no other fiddling to do.

 

I've also made sprites (not included yet, that'll be coming when I fix up the last bits of the offsets) for the spinning book, but it looks slightly different than the existing PWRBK and ARTIPWBK sprites due to my skill limitations with Blender's sculpting tool and seeking a more harmonious color combination -- brown and gold, instead of black and gold. I modified said sprites to match the color and get rid of the random(?) letters which turn into odd shapes with xbrz filtering on.

 

Also mostly done with a possible replacement for GWND?0 that looks less... phallic? The current sprite appears to curve up and even has not-so-subtle veins... in wood. Even if it's mythology is that it was the chopped-off genitalia of an ent, I'd rather not take the role of someone waving it around at people. 😂 Still working on getting the internal glow of the gem part just right, then I need to fix the projectile splat's color and whip up something for the missing empowered projectiles too, so that'll be a while yet despite being the first thing I started on.

 

Sorry about the inconvenience with the offset errata, but I've already compromised my available sleep time making and adding the patch and writing the rest of this post, without redoing the packing right now.

 

Stay safe!

 

 

wadinfo.7z

Edited November 23, 2020 by bpeterson

[Cacowad]

Hello there! Thank you for taking the time to do so, and using the experimental branch nevertheless! I'm a bit rusty, but i'll try do do what i can: i'll try the new wadinfo once i get my old setup back up and running (wich could take a while) and try to fix the staff.

15 hours ago, bpeterson said:

Also mostly done with a possible replacement for GWND?0 that looks less... phallic? The current sprite appears to curve up and even has not-so-subtle veins... in wood. Even if it's mythology is that it was the chopped-off genitalia of an ent, I'd rather not take the role of someone waving it around at people. 😂

That's... jokewad material xD

 

Anyway! i finally managed to merge the experiemental branch into the main branch: it is under Pull Request 21 and it is Blaphemer 1.15.
https://github.com/Blasphemer/blasphemer

Unfortunately for me, i still have not got around adding HettinGrinder maps or a couple of discord submissions, but i'll try to be a little more active and put everything on the Experimental branch for all to see.

[BethOfDeath]

22 hours ago, Cacowad said:

Hello there! Thank you for taking the time to do so, and using the experimental branch nevertheless!

 

Not a problem, I just wanted to be sure I was working on the most recent stuff.

 

Quote

 

Anyway! i finally managed to merge the experiemental branch into the main branch: it is under Pull Request 21 and it is Blaphemer 1.15.
https://github.com/Blasphemer/blasphemer

Unfortunately for me, i still have not got around adding HettinGrinder maps or a couple of discord submissions, but i'll try to be a little more active and put everything on the Experimental branch for all to see.

 

I didn't realize there was a Discord, but I'm not on there anyway.  My submissions will all be here or via Github pull requests for now, probably the former just to get this thread visible.

 

I haven't had time to work further on it yet since my last post, but here's a gif-for-comment of an earlier beta version of GWND?0, that I already had made to show to a friend. The gem's internal glow has  since been smoothed out, too much in fact, and lighting/shading on the metal parts greatly (IMO) improved since, I'm just looking for thoughts on the overall design:

 

 

[MrFlibble]

The new wand looks awesome!

[BethOfDeath]

On 11/25/2020 at 3:24 PM, MrFlibble said:

The new wand looks awesome!

 

Thanks! Though, I must nitpick myself anyway: I forgot to take the aspect ratio stretching into account!

 

As such, while the wand is drawn like this:

 

it ends up looking something like this ingame (simulated by multiplying the height by 1.6 in GIMP with NoHalo upscaling):

 

which is... not quite the isometric perspective it was supposed to be. I don't think it looks completely awful, though, and in reasonably up-to-date versions of GZDoom one can mess with the pixel scaling to their taste anyway.

 

It's much too late to do anything about this, as I never realized I'd made the mistake until I was making my rather poor attempts at empowered projectiles (upscaled 10x here):

Those projectiles caused me a bit of a headache -- at no point could I get the first two frames -- A and B -- to show up in GZDoom, without or without freeze mode, nor could I spot them in Heretic+. C, D, and E seem to show up seemingly at random, replaced at whatever tic the engine is at, so I couldn't really figure out a good temporal-over-distance animation order.

