Home » SIRTECH CLASSICS » Jagged Alliance: Unfinished Business » Tools and Guides Repository (Archive) » Improving Original JA2 graphics
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179051]
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Tue, 25 March 2008 14:01
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sphinx |
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Messages:42
Registered:February 2007 |
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So it's a massive amount of work. Can we have shortcuts? I mean, if there are 6 body types, could it be cut down to 3 (slim fem & male merc and bodybuilder merc) and make every character in the game use those body types (except bloodcats, creps and kids of course)?
Same for armor and weapons. Is it really necessary to recreate every weapon and armor graphic or could it be limited to, say, 3-6 models per item class, meaning 3-6 pistol, rifle, assault rifle, SMG, MG, shotgun etc.. models; 3-6 legging, vest, helmet models?
Pistols: short barrel pistol, long barrel pistol (2)
Revolvers: ditto, but revolvers (2)
SMGs: Uzi/Mac-10 type, MP5 type, P90... anything else? (3)
Rifles: rifle or a scoped (sniper) rifle (2)
Ass. rifles: M4/M16 type, AK type, Steyr, Groza (4)
Shotguns: buttstockless pump-action, street sweeper, USAS-12 (the drum magazine), other two (SPAS-15 and M870) could use rifle M4 and rifle models (5)
MGs: FN Minimi, RPD... (2)
I mean really, from a distance, how accurately can you make out what kind of weapon the other guy is using? Oh well.. I suppose underbarrel grenade launchers, scopes and suppressors should be visible too.
On a related note, I (and probably few others), would be happy to NOT see certain animations, like the ludicrous karatekid-esque martial arts finishing move and the strong merc firing an assault rifle with one arm stretched out.
Edit: Edited last sentence a bit. Not fast enough though.
[Updated on: Tue, 25 March 2008 14:46] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Corporal
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179056]
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Tue, 25 March 2008 14:23
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sphinx |
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Messages:42
Registered:February 2007 |
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I'd remove the kids completely for now. Maybe add them later if someone really really wants to see kids running for their lives during combat or worse.
I was trying to come up with a middle-ground option (compromise) for creating every single piece of equipment. You really want to have different graphics for all the dozens of AK variants? A merc on my screen appears now about 1 inch tall. How far does a person has to stand so that he appears 1 inch tall? 50 meters? 100 meters? See that assault rifle he's carrying? The best you should be able to make out is if that rifle is an AK or M16, whether it has a scope or an underbarrel GL.
As for the civilians, let them have their clothes... sleeveless shirt, t-shirt or a jacket? Maybe add a baseball or a fedora? Skirts for the ladies? How much do you want?
Edit:
If it's the weapon/armor info you want quickly, maybe request tooltips on mouseover revealing exactly the equipment a character is wearing? That's been done already though. Visually identifying -exactly- what the other guy is wearing requires close proximity, binoculars or a rifle scope. And that the target stays relatively still.
[Updated on: Tue, 25 March 2008 14:48] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Corporal
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179065]
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Tue, 25 March 2008 15:59
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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if you look at ja2 1.13 and see the hundreds of items and guns, i'd have to say that it is probably faster not having to model/ skin hundreds of objects for little gain.
i suggest everybody to have a look at animations.slf just so you guys know what level of detail we're talking about here.
also i suggest having a look at older animation-themed threads for example of how little variation is possible at all given then engine
so what can be done is have one gun sprite for each weapon class. that is something i wouldn't rule out. But i think that none here is ready to invest months of freetime for it, not even the gun-nutties gun-nut.
we should especially forget armour, clothing, gear whatever becasue this is used in each animation, while weapons are only used in a limited number of animations (still too many for most of us to ever deliver anything)
so different weapons is from an artist point of view not unthinkable. But then somebody would have to draw it and somebody would have to code it and we have neither ;-/
plus it would mean even more restriction. The more anims are added, the more works it is to add new things or overwrite any existing stuff. On that subjects, there's various animations already in the animations.slf that are unused. So if nobody bothers to code them into the game, how can we expect people to bother about this at all anyway.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179070]
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Tue, 25 March 2008 16:18
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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you'd require the model for this and the tool and a guy who does it.
it will still be much work because somewhere, the detail comes from. i'd like to see just ONE example of this method and i'd be cool with it.
i haven't seen anybody pulling it off, maybe this community being iso-game themed, lacks 3d pro's.
and please, if you compare this to diablo 2, then ja2's sprites are way beyond this detail level. You have them climbing fences/ roofs with dozens of frames per angle, you have them jump down the rope, fall down from roofs, this is not the typical diablo 2 generic minimalistic animation that only has breathing running and a generic slash with one hand and everything mirrored to the other side, this is ja2 and its animations are pieces of art EACH direction of each bodytype.
so even with a very efficient process, you'd have to be 100% behind this to get anywhere.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179071]
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Tue, 25 March 2008 17:08
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lisac |
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Messages:92
Registered:July 2006 Location: Austria |
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Khor1255Although I can forsee some real nightmarish xy coordinate tweaking to get 'floating' armour and the like to look right I think this is a great idea.
