Finishing unfinished monsters

[HorrorMovieRei]

I've been looking through old projects of mine and stumbled upon my Freedoom folder of stuff I wanted to submit to this project and Blasphemer(yes, I will finish the slug. I'm just busy and forgetful). I found Raymoohawk's earlier drafts for the Nukeptile sprites, which I saved for safekeeping back then. That one monster is one of his pitches that always stuck the most with me for no other reason other than it looking cool, and looking at it now I'd certainly be able to finish the rest of the frames with my current level of skill, and am highly interested in doing so. Even if it isn't particularly a priority since the Pestmeister recolor is working as a Baron replacement right now, I still stand by the position I always had that it would be neat if the Hellknight/Baron in Freedoom were more distinct characters than the "recolor of the same monster" route Doom went with.

 

With that said, I don't feel exactly comfortable with doing it without his knowledge. Does anyone here have contact with him, or know somewhere where I can speak with him personally? I'll go out on a limp here and assume that at least one of you has tried to reach him. Has he responded? Was it a positive response? I really don't want him to feel like I or anyone else here is harassing him. However, I do need his blessing in this in order to proceed.

Edited December 21, 2019 by HorrorMovieGuy

[luckypunk]

1 hour ago, HorrorMovieGuy said:

Does anyone here have contact with him, or know somewhere where I can speak with him personally?

 

Have you tried the zdoom.org forums?

[HorrorMovieRei]

5 hours ago, luckypunk said:

 

Have you tried the zdoom.org forums?

Been a good while since I went there. Checked it now and apparently last time he logged was in 2017.

[Ferk]

I really like Raymoohawk's Serpentipede and the Trilobite creature. But personally the Nukeptile's concept is the one I like the least to be honest.

It might just be me but it feels like an anthropomorphic alien like the ones from Duke Nukem.

 

It would be better imho to try something scarier and less sci-fi for the baron.

I was thinking for a while to play around with the idea of maybe "frankenspriting" a bit the Pestmeister to make it a bit more crazy and scary, for sort of a "Lord of Pest":

That's just a concept though.

Edited May 20, 2019 by Ferk

[Deleted User]

I don't really like the Nukeptile one, it's too big, and really buffy, I honestly think that having both the pain bringer and the pain lord, so i've made them look different...

 

instead of them looking like this, why not something different...

 

They look kind of same, but more edited so they look WAY different 

 

the pain bringer or hell knight weilds a goldish armor whit red arms and a green lizard on the left arm

 

and the pain lord or baron of hell wields a black armor whit dark green shoulders and knees and two red lizards on both hands and their eyes are white, resembling the god mode

 

if you want to finish it, do it, all i made is a concept, this is free-to-use

Edited May 21, 2019 by D4RKP1G

[MrFlibble]

On 5/20/2019 at 6:02 PM, HorrorMovieGuy said:

With that said, I don't feel exactly comfortable with doing it without his knowledge. Does anyone here have contact with him, or know somewhere where I can speak with him personally? <...> However, I do need his blessing in this in order to proceed.

I think it would be wonderful if you were able to finish the Nukeptyle. I know ramoohawk has a DeviantArt account but it appears as if there were no updates since mid-2017.

 

I wonder if the Nukeptyle sprites and the concept he has already provided can be considered contributions to Freed∞m on their own, and thus being already released under the appropriate license; in which case you'd be free to enhance and modify them however you wish. After all, the Pestmeester sprite sheet was completed by someone else IIRC thus setting a precedent (I guess).

On 5/21/2019 at 1:03 AM, Ferk said:

It would be better imho to try something scarier and less sci-fi for the baron.

I was thinking for a while to play around with the idea of maybe "frankenspriting" a bit the Pestmeister to make it a bit more crazy and scary, for sort of a "Lord of Pest":

If you can produce an entire sprite sheet for this variant I think it would be cool if only for modding purposes.

[luckypunk]

55 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

After all, the Pestmeester sprite sheet was completed by someone else IIRC thus setting a precedent (I guess).

I guess, you're talking about me.

 

I was just trying to make a placeholder until Ray gets around to finish his work. Then Ray appeared and was extremely annoyed with me. If I had expected anything close to that reaction, I would have never touched his stuff.

 

We might be legally clear by now, but ethically I still feel like a POS.

 

IMO trying to contact Ray first seems like the right thing to do.

 

I would still recommend a PM through zdoom.org. Ray might get an email notification.

 

My 2 cents.

 

[MrFlibble]

4 hours ago, luckypunk said:

I was just trying to make a placeholder until Ray gets around to finish his work. Then Ray appeared and was extremely annoyed with me. If I had expected anything close to that reaction, I would have never touched his stuff.

