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Messages - Leflair

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226
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 23, 2012, 02:48:02 pm »
NW arms movements


Was a bit worried that some of the hands would overlap the legs before I started gluing on the legs (and not sure how the game handles that when it comes to "overlap priority") which could look wonky if an arm was supposed to be "infront" of the leg while the hand ends up behind the hip or something. Turns out none of the hands did so no worries there.

I've noticed that the game have "complete" arms even when the main body should hide most of them (diagonal facings/side view). Might be smart to fill in with a dark colour "just in case" the arm doesn't link up perfectly with the body as it wouldn't be noticable then. Might help with positioning too...

NE done


SW done


Because the body hides the arms I chose not to draw the hidden arms, no need to have them pop out if they end up misaligned with the body.

Only 40 frames (West and North) + 8 stills + Picking death animations to go!

Well... that and getting them in game.

227
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 22, 2012, 05:08:52 pm »
S Arm movements:


Gonna be tricky to get the weapons to line up properly, the Muton sprite is very broad and bulky. I'm trying to keep an eye on where the hands are in relation to each other though, everything else is pretty irrelevant.

E: SE Armo movements done:

Took a lot of work to get those arms looking decent. Process right now: Do drafts of all the arms and worry about things lining up properly on the big grid later.
Assembling the models to get a good view of how things should look complete helps a lot. Gotta be careful not to have weirdness like arms/hands that should be "behind" the model show up "infront" of the legs and such.

228
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 22, 2012, 04:25:34 pm »
Enough talk, more pixels!

East-facing arm set minus "Stationary unarmed":

Going for a bit of a jogging feel. Closed fists = Powerful, or so some art book I read said. Hmm, making some close combat boxing animations might be fun  :D

I wonder if the bigger gun will block like half the face one some of diagonal posing models like this one, then again the Veronian got a big third eye on the forehead that should peak up above so it might not be a problem :P

229
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 22, 2012, 01:53:16 pm »
There are ways to get around that problem with the guns, for example if you got a humanoid sprite that doesn't wield weapons at all, or got them built in, or holds them in a way where overlapping aint an issue - as for the walking stuff, the game could simply switch out the models so it's just one (whole) model loaded in each frame, considering we got like 20 years of computer power over the original I don't think it would be much of a data sink  :P

I did propose that the game have a switch for handling it one way or the other, so depending on what kind of asset you want to include it can be a lot less work involved. A bit like setting up a fancy Excel sheet, some extra work up front but you save time in the long run.

e: Ideally all the loading information for the model/frames would be editable in a simple .txt file or similar, so we can set exactly how Y-levels, load-orders of overlapping frames, number of total frames and their order etc should load for each individual folder/sprite.

Maybe it's not possible to go over a certain number of frames for an animation sequence due to how the game works but the other parts would really give some freedom!

230
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 22, 2012, 12:25:12 am »
PCKVIEW from dashivas mapview, with Save  to get the whole sheet instead of chopped up per frame. Not sure why it unpacks it "out of order" like that.

Once we can insert wholy new species graphics packs, being able to modify the number of frames and the order they load would open up a whole new world. The game already does this when you think about it, because Snakemen and Floaters don't have the same number of animation frames as the Muton/X-Com soldiers. Could even include stuff like transforming enemies when they do some action - which could potentially be linked to another sets of stats or abilities.

Maybe even remove the 8-frame limit if you want to make "smoother" movement animations, and as stated in my previous post edit: Not need to chop the original up in the different limbs.

231
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 22, 2012, 12:00:50 am »
Thought it might be the division lines which is why I tried removing them, but the remaining difference is tiny and only pops up when measuring 3+ "sets" of 8 frames. I'll just have to try my best to superimpose my new arms over the old ones and see how it ends up fitting.

I've already done a camera facing sitting frame for the Veronian that's 4 pixel height difference, imagine that. If OpenXcom could include a smarter AI (At least for higher difficulties) than the original that would be pretty grand  :P

Let's see if I can list and classify all the different arm sets in order from looking at them now (you said they should match your list/the human animations so here we go):
First: Standing perfectly still facing all the different directions, unarmed, unit's left arm.
Second: The same, except right arm.
Third (the one which were two frames "off"): Looks to me like the unit's Left arm, unarmed, movement animation. As it's a movement animation it should be for a direction - Might be the "northern" one going with the clock-wise fit for the torso order.
Fourth: Which should make this the same except for the right arm.
Fifth: Left arm, NE side-view movement animation (fitting with the clockwise order)
Sixth: Right arm, NE side-view movement animation
Seventh and Eight looks like the Eastern movement animation.
Ninth and Tenth: SE movement animation "front".
Followed by the same for the remaining directions, S: 11, 12, SW: 13, 14, W: 15, 16 and NW: 17 & 18 sets.
Which should make the last arm sets the weapon holding arms. The first set, 19 looks to be holding a one-handed weapon and set 20 is for rifles and other two-handed weapons.