No need for tweaking coordinates, since all the layers of one animation will be "fit" into one "master frame" (see the pics in my first post). The only problem would be amount of space taken by the new sprites, but I believe that, in terms of today's modern era computing, this would be acceptable.
SphinxSo it's a massive amount of work.
Nobody said it isn't.
SphinxI suppose underbarrel grenade launchers, scopes and suppressors should be visible too.
Are you kidding me?
SphinxOn a related note, I (and probably few others), would be happy to NOT see certain animations, like the ludicrous karatekid-esque martial arts finishing move and the strong merc firing an assault rifle with one arm stretched out.
On a related note, you've missed the point of the clich
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Corporal 1st Class
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179191]
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Wed, 26 March 2008 21:05
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Arethusa |
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Messages:24
Registered:August 2006 Location: Connecticut |
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I honestly have to say that I'm surprisingly fond of the idea of stealing CoD4's character models for this. Would save enormous amounts of time, and this project is non profit and really very, very low profile anyway.
To address a few things that have been raised so far, if the system is well set up someone has the right tools for this (which is more than being familiar with 3D content creation, which I am; doing sprites from 3D is a pretty specific skill and tool set), making attachments visible isn't really that hard. It's just a bit of additional tedium for each weapon, and I suppose it is a geometric increase, but it's not terribly worse than what you already have to deal with. The real difficulties, as far as I can see, are in animations, which you cannot take from another game and will need to both create, orient, and render. Far from simple. New gun models take a fair amount of time, but given the resolution (even if you were to increase the game's resolution significantly to 1600x1200 or something, which I think is a good idea), it's not that hard to make new, individual ones for every gun. It's the animations and the rendering setup that are hell; the rest, if it can be reasonably automated, will take a while, but isn't impossible. I think there's also a reasonable argument here that this might be a better idea than a new engine if everyone's pretty much waiting for JA3 so that that can be ripped apart and modded to 1.13 standards when its inevitable unimpressive release comes.
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179258]
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Thu, 27 March 2008 21:52
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Arethusa |
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Messages:24
Registered:August 2006 Location: Connecticut |
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Yeah, we really do need a switch to png, which should have happened a while ago. I loathe proprietary formats.
The problem with lisac's proposal is that it multilayering doesn't make things as easy as it may seem. Principally, it does absolutely nothing for the animation problem, and every weapon or carried object is going to need to be rendered for every animation frame, which, as you can imagine, is not pleasant. What it primarily helps with is animation redundant rendering, such as attachments on guns (which is why they're not as much work, though attachments are a pain if they change animations, like a vertical foregrip or grenade launcher) or different clothing (which is why visible armor and equipment is a fair amount of work, but not as much as it may seem). Admittedly, it's hard to say how far this is worth going through with; it's a lot of work, and if JA3D comes out (and sucks, which it will, but is moddable and therefore fixable, which we all hope for), then we might as well jump 1.13 to that and deal with graphics that are not stuck in the last century. But if lisac has the tools and people who know them (I know models and texturing, but I don't know sprites, Lightwave, etc), then at least some amount of this is worth doing. JA2's graphics were pretty damn awful in 1999, after all.
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Private 1st Class
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179268]
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Thu, 27 March 2008 23:54
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lockie |
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Messages:3721
Registered:February 2006 Location: Scotland |
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I'm with mauser on this one , who has time or money to spend on this when it doesn't really matter!
the guys who really are worth helping are scorpion , will and the polish guys and khor, new stories , characters and quests. All this blether about basically building a new game , when identical (ja3 / jazz ) games are on their way already , just seems a waste !(ok , ok , its not my time I'm wasting , but...) sorry guys , rant over :rant2:
[Updated on: Thu, 27 March 2008 23:55] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179272]
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Fri, 28 March 2008 02:28
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BirdFlu |
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Messages:438
Registered:September 2007 Location: Lampukistan |
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OK, now that i have a little bit more time, i can contribute something to this
discussion too.
