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Blastfrog

The Doom Sprite Overhaul Pack (formerly the Major Sprite Fix project)

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All that needed to be done on @Revenant100's excellent Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project is done, per its design goals. However, there are many more subjective errors and general sloppiness that would be nice to see edited away, but are not appropriate for that project. Revenant100 has kindly granted me permission to fork his project.

 

Here are some comparison images (all of these are out of date except the pinky, further changes have been made since):

 

XMFhr1h.gif

 

VQlP3tg.gif

 

e5k2daR.gif

 

I have already made some suitable content. I have created a small PWAD meant to be loaded on top of the latest version of Revenant's project as an example of what I'm going for. You can download it here. Changelog is in the spoiler.

 

EDIT: This WAD was only meant as an example and is already out of date. A proper release will come later when there is a more significant amount of material.

 

Spoiler

Based on Revenant100's minor sprite fixing project v1.7*
See the changelog for that project for all that this has inherited.
*I started this a while ago, however, nothing in this patch needs updating to 1.8 except perhaps to add padding.


Blastfrog's changes:

WISPLAT has brown pixels recolored to red as opposed to removed (yes, this is a Doom 1 item but I include it for sake of completeness)
Cleaned up edge artifacts on all PUNG frames
Cleaned up edge artifacts on CHGGA0 and CHGGB0
Cleaned up edge artifacts on PLSGB0
Rifle zombie polished in same manner as player sprites (only frames A-D, the rest remain, shotgunner not started on yet)
Orange shin markings added and increased contrast on toes on SARG frames E, F, G and H
Baron frames A, B, C and D aligned and organized like Hell Knight (for consistency and the HK animates better IMO anyway)


Changes sourced from elsewhere:

STBAR from Doom Retro and modified by Blastfrog, STARMS from Doom Retro and unmodified
MISFB0 from Doom Retro (I prefer it over Da Werecat's version)
PSTrooper's custom SKULA1 and SKULB1, further modified by Blastfrog

 

There are at least two things off the top of my head that I haven't tackled yet:

 

*missing revenant toes on some frames

*mastermind chaingun uses latex model version in death animation

 

And I'm certain there are many more that vigilant sets of eyes can find and report.

 

So, anyone else interested in this idea?

Edited by Blastfrog

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4 minutes ago, Blastfrog said:

WISPLAT has brown pixels recolored to red as opposed to removed (yes, this is a Doom 1 item but I include it for sake of completeness)

That highly questionable edit is still there? Jeez.

 

10 minutes ago, Blastfrog said:

MISFB0 from Doom Retro (I prefer it over Da Werecat's version)

It was MISFA0, and you included MISGB0 instead.

 

11 minutes ago, Blastfrog said:

PSTrooper's custom SKULA1 and SKULB1, further modified by Blastfrog

I still prefer my version with the flashing face, but that's natural (for me).

 

14 minutes ago, Blastfrog said:

So, anyone else interested in this idea?

I kinda wanted to start something like this myself, but I'm not sure exactly how far I would go with the changes. The weapon sprites, for example - I don't know if it's even possible for me to be satisfied with them without ruining authenticity.

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On 5/10/2017 at 4:11 PM, Da Werecat said:

I still prefer my version with the flashing face, but that's natural (for me).

Actually, I think I've figured out exactly what happened with the lost soul sprites. After overanalyzing them, I have a theory:

 

Spoiler

The 1.1 sprites are likely the originals, and I believe that the 1.666 sprites are last minute updates made just before shipping Doom 2. This attempted update was botched to an unbelievable degree. There are in fact three (not two) official style variants*  of the lost soul sprite as far as I can tell; the original, an intermediate revision, and a second and final touchup (possibly with only the first frame done, the second left in the intermediate style).

 

*of publicly available material, ofc

 

Here is the original sprite for reference:

 

zcRwPgM.gif

 

Of id's three known variants, it's the most consistent with the rest of the sprite sheet and generally the least problematic one. However, it's ugly, unpolished, and has stray green hues. Because of this, I suppose some at id might've disliked it, so according to Romero, they decided to give it another go:

 

n4ANRAY.gif

 

^^ Mockup for illustration purposes ^^

 

They paved over the brow-ridge, giving him a stupid looking monobrow. They also gave him highlights on the edges of his face to perhaps reflect the light more realistically and look less pillow-shaded. They also cleaned up his horns a little bit, and added dark orange lines to the bottoms to imply more realistic light from the fire. They reshaded his nose to look less like a black blob and more like an actual 3D hole. The fire was extended further into his mouth.