Looks to fit your list perfectly.

Is that correct?

Hmm, when I think about it the only reason the game keeps the sprites chopped up like this is to save room (for what was then very premium space).

There shouldn't be a reason why we couldn't just mash the bodyparts together like in my "work sheets" for OpenXcom and have the game just replace the whole model inbetween movement animations (in effect achieving the same result as the original). Would save a lot of time when making new sprites in the future, dunno about you guys but when making completely new stuff, being able to see the "whole" and compare it to other models at the same time is a lot easier than staring at each individual part in GIMP and keeping track of 260 different layers or have a whole bunch of different files :P

I mean, that way fine for just modifying stuff that's already in the game. Perhaps an option (a txt file flag in the graphics file pack or something) to have the game switch between reading a set of graphics in the two ways to give more leeway. Just a thought.



232
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 21, 2012, 09:29:42 pm »
I'm having one more headache though (scroll to the right end):


I'm figuring Paint.net just aint that exact - so even when it displays "32 pixels width" it might be 32.25 because I keep on redoing each grid but once I add up the totals it's off by ".5" or some other miniscule amount that do add up once I start gluing my grid back together.

Any ideas how to pull it off to the necessary exactness?

Moriarty: Does that mean I could make my Voronian have a full set of kneeling animations? What would be the Y-modifiers for the upper body so it matches with the legs? The AI might not use it unless "fixed" though... but it could be fun (there are two different sets of height values for standing and kneeling on all units)

233
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 21, 2012, 08:34:15 pm »
Those are just a small section of the 260+ frames, but yes - directly exported from the game.

Here's the full thing:


Look up in the top right corner, might be why the bottom row in the one I posted look wonky!  :P

(Not sure what the hell is going on with the 8 frames of a single pixel in the top row)

234
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 21, 2012, 08:23:39 pm »
I've readjusted all the legs so that they are "one pixel" "down" compared to the Muton, and the Veronian torso the same to match-up. Might adjust more downwards.

And this to get some visual ques to figure out the arms  :P


The top arms should be the models "left arm" (from its perspective) but I'm not sure what's going on with the bottom row, the dark areas would indicate that they are arms on the "other side" of the body, facing away from the camera and they appear to be unarmed like the top row? But they don't seem to quite line up...  ???

235
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 19, 2012, 08:07:53 pm »
Here's an example of how the Y-level will make things... trickier



The blue line shows the height difference between the current complete models depending on their movement frame.

Depending on which set of "four" movement frames for the legs, you got to track either the inner or outer leg that stays "solid" while the other leg moves. (see pink line)
This becomes a bit tricky with the "bug legs" of the Veronian and the pseudo-depth perspective on the inner leg, which quickly gets "compressed" as hell but I might get away with having the "solid" leg be one-pixel off from the center-line on occasion while the other one moves in the foreground.

The red line shows the height difference between the different frames of the Muton legs (and torso), a total of 3 different levels, with 2 of the leg frames sharing the same one (the left most ones).

As you can see from my current (remake) of the leg animation, the only place to compensate for that height difference is the "free" moving leg, while keeping the 3 midriff levels in mind to get it all to "glue together" correctly later (for the Muton, the other animation sets differ with the Y-level stuff).

Not only that, but due to the "hunch-forward" look of the Veronian, the midriff will at different times be covered by the arm closest to the "camera", which is why I've added some dark purple in the top layer of the mid-riff on the legs - which should mostly be hidden by the arm (Which should impose itself above all other pieces depth) while in animation and should come across as "shadows" when not. I hope that works as I think it does...

This is how it looks "fixed" (I think)


Adjusted all the running animations accordingly, with some new frames too where the legs didn't work right:


Still need to check so that the different "torso's" line up correctly with their lower bodies - and do the arms.

236
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 19, 2012, 07:14:45 pm »
You mean arm "motion" while moving? Yeah, most of the arms are frozen (copies) currently (with a few exceptions), will take on properly animating that after I'm done with the rest of the frames.

The largest bulk of frames are actually arms, due to having both "unarmed" and "armed" states.

