Sprites not done

[Jon]

wesleyjohnson said:

Some of the demons throw fireballs, but notice that the fireballs come from a particular spot on the body as if they were lauched.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but in the case of doom's imp, the launch point is roughly from the centre of the sprite, which doesn't look *exactly* like it was thrown, if you look closely.

I think ideally the launch point and sprite graphic would line up, but it's not essential. Even less for bullet firers vs. thing throwers.

[Gez]

If the graphics really matched, the cyberdemon would always aim at the ground some distance close to him.

In the Doom 64 that some effort has been made to get the demons to visibly actually shoot the projectiles as the graphics imply.

[Catoptromancy]

I know way too many frames are missing, but they will make much better placeholders.

Sure it doesnt match but its better than a tiny skeleton. I probably should have made it a bit smaller.

http://ftpusers.coffeenet.org/~cato/freedoom/sprites/doom03.bmp
http://ftpusers.coffeenet.org/~cato/freedoom/sprites/darkcyb.wad

Ya, likely wont be committed. But it is Freedoom licensed and if anyone can do something with it they are free to.

Here is the Gimp script I used to rip the layers out of the gif.
http://ftpusers.coffeenet.org/~cato/freedoom/tools/sg-save-all-layers.scm

[wesleyjohnson]

Before starting on the spider-demon I tried to figure out where the gun should be placed. The best I could determine was that it was a fixed point for all creatures, as a ratio based on height. I did not discover any table that controls it.

Bullet shooting monsters can have problems too. Consider the spider-demon on FreeDoom MAP10, up on the balcony with the short wall.
The player can get to positions where the bullets from the spider-demon hit that wall. Ideally, from those positions the player should be able to see if the gun is blocked by the wall.

A demon with a high mounted gun would look like it could fire over the wall, but the engine will not do that.

If the gun is too low, then the player would see it blocked by the wall and would think themselves safe (such as going up the stairs to get a better shot, but not so far as to give the spider-demon a good shot). They would then get surprised when they are shot by a gun that looks like it is below the wall.

[wesleyjohnson]

Still working on the spider-demon sprites.

Trying to get together some 3D model that can render the sprite views accurately, but that is hung up. Either spend a couple months finishing the modeling code in my other program or try to get one of those downloaded programs to work.
Installing new operating system version (got Slackware 13.1), so that will help, but also involves massive amount of time fixing customized programs and settings before it is stable system again.

May have to fall back on hand generation (using existing OS), at least for a first cut, just to get it done in time for any release (maybe august ??). .... It may be crude.

[Urric]

Hey, I've been working on a new monster, a friend of mine said that it could work as the spider mastermind for freedoom.

I just need to complete the death animation
let me know what do you think!

Here's a screenshot of how it looks on gzdoom



and a gif animation

[Jon]

Urric said:

Hey, I've been working on a new monster, a friend of mine said that it could work as the spider mastermind for freedoom.

I just need to complete the death animation
let me know what do you think!

Here's a screenshot of how it looks on gzdoom



and a gif animation

I think it looks great and would fit well with the other freedoom monsters.

[Catoptromancy]

Do like new spider!

[Jostol27]

Spider mastermind looks brilliant!

[wesleyjohnson]

I have been working on spider-mastermind. I hope I have not been doing this for nothing. Have not been idle on it, have been trying to re-invent how to make a sprite using gimp for the last 3 days.
Re-doing it with separate body and legs so it animates easier.

Try speedyshare again:
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/23406313/spid-v5-front-fire.png

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/23406352/spid-v5-side-left.png

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/23406366/spid-v5-side-legs.png

Yes, I spent the last night pulling the legs off a spider-demon.

previous version, but more completed:

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/23406419/spid-v5-b7.png

[wesleyjohnson]

I have uploaded Spider Demon v6.2 to incoming
johnson_spid_01.zip
This is complete with every frame, and includes wadinfo.txt file.

This spider demon is custom made for FreeDoom, to fit-in with the existing sprites.
Spider demon characteristics.
* Big, General spider shape
* 8 Mechanical legs
* 4 arms (2 little arms run the machine gun)
* Machine gun.
* Waves a war hammer in its left hand.
* Communications antenna with little blue thing on it.
* No shared sprite views, it is left-right distinctive.
* Left-right distinctions:
- Antenna on right side.
- left hand has war hammer.
- ammo boxes on right side, one big box (armored) on left.
* Death sequence starts with ammo box blowing up, then power box blows up and catches fire. Burns to ground leaving metal parts.

This was revised 6 times already during development and still could use some changes, but not right now. I have worked steady on it for the last 6 weeks and have to get some other stuff done.