 

The fire was generally redrawn to be more even and less messy, and many areas were recolored orange. They reshaped his cheekbones to give them more definition, even adding highlights to the bottom to accentuate it more. Lastly, they must've thought that the yellow stripe coming down from the core of the fire looked bad, so they softened/darkened it a bit by fading into orange.

 

This was still not good enough for them, so they gave it one more pass.

 

PysHBLa.gif

 

^^ Mockup for illustration purposes ^^

 

First off, they reverted the cheekbones (only partially, you can see remnants of the second version's shading), and then reverted the flame's core, probably because they realized it made the border between the skull and the fire look worse (sudden jump in shade vs more smoothly fading in). In general, the second version looks quite a bit brighter than the original due to the paved over brow-ridge, so they darkened the forehead to compensate, bringing the average brightness of the area close to where it originally was.

 

The horns were flattened, redrawn and reshaded. Any dark yellow in the fire was replaced with orange, because it's less of a jump in hue and thus looks more natural. Perhaps to imitate the color of the fire affecting the light, the outer pixels of the top two teeth are turned from tan to red. For whatever weird reason, it was decided to raise the horns and fire by one pixel, you can even see exactly where the top of the skull was stretched to compensate. Lastly, they trimmed the wider portion of his chin and darkened the bottom to give it more contrast.

 

Once it was time to put it in the game, they accidentally imported the wrong frames to the IWAD. Frame A was taken from this final third version, while frame B was erroneously sourced from the intermediate second version, resulting in this abomination that plagues the official IWADs to this day:

 

8Bwv6oG.gif

 

It's also plausible that they just didn't finish (or even start) the B frame final revision and left it in the game thinking "ooh that looks cool".

 

Or perhaps it was intentional all along. In any case I think it looks like shit, frankly. Some things are better left alone.

 

All that being said, I put together a completely new lost soul from scratch for this project, rather than continue to use my modified version of PSTrooper's version.

 

EDIT: THIS IS DEPRECATED, SEE POST BELOW FOR MY FINAL VERSION

 

It's as close as you can get to the Doom 1 version of the sprite while still keeping Doom 2's edits in some form or another.

Edited by Blastfrog

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4 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

That's one dumb facial expression. Sorry.

Okay, personal taste, etc. Any thoughts on the theory? Could I be right, or am I far off the mark?

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I guess it's a better explanation than them updating one frame, but forgetting to update the other for some reason.

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Here's one idea for a fix that wasn't applicable to the minor fixing project: The Revenant's SKELK6 and SKELK7 frames are not actually unique rotations. Rather, they're just mirrored versions of the SKELK4 and SKELK3 frames, respectively. This is a marked inconsistency as SKELK8 is a proper and unique rotation, not simply a mirrored version of SKELK2. With the no assets for the correct rotations available, fixing the two aforementioned frames would require some significant original art edits.

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I wasn't quite satisfied with my hybrid lost soul, so I worked on it some more. I don't plan on making any further changes to these two frames.

 

fSNZScl.gif

 

On 5/10/2017 at 4:11 PM, Da Werecat said:

That highly questionable edit is still there? Jeez.

Unfortunately so. I intend to keep the full volume of that and the "you are here" graphics.

 

On 5/10/2017 at 4:11 PM, Da Werecat said:

It was MISFA0, and you included MISGB0 instead.

Heh, oops. Well, Doom Retro does have some custom firing frames with their own differences, I'll create a hybrid of yours and (I assume) Brad's, as there's useful details in both.

 

On 5/10/2017 at 4:11 PM, Da Werecat said:

I still prefer my version with the flashing face, but that's natural (for me).

Honestly, I don't think the lost soul was ever meant to flash or alternate appearance so heavily between frames in any way. It seems to be the result of accidentally importing two different versions of the sprite.

 

On 5/14/2017 at 2:40 AM, Revenant100 said:

The Revenant's SKELK6 and SKELK7 frames are not actually unique rotations. ... With the no assets for the correct rotations available, fixing the two aforementioned frames would require some significant original art edits.

Nice catch. That reminds me, I should look into doing the same for other such sprites, like the attack frames of the imp.

