Sprites My take on the Sprite Fixing Project: New Offsets and More [Rev. 3 released]

[Alaux]

So you probably know about the Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project (D2SPFX or DMSF for short). In my opinion, it's a HUGE improvement over vanilla Doom's graphics, but I wanted to change it a bit... so I did.

As stated by Revenant100, author of DMSF, he attempted to be faithful to the Doom artists' intentions regarding the artwork. A truly respectable guideline, but not one whose results I'm personally fond of. Because of this, I'll disregard said guideline, which is why this exists separately from his project; my changes go way beyond it's scope. This should also make it clear that this is not necessarily better, but rather just my take, my approach.

 

The majority of this custom version of DMSF consists of me taking its sprites and manually reworking their offsets without being as strict in terms of faithfulness.

Generally, this means centering a sprite's bulkier region (for example, a sprite with an arm stretched sidewards will be centered around the rest of the body, ignoring the protruding arm), and attempting to achieve seamless rotations for the rest of its subsprites, as if the object were centered on a rotating plate, but also keeping the pivots.

Keep in mind, however, that the sprite used as a base is generally one of the middle frames of an animation, which combined with the pivoting action, results in certain animations beginning off-centered.

 

Here's an example, showing off the player's rotations. Left animation is my edit, while right animation is D2SPFX's:

And here's another one, showing off the Arachnotron's chase animation:

 

However, that's not all that this WAD has to offer:

The offsets rework has been applied to pretty much every non-First Person sprite; that is, monsters, projectiles, effects, decorations and pickups. Due to the intrusive approach towards the latter two, some maps that rely on very specific placement of said elements might look wrong. A few First Person sprites have been slightly edited, however.
Apart from the sprites which DMSF worked upon, sprites for the MBF Helper Dog, crouching Player and Pistol pickup have also been added and given handmade offsets, with sound effects for the Dog. Additionally, some new/redone sprites by @Korp have been implemented, most notably a new gibbing animation for the Imp.

Regarding projectiles, a very notable change is that now, the projectile itself is centered, disregarding the trail. An example:

Spoiler

Due to the removal of unmodified Doom 2 fullscreen menu graphics in favor of autoloaded widescreen graphics, the few Doom 1 fixes were included too, hence making this WAD suitable for both Ultimate Doom and Doom 2.

Additionally, GZDoom's DSSECRET is also included for ports that make use of said sound.

 

Some menu graphics have also been "fixed". Taking this further, however, many source port-specific menu graphics have been added. Expand the spoiler for a detailed explanation:

Spoiler

Let's take Crispy Doom as an example.

Normally, when you enter the Options menu, you'd see this:

Unlike classic Doom, the Options menu's items are now displayed with small text. This is because the new entry, the "Crispness" menu, doesn't have a dedicated graphic, unlike the rest of items. However, Crispy checks for the presence of an "M_CRISPY" graphic inside WADs. If such graphic is present, since all items now have dedicated graphics, they are used once again:

 

This was just an example, however. My version of DMSF doesn't only provide an M_CRISPY graphic, but it provides many other graphics for other source ports. In fact, if you notice that I'm missing any, please let me know!

 

To top all of this off, the WAD's lumps have been organized rather elegantly, making use of prefixed markers for easy navigation.

 

Most of the testing was performed on Nugget Doom (my Woof! fork, so it pretty much applies to both), but some minor testing on vanilla Doom running through DOSBox and on Chocolate Doom showed no issues. Regardless, in theory it should work on most ports: let me know what ports you use it on to expand upon the list.

 

So well, that's all I have to say. Here's the main file!

 

DMSF_ALX-R3.zip

 

"Untrimmed" version for modders (please read the details):

Spoiler

Likewise to the original DMSF, my version also comes with an untrimmed variant of the file which maintains duplicate, unmodified graphics to facilitate work for modders.

However, it was not done in the same manner: only the unmodified menu graphics have been trimmed for the main file, keeping all the gameplay sprites in both files as to provide better compatibility with DOS and Chocolate. The difference is minimal in any case, but here it is just in case:

 

DMSF_ALX-R3_FULL.zip

 

If you do make use of this, be it during casual play or in your own mods, feel free to provide any feedback you might have. Hope you have fun!

