Lord Vile done!

[bartwart]

Since the community lacks any archvile type monster mods I'm going to make one. I don't have a name for it yet, but basically it's going to be a super magical vile of some sort. I like wizard's outfit so I'm going to see if I can replacing the wizard's face (or what little you can see of it) with the Archvile's face. I'm going to recolor his limbs to match the archvile's skin color, and I'll probably chop off the tail. For his magical attack, the hands must glow the same color as the archvile's hands do during his flame attack. The emblem on his chest will be changed to a demonic face with pentagram of some sort.

For his death, I want to create a sense of him disappearing from the battlefield, but not really dieing. Doom needs at least one monster that doesn't really die, but gives the impression of teleporting away to safety when its hp goes to zero. His "death" sound will be some kind of verbal threat to return for revenge.

His main attack will be an invisible bfg-type projectile, but I'm still debating this because it might be too unfair to play against. For his secondary "attack," I'd like for him to spawn an archvile. Monsters.wad has an example of a monster that spawns other monsters.

All of this coordination will have to be done with Zdoom's decorate feature. The sprite modifications will by done with the gimp. I've already extracted the frames from both doom2.wad and hexen.wad that I need. I've just been experimenting with the gimp to see what kinds of capabilities it has.

[Azriel]

Sound like a great idea.
Don't make the monster too hard though. I think it's better if you use some other attack rather than the BFG.

[Vegeta]

Well, there is an archvile modification in Osiris (a pretty cool one, but rather weak unfortunatly).

Good luck with this, it seems very interesting. I know that the behavior is the last part, but try don't to put that "invisible bfg attack", it'd be both, annoying and boring, you could implement attacks from the Motherdemon (that looks like a super archvile), the archvile from DOOM³, or stuff like that.
Once you have something to show, I'd love to see it.

[Giest118]

Vegeta said:

the archvile from DOOM³

I already made that...

[Vegeta]

Really? Can I see it?

[Giest118]

Sure.

geocities.com/giest1182000/giestvile.zip

[bartwart]

Giest118 said:

Sure.

geocities.com/giest1182000/giestvile.zip

That's neat.

[bartwart]

The idea for the invisible BFG attack comes from the A_Game.zip weapons mod collect, where in A_Swarr.wad there is a BFG replacement attack where the player squeezes a samari's heart and the monsters just die right before your eyes. It's basically an invisible, soundless BFG attack done with dehacked. Perhaps a bfg type weapon is too strong, but I do like the idea of a monster just pointing at the player and really bad things happening.

[Vegeta]

Giest118

That's really cool, very professional. I know that it's not the same, but can you do it also for Edge? That's because I'm making a monster pack for Kronos' "DOOM 3 in DOOM 2" mod.

[bartwart]

I have my first sprite. It kind of reminds me of Skeletor from the old He-man cartoon.



Its actually the Heresiarch and the Archvile.

[Giest118]

Vegeta said:

That's really cool, very professional. I know that it's not the same, but can you do it also for Edge? That's because I'm making a monster pack for Kronos' "DOOM 3 in DOOM 2" mod.

1) Thanks!

2) Uh, I wouldn't know how.

[Vegeta]

Bartwart, try to move the face upward a bit, and turn the skin a bit darker. Other than that, looks good.
I made some modifications to your sample, let me know what you think, if you like it, I'll say you the exact steps I did.

Here you can compare


http://img74.exs.cx/img74/9595/heresvile0ki.jpg

Mm.. I noticed that none of both images use the DOOM pallet, you'd better check that, because the convertion makes some significant changes.

[bartwart]

Thanks. I like the face up higher. Its looks more ominous. The skin color was really tricky for me. I worked on it several hours trying to get a shade that matched the archvile's skin color. Over the course of those hours I saw many different shades, and the darker ones actually looked better.

Another thing I don't like are the purple accents on the robe. No demon should wear purple! I was thinking of shading them red, but that might be too much red considering he already has a red pentagram on his chest. I could just make it all black.

By the way, does that even look like a pentagram on his chest? I got a nice gif of one off the net, but it was too large and I had to strink it. I may just draw one in myself.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I was also wondering about palette issues, because Hexen and Doom use different ones. I'm still trying to figure out how to use The Gimp and I haven't gotten around to messing with palettes.

EDIT: Vegita - yes, please explain how you moved the face like that.