 

Speaking of headaches: apparently puffs and FX??? sprites aren't aspect-ratio adjusted, even in Heretic+? Tests with round-as-possible and adjusted-for-ratio temporary sprites showed that round stayed round, and adjusted ones stayed oval, whether in GZDoom or Heretic+ (inside DOSBox-X, with or without aspect ratio correction). While I might have enough old parts still-functional in storage that I could assemble an old MS-DOS machine and test it out there, I don't have a VGA CRT monitor and that's more work than I'm willing or able to do. Testers welcome.

 

I recolored the existing puffs for the wand (PUFF2?0), I think they came out better than the FX (scaled 10x here):

 

 

And, for completion's sake, the full version of the wand itself firing:

 

Anywho, here y'all go: GWND and updated wadinfo.7z  -- this includes the puffs, empowered projectiles, and wadinfo.txt file. I discovered that I'd also completely missed the Firemace-replacement's projectiles the first time through, so I fixed that and the previously-mentioned errata from my last post, along with updating the offsets for the new wand and projectiles.

 

And a bonus, since they were pretty easy: two sets of screen border graphics! Say goodbye to the row of red smiles at the top of your HUD! Both are intended to not be eye-catching.

 

Mossy Stone is designed to look like the corner bits are grey stone with light moss growth out of their centers, with the horizontal and vertical bits having shaded diagonal lines to suggest it's steel cables or something. It was the best idea I could come up with in 4 pixels of height/width.

Border - Mossy Stone.7z

 

Simple Brown is just that: A simple brown gradient.

Border - Simple Brown.7z

 

Still working on the SPINBK sprite -- it works fine in GZDoom, but no matter what I do I get crash with a "Error: Bad V_DRAWPATCH" or similar in Heretic+.

 

I hope y'all enjoy!

 

Another edit: figured out GitHub well enough to fork, add the changes, and make a proper-ish pull request: https://github.com/Blasphemer/blasphemer/pull/22. Includes the Mossy Stone border.

Edited December 2, 2020 by bpeterson

[Cacowad]

Oh, this got real really fast! that's awesome, i'll try to test it out in my old winxp laptop using heretic+ and report back.

I'll need to create some sort of "attic" to house the old sprites before i merge the request, i am going to do it once i get a bit of free time.

In the mean time, thank you sincerely!

[BethOfDeath]

Not a problem! Blender 2.79 + GIMP 2.10.22's layers make for a set of tools powerful enough for even someone whose art abilities are as underdeveloped as mine to make passable contributions... at least for inorganic things.

 

I managed to fix the SPINBK* issue -- I just needed to set the offsets to exactly what vanilla used. I suspect the same will need to be done when the flight one is done. I also recolored ARTIPWBK to better match the colors, and to (if you're reading this: sorry, Stilgar) get rid of the letters from the cover, which I couldn't discern a meaning from and which completely transform into various shapes with sprite upscaling in play.

 

Comparison in spoiler, if anyone's interested in seeing what I mean. It's not quite the same, being XBR 4x from gimp-plugin-pixel-art-scaler and then 2x No Interpolation on top of that to be easily seen on screen, and not xBRz 4x as in-game, but you'll get the idea.
 

Spoiler

 

 

It's almost like everything but the letters were designed for xBR/xBRz filtering to be applied.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, I can't get GIMP to generate an up-to-date GIF (or even WebP) of this one without completely destroying the colors! I have no idea why. I've recreated the animation multiple times, tried loading it with GIMP versions on both Debian 10 and in Windows 10, and on both something goes wrong... in different ways, neither of which show up in the Animation->Playback preview, but which get transferred if I save and scp over the .xcf file. I do have a preview from a version before I did some very slight additional color tweaking (including that jarring switch of the middle spine line's lighting), though... and GIMP 2.10 doesn't have any issue at all about upscaling it then re-saving it as an animated GIF. I can't even.