Edited December 1, 2022 by Alaux

[liPillON]

sweet!

do you plan to make a doom1 version too? nvm, I've tested and it works just fine (when using revenant's D2SPFX the game crashes due to missing rotations for a few sprites)

 

also: what about revenant's compatibility patches for selected megawads? will they work with your version as well?

  

Edited December 7, 2021 by Delfino Furioso

[Quill]

haha spiiiiin

But seriously though, nice work! Any plans on adding Evolution's MEGAC0 fix?

[Alaux]

10 hours ago, Delfino Furioso said:

do you plan to make a doom1 version too? nvm, I've tested and it works just fine

Fun fact, I first tested it with Ultimate Doom instead of Doom 2. I should make a Doom1 version nonetheless, though, since some lumps are shared across both IWADs (for example, M_DOOM and TITLEPIC) and you'd be getting the Doom 2 ones in Doom 1. Same goes for the episode graphics in the existing Doom2 version: they're not normally used, but on a very specific case like Crispy Doom they are used when No Rest For The Living is provided, and that might be the case with other ports too, which is also a problem if they do anything differently.

 

10 hours ago, Delfino Furioso said:

what about revenant's compatibility patches for selected megawads? will they work with your version as well?

I'm not quite sure how those work, so I'll have to examine them first to provide an answer. It also doesn't help that, in the case of BTSX E1, the compatibility patch seems to already be merged into BTSX itself, but a compatibility patch is still listed up.

 

2 hours ago, dotQLL said:

Any plans on adding Evolution's MEGAC0 fix?

This, I think, should be decided by the community. Granted, I was fairly more subjective with my edits than Revenant100 was, so I could easily choose one of the two options and call it a day... but I can't decide which I prefer, lol.

[Alaux]

So, with the pre-release of a new version of D2SPFX, and the accumulation of a fair bit of adjustments and changes that I could make, it's about time to update this.

 

The WAD's 1st Revision, as I like to call it, has been released. Relevant changes are the inclusion of D2SPFX 2.0 Beta 1's changes, and of some notably different Imp gibbing sprites and proper SKELK6 and K7 frames. Some of my own offsets have been further adjusted, too.

Detailed changelog:

Spoiler

  - Added D2SPFX20 Beta 1's new fixes
  - Added @Korp's new Imp gib animation, and SKELK6 and K7 edits
  - Tweaked offsets for:
    - PISGE0, PLSGA0 and PLSF#0
    - Player, Zombieman and Shotgunner
    - Imp
    - Cacodemon
    - Pain Elemental
    - Revenant
    - Mancubus
    - Mancubus Fireball
    - Spawn Cube
    - Archvile Fire
    - Explosive Barrel
    - Candle
    - Evil Eye
    - Some Hanging Gore
  - Reverted renaming of Imp chase frames
  - Reverted recoloring on some Rocket rotations
  - Fixed missing outline on the leftmost edge of M_DETAIL
  - Fixed missing pixels of outline in uppercase S in M_* graphics
  - Added M_PADSEN

 

File download in the OP. Might put together a list of legacy versions sometime in the future.

 

Regarding compatibility patches, I figured I'll make them only if the community really wants them, so bring up your requests... if any.

[liPillON]

this revision includes stock (16:10 aspect ratio) lumps for STBAR, TITLEPIC, etc...

is this intentional?

 

they end up overriding any widescreen asset provided by the sourceport (gzdoom, doomretro)

 

 

Edited February 7, 2022 by Delfino Furioso

[Alaux]

25 minutes ago, Delfino Furioso said:

this revision includes stock (16:10 aspect ratio) lumps for STBAR, TITLEPIC, etc...

is this intentional?

Those have been present since the first release, reason being that work was done over the Modder's Resource version of D2SPFX instead of the trimmed down, mainstream release. That was necessary for the most part since the grand majority of sprites were required to be given new offsets, but now that you mention it, I could remove some menu graphics.

[Alaux]

In response to the former issue, I've made a trimmed down version of the file available, to be used during gameplay, that removes the unmodified menu graphics, and all fullscreen ones, fixed or not. Of course, an untrimmed full version of the file is now available too. Due to how it was done, the 3 fixed graphics unique to Ultimate Doom could also be implemented, making the mod theoretically fit for both the former and Doom 2.