[Vegeta]

How I moved the face?
Well, I used Paint Shop Pro, to move (and merge) graphics like that..

-select the part that you want to move
-copy or cut it
-then past it over the part you want to edit
-Use the eraser, on this situations instead of delete, it return the image to the original (with the right botton) when you past it, if you want to see how are you doing it, delete the floating selection, and then, the classic "ctrl-z" to get back to editing. If you use the left botton it allow to undo the efect of the right botton.

Don't try to just move it and use this option or the eraser will work in the conventional way.

This can be used with diferent images, some cool editing can be done with it.

I know that I'm not clear, but my English is not the best (as you surely can see).

P.S: Oh and yes, the pentagram looks good.

[bartwart]

Hey thanks. I just figured out how to do that with The Gimp. I also figured out how to convert images to different palettes. When I get home I'll have to convert the image to the doom palette.

I'll post again when I have a gif of him walking.

[bartwart]

This is what he looks like walking straight ahead:


4 sprites down and about 40 more to go.

[Vegeta]

Wow, that's sweeet! Keep it up!

[Vegeta]

Look out, it looks a bit pixalated in the DOOM pallet.
Another thing, you can turn darker the skin without modifying the other parts of the picture. I don't know nothing about Gimp, but in psp, if you select something you can do modifications to that without touching the rest.

[bartwart]

Vegeta said:

Look out, it looks a bit pixalated in the DOOM pallet.
Another thing, you can turn darker the skin without modifying the other parts of the picture. I don't know nothing about Gimp, but in psp, if you select something you can do modifications to that without touching the rest.

I noticed that it was a bit pixelated too in some areas. Gimp also supports just selecting and modifying certain areas.

Thanks for the feedback.

[chilvence]

Just a small tip, to make a nice walking animation you really need a slight bob up and down for each step. Otherwise it looks like its being suspended by its head.

[bartwart]

That's just the gif. The real bmps have slightly different heights.

[blue]

dude it looks like he is dancing rofl

nice work thought I would like to see this

[Scuba Steve]

Moo.

[TheDarkArchon]

Vegeta said:

Giest118

That's really cool, very professional. I know that it's not the same, but can you do it also for Edge? That's because I'm making a monster pack for Kronos' "DOOM 3 in DOOM 2" mod.

I don't know. The effect was scripted for ZDoom.

[Draconio]

bartwart said:

This is what he looks like walking straight ahead:
(image)

4 sprites down and about 40 more to go.

Try putting some shading or something on the insignia, having it all one color looks slightly cartoonish.

[Bucket]

bartwart said:

I noticed that it was a bit pixelated too in some areas. Gimp also supports just selecting and modifying certain areas.

Thanks for the feedback.

It's probably because you're using dithering when you save as a .GIF or whatever. When reducing the palette(called "Indexed Color" in Photoshop), turn it off. Or at least really low, like 10%. It'll get rid of the grainy look.

[bartwart]

blue said:

dude it looks like he is dancing rofl

That's what I thought too when I first saw the gif, and it was slightly discouraging, but the dude's carrying a tail so he has to shake his hips a little bit.

[bartwart]

I have all the sprites *mostly* done and I'm working on a wad to beta test with. He will have a primary projectile attack, a spawn archvile attack, and a reflect projectile defense (when in pain). Some of the sprites will need to be changed before the final version, but this will be a good start.

I should have something for you guys to look at soon.

[bartwart]

Test this guy out. It only works on Zdoom that supports decorate.

lordvilebeta

[Deathmatcher]

bartwart said:

Problems/concerns:

1: Can't get the attack and death sounds to work correctly

2: Lordvile moves too slowly? To big?

3: Can't get the yellowish bfg type ball to appear, only the trail does.

4: Archviles spawn too close to the lord vile

5: Not sure if I like the sprites for protection and summoning animations.

Open to suggestions because I'm running out of ideas!

1: Yeah, you should work on that.
2: I don't think so.
3: The attack is very strange. I get constantly hit and pushed up in the air by invisible projectiles - even after its death!
4: I haven't seen any archviles spawning!
5: It looks somewhat out of place, when the lord vile becomes green. (Especially because it is not accompanied by sound and takes too long, it looks like a bug) The other effect looks cool, though!

I can't wait to see the final version. I think it's a great boss for ZDoom projects!