Smoother weapon sprite animations - Released!

Using the original Doom sprites is the only option for me, however the sprites have limited number of frames so I thought I'd try to make them more smooth.

The Pistol already has unused frames, but I mirrored them so the Doomguy use the left hand for punching and the right for shooting - not unlike Clint Eastwood in the first scenes in "For a Few Dollars More". I've also added a new firing sound.

The Shotgun has a lot more frames now and the reload sequence looks more smooth. I reversed the muzzle flash frame order on both shotguns as it looks more natural.

The Super shotgun was quite a bit of work, it's a complicated animation. One thing missing with the original sequence is the hand releasing the shells in the breech so I wanted to add that.

Finally one can see which direction the Chaingun barrels spin! This has bugged me ever since I first played Doom. The Chaingun fires one shot for each 4 frames, so it's possible to fire single shots with it - this may interfere a little with the gameplay, but solves the issue about two shots being fired when there's one left.

It was fun doing some old pixel-by-pixel painting again!

Here are some (Doomsday) videos of the new animations in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5no9cu0Nlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyqCOMzeoeA


And here is the download:
Smoother weapon animations

The mod is now compatible with a number of ports other than Doomsday as I originally created it for. This was made possible with the thanks to the following people:
ZDoom DECORATE created by Phi108
Eternity EDF created by Esselfortium
Doomsday DDF tweaked by Vermil

It's adorable! The hands and weapons look almost 3D.

I'm gonna have to get used to that pistol, though.

Frikkin nice!

I FUCKING LOVE YOU.

Thanks for the comments guys :-)

DuckReconMajor:
I see your point in the bendyness on the SSG. I was trying to make it appear the gun is thrown a little towards the left due to the momentum it has when it's being closed. I'll just skip that frame as it was doing more harm than good.

Awesome man. Is there any chance that this smoothed sprites could work on Skulltag for instance ?

Dad Raulo said:

Awesome man. Is there any chance that this smoothed sprites could work on Skulltag for instance ?

For any ZDoom based port would be nice...I'd be all over that like flies to shit just for those smoothed animations.

This is fantastic. Excellent work!

This is amazing. You are amazing.

I hope this is deh + vanilla compatible, i've been wanting to do something like this for a long time and never got around to it. Finally glad a purist is taking on this though and not sacrificing the familiar sounds and sights for something Cstrike-like.

leileilol, the only way this could possibly be deh and vanilla-compatible is if he made it borrow all the necessary frames from something else. Which would, obviously, be a pretty big issue for compatibility with Doom2 and pretty much any level set.

The frames are stored in a wad, but the animation/action sequences are configured in Doomsday definition files, which could be a problem. It should be possible to translate this over to another port I'd guess, although I am not that familiar with other ports.

perkristian said:

The frames are stored in a wad, but the animation/action sequences are configured in Doomsday definition files, which could be a problem. It should be possible to translate this over to another port I'd guess, although I am not that familiar with other ports.

I'll definitely take a shot at it in DeHackEd. I would GLADLY do it for you. For the love of god though, don't give up on this project!!!

esselfortium said:

leileilol, the only way this could possibly be deh and vanilla-compatible is if he made it borrow all the necessary frames from something else. Which would, obviously, be a pretty big issue for compatibility with Doom2 and pretty much any level set.

The most obvious solution would be to sacrifice the Wolfenstein S.S. That should provide enough frames, I think, and you could further modify the patch to prevent the monster from even displaying, or it using some other sprite in Doom II.


Also, somewhat offtopic a bit, but can anyone think of a way to make the chainsaw bobbing frames less chunky? It does this because they are animated, but surely there is a way to smooth it out a bit, no?

Actually, I think the chainsaw bobbing frames are so chunky because the chainsaw's idle sound restarts at the beginning of each frame. For some reason, rather than making the sound work differently it seems that they just made the bobbing frames longer, and as a result the chainsaw jerks all over the place when it's bobbing. I'm not sure if that can really be fixed without using codepointer additions from your sourceport of choice to specifically play the desired sound on certain frames only and stop it from restarting the sound on all the other frames, though I'm not in Windows now and so can't check exactly how it works currently.

I'm surely not giving up, got the plasma rifle ready, but I am not totally satisfied with it - there's only one frame to work with on the recoil animation.

Do you mean the chainsaw idle animation? It looks like there's some clipping on the hand and parts of the chainsaw during the idle, I combined parts from the best looking frame and kept the chain animation. Further improvements in the chainsaw could be the running chain on the cutting frames.

