STraTOS 1997 April & May/STraTOS 1 - 1997 April & May.iso/CD01/INTERNET/SITES/RAND/T0314/text0011.txt

Text File | 1997-02-06 | 3.5 KB | 65 lines

        Last week I *tried* to send a mail that should help fellow graphics
people if they want to design new sprites and stuff for Bad Mood. (Sebbe
wanted info I think) I don't think it got there, and I've also dug out a
little more info, so here we go again. (Footnote- I sent this again, but
I'm not sure whether that got there, or whether it was just reflected back
to me. Forgive me if the messages I send this week arrive twice, I'm still
not sure exactly what's going where after my email recovered.)

        Sprites. You don't need to do all frames in all eight directions.
There is a part in the Wad file that allows you to flip (horizontally) a
sprite if it looks the same from both directions. This can save a fair bit
of space in the wad and will cut down the amount of drawing needed on the
part of the artist by about thirty per cent. Static objects (things) and
dying/dead creatures look the same from all directions. Things can be
animated.

        Here are a few sizes for reference. (pixels also count as units in
size which is handy) Player sized creatures are 56 pixels high . The player
is 32 pixels wide although most creatures are slightly wider (those brown
imps are 40 wide I think), and this size dictates the size of spaces they
can go down (half the width equals the radius). The pink demons are 60
pixels wide(radius of 30), so can't follow the player down very narrow
corridors. Incidentally, the corridor must be one unit wider than the
sprite's size. Some of the bigger creatures are 48 wide by 64 high. As you
can see the size of things is as variable as you like. There can be no more
than 25 frames of animation for a single creature (the frames are numbered
by a single letter a-z).

        Now for textues. There are two types and they're slightly
different. Wall textures can apparently be any width you like (multiples of
eight only though), but bear in mind that if you want them to tile properly
ie.- no half texture at the end of a wall, then it would be wise to keep
them to a standard and frequently used dimension (128 wide for standard
walls I guess). If you want a wall to tile vertically, it must be 128
pixels high. You can have a shorter texture if it has to fit into a low
corridor, but it must not be used where it would tile as you'd get garbage
at the top of the texture. I think a texture can also be higher than 128
pixels if it doesn't have to tile. The average size of a normal wall tile
would therefore be 128 by 128 pixels. Narrow ones are used for such things
as corners and lights. Doors are no different to normal wall tiles.

        The textures for the floor and ceiling are called flats and are
always 64 pixels square, so that's easy enough.

        Both flats and wall textures can be animated (I think- certainly
flats, see the nuclear waste). Any sensible number of frames can be used.
(Probably upto 25 frames like sprites).

        The sky is always 128 pixels high (if I remember rightly) and
should wrap around with no visible join. one full rotation is 1024 pixels,
but this is a little extravegant in memory, so smaller images can be used.
A 512 pixel wide image will tile twice horizontally, but is wider than the
screen so won't show. A 256 pixel wide image will tile four times, but
isn't much less than a screen width, so you could probably get away with it
(and conserve a bit of memory).

        I hope this is of some use. All info was extracted from the
Doomspec file and a little bit from peeking at the graphics via WinDEU.

Have another day.

Robin Ball