 

 

 

Yeah, not as good, I know. The head especially, I'm not happy with at all, but it's the closest I could get sculpted in Blender. I'm not great with organic forms, sorry. It's a barely-acceptable placeholder, at least, and looks better in motion. Even vanilla Heretic's SPINBK has a couple wonky frames, anyway...

 

If anyone else wants a go at making it look closer to the much-better head on Stilgar's design, I'm including a 7zip file of the .blend file and the very simple made-from-scratch textures I used to render out the references. The head is a separate object from the book, so anybody could make a much better go of it. Here: spinbk blend.7z     

 

Edit: Uh, I guess it would help if I said where to get the files without the whole archive unpack dance, lol! They're in my git, at https://github.com/BethOfDeath/blasphemer/tree/experimental at commit d243548d7d37919c1e6ac1149b5af1f602c40ed5

 

As you can see, I've committed both these new sprites and, in a separate commit, both cropped the blank space around the torch sprites and fine-tuned the positioning of the artifacts' inventory sprites.

 

This'll be the last for a while, I think. Like I said before, my life is getting hectic -- this last bit is something I pretty much had done but for getting it to work, plus some tweaking in a few minutes of spare time.

 

Yet another edit: Somehow I forgot to update the credits file to include myself? *sigh* I'll fix it later, I did label the new entries in wadinfo.txt though.

Edited December 6, 2020 by BethOfDeath

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

@Cacowad

Take your time but do let me know if you're interested in including my maps, I can help fix them up a little but I want to be sure it's not a wasted effort first.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Hi there, I'm a noobie with GitHub, can anybody teach me or tell me how to download the IWAD? I have one version, but I think it is a very old one.

 

 

[Breadbunbun]

I second on Lol 6, is there any way to obtain the most recent iwad without having to build it with the use of a computer

[Cacowad]

On 1/3/2021 at 2:24 AM, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

@Cacowad

Take your time but do let me know if you're interested in including my maps, I can help fix them up a little but I want to be sure it's not a wasted effort first.

Sorry, i still could not, i was swamped with work and my pc blew up during vacations; so i could not do anything in the previous month.

I'm still interested, but as you say it could be a bit of wasted effort for now.

 

For Lol 6 & Breadbunbun: the last build i compiled can be found here , but it is quite old. I'll probably need to write a script to build it automatically, like freedoom.
On he side not, at least i finally merged Bethofdeath pull request. 

[Breadbunbun]

On 1/29/2021 at 2:42 PM, Cacowad said:

Sorry, i still could not, i was swamped with work and my pc blew up during vacations; so i could not do anything in the previous month.

I'm still interested, but as you say it could be a bit of wasted effort for now.

 

For Lol 6 & Breadbunbun: the last build i compiled can be found here , but it is quite old. I'll probably need to write a script to build it automatically, like freedoom.
On he side not, at least i finally merged Bethofdeath pull request. 

Thank you very much @Cacowad This build appears much newer than the one i was currently using!

[Shino1]

Hi, it's me, the Stone Golem chick. I didn't forget about the project, it's just I fell into a really bad depression spell - and the pandemic didn't help. But now I'm fine, so I can return to work. I will try to make at least a frame a day, and post regular updates - it might take me like two months though, Maulotaur has like 50 frames. It's a beast, pardon the pun.

 

Another thing - if I recall, one of the monsters has incorrect shading. I don't have Blasphemer git on me, rn I'm on mobile, but I recall it's a small two-legged brown beast that uses cel-shading instead of Heretic smooth shading. After I'm done with Stone Golem, I could touch it up.

 

Oh, in other news, I've been interested in level design since childhood, and lately I've gotten into Doom engine mapping. If there are still missing maps, I could help make them.

[omx32x]

On 2/26/2021 at 8:15 PM, Shino1 said:

Hi, it's me, the Stone Golem chick. I didn't forget about the project, it's just I fell into a really bad depression spell - and the pandemic didn't help. But now I'm fine, so I can return to work. I will try to make at least a frame a day, and post regular updates - it might take me like two months though, Maulotaur has like 50 frames. It's a beast, pardon the pun.

