Zauberer

[Nikita_Sadkov]

@Cire MrGamer's music is great, but it is more suitable for arcade sci-fi games, like SHMUPs. While Zauberer is planned to be fantasy. Original Hexen had some 80ies Hollywood horror movie style music, probably inspired by John Carpenter and Goblin's soundtracks.

[Cire]

@Nikita_Sadkov While I agree with you to a certain degree, it's the only music that's available for use with Zauberer afaik. I think they can serve as placeholders at least. MrGamer is in progress in making music made to fit Zauberer specifically, the first tune is about 87% complete, though MrGamer is busy with IRL for the coming 2-2½ months after that, progress will resume.

[Voros]

They should be in MIDI/MUS format. Preferably MIDI.

[Cire]

Yes, I'm aware. It's possible to convert XM/MOD etc. songs to MIDI afaik. Tried some applications to do it automatically, had most success with this one thus far:

http://www.un4seen.com/2midi.html

[Nikita_Sadkov]

7 hours ago, Cire said:

Yes, I'm aware. It's possible to convert XM/MOD etc. songs to MIDI afaik. Tried some applications to do it automatically, had most success with this one thus far:

http://www.un4seen.com/2midi.html

That won't be a solution, because MIDI is incompatible with tracker formats, which use special effects and samples not available with standard MIDI:

https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/trackers-vs-midi/

 

[Cire]

Yeah, I know it's not a very good way of doing it, though the alternative would be to remake them by hand I guess, which would take considerable amount of work I would guess?

[Nikita_Sadkov]

On 9/3/2017 at 1:53 PM, Cire said:

it's the only music that's available for use with Zauberer afaik. I think they can serve as placeholders at least.

At OGA there are a few Hexen-style tracks https://opengameart.org/content/revenge-of-the-jungle

although none are under BSD license, because OGA admins for some reason hate BSD, they even banned me for uploading Freedoom sprites there, under CC-BY-SA, which appears to be incompatible with BSD. Yet they have GPL. Guess it is some Linux vs BSD thing.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Nikita_Sadkov

[Voros]

For the time being, a placeholder track will do.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

variety of silly public domain sprites that can serve as placeholders:

https://opengameart.org/content/cartoon-enemies

 

[DoctorGenesis]

10 hours ago, Nikita_Sadkov said:

variety of silly public domain sprites that can serve as placeholders:

https://opengameart.org/content/cartoon-enemies

 

They have sprites that fit Heretic's art-style more than this. Just do some searches for Doom, Duke Nukem, Hexen and so on and you should find some more fitting stuff. :)

[Nikita_Sadkov]

23 hours ago, DoctorGenesis said:

They have sprites that fit Heretic's art-style more than this. Just do some searches for Doom, Duke Nukem, Hexen and so on and you should find some more fitting stuff. :)

1. I doubt they are public domain, while OGA people dislike BSD license.

2. Good placeholders are intended to stand out of place, crying"replace me with a proper art!", yet at the same time you need variety of them to discern one from another.

3. IIRC, Freedoom's idea was to attract artists with their own monster designs, instead of incorporating existing art, with conflicting art style.

[Snakecharmer]

Hey @Cire, how come the zaub.wad file was removed from the repo? I kind of liked that one :)

[Cire]

Hey @Snakecharmer!

I Think the zaub PWAD I made didn't hold up to the quality wanted. I would have prefered an IWAD, which I belive Voros is working on. Glad to hear that you liked it though, wasn't expecting that! :) You just made me motivated to do an improved version of it ;) Maybe have could help out with making a bare-bones placeholder IWAD if you have the time?

[Voros]

Lack of resources is the main issue here. 

[Snakecharmer]

On 2017-09-20 at 1:30 AM, Cire said:

Hey @Snakecharmer!

I Think the zaub PWAD I made didn't hold up to the quality wanted. I would have prefered an IWAD, which I belive Voros is working on. Glad to hear that you liked it though, wasn't expecting that! :) You just made me motivated to do an improved version of it ;) Maybe have could help out with making a bare-bones placeholder IWAD if you have the time?

 

Well, my IWAD making skills are seriously lacking but I'll see if can squeeze out some more graphics for one. The fact that @Nikita_Sadkov made a texture brought my hopes up for the project. I'll just file the PWAD to my personal collection and get cracking with the graphics :) And please do continue PWAD-ing...

