Home » SIRTECH CLASSICS » Jagged Alliance: Unfinished Business » Tools and Guides Repository (Archive) » Improving Original JA2 graphics
Re: this project sounds great.[message #167574]
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Fri, 14 December 2007 11:28
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Khor1255 |
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Messages:1817
Registered:August 2003 Location: Pleasantville, NJ |
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This touches on a good idea though.
An expanded choice of pallettes would be a great step toward making sprites appear
exactly like the modder wants them to.
[Updated on: Fri, 14 December 2007 11:29] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Sergeant Major
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #167608]
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Fri, 14 December 2007 17:30
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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the problem with drawing in any body armour and such is that you'll have to edit each and every single animation. And almost each frame.
unless you can get some 3dmodelling procedure working, it'll take ages.
there's a couple of ideas how to depcict body armour. since i don't see manual drawing in of body armour possible (again, this is unless the 3d model and rendering and all is being done) i'd say a more precise use of the pallets would help: camouflage pallets currently effect the skincolor, the pants color, the vest color and probably even hair color (not sure there though)
if we could define color palettes just for each of this colors, we could at least have body armour distinguished by color, maybe one color representing one specific body armour class level
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Sergeant Major
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #167612]
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Fri, 14 December 2007 18:36
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Thor |
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Messages:423
Registered:February 2007 Location: Belgium |
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I wouldn't bother about body armour. People wear it beneath their clothes... The character should just have to be a bit puffed up around the body if anything.. (Which should only be visible from up close)
A helmet that's a different story.
What do you think?
[Updated on: Fri, 14 December 2007 18:37] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Master Sergeant
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #167613]
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Fri, 14 December 2007 18:43
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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not sure. i can imagine my Mercs to wear commando tuques, barrets or even bandana's
large helmets are so WW1- ish. me personally i'm not too fond of it
the hair color usually has only some 10 max. pixels per frame... i think we can't be very creative there. but that's just me. i guess that can be seen totally differently
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Sergeant Major
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #167623]
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Fri, 14 December 2007 19:54
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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hehe yeah.
i hope you don't mind if i pick up a point i was referring to earlier: camouflaged items, such as vests, pants and helmets give camo only to the part of the body they actually cover.
it would only require the game to check what armour type (armours.xml has already those distinctions) an object is. a camouflaged helmet would then just modify the haircolor palette, a vest only the vest color and pants only the pants color. We already have like 4 or 5 camo patterns... snow, urban, woodland, desert, stealth as far as i remember.
what i'm implying is that in such a way, we could customize the optics of our mercs manyfold, as a woodland camo vest plus a desert camo helmet plus an urban camo pants would make our character look much more unique.
we have 3 body parts and 5 possible camouflage patterns... that would give a large span of different possible looks. If somebody wants to portray specific armies in his squads, he may do so by adjusting the palettes in question...
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Sergeant Major
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #168366]
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Fri, 21 December 2007 07:06
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tazpn |
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Messages:99
Registered:December 2007 Location: CA, USA |
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New user to the forum and boy was I pleased to find this gem still alive and kicking and even better open source. I've always ranked JA2 up in my top 3 favorite games of all time with Fallout and Planescape.
Anyway, I'm no expert in blitting but I think most of the request is possible but still not exactly easy. Between stiedit and ja2pal many of the base tools are ready but the remaining manpower seems a little light.
1. Updating Palettes
This is relatively straight forward. Basically, all of the customized merc palettes are held in ja2pal.dat and are referenced by name in the code. The animation palette is then altered with those colors. This still means that the available colors are fixed but very flexible. More selections and the ability to customize in the IMP screen (or inventory screen) is probably the biggest job.
2. Separate items
Again still possible to do with the STI format but definitely a lot more work. The current resolution of the images are poor enough that I'm not sure allow that to be more fancy would be useful. It would be nice if we could block off part of the palette for the gun colors and then use the color substitution code for slightly different colors. Still not easy but probably easier than creating 5x more STI files with only the requisite body parts.
Given that every soldier already has unique color combinations for Head, Pants, Vest, Skin, Misc colors that is almost enough for a lot of interesting customization.
3. Unique color control based on armor
Color control based on items should be easily doable. One difficulty here is that there is no good mapping of items to color palette that I can see but I'm sure this could be added to the XML files if somebody wanted and then if it was missing default to the original color or something. We could easily introduce a bunch of different color shades here to get the most bang for our buck. This also fixes a lot of interface problems. I would recommend introducing new attachment items that alter color here for extra flexibility.
4. Camo items
I can't really tell how the replacement works at the moment but it looks like its just another form of palette replacement. The colors types are hard coded but specified in XXX.COL files for some flexibility.
5. Arms
Looks like arms use the same palette as the face so it looks like trouble to allow for sleeves.