Edited by Blastfrog

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Quote

 

iirc in the Minor Sprites thread there was a discovery involving the chaingun on the Spider Mastermind changing appearances during the death frames.

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1 hour ago, Averagewalrus23.9 said:

Could you possibly put pictures of some of the sprite changes in the op? (Similar to the minor sprite fixing project's op)

Good idea! Done and done. :)

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This is an interesting project! Maybe the green gunk on the SSG reload sprites could be removed? I have some edits in Smooth Doom you could use, or you could make some  edits yourself if you feel inclined.

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Artists often highlight the undersides of the objects to make the lighting seem more complex. The point is - I'm not sure the barrel of the gun was supposed to be dark at the bottom, or it was a reflection.

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55 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Artists often highlight the undersides of the objects to make the lighting seem more complex. The point is - I'm not sure the barrel of the gun was supposed to be dark at the bottom, or it was a reflection.

Are you referring to the green stuff on the SSG?

 

8 hours ago, Gifty said:

This is an interesting project! Maybe the green gunk on the SSG reload sprites could be removed? I have some edits in Smooth Doom you could use, or you could make some  edits yourself if you feel inclined.

Thanks for the offer, Smooth Doom is a really cool project. I've already found a couple interesting things that, though I won't use directly, give me some good ideas. For example, I like how the muzzle flash of the shotgun lights the barrel, something that id probably should have tried addressing. If I do make those kinds of edits, it'll be in a way that blends as seamlessly as possible with id's art style.

Edited by Blastfrog

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21 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

No, to the zombie rifle.

Oh. I will say that I would not have made that change at all without some kind of official material as a reference. Just because I'm going further with the sprite edits than Revenant100 is doesn't mean I'm going to go willy-nilly changing whatever I feel like. I'm still debating with myself whether I should even bother doing anything with the shotgun muzzle flash, if it's going too far or not to do something similar to what Smooth Doom did.

 

Every single altered pixel in the zombie sprite has a basis in the player sprite, by meticulous comparison of every frame of the press release player, the final player, and the zombie (who is no different between final and press release). id themselves already made these changes to the player sprite late in development, but never bothered to backport (errr... forwardport?) it to either of the zombies who used the player sprite as a basis.

 

That goes for my new lost soul as well, literally every single pixel has some basis in an edit that id did for the Doom 2 version, just applied in a more subtle way in order to respect the original 1.1 appearance better.

 

I haven't even started on this yet, but I've noticed that the hell knight is more than just a recolor, they actually cleaned up quite a few nasty details that, surprise, were never backported to the baron. This is something I will tackle.

 

My goal here is to emulate Adrian Carmack's style and methods as much as possible, in some alternate universe where he had more time/will to keep polishing things rather than just stopping at the "well, that's good enough" state of quality.

Edited by Blastfrog

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I'm definitely noticing a pattern here. It seems that almost every time a sprite is recycled to make a new sprite, either Kevin or Adrian would clean up, fix, polish etc. the sprite when making their new version, and would often not backport the changes. I suppose they figured they could fix it up while working on it because it happened to be right in front of them, but they didn't want to bother putting the effort into keeping things consistent, thinking it all to be "good enough". Which, sure, it is, but I figure if I can update the graphics in a faithful way, why not?

 

Not only do I want to see the game looking this way, it's also good practice in general for pixel art, and I learn a lot of things about the methods and stylistic choices they used when making the sprites by comparing revisions.

 

The berserk pack seems to have been based on the medipack (it would make sense too that the medipack was created first), but they revised it. So, I made a new medikit that is consistent with the berserk pack.

 

2pFdYzZ.gif

 

However, I'm not 100% sold on my own edit, yet. It is as close to objectively faithful as it can be, but I wonder if it's still going too far just because of how different it looks now. Any thoughts?

 

EDIT: Well, nobody said anything. I guess I'll just revert the shading on the bottom because I just can't make it smooth without going too dark, but otherwise keep the edits seen here.

 

On 5/13/2017 at 9:47 PM, Da Werecat said:

That's one dumb facial expression. Sorry.

Quoth the manual:

 

"Dumb. Tough. Flies. On fire. 'Nuff said."

Edited by Blastfrog

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Hmm, not much response. Nevertheless:

 

8zcruID.gif

 

It's weird, suddenly the shotgun's shape makes far more sense.

 

Also...