First, i don't think that a switch to a 3D-Engine is going to work (very fast), because you
basically don't have any 3D-content. And the newer games don't look great because of a
special engine, they look great because of high-resolution 3D-models and textures. I mean
it is just an engine, not a wonder machine. No high-res content -> no good looks.
But high-res data is one thing, the other thing is the required 'horsepower'. What
would be the target group of such a project, only those people with uber-computers?
What about those who have smaller pcs or even laptops with very little 3D-rendering power?
Then there is the Direct3D issue. You would again have a hard time to port it linux or
MacOS systems (or you just wouldn't do it).
That was the bad part, now the good part.
I was working on an OpenGL 'engine' and already have a very basic prototype.
Right now it is just a small part of the laptop. The strategic view would be basically
the same. But the hard part is the tactical view. I haven't look too close on the
world rendering, so i don't know yet how to structure my engine, because as it is now
it would probably be too inefficient for rendering maps with a lot more content.
So, if those, who know, could point me in the right direction, it could speed-up development
a lot. The 'right direction' would be the important data structures, how maps are stored, loaded,
rendered (a basic outline of the algorithms would be very helpful), or just anything else of
importance.
BTW, is there anyone else who hates to scroll through files with 5 or more thousand
lines of code, or is it just me?
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179331]
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Fri, 28 March 2008 18:45
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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i can only speak for the medieval approach ;-D
i think the main problem is how detailed ja2's sprites are not in terms of resolution or colors, but in the number of frames and sophistication of the portrayed movements.
even with a semi-automated process and a highly motivated and skilled guy, it's still a HUGE thing, especially if the idea was to multi-layer every animation!
this would become necessary if things like armour/ clothing should be portrayed too. Weapons is one thing becasue they aren't used for the most difficult animations (e.g. falling from the roof, climbing a roof, jumping over fences etc)
there are many of even today's 3d games that don't even have things like that, jumping fences or climbing onto things (without the use of ladders... step-by-step)
so i'd say even if armour, clothing and such stuff is left away, the workload will still be quite high, even in spite of the semi automated process. i mean every desired item will have to be modeled for each of the moves for which it is used. For a normal number of guns, this is thinkable IMHO but for all equipment and armour i doubt it is doable.
i think the guy(s) who'd made the anims for ja2 was doing this as a full time job over a longer period of time. So i think lisac should get some help there.
i received some custom animations lately (yes, there are people working on that... the medieval way) and personally i wouldn't mind if more actions/ movement would be added rather than items/ layers. i'd say it might add more to the gameplay but then that's probabl a matter of taste.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179333]
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Fri, 28 March 2008 18:59
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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if you look at ja2's real-existing sprites.
how would you portray the difference between a guardian and a spectra vest on a female or normal merc? i mean on the big guy, i could see it, but on the small bodytypes, let alone civilians, i see only 3 things:
like they are now. A thick thing to portary armour. a coat.
these are the 3 distinct shapes possible for the torso
now the head: headgear or not.
2 options. try to make a different sprite for different helmets or even helmets and caps or boonie hats... with 4-8 pixels, there is no much you can do
legs... well... uhmmm...
thinkable are weapon classes. a sniper rifle vs. submachinegun, there are visible differences.
but armour is not of much use. i made a suggestion one time that camouflage (from clothing) should only apply to the bodypart where an item that gives the camo is worn.
if we now expand to 255 camouflage patterns, we gain a lot more than what we can with the 4-8 pixels for headgear that have to be applied in some way to tens of thousands of pictures.
if we had this feature (camo only to the bodyparts effectvily covered by it), i could alsready visually portray the biggest number of vanilla ja2's armours.
and i think the workload for coders to add a big number of exceptions for the different parts of the body would be MUCH less than for drawing armour onto every sprite. (with or without the background sprite... the layer must still be drawn)
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Improving Original JA2 graphics [message #179371]
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Fri, 28 March 2008 21:12
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Da_Fazha |
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Messages:18
Registered:March 2008 Location: USA |
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Star walker is mostly right, I would like to know that but my primary reason was to see if you are making sprites to include all the different variations in the NIV as well as the original inventory, ie, LBE, new weapon shapes, etc.
I'm probably outta my league here, so some of my questions might seem wierd, or odd. Sorry bout that, but its not like I'm gonna get to it yet anyway so I might as well learn what I can, when I can.
Again thanks for all the help you guys have given!
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Private
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