 

New download links in the OP.

[liPillON]

thank you!

[maxmanium]

FYI, you should probably restore Marphy's method of mirroring sprites. He's already added padding to them such that they mirror properly, and doing it this way not only reduces the file size, but also the number of lumps (doom2.exe has a limit of 4046 lumps in a single PWAD). Of course, only on sprites which have 5 unique rotations instead of 8.

 

EDIT: Sorry, I just realized you made changes to those sprites and didn't just undo the mirroring stuff. My bad, disregard.

Edited February 16, 2022 by maxmanium

[Alaux]

30 minutes ago, maxmanium said:

FYI, you should probably restore Marphy's method of mirroring sprites.

I am totally aware about said method, and I agree on that it is much better by far. Problem is, it appears that SLADE doesn't allow me to add blank space to graphics easily, which means that, for many sprites, I'd have to export them, add the exact amount of blank space as to keep the offsets that I've made for them (Marphy's padding doesn't quite fit my offsets), and import them back, which would probably once again bring the issue of incorrect color indexes. The padding fix is probably only relevant for ports that don't fix sprite mirroring anyways, can't tell for sure.

 

TL;DR, I'm simply not up to the task of doing such a thing, in terms of will. What Marphy did is no joke, while what I did, I'd say, was a walk in the park in comparison.

 

Fortunately, the amount of lumps does not appear to be much of a problem yet: the main file has 1980 entries in total, while the untrimmed file has 2209.

Furthermore, the trimmed file can be reduced even further, down to 1783 lumps, by removing the Dog assets, the Crouching Player sprites, the navigation markers, the fixes for Ultimate Doom, the port-specific graphics and the INFO lump. Even then, authors could split their WAD(s) into two parts like BTSX, too.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Alaux

[maxmanium]

I just noticed the new imp gibbing animation. Where is that from?

 

Also, if I checked and found anything that could be mirrored and did the work, would you be interested in implementing that?

[Alaux]

1 hour ago, maxmanium said:

I just noticed the new imp gibbing animation. Where is that from?

Made by @Korp, I think he's credited in the text file that comes with the WADs.

 

1 hour ago, maxmanium said:

Also, if I checked and found anything that could be mirrored and did the work, would you be interested in implementing that?

I'm not quite sure how this would be done. I believe that just a few of Marphy's edited sprites didn't need their offsets changed for this, so they could probably be mirrored with no issues.

[maxmanium]

12 minutes ago, Alaux said:

I'm not quite sure how this would be done. I believe that just a few of Marphy's edited sprites didn't need their offsets changed for this, so they could probably be mirrored with no issues.

 

It's easy to do, just a bit tedious -- I'd just reference the two sprites that are usually mirrored and check if their offsets are the same. For example, SARGA3 and SARGC7 are identical in this wad, so they can be combined into one lump. I'm just asking if you'd want to implement that if the work were done for you, since I'm not burnt out :)

Edited February 16, 2022 by maxmanium

[Alaux]

16 minutes ago, maxmanium said:

I'm just asking if you'd want to implement that if the work were done for you, since I'm not burnt out :)

I could look through them all by myself later, but if you feel like doing it first, feel free! I'd appreciate your help.

[Doomkid]

Those offsets are goddamn clean. So satisfying to watch them rotate! This looks like a really sweet fork of Marphy’s - can’t wait to give it a spin.

[Hitboi]

Those offset fixes are awsome! Love that gif of the Revenant trail spinning.

[Revenant100]

21 hours ago, Alaux said:

I am totally aware about said method, and I agree on that it is much better by far. Problem is, it appears that SLADE doesn't allow me to add blank space to graphics easily, which means that, for many sprites, I'd have to export them, add the exact amount of blank space as to keep the offsets that I've made for them (Marphy's padding doesn't quite fit my offsets), and import them back, which would probably once again bring the issue of incorrect color indexes.

 

SLADE now has a largely undocumented feature called "mirrorpad" which automatically performs the sprite mirroring padding task I manually did before in the sprite fixes. It's not accessible through any of the menus, so you need to bring up the console (View/Console) to enter it. The "mirrorpad" function also comes with the complementary "adjust" function to crop any already existing empty space in a sprite which you'd want to do before redoing the padding. There's one caveat here, though: "adjust" does not maintain the same relative offsets for the sprite after the function runs. You'll need to redo the offsets before running "mirrorpad".