 

Another thing - if I recall, one of the monsters has incorrect shading. I don't have Blasphemer git on me, rn I'm on mobile, but I recall it's a small two-legged brown beast that uses cel-shading instead of Heretic smooth shading. After I'm done with Stone Golem, I could touch it up.

 

Oh, in other news, I've been interested in level design since childhood, and lately I've gotten into Doom engine mapping. If there are still missing maps, I could help make them.

are you gonna post them here on doomworld or in another site? i would love to follow the updates

[Shino1]

I'm gonna post them here, it's the easiest solution. Plus, an added benefit that updates will prop the thread higher on the page, so more people will see it - and might become interested in contributing to the project.In fact, I can post the first update, second frame! I'm not doing dithering or detailing until rough versions for all frames are completed, so I can do 'pencil tests' - as in, see all animation in motion and see if it needs touchups. So so far, those are just paintings resized using Nearest Neighbor.

 

EDIT: Also is somebody is curious - my process is:

• First I do the painting in a paint program (my favourite is free MyPaint, but Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint also works), while making sure to open a file with the correct color palette, to use them for the painting. I have the original sprite open in another window to use as animation reference. Then, well, I paint, that can be easily taught with online tutorials from youtube channels like Proko, Sycra, Marc Brunet or Borodante. I just make sure to not use colors I want, but only colors from the palette, to ensure nothing will be lost in the process of reducing color palette. If I'm doing another sprite in a series, like in a walkcycle, I can probably get away with not repainting entire sprite again, so I copy-paste the last sprite into the window, and resize it into the correct scale, and then paint the changed parts - but remember to not overdo that, a lot of bad animation changes too little parts, people are dynamic when moving. Generally, I recommend that you at least read Animator's Survival Kit. Just remember to not paint tiny details, they will be lost in resizing - you can do that later.
• Tip for painting humans - you can install free app DesignDoll, and pose a human model in any way you want, rotate it into every angle you want, and then trace that 3D render. This is ethical and legal, because you created that 3D artwork, and nobody cares if you trace your own work, plenty of professionals do that. Normally legal stuff isn't important in Doom spriting, but here it is - because sprites have to be fully original so we can include them as open source, it'd be unethical to put edits as open source. Note that free version of Design Doll doesn't allow you to save project files - but you can still take screenshots. Of course I can't do that here, because Stone Golem is completely non-human, but it'd work for human sprites, like Former Human variations.
• After I'm done with the art, I resize the painting to the size of the sprite using Nearest Neighbour filter. I do that in GIMP (which is free), Photoshop will also work. NN is important, it will preserve hard edges between different color areas. In GIMP, remember to use Scale Layer window and not the Scale tool, because you can't change the filter on Scale.
• After I scale the new sprite, to make sure it conforms to the palette, I use the color indexing option in GIMP to do exactly that - in GIMP, it's in Colors -> Mode menu. I have Blasphemer palette saved in the Palette window, but I actually go an extra step - after I create the first finished sprite, I create a new, smaller palette of only the colors I used in that sprite - and save it, and use that smaller palette in all new frames. This will tie together the sprite better, make it look more coherent if all frames use the same color.
• Then... I'm done! I'm not doing cleanup or detailing for now, for that, I wait until I painted all the rough frames. Then I arrange them to be different layers that overlap each other, and animate it using Animation-Playback filter, and see if animation looks good. If not, I fix stuff. if it is...
• ... I finally add the details on all the sprites using the same process I use for normal pixel art. I also cleanup jaggy lines - https://pixelart.fandom.com/wiki/Jaggies
• Then, I play it again, to see if the detailing work didn't screw up the animation. If it did, I fix it, if not - sprite is finished! All you have to do is to export it to a series of PNG files.

I do it this way, because trying to painstakingly put every pixel in place one by one, like I do for normal pixel art, would be a murder with the smooth shading of Doom.

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Shino1 : Didn't want to double post.