Look at it and make your comments (useful ones please).
I can make it darker and lighter really easy by altering the gamma in the script file.
I am thinking about that hammer in its left hand, which was added just so that hand had something to do.
The color quantization has been roughly handled by ppmquant, in the PNG files he has shades of brown (not red and orange) sides.

For those that collect statistics:
Used GIMP, running Linux 2.4.31 (GIMP has many useful functions, but takes 3 to 4 weeks to learn).
Generates PNG files with alpha channel (transparent areas), which are converted using pngtopnm.
A script file (BASH) does the conversion from PNG to PPM.
I have another Linux script that will make a spid PWAD.
Color quantize using ppmquant and special palette file.
Took about 120 hours (pure guess), about 6 hours a night, 3 out of 4 nights, for the last 6 weeks. It takes about 12 hours to do one angle, about 3 hours to do one death sequence frame, shooting or hurt frame.

Notes:
Must set GIMP background color to cyan, and clear switch about saving colors in transparent areas, every time GIMP is started.
Must add cyan to palette colors in ppmquant to stop it from changing the transparent cyan to the nearest palette color.

[Urric]

Hey
I finished the sprites for the spider monster, but as it wasn't originally intented to be a substitute for the mastermind, the number of walk sprites do not match exactly with the mastermind's, is it a problem? should I upload it for you to check?

as preview, here's a gif of the death anim

[Catoptromancy]

Exact frames dont matter too much. Some walk frames can be copied and used for other walk frames. The baron right now is missing tons of frames, but looks kinda stiff. Can carefully select whatever frames you have and use them in other places so animation is as smooth as possible.

Looks very awesome!

I dont have access to ftp at the moment. So hosting it anywhere else would be great.

[Gez]

Catoptromancy said:

I dont have access to ftp at the moment. So hosting it anywhere else would be great.

I suggest http://files.drdteam.org/ . It's there just for the Doom community.

[jute]

It looks great. I wonder what enemy this would best replace?

It's nice to see two full enemy sprite sets contributed in the last week or so.

[wesleyjohnson]

The frames a..q must match what the engine is expecting.
Otherwise the engine will display something, and it can be from some
random source. I found out with the spider-demon that there was all kinds of noise, images from the other wads, and just garbage displayed for missing frames. Some times it even crashed legacy (prboom too).
I finally put in dummy frames with just the id, like "C7", just to stop the crazy displays, until I could get something done for those frames.

Each type of monster has pre-assigned frames, and they differ between monster types. The imp and humans are almost identical, but the others vary.

For the spider-demon
Frame a..f : walking
Frame g h : shooting
Frame i : hurt
Frame j..p : death sequence
Frame q : dead

Another monster:
* Different number of walking frames. I think it is 4 or 6, but cannot
remember this clearly at the moment, but you got to check.
* Different length to death sequence.
* If dead frame is wrong, then nothing (or garbage) will be displayed
for dead monsters.

Sometimes when the frames do not match, you can get the invisible monster. It displays nothing, but can still kill you.

[Gez]

These frames correspond to the states as defined in info.c.

As a general reference, I'd recommend looking at the mobjs' actor definitions in the ZDoom wiki. Look here The DECORATE format is a lot simpler to read than those huge C arrays of structs.

For example, the spider demon is here.

It also gives you the frames' duration (in tics, which are 1/35th of seconds) so this gives you a reference for the speed of the animation.

[Catoptromancy]

Missing cant be just not there. But can reuse other frames.
But the pre-attack and attack frames are most important. It lets player know when monster is attacking or done attacking.

[Catoptromancy]

Urric said:

Hey
I finished the sprites for the spider monster, but as it wasn't originally intented to be a substitute for the mastermind, the number of walk sprites do not match exactly with the mastermind's, is it a problem? should I upload it for you to check?

as preview, here's a gif of the death anim

That would make an excellent cyberdemon! Style is very fitting. Hope it gets uploaded soon!

[Urric]

I finally fixed all errors I could find, the monster is ready, I will upload it as soon as i can.

Catoptromancy said:

That would make an excellent cyberdemon! Style is very fitting. Hope it gets uploaded soon!

It could be a great cyberdemon, but the sprite has 2 cannons, after I upload it, we should see where does it fit.

[jute]

The revenant has two cannons but only fires one missile, so there's definitely a precedent.

[Urric]

I finally uploaded the monster to the ftp, Urric_boss_demon.zip is the file, either as mastermind or cyberdemon, i hope it can find a home in freedoom, I'll post some concept art of the monster later.

I want to make the sprites for the archvile, I'm currently making some sketches, I could post them later.