 

On 2017-09-20 at 1:39 AM, Voros said:

Lack of resources is the main issue here. 

 

True that.

[Angry Saint]

Yeah right, absence of resources is what is preventing me to start mapping for this project (even if I still did a map nevertheless). And just think that I really like Hexen.

[Voros]

You can still get the Zauberer PWAD though.

[Snakecharmer]

Here's my idea of a Disc of Repulsion...

Now for the tricky part of animating it. Cyan background and BMP-format is in the works :)

[Nikita_Sadkov]

In case you haven't seen it, here is one of the best pixel art tutorials: http://blog.studiominiboss.com/pixelart

 

great to study even if you aren't an artist, as it would help you truly appreciate the art.

 

People at wesnoth.org also have nice animation tutorial: https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Basic_Animation_Tutorial

[Cire]

@Snakecharmer Thanks, it's been added to my repository and in my WIP WAD I'm working on! :)

EDIT: Added back a new Zaub PWAD with a few of the latest submissions as of now

Edited September 21, 2017 by Cire

[Snakecharmer]

7 hours ago, Nikita_Sadkov said:

In case you haven't seen it, here is one of the best pixel art tutorials: http://blog.studiominiboss.com/pixelart

 

great to study even if you aren't an artist, as it would help you truly appreciate the art.

 

People at wesnoth.org also have nice animation tutorial: https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Basic_Animation_Tutorial

 

Thanks for those @Nikita_Sadkov , I hadn't seen them and they seem great.

 

 

5 hours ago, Cire said:

@Snakecharmer Thanks, it's been added to my repository and in my WIP WAD I'm working on! :)

EDIT: Added back a new Zaub PWAD with a few of the latest submissions as of now

 

Nice @Cire! It's cool to see your sprites in action, even if they're just one-framers. I'll probably change the color of the crystal vial since it's easy to mix up with the quartz flask that is also red. Some day I'll learn how to make a PWAD myself to test stuff out.

 

[Cire]

Hey, thanks @Snakecharmer! Yeah, most of the sprites are unanimated sadly, which makes some of them not as noticeable. Sounds like a good idea, also the quartz flask is from Blasphemer. There are two maps, some textures and sounds, and a couple of test midis in there too besides the sprites. Some of the sprites are borrowed from Freedoom and Blasphemer as placeholders. The second level is WIP and still needs retexturing completed. I included Three Oblige generated skies too. They need more work though, on some maps the Mountains can be seen scrolling along with the sky ^^

EDIT: Also, I forgot to say, I included @Nikita_Sadkov's texture as W_002 (not sure if it was intended to replace a specific Hexen texture?) and the Swamp Stalker frame he made. :)

EDIT2: Forgot to say, but might be a good idea as suggested to try including some placeholder enemies too. Should be possible to borrow a few from Freedoom's attic too as placeholders

Edited September 21, 2017 by Cire

[Cire]

Added some of the cartoon sprites as placeholders. Check the bat, dragon, leaf and pig ^^

[Cire]

Made an effort to made the status bar look nicer. Still WIP

[Nikita_Sadkov]

On 9/22/2017 at 0:12 AM, Cire said:

Forgot to say, but might be a good idea as suggested to try including some placeholder enemies too. Should be possible to borrow a few from Freedoom's attic too as placeholders

Yeah. Compiling something working quickly would be a nice thing to do, so level designers could join and we could test the wad against existing Hexen maps.

[Cire]

Yup, sounds like a good plan. There's a couple of skeletons in the attic that could replace some of the monsters, and we could probably use Snakecharmer's crystal vial as placeholder for the items? Any good ideas of what to do about the textures? We need to have a texture set that at least somewhat resembles their Hexen counterparts for mappers to be able to map against the WAD, I presume.

[Snakecharmer]

Added a slight pulsating effect to the crystal vial. It's still red though, we should come up with a quartz flask of our own.

[Cire]

Nice, thanks! :)

And yeah, you're right about that, no need to change the color.

[Snakecharmer]

If you're into IRC I made a channel for project chat at QuakeNet.org called #zauberer. IRC is mostly dead these days but someone may see the topic and get interested in Zauberer that way. I'll drop by the channel occasionally when I'm online, not everyday though.

[Voros]

How about Discord instead?