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raymoohawk

what do yall think about sprite rotations

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wesley recently mentioned that he is interested in giving the mastermind an 8 directional death sequence. i really like this idea, since i think all sprites in the game should have rotations, but recognize that i wont be able to do it for all my monsters. actually i probably wont be able to do it for any of them. so that got me thinking, would having a single angle death sequence, but 8 directional corpse be a good alternative?

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I don't think rotations for inanimate objects are a good idea. Here's my reasoning:

In Doom, the only objects with rotations were monsters and players, the stuff that was moving around on its own, so changes in rotation were paired with animation and movement.

With inanimate objects, they're otherwise just sitting perfectly still and not making any sudden movements (with any animation being very subtle if present, like the glowing eyes on an armor bonus), so seeing an abrupt change to a different rotation frame when you move around it is more jarring.

It's less jarring, and also a lot less work, to make single sprites. It's also best to keep them reasonably direction-neutral where possible, like lamps, pillars, and barrels. (Of course that's not always attainable, but it's something to aim for when possible.)

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i dont know, the 8 directional tech pillar seems to work fine to me (it needs better shading tho). i mean it does skip from one angle to another, but it doesnt seem any more jarring than when something turns to always face the player

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The tech pillar works okay, but it's also kind of a special case, IMO, because it's such a tall cylindrical shape. Circlestrafing around a basic shape like that is going to be much less jarring than circlestrafing around something more irregular like a corpse. Having limbs and bits of gore 'jumping around' as you circle a body has always looked kinda bad the few times I've seen it tried.

Besides essel's point, I also think it's in the interest of gameplay if corpses remain visually static and mostly just 'blend in', to avoid drawing attention to themselves by animating as you move.

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i think thats only because doom players are used to the corpse always facing the camera, corpses change shape with viewing angle in most games

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Actually, I can't think of a single sprite-based FPS that has rotating corpses. The only FPSes I can think of that do use 3D models, where you don't just get 8 rotations but effectively infinite ones. That prevents any sort of popping what so ever, and has the same effect as a single rotation corpse where the actual image doesn't seem to move to the player.

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Personally I don't like the current 8-directional pillar, and I wouldn't like other static items or corpses doing the same thing -- too visually distracting and simply does not look any better than single rotation decorations.

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I do also think that Freedoom should not have any more sprite rotations that Doom. The tech pillar is IMHO a good example supporting my point, I don't like it at all.

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The tech pillar is something that never ceases to be odd to me, as well, but I've not really heard many complaints about it. If there is consensus about it, we can just make it static.

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Mithran Denizen said:

The tech pillar works okay, but it's also kind of a special case, IMO, because it's such a tall cylindrical shape.

Which makes it unnecessary to add rotations, ironically.

LilWhiteMouse liked to add rotations for everything, because she rendered her objects from 3D models, and making rotations was easy. I remember trees twitching as I moved. It just felt wrong, in a "trying too hard to fake 3D and failing miserably" way.

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I concur with the consensus.

Here's a video in which a 16-angled chair is demonstrated at some point. It's less janky than with just 8 angles, but it's still janky.

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There are also some static objects with rotations in Shadowcaster -- one type of small tree, and treasure chests, on the top of my head. No corpses, though.

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My 3-D sense cannot ignore those spinning corpses and especially the technical column.
Any corpse with any appendage appears to be alive as it spins on the floor.
Your 3-D sense must be broken.

Because this directly relates to personal interface issues, this ought to be a selectable in the engine. It is not a big programming challenge to make the dead bodies always use view direction 1, if the player wants it that way.
It should not be restricted for all players by what
is most conservative, or how vanilla does it.

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I'd actually prefer a more conservative approach, largely because ports like ZDoom can use sprites in its TEXTURES format and changing anything to/from rotating sprites will screw up the naming convention for anything trying to use those.

It's hardly a guarantee that many, if any ports would go through the trouble of adding such a feature to disable rotation on specific sprites.

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wesleyjohnson said:

My 3-D sense cannot ignore those spinning corpses and especially the technical column.
Any corpse with any appendage appears to be alive as it spins on the floor.
Your 3-D sense must be broken.

Can your unbroken 3-D sense ignore corpses and inanimate objects making sudden movements?

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Nice idea, but I'm going to say "no" for the reasons given above. Having multi-angle corpses would only be distracting and look shitty with all the jerking and changes in visual size (i.e. corpses such as zombies will look especially shitty with rotating as you circle them).

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I think I recall Outlaws has full 8 direction rotations for some world object sprites but my memory could be wrong.

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Perhaps a better idea would be to just have 2 different death sprites for each monster, one for when it dies in front of you, and a different one for when you walk past it (basically a "front" and a "back" for the corpse).

That would minimize the graphics changing a whole bunch while walking around dead monsters, but still give the appearance of effort having been made. And it would keep the dead monsters from being so distracting that they get you killed.

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Nope. Can't do that. Has to be all 8 angles or just one angle.

Unless you want to fill the WAD up with duplicate images with different lumpnames just as a shitty workaround, but that's an awful idea and you should feel awful if you like it.

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BaronOfStuff said:

Nope. Can't do that. Has to be all 8 angles or just one angle.

Unless you want to fill the WAD up with duplicate images with different lumpnames just as a shitty workaround, but that's an awful idea and you should feel awful if you like it.


Is this where I'm supposed to be argumentative as well, and have a shitty attitude, and tell you to "check your privilege"?

It was just an idea. You could've just said it was a bad idea without being being insulting about it.

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If someone ever tries to replace anything that has rotations for Doom, Freedoom will break compatibility, because said mod would have to keep a deh file in the wad without the extras frames. Imagine an author who has replaced the Imp, they usually gives one death frame; now let's add 8 frames rotation for our Imp equivalent. The result is a mod with alternating frames between Freedoom's and the mod's.

I'm not against, nor in favor of the idea. I believe that if it is well done, there is no reason to whine about it. But for compatibility purposes, those should be left out.

Maybe as an add-on?

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well i guess the people have spoken XD
i still think that people who think rotations look bad have just gotten used to the way doom does things, but i can always make my rotations be in a pwad anyway, so i wont try to push this

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I noticed that about Outlaws too. I especially remember how bad Doom sprites looked after I played Outlaws. After playing games with full 8 views, the spinning corpses just looks like someone cut corners to save memory. I do not remember being especially bothered about the corpse switching sprite frames. It does it only a few times as you pass it and every sprite does that. It was much more annoying going back to Doom where the corpses keep moving, orienting on you like they watching you.

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Gez said:

janky


I'm going to figure out how to incorporate 'janky' into my everyday vernacular.

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Arctangent said:

Actually, I can't think of a single sprite-based FPS that has rotating corpses. The only FPSes I can think of that do use 3D models, where you don't just get 8 rotations but effectively infinite ones. That prevents any sort of popping what so ever, and has the same effect as a single rotation corpse where the actual image doesn't seem to move to the player.


For some reason, this makes me wonder how it would look with a Pk3 add-on for OpenGL source ports that makes the Free Doom assets 3D models. As a side-project kind of thing, of course.

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TheMightyHeracross said:

Marathon, IIRC, has rotating death frames and corpses.

Yes and no. They have 4 rotations, but it simply chooses which one to show at all times, which is odd.

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