I'm sorry, I didn't know about that.

 

But it has always been my impression that this is how the project flows: every asset contributed to the pool may be then altered by other artists if the need arises. I understand raymoohawk has a right to his work, as an artist and ethically speaking, but by contributing to this project he tacitly subscribed to this kind of design philosophy.

 

After all, he could've made the missing frames afterwards the way he had seen fit, and replaced your temporary placeholder frames in the subsequent builds. From the community standpoint it seems much better than to hold back an upgrade because it is not yet complete.

 

I'm not arguing against trying to contact him - on the contrary, I fully agree that this is the right thing to do. But, considering that the reply might take super long, a provision should be made for a time period after which a different course of action should be decided upon if the reply does not materialise in a reasonable time frame.

 

That is why it would be a good thing to be clear on the licensing terms of the unfinished assets. Surely the creation of derivative work based on partial sprite sheets, made in good faith, cannot be construed as harmful to the original author if it does not break licensing?

[HorrorMovieRei]

Thank you, I also wanted clarification on the licensing side of things too from someone more knowledgeable or from the project leaders. These last posts have been very helpful.

 

With that said, after my finals are done I will attempt to contact him through the Zdoom forums since I don't have a deviantart account. From experience, you do indeed get notified via e-mail when a DM arrives. I think it's only fair, and given how he reacted before perfectly reasonable to let him know. From there we can all work something out. I do think the Nukeptile would be a fine addition to the roster, since him and the pestmeister are thematically linked. (otherwise there's no real reason as to why his weapon of choice is a small lizard arm)

 

I'll ask about the Octaminator too, but for starters I'll just focus on the Nukeptile.

[MrFlibble]

It would be wonderful if we got some word from raymoohawk in any case. The problem of course is that even if an e-mail notification arrives from a ZDoom forum PM (I think such notifications be turned off in the user profile settings though) there's still no guarantee that it will be received and read, and even if read, that there would be any reply any time soon.

[HorrorMovieRei]

I went ahead and dropped him a message already, since I don't expect a reply any time soon (or at all frankly by the look of things). Depending on how things look on the license front, I think we can work something out. Thinking back now there have been multiple instances where unfinished assets where completed post submission by someone else. We'll see, but I'll just give it a little time for now.

[Ferk]

What about the improvements to the Combat Slug that you were working on? That would be great to have completed.

 

Personally, I even prefer the current one than a space lizard, although an alternate recoloring would be better like one of D4RKP1G's (although the color scheme of current Pestmeister should be left unchanged, imho ..it's just that the color scheme chosen for the baron version is very bad).

Edited May 30, 2019 by Ferk

[Ferk]

On 5/28/2019 at 4:55 PM, MrFlibble said:

If you can produce an entire sprite sheet for this variant I think it would be cool if only for modding purposes.

 

I could complete it when I get the time, and try to make the frankenspriting less obvious (specially the skull chestplate). I'm thinking if I should change more the head.

[MrFlibble]

All this talk made me think about other assets that have been posted here as tentative contributions to the project. There are at least several instances when someone made something and showed it in the forums, but that particular asset was never submitted to the repository and never accepted or rejected (via GitHub or earlier repository management methods), and only exists as a post here. Suppose someone wanted to use that asset in a project or create a derivative work? It's always nice to contact the author, but what if that is for any reason impractical, and the author explicitly intended the asset as a submission? Does the Freed∞m license extend to such contributions, or are they stuck in some kind of limbo?

 

Same about incomplete/WIP assets that have been for all intents and purposes abandoned by their original authors.

[HorrorMovieRei]

On 5/30/2019 at 4:31 AM, Ferk said:

What about the improvements to the Combat Slug that you were working on? That would be great to have completed.

I will finish those as well, I just kind of forgot about it. On that note, I encourage anyone to do their edits and new creations as that has always been the ethos of the project. Even if the Nukeptyle and Octaminator don't get added I just wanna finish them because I think they're neat, and modders/developers could find use of them.

 

In other new, Raymoo has replied! He confirmed that the stuff he did for Freedoom is indeed free to use and licensed in the same way as anything else in the project. Therefore, I will get to work on those two (and also the Slug) right away whenever I get the free time.

[luckypunk]

49 minutes ago, HorrorMovieGuy said:

In other new, Raymoo has replied! He confirmed that the stuff he did for Freedoom is indeed free to use and licensed in the same way as anything else in the project. Therefore, I will get to work on those two (and also the Slug) right away whenever I get the free time.

That's great news. Thank you!