 

To summarize, the workflow to add proper mirroring padding to your set of sprites is as follows:

1. Bring up the console, located under View/Console
2. Select the sprite to be mirrored
3. If the current sprite already has some empty space, crop it by entering "adjust" in the console's command prompt
4. Re-center the sprite on the x-axis
5. Enter the "mirrorpad" command in the console

And repeat for all other relevant mirrored sprites. This is only necessary for sprites that are mirrored by the engine, however, and that doesn't apply to the current setup of your WAD as you've provided duplicates of the previously mirrored sprites but with their appropriate non-mirrored lump names. You'll have to undo that change to bring back the in-engine mirroring.

[Gez]

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

can’t wait to give it a spin. 

Literally! :D

[maxmanium]

Here's my pass-through. Saves 21 lumps. Most mirrored rotations did have different offsets, so you weren't lying when you said you changed pretty much everything.

 

mirrored.zip

[Alaux]

1 hour ago, Revenant100 said:

SLADE now has a largely undocumented feature called "mirrorpad" which automatically performs the sprite mirroring padding task I manually did before in the sprite fixes.

Well, what can I say? I was certainly not expecting your presence around here, let alone sharing of such grand advice. Seriously, thank you so much!

 

1 hour ago, maxmanium said:

Here's my pass-through.

Given the situation, I might not need to use this. Regardless, I'm certain you were the one that sparked this whole advancement, so thank you too!

 

As of now I'm working to get the padding done. Hopefully I'll be able to release the Second Revision in a few hours.

[Alaux]

The WAD's 2nd Revision has been released. Thanks to @maxmanium's suggestion and @Revenant100's advice, sprites have been given appropiate padding for them to be properly mirrored in-game. With this, it is no longer necessary to include manually mirrored duplicate rotations, reducing the amount of lumps in both files by 296 lumps, and taking the file size down by ~1 MB.

 

Detailed changelog:

Spoiler

  - Added padding to sprites to make them suitable for in-engine mirroring
    (Thanks Revenant100 and maxmanium!)
  - Tweaked offsets for:
    - Hell Knight/Baron of Hell
    - Revenant
    - Rocket

 

File downloads in the OP.

[El Juancho]

Thank you! I'll use this wad instead of the original one :)

 

Oh yea, the demons movement feel more "natural" now :D

Edited May 28, 2022 by El juancho

[deleted-account]

I'm unaware if it's already been stated, but are there brightmaps for this *particular* mod? 

Absolutely superb tweak to an already great mod btw.

[Alaux]

4 hours ago, Robo_Cola said:

I'm unaware if it's already been stated, but are there brightmaps for this *particular* mod? 

There's none that I'm aware of. If you can link me to whatever file adds brightmaps to the original Sprite Fix Project, I might try to adapt it.

[deleted-account]

15 hours ago, Alaux said:

There's none that I'm aware of. If you can link me to whatever file adds brightmaps to the original Sprite Fix Project, I might try to adapt it.

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=64299

Should be the one called "1.2 Brightmaps for Sprite Fixing Project"

Edited August 14, 2022 by Robo_Cola

[Floowand]

Any chance of this getting updated to the latest version?

[Alaux]

55 minutes ago, Floowand said:

Any chance of this getting updated to the latest version?

Definitely. It wasn't updated yet because the new D2SPFX update has just come out.

[Alaux]

Well, it's been a while.

 

The WAD's 3rd Revision has been released, for the most part just to include the latest DMSF fixes, although we've got a few changes to the Imp sprites.

 

Detailed changelog:

Spoiler

  - Added D2SPFX20 Beta 2 and D2SPFX20 (Final)'s new fixes
  - Added Korp's TROOH6, TROOH7 and TROOH8
  - Added 1 missing pixel to Korp's TROON0
  - Tweaked offsets for the Imp's Pain frames

 

File downloads in the OP.

 

Also, I didn't forget about brightmaps. Just now I checked NightFright's Brightmaps Plus, and at first glance it appears that adapting it to fit my fork of DMSF would be a considerable undertaking, so I don't think I'll be doing it anytime soon.