Actually:

Patch File for DeHackEd v3.0
Doom version = 21
Patch format = 6

Frame 67
Duration = 1
Next frame = 720

Frame 68
Duration = 1
Next frame = 723

Frame 720
Sprite number = 11
Sprite subnumber = 2
Duration = 1

Frame 721
Sprite number = 11
Sprite subnumber = 2
Duration = 1

Frame 722
Sprite number = 11
Sprite subnumber = 2
Duration = 1
Next frame = 68

Frame 723
Sprite number = 11
Sprite subnumber = 3
Duration = 1

Frame 724
Sprite number = 11
Sprite subnumber = 3
Duration = 1

Frame 725
Sprite number = 11
Sprite subnumber = 3
Duration = 1
Next frame = 67

[CODEPTR]
Frame 720 = WeaponReady
Frame 721 = WeaponReady
Frame 722 = WeaponReady
Frame 723 = WeaponReady
Frame 724 = WeaponReady
Frame 725 = WeaponReady

Works perfectly in all ZDoom ports. Sound doesn't get cut off, animation plays correctly, and the bobbing is baby-butt-smooth. :)

I think I might even be able to simplify it a bit more, although I used 4 frames for each animation at one tic delay for each (so the duration of the entire animation was the same). Not sure if that's significant or not or how this even worked to begin with.

This probably won't work with vanilla, as I don't have much DeHackEd experience without BEX (assigning codepointers to frames without ones I don't think is valid), but anyone is free to try it on any source port and tell me what happens. I used the pain elemental's respawn frames for this, by the way.


perkristian: can you tell me the approximate number of frames that your new weapons require? I want to start planning ahead and seeing how many frames are available for use in DeHackEd, and what needs to be sacrificed in order to get this working in DeHackEd. I'm not talking about the sprites, by the way, but the number of actual frames in the animations.

OK, new frame count for the guns are currently as follows:

Pistol - 6
Shotgun - 8
Super shotgun - 19
Plasma rifle - about 7

Roughly speaking, as some frames are identical to the original ones.

I honestly don't see the point of making a dehacked patch for ZDoom. Dehacked for vanilla or PrBoom, okay, it makes sense; but if making it specifically for ZDoom then DECORATE is much more appropriate. No need to cannibalize frames from other actors.

Gez said:

I honestly don't see the point of making a dehacked patch for ZDoom. Dehacked for vanilla or PrBoom, okay, it makes sense; but if making it specifically for ZDoom then DECORATE is much more appropriate. No need to cannibalize frames from other actors.

My intention was to port it to something that would be compatible with all ZDoom-based ports, which includes ZDaemon. If someone wants to port this to DECORATE, that's there own business. Plus, the same patch might even work with Boom or Boom derivatives.

EQ if you can do it in DEH I'd go wild as it could probably be used in Odamex

My god those look amazing <3. Definitely gets my stamp of approval!

Do want

edit: if another format is used for more port compatability, would a doomsday version still be available? If .deh is used I assume yes, but the .deds you have now would be best.

Ralphis said:

EQ if you can do it in DEH I'd go wild as it could probably be used in Odamex

Odamex would definitely be a goal, as it's based on ZDoom and probably retains the same DeHackEd behavior.

I plan to release this in some way, probably a WAD and the DED files. The tics/frame orders in the DED files will be necessary when converting it for another port I suppose. Getting all the weapons done would be nice.

So most people use some type of ZDoom? Doomsday is THE port for me. I probably wouldn't bother editing stuff for Doom if it weren't for Doomsday, made some cool particle torches yesterday :-)

GTFO of here!! I WANT THIS BAD

Your my favorite person ever. I should probably let you know that I haven't stopped using the hi resolution soundpack since you made it too.

Certainly Zdoom does seem to be more popular than jDoom here at Doomworld but I wouldn't base much on that. Doomsday too is a very popular port but it attracts a different (perhaps more casual) player base with different values and with them, viewpoints on mods like this.

I too have been using your sound pack since release and this mod is looking every bit as good.

I'm glad my work is being put to good use!

DaniJ:
I wonder; is there a way to add a sound to the ricochet effect and loop sound on torches in the current Doomsday audio system? It would be fun just to try it out. Tried the sound command different places but nothing works.

For the torch fire, use a stage Sound. For the ricochet use a Hit Sound:

http://www.dengine.net/dew/index.php?title=Generator

Super, thanks a lot!

Checking in to this thread a bit late just to say those animations look very nice. The chaingun in particular is very smooth and much improved. Can't wait to see these in the "flesh". :)