 

syRPzlm.png

 

9ZDtOMQ.png

 

I sourced the flashes from the SSG's frames to add to the regular shotgun, taking extra care to ensure the shape and brightness matched up. @Gifty, feel free to use these in Smooth Doom if you'd like to.

 

It's a big change, but the frames don't last very long in-game, and it's literally the only weapon that the flash doesn't light the weapon itself. Not only is this a consistency issue, but I believe it was a result of laziness, rather than deliberate omission. Note the complete lack of antialiasing on the original flash frames on where it connects with the shotgun, clearly all they did was draw the flashes, and then paste a transparency mask on top of it.

 

I will be including an extra patch that keeps the antialiasing, but removes the added yellow, for those who may dislike this change. I will also include a Doom 2 lost soul patch, for those who prefer it over the Doom 1 appearance (it will not flash, as that was never an intended part of the sprite).

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44 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Nice.

Thanks. :)

 

44 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Why is the reflection on the first flash sprite asymmetrical though?

That's a question for id. It was like that on both barrels of the SSG, so I opted to keep it that way.

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Maybe it has something to do with the asymmetrical lighting on the gun itself, though I'm still not sure what was the exact logic of the artist.

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So basically you're editing the shading on the sprites? Hmm... I could probably touch something up in GIMP if you want some help.

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6 hours ago, DoctorGenesis said:

So basically you're editing the shading on the sprites?

Pretty much. I'm trying to polish the sprites as much as possible while remaining as faithful to the originals as possible.

 

I consider it to be "fixing" a lack of polish due to the need of releasing the game on time, but really they're not "fixes" in the same way as Revenant's project does. I shall rename the project because of this, and also to avoid ambiguity whenever someone says "the sprite fix project" without specifying whether they mean Revenant's project or mine.

 

6 hours ago, DoctorGenesis said:

Hmm... I could probably touch something up in GIMP if you want some help.

Cool, I'm interested. :) I intend to be touching up literally every sprite, so some extra hands on deck will be more than useful.

 

I have certain specifications of what needs to be changed and what should not be changed, and I apply rules to myself when making these edits. Perhaps we could talk on Discord/Steam or something?

 

10 hours ago, Da Werecat said:

Maybe it has something to do with the asymmetrical lighting on the gun itself, though I'm still not sure what was the exact logic of the artist.

I have no idea what the logic was, and if I were an artist at id at the time I wouldn't have done the same thing. The weird thing is that the second flash frame on the SSG is symmetrical. If both were asymmetrical, I probably would have made the normal shotgun version symmetrical, with the logic being that the SSG is quite asymmetrically shaded, while the regular shotgun only has the most subtle amount of asymmetry in its lighting.

 

But, with the way the SSG flashes already are, I feel like I didn't have a choice if I wanted to remain as faithful as possible. I only take liberties based on what I see elsewhere in Doom's sprites (including comparing revisions to see exactly their method of polishing things). Any liberties I do take are not personal liberties with no basis in id's own work or general style.

 

I definitely employ my own techniques, too, but only in ways aren't unfaithful in my view. I feel that I may be more skilled than id's artists at the time when it comes to polishing small pixel details (and I have better tools) (my traditional art skills are admittedly somewhat lacking, though), and I am not Adrian/Cloud, so I cannot know exactly how they would have done things outside of what I can already observe.

Edited by Blastfrog

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Why did you remove those yellow spots from the Pinky? I always thought they were intentional. 

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42 minutes ago, Voros said:

Why did you remove those yellow spots from the Pinky? I always thought they were intentional. 

I actually added them to the sprites that are missing them.

 

I think the pinky's development went like so:

 

* Pure clay model, turned into sprites. White teeth, brown eyes. This is what we see in 0.2 to 0.5.

* Slight touchups shortly after 0.5, recolored eyes to yellow, teeth are now brown. Probably not much else.

* Overhaul that we see in the press release beta. Rather than mess about with clay again, they opted to use a dinosaur toy to replace the legs. Much contrast added, details like orange markings on shins added.

 

The released game uses version 3 on the running and death anims. They never bothered to touch the pain or attack frames and those remain at version 2.

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Idea: smaller, flatter corpse sprites for cacos and mancs. Because they're kind of annoyingly big.

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1 hour ago, Gez said:

Idea: smaller, flatter corpse sprites for cacos and mancs. Because they're kind of annoyingly big.

As heavy as my art edits are, this is directly counter to the goals of the project and beyond its scope.

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