[Never Forgotten]

I'm going to begin work on Atomic Crisis soon* and I was wondering if anyone knew of any programs to create some good sprites with. I've made a few using bits and pieces of others using Paint.net... but they look horrible and blurry. I just want to make them look good, I'm not that skilled in that area. Also I've asked this before but I still can't figure it out... and I can't seem to find the forum I asked it under, but how do I create brand new enemies and weapons from scratch? I have a new boss that actually turned out pretty good, and I wanted to create a brand new enemy, instead of replacing an existing one. Remember I may have been mapping for a while, but as you all recall I'm still fairly new, especially to the scripting parts of it. Thanks.


*Soon being whenever I get a new computer as my new one died.

[Mark]

Your questions are not the easiest to answer. As far as graphics programs it depends a lot on your talent. Some people have done wonderful things in MSPaint and others have made crappy stuff with better programs. Since the mid 90's I have been using various older versions of Paint Shop Pro. Its kind of like a Photoshop Lite. GIMP is another very popular program. I use it only for a few things that my regular program can't do so I'm not sure how easy to use it is for everyday work.

Coding a new enemy from scratch is not something a beginner coder can handle unless you are an extremely good and fast learner. Everyone I know including myself has started with tweaking existing enemy code to your needs. Even doing that requires some con code experience. The Eduke32 Wiki is your friend.

Sorry I couldn't give a more positive response.

[Never Forgotten]

Mark., on 27 January 2017 - 01:05 PM, said:

Sorry I couldn't give a more positive response.

Don't worry, I'm not looking for positive, I'm looking for honest. Thanks for the response, I'll see what I can do using the Eduke wiki.

[Spiker]

Cage made some great sprites. He also made a tutorial. As for the dn3d enemies, I think they were made from 3d renders, it doesn't mean you can't draw them but so many angles makes it damn tedious.

http://ccorner.duke4...tutorial/8-bit/

[LkMax]

If you can get photoshop I recommend it, because its useful for much more than just sprites. If you do have photoshop you can disable the blurryness it does on images when changing dimensions:

Edit > Preferences > General

On "image interpolation", change to "Nearest Neighbor".
Other thing you can do is always uncheck "anti-alias" options on tools that have it because it blurs the borders of layers being edited.
Anti-alias is good for blending complex images bot not necessarily pixelated sprites.

[Never Forgotten]

LkMax, on 27 January 2017 - 02:23 PM, said:

If you can get photoshop I recommend it, because its useful for much more than just sprites. If you do have photoshop you can disable the blurryness it does on images when changing dimensions:

Edit > Preferences > General

On "image interpolation", change to "Nearest Neighbor".
Other thing you can do is always uncheck "anti-alias" options on tools that have it because it blurs the borders of layers being edited.
Anti-alias is good for blending complex images bot not necessarily pixelated sprites.

Thank you, that helps a lot.

Does anyone have any tips for modifying existing weapons? I was thinking of changing one of the weapons to a different type, example being changing the RPG to a machine gun. Any help would be appreciated, even if it means I need to learn a bit more.

[Tea Monster]

Blender is great for making sprites from. If you don't have a lot of 3D texturing knowledge, sometimes just making the shape you need in 3D and screen-grabbing it can act as guide to how to draw the sprite.

[Mark]

I haven't been gifted with the patience to help run you through the whole process but I can help get you started.

Many people including myself use the program Notepad ++ for con editing. Its a free DL.

Create a new project folder with all the usual files needed to edit and play the game.

Using GRPViewer, extract the USER.CON, GAME.CON and DEFS.CON files to the main folder.

Bookmark the Eduke32 Wiki page in your browser. You'll be going there a lot. There is a handy list of all the con commands and what they do. Some are well documented with example usage and some have hard to figure out technobabble. There is also example code for some popular things people like to modify in their mods.

Take a long look at existing code to get a feel for how you use brackets and pay careful attention to them and the use of spaces. I can't tell you how many times I swore at myself for simple mistakes caused by those 2 things.

Pick an item from GAME.CON whether its ammo, weapon, enemy and start to make minor changes to existing code for sound, or projectile type used. After making many mistakes you'll start to get a feel for what you are doing. It was a long slow process of trial and error for me. Once you start to know a little of what you are doing I think you will get more responses from members here when asking specific help questions as opposed to asking for help from scratch.

Checking out the con files from previous mods that did something like you intend to do is a major help also. That helped quicken my learning time in some cases.

Good luck.

[dnskill]

I use GIMP and have made several sprite edits and also new ones from scratch. I've also used it to make sprites out of actual physical objects. Doom had several weapon sprites that were modified pictures taken in a first person view, like how they did the DN3D shotgun. This can go beyond weapon sprites, like how ROTT had actors dressed in costumes to design the bad guys.

Here's some examples:
Modified existing sprites:

Spoiler

I made this from scratch:

Spoiler

And here's some of the stuff where I took pictures and then made them into sprites:

Spoiler

became

I don't have the original images anymore, but this temperature gun I had to use working as a security guard to check freezer temps

Spoiler

became

So anything is possible, you just have to keep at it. I'm not the best, but I've been doing sprite work for years now. Just keep at it. I would recommend GIMP or Photoshop.