[omx32x]

just as a question does anyone know what licence does blasphemer have? is it like freedoom were you can use its assets on other comercial projects or like the peoples doom were you can only use it in free projects? i cant find information about it anywhere

[DooMAD]

The licence listed on the old homepage was the https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

 

I assume it's still operating under that one.

[omx32x]

22 minutes ago, DooMAD said:

The licence listed on the old homepage was the https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

 

I assume it's still operating under that one.

thanks

[Cacowad]

Welp, someday i'll check the forums consistently.

Welcome back @Shino1, glad too hear you feel better.

@omalefico32x: yes, the license is unchanged. It's absence on the github page is an heavy oversight on my part, i'm going to update the readme at least.

[Shino1]

I was super busy lately, but I did manage some progress! 2 more frames, one walk frame (which was easy enough, mostly flipping first frame) and a hit frame. Also, I tweaked the two existing frames to be more consistent with each other to better mesh with principles of animation.

Question: @Cacowad which version of the hitstun is better? With the flash, or without? I mean, remember that because it's a golem, it probably won't have blood, so having some visual indicator of damage might be nice.

.......

[omx32x]

36 minutes ago, Shino1 said:

I was super busy lately, but I did manage some progress! 2 more frames, one walk frame (which was easy enough, mostly flipping first frame) and a hit frame. Also, I tweaked the two existing frames to be more consistent with each other to better mesh with principles of animation.

Question: @Cacowad which version of the hitstun is better? With the flash, or without? I mean, remember that because it's a golem, it probably won't have blood, so having some visual indicator of damage might be nice.

.......

nice keep up the good work dude

im not cacowad but i think one thing that could be done for better damage visuals is making him put his hands in front of him trying to defend himself

i think it gets the job done without looking a bit cartoony and since he doesnt have arms i dont think it would increasse the work load too much but i dunno i dont draw myself so take that just as a sugestion

[Shino1]

2 minutes ago, omalefico32x said:

nice keep up the good work dude

im not cacowad but i think one thing that could be done for better damage visuals is making him put his hands in front of him trying to defend himself

i think it gets the job done without looking a bit cartoony and since he doesnt have arms i dont think it would increasse the work load too much but i dunno i dont draw myself so take that just as a sugestion

I'm not sure if that would work. Remember that this single frame will be a brief flash - I can't find information on exactly how many tics it lasts, but it's only a handful. The point isn't to convey information (which isn't really possible at this speed), the point is to create illusion of impact.

Making extreme movement would be inadvisable, I'd have to use extreme smear frames (motion blur) to sell that. Note that to my knowledge, no enemy in Doom, Heretic or Hexen has any kind of 'defense' animation for their pain state.

[MrFlibble]

IIRC the game already will produce some sort of flash effect or other on impact, depending on which weapon is used. So I guess the version on the right would preferable.

[Shino1]

5 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

IIRC the game already will produce some sort of flash effect or other on impact, depending on which weapon is used. So I guess the version on the right would preferable.

Oh, right, lol, I forgot this isn't Doom and most weapons shoot magical projectiles with a visible impact FX.

EDIT: Okay, no flash it is. Which is better, version one with smear (motion blur), version two with light smear, version three with heavy smear?

Edited March 24, 2021 by Shino1 : no double posting

[Cacowad]

Oh hello there, 

I'm gonna be frank with you, i can't see any difference between the tree versions, but i'm also pretty bad with this sort of art stuff...

[Shino1]

On 3/25/2021 at 12:04 AM, Cacowad said:

Oh hello there, 

I'm gonna be frank with you, i can't see any difference between the tree versions, but i'm also pretty bad with this sort of art stuff...

Well, I guess I think that third one looks the best so as the artist I will pick that one, lol. Unless there is someone in an art director-like role.

EDIT: Also is there like, a way to actually play the current state of Blasphemer wad? So far I wanted to test the current maps, and I simply loaded them as PWAS with vanilla Heretic. I tried zipping the git and using it as PK3 but that doesn't seem to work, and neither does the heretic.wad in the main directory.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Shino1 : no double posting

[CBM]

what is the current state of blasphemer?