[Ferk]

That's nice. I like the Octaminator concept, much better fit as a revenant replacement than the current gargoyle, and the implicit Cthulhu reference makes it feel more like a monster and less of an alien. Although that one will be hard to animate with the tentacles.

 

Thinking about it, I feel a palette swap for the skin color of those 2 could make sense, having the Octaminator be dark green and the Nukeptile be red, so it's less of an obvious lizard and a bit more scary, it'd also match the red of the original baron it's replacing. If the suit is made black or given some leather/bone tint it would also fit better so it's more of an armor.

 

My main concern imho is that I'd rather Freedoom could still fit on gothic themes and castles, sometimes the art direction for the sprites gets too far into sci-fi. For things like the revenant replacement it's ok, since even in doom they have techy suits and mappers would use them accordingly, but baron and knight are sometimes used as demonic bosses and it feels weird to see a green alien in a high-tech spacesuit.

 

Edited June 4, 2019 by Ferk

[HorrorMovieRei]

That's a fair concern, specially with the Baron being one of the more overtly satanic enemies in Doom. I will do the following: I will finish the Nukeptyle as it is right now, and then make an alternate version of it afterwards with the red translation and some dragon-like horns. We can just call it a Nukeptyle beserk or something. Should I give it green blood too? A lot of gameplay mods give the Baron a proper green blood translation, and having it bleed red would kind of just blend in with it's red skin too.

Anyway, I will make both sets of sprites available for use (the normal nukeptyle could go in the attic, and I'll also post it in my resource thread in the other forum).

 

As for the Octaminator, mmh I'm not too sure. I suppose green looks good on him too, but we'll see. Maybe it might even help set him apart from Vader's terminator even, which is his source of inspiration.

[Deleted User]

On 6/4/2019 at 4:46 AM, Ferk said:

That's nice. I like the Octaminator concept, much better fit as a revenant replacement than the current gargoyle,

 

It ain't a gargoyle, it's a black humanoid deer. 

[MrFlibble]

On 6/4/2019 at 6:41 AM, HorrorMovieGuy said:

In other new, Raymoo has replied! He confirmed that the stuff he did for Freedoom is indeed free to use and licensed in the same way as anything else in the project.

Excellent news indeed! Also don't forget that he did some textures, some of which aren't used in the project AFAIK (or were those for Zauberer?)

 

Is he planning to ever come back to the unfinished sprite work himself?

 

BTW, there was an Octaminator model made by another artist at raymoohawk's request a while ago (for spriting reference), do you think it could be useful?

On 6/12/2019 at 6:04 AM, D4RKP1G said:

It ain't a gargoyle, it's a black humanoid deer. 

I think you're mixing this up with the Golem replacement from Blasphemer. The Dark Soldier was indeed conceived and created by leileilol as a gargoyle (apparently it was inspired by a character called Firebrand). It was supposed to be an imp replacement but came out too tall. In fact, the v0.7 IWAD contains the original version that is taller than the current one, it could easily be a Baron replacement on its own.

 

I believe someone else then edited leileilol's sprite into what it is now, adding the rocket launcher worn on the neck like a pendant. (I can't find that thread right now).

 

I did some digging, the Golem replacement in Blasphemer is called cawibouk, made by bigprojectalone. It was suggested by raymoohawk. I remember there actually being four variants in the sprite sheet, which I cannot find ATM.

[Cacowad]

On 6/17/2019 at 11:13 PM, MrFlibble said:

I did some digging, the Golem replacement in Blasphemer is called cawibouk, made by bigprojectalone. It was suggested by raymoohawk. I remember there actually being four variants in the sprite sheet, which I cannot find ATM.

Those were probably posted on Doomad's (now defunct) forum, if i'm lucky i could have those on my old Pc, since i was the one to put them in Blasphemer.

 

[Deleted User]

On 6/17/2019 at 4:13 PM, MrFlibble said:

I think you're mixing this up with the Golem replacement from Blasphemer. The Dark Soldier was indeed conceived and created by leileilol as a gargoyle (apparently it was inspired by a character called Firebrand). It was supposed to be an imp replacement but came out too tall. In fact, the v0.7 IWAD contains the original version that is taller than the current one, it could easily be a Baron replacement on its own.

 

Wait, so i've been drawing him wrong!?

This is unacceptable 

Edited June 23, 2019 by D4RKP1G

[Starman the Blaziken]

Honestly I love the designs used for so long, heck even their names as Pain Lord and Pain Bringer, though as much as I would hate to see a design change just because those silly names: pest miester and nukenewt just sound kind of dorky, I think only a *bit* of an update needs to be done with then since their real design deference is the red and green twizzlers that are apart of them.