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I would take the approach of:
1. Adding meaningful palette replacements to ja2pal.dat for use in the XML.
2. Adding references to those color strings to the XML for all armor items to allow custom colors.
3. Adding color attachment items for the Head, Chest, Leg armor (using the XML color strings)
4. Altering the "Soldier Control.cpp" code to update palette from the items worn by the soldier.
5. Adding a setting to disable this code in the INI file so its not forced on users.
Having said all this, I dont know if I have the time for this kind of project but could be fun and looks simple enough that it could be manageable.
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Corporal 1st Class
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #168410]
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Fri, 21 December 2007 16:33
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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concerning point 3
the scorpion
camouflaged items, such as vests, pants and helmets give camo only to the part of the body they actually cover.
it would only require the game to check what armour type (armours.xml has already those distinctions) an object is. a camouflaged helmet would then just modify the haircolor palette, a vest only the vest color and pants only the pants color. We already have like 4 or 5 camo patterns... snow, urban, woodland, desert, stealth as far as i remember.
what i'm implying is that in such a way, we could customize the optics of our mercs manyfold, as a woodland camo vest plus a desert camo helmet plus an urban camo pants would make our character look much more unique.
we have 3 body parts and 5 possible camouflage patterns... that would give a large span of different possible looks. If somebody wants to portray specific armies in his squads, he may do so by adjusting the palettes in question...
i think this is a promising idea. instead of checking for the 50 percent camo bonus, the game would have to trigger a special palette according to the item's type or maybe even by an external value
"ItemPalette" tag that points to a palette.
i used camouflage as an example in the above posting, but basicly, any kind of palette is thinkable.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #169089]
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Sun, 30 December 2007 22:41
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Dr-D |
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Messages:102
Registered:July 2005 Location: Portugal |
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since weapons will also need multiple frames, maybe the xml tag sould be:
with P90.sti having several folders one for each frame
so if does not exist
and item is a weapon, add default animation (to cover the huge amount of weapons issue)
[Updated on: Sun, 30 December 2007 23:48] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Sergeant
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #169093]
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Sun, 30 December 2007 22:56
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Khor1255 |
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Messages:1817
Registered:August 2003 Location: Pleasantville, NJ |
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Another problem I can see is that the computer would need to know when the torso should block the weapon and when the weapon should appear over the torso.
Perhaps making the back of each sprite a different colour (we might even be able to make all 'far' parts of a sprite the same colour) could be the solution?
EDIT:
Sorry, just saw your post. That is the only way I could see thins thing actually getting done. That is precisely what we need to do.
I am wondering how you got all that detail into the sprite sized p90?
Is this by using the highest resolution and if so how to I generate the extra pixels necessary to make images in this resolution?
I'm sure it is probably just a simple mathematical formula but what is it?
[Updated on: Sun, 30 December 2007 23:00] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Sergeant Major
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #169094]
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Sun, 30 December 2007 23:03
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Dr-D |
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Messages:102
Registered:July 2005 Location: Portugal |
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Khor1255Another problem I can see is that the computer would need to know when the torso should block the weapon and when the weapon should appear over the torso.
Perhaps making the back of each sprite a different colour (we might even be able to make all 'far' parts of a sprite the same colour) could be the solution?
well thats not up to the computer, thats up to the animation, i explain:
when the weapon is in front of the torso, the animator should use frame 14, when its behind the torso, the animator should use frame 8.
so in the same place that frame 8 is used, the frame 14 has nothing(in this case, in other cases it may have).
Its all up to the animator, if he choses the right frames, it appears correctly
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Sergeant
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #169095]
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Sun, 30 December 2007 23:05
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Dr-D |
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Messages:102
Registered:July 2005 Location: Portugal |
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Khor1255
I am wondering how you got all that detail into the sprite sized p90?
Is this by using the highest resolution and if so how to I generate the extra pixels necessary to make images in this resolution?
I'm sure it is probably just a simple mathematical formula but what is it?
Nope, I'm a paint fanatic, i painted it, pixel by pixel, from memory.
But if you want a good (and free) draw tool, get Gimp.
[Updated on: Sun, 30 December 2007 23:09] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Sergeant
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Re: this project sounds great.[message #172377]
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Tue, 22 January 2008 02:30
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circ |
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Messages:10
Registered:August 2004 |
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interesting that you brought up FOT, as i played that for a week or two just recently. anyway, it has some cool sprite animations and the gear changing your appearance is nice. but not everything is painted in so you get crowbars and spiked bats and cattle prods that look like each other. ive never played d2 because diablo 1 was utterly boring, however, lately ive been playing ToEE, the temple of elemental evil, and it too has some cool layered sprites. i think it uses 2d maps and 3d for the tiny chars, that end up about the same size as JA2. it looks pretty cool, and uh barbie doll like, you put on say a fullplate, and it shows up, and then slap on a robe and it covers the whole thing up.
the 1.13 did alot for JA2 graphics just with the higher resolution possibility imo, but ah, to have the living scenery of ToEE or even the shell craters from FOT would be nuts. but lacking that, more lifelike sprites would be cool.
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