To quote moriarty:
Take a look at my list here: https://openxcommods.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/8/4/11849982/xcom_0_sprite_usage.txt. the sprites are for the most part in groups of 8, for the 8 different facings possible. the order is always the same, and can be seen best when looking at the legs or torso: it starts facing "away to the right" (which is "north" in-game, as seen in the mini-map - the "camera" sits southeast, looking towards the northwest), and then turns clockwise.


237
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 18, 2012, 09:38:01 pm »
The conversion job so far:




Played around with the upper torsos to see how best fit the individual arms later, as you can see I left some of the shoulders "in" on a few of them due to the minimal differences between that part on the various arms - may have to reconsider that when I flesh out the "unarmed" arm frames.

Due to how the unched over body covers most of the arm "away from the camera" I might not actually need to modell the complete arm for those frames, just what juts out of the elbow.

I wasn't satisfied with how the diagonal front legs turned out in the first draft so I redid them to better work with the games way of animating it. Might still require some changes, although this is at 300% zoom so it might not be noticable if a few pixels are a bit "off" here and there once ingame.

There's still some height differences between the Muton and Veronian, due to how the legs are structured on the Veronian (Humanoid vs "bird/bug legs"), most noticable on the full model rotation and the diagonal running comparisons. May require some modification - or it might turn out that the legs work better overall with one of the other alien models. The diagonal arms may "bob around" less than the Mutons due to the more compact motion set.

238
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 18, 2012, 08:09:56 pm »
Ah, missed that part when I read your post! (I guessed the same after though so  :P)

I believe Mutons might be the closest fit as far as Y-position goes (for the legs at least), but we'll see.

239
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 18, 2012, 06:32:45 pm »
Tell you what, I'll assemble a first version with the focus on just getting all the frames in the proper order and then if things looks funky with the weapon handling I'll adjust things accordingly.

I still wonder how the (single) torso frame "knows" how to move up and down with the different leg frames, perhaps that too is tied to the Y-offset?

Edit:
Here's an idea I knocked around in my head today at work:

The "Sectoman" (Yeah yeah I know :p)


Inspired by that comment about one of the remade snakemen heads making for a potential new species and the "Outsider" from the new XCOM game, I thought the idea of a universal "guardian" to be pretty cool.

Regardless of species it has a chance of appearing onboard medium and larger ships + bases, up to 4 units [in addition to the normal crew].

The chance of appearing is modified by difficulty.

So a Medium ship might get 1 [say 25% chance on beginner]
While a large ship may get up to 2 and a battleship up to 4 (same for bases). It might be none though, or anything inbetween.

It's tough as nails and comes with built in weaponry that doesn't run out of ammo (like the Sectopod gun), shielded against psionics with its only weakness perhaps being "slowness" and low aggression to keep it around the ship.

I also knocked around having a even beefier version with lower % chance of appearing, just for that extra "That doesn't look good-" factor.

Ideally OpenXcom could have a seperate category for a "guardian" class of unit, just like terror units that simply slaps on a randomly (or tied to species) unit for when the aliens are on the defensive to spice things up.

240
Work In Progress / Re: The Leflair Sprite Sweatshop, Voxels need not apply
« on: September 17, 2012, 10:44:00 pm »
Working on converting the Velarian to something usable ingame but I am running into some issues:
Is there a max roof on amount of frames for one "movement"? For example: When walking the game seem to use about 8 frames (+1 idle frame)

My own draft got like 18 frames + 1 idle for the same - Do I need to cut out some frames for the game to parse it correctly?

Example:

8 Frames, 4 for each movement - The other 4 are just mirrored versions of the first set
The frames also move up and down about 2 pixels (I guess to create a faux sense of movement)
It's a bit interesting because there's just 1 single front torso part, which makes me think that it somehow automatically moves up and down with the leg parts between frames? Or do they in practice clip through it? That shouldn't look right, but it's hard to know without directly comparing it ingame.

My old animation looks like this


And a new one that "matches" the Muton one, sans the pixel jump



Thoughts?

The other issues are "unarmed" arm movement and weapon positions.

The Muton got a pile of arm movements for each angle and a set too for holding weapons for the various angles - within the current game modding limitations I can't just throw in a gun on my own sprite sets and create a file for weapon positions from that - I need to match it with an existing set (and replace it) and that's proving to be the most difficult part, siffling through the unassembled standard aliens to find a decent match.

The Veronian is slightly taller than the X-Com soldier (and I can't exactly replace that either) and the other closest match is probably the Muton, which got some funky beef-cake arms where I'm uncertain on how the final gun position rests. I've yet to find the default "standing still holding a rifle" arms. Maybe I'm overthinking it and it won't even be noticable if most of the hands are covered by the guns? Still, don't want the guns to hover clearly above the hands either.


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