(Also nice deer boi Da4k :P)
And where the Dark Soldiers just as tall in the 0.7 version as they where in the 0.6.4 version too? They seemed to be when I looked at the 0.6.4 version.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Starman the Blaziken

[Ferk]

On 7/10/2019 at 8:52 PM, Starman the Blaziken said:

their real design deference is the red and green twizzlers that are apart of them.

In case you don't know, this is what was actually named "Nukeptile":

The current sprite recolor is a placeholder.

 

[Starman the Blaziken]

11 hours ago, Ferk said:

In case you don't know, this is what was actually named "Nukeptile":

The current sprite recolor is a placeholder.

 

You mean the current sprite as in where the arrow is pointing to is the placeholder?

[Starman the Blaziken]

Also I figured it would look something like that along with said name change, but I am normally more fond of the armored with lizard beaks Pain Lord and Pain Bringer.
Not to say that the Nukeptile looks weird, but the names are just kind of something I will joke on for years calling it Nukenewt since it is not easy to say Nukeptile without feeling like as if that p is just a road bump.

[Ferk]

 

15 hours ago, Starman the Blaziken said:

You mean the current sprite as in where the arrow is pointing to is the placeholder? 

No, ignore the arrow. That's just because I took the image from a post by Raymoohawk where he was showing the progress he was making. The sprite is not finished, the placeholder is the current recolored green version of the Pestmeister.

 

The one in the left is a placeholder, the one in the right is not.

 

15 hours ago, Starman the Blaziken said:

I am normally more fond of the armored with lizard beaks Pain Lord and Pain Bringer.

I don't think there are plans at the moment to replace the armored Pestmeister (the one in the right of the image). What I was trying to tell you is that the Baron replacement (the Nukeptile) is not supposed to be a recolored version of it. They are meant to be different, it's just that the Baron wasn't completed so for now we get a recolor.

 

15 hours ago, Starman the Blaziken said:

Not to say that the Nukeptile looks weird, but the names are just kind of something I will joke on for years calling it Nukenewt since it is not easy to say Nukeptile without feeling like as if that p is just a road bump. 

Personally, I do think it does look a bit weird. That's why I proposed my edited replacement with also a different name.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Ferk

[luckypunk]

4 hours ago, Ferk said:

The one in the left is a placeholder, the one in the right is not.

Actually it kind of is. Ray never finished the attack frames or the death animation. And the mess I made there was never meant as a permanent solution.

 

If anyone feels inspired, these two aspects of the Pestmeister are still up for grabs.

 

[Starman the Blaziken]

2 hours ago, luckypunk said:

Actually it kind of is. Ray never finished the attack frames or the death animation. And the mess I made there was never meant as a permanent solution.

 

If anyone feels inspired, these two aspects of the Pestmeister are still up for grabs.

 

Is that why it looks like a bunch of broken pieces as of now? (As I will miss the old death frame where the turn into instant strawberry jam though)
 

 

7 hours ago, Ferk said:

 

No, ignore the arrow. That's just because I took the image from a post by Raymoohawk where he was showing the progress he was making. The sprite is not finished, the placeholder is the current recolored green version of the Pestmeister.

The one in the left is a placeholder, the one in the right is not.

 

I don't think there are plans at the moment to replace the armored Pestmeister (the one in the right of the image). What I was trying to tell you is that the Baron replacement (the Nukeptile) is not supposed to be a recolored version of it. They are meant to be different, it's just that the Baron wasn't completed so for now we get a recolor.

Personally, I do think it does look a bit weird. That's why I proposed my edited replacement with also a different name.

Eh, I figured that the 2nd Nukenewt sprites (shading and armor similar to the normal player armor) are going to replace the Pain Lord.

But I know for one thing is that I rather keep the Pain Lord in history since well, apart from the minor differences, I thought that he was the final product since both Moo Moos in Doom are color changes with sounds as well since they also fit a description of the species (and with all those statues laying around) that allies to the Jaws of Defeat ever since I saw Maverick's lore take on Freedoom which I plan to take a bit of changes to make the lore click in place well.

… Though for some odd reason I want to make like a cute chibi design of ether one since I dunno, they would look adorable as a plush. .3.

[luckypunk]

10 minutes ago, Starman the Blaziken said:

Is that why it looks like a bunch of broken pieces as of now? (As I will miss the old death frame where the turn into instant strawberry jam though)

Did the strawberry jam ever make it into a release? As far as I remember, I'd posted the jam version and someone immediately bullied me into improving it. So I copied bits and pieces from other frames into the jam.

 

In my memory there were only a few hours between both versions. But then it's been a while. My memory might be off.

 

So yes, that's the reason why it looks the way it looks.