HD sprite upgrade possible?

[Raihn]

I'm an artist and I'm curious as to where I might find information on or if it is possible to create an HD Sprite pack for Open Xcom?  Also, if that is possible would it also be possible to do some fun UI upgrades and tweaks.  For example, a year or so ago a friend of mine and I played through the OG XCom on DOS box and live streamed it.  To help get the audience into it we added a UI that I would just update as we played via Photoshop, it was quite fun. 

Definitely not my best work, it was a rushed experiment, but you can check it out here https://raihn.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/overlay-for-x-com-stream/

I'm currently working on a 2d Side scroller www.Mecromage.com it has some images etc that I've done.  I've done an HD remake of Castlevania 3's first level as well, a few years back.   Anyhow, love XCOM and I love this project!  Thanks for the work!

[Hythlodaeus]

It's certainly possible. OpenXcom uses SDL, which pretty much means you can use any graphics resolution you wish. The UI can also be resprited and reshaped to your will as long as you know a bit of coding. The real problem isn't whether it's possible or not, but rather the insane amount of sprites you'll have to work on. If you want more info you should try showing up on our IRC channel and ask your questions directly to the lead devs.

[Yankes]

OXC depends internally palette colors, shading effects depends on this (globe & battle scape). Creating similar effect in RGB is lot of harder.
Main problem there is that color change isnt linear, darken colors are more reddish than bright ones.
If this is will be resolved mixing RGB and palette will not be hard. AndO3131's TFTD branch used two different palettes at once, adding another one or
RGB graphic will be easy.

In battlescape all sprites are fixed to 32x40 if you use different size everything would break (drawing routines of unit have hard coded offsets that depends on this). Only way to have new graphic without breaking old one is upscale by fixed number all old graphic to 64x80.
But because of that you will end up with sprites with different "pixel size".

[Raihn]

Thanks for the information!  Where is the IRC Channel.  The pixel information makes sense, and up-scaling as you have mentioned would be cool.

[Hythlodaeus]

#openxcom on irc.freenode.net

[xracer]

Well with some help (read a lot) form Sup i have been able to include higher res sprites. The Issue is the insane amount of work needed.

Also there are quite a few things that will need to be modify in the code and  adjusting the offset so that sprites get their proper drawing. Trust me if a person like me was able to get something to work albeit partially a person with just a little skill can make it work with no problem

Oh and I have started a fork in OXC to make it higher resolution you know just saying *hint* *hint*

[mercy]

Hi-res sprites fragmented explosion support. Soldiers & alien units can explode like weak monsters in Baldurs Gate. Aliens' and soldiers' weapons sent flying if their owner drops & dies.

Tanks can explode to pieces and bits can be seen bouncing around also back from floor and walls.

Bouncing sparks & ricocheting bullets, new explosive effects: walls coming apart and pieces flying around.

Crater support.

Fallout 1 gooification support aliens spitting quick-dissolving molecular acid into soldiers faces causes XCOM soldiers to be dissolved alive like in ALIENS.

Large structure collapse support. Multi-storey buildings coming down from explosions and behave like an old house-block during demolition.

Impact hits: soldiers are thrown back if alien is too strong and hits them critically during melee. Similarly sectoids can fly backward from a healthy slap given by a Schwarzenegger Commando.

[Raihn]

Haha, all would be sick.  I'm currently in the midst of a project, but if there can be some serious direct support from the team (since it'd be important to make sure the authentication of the original and the code can support resolution and color updates) that made OpenXCOM, I would be interested throwing in some time.  Initially I'd like just enough specifications to know how I'd at least demo the graphics.  I'd probably use Tiled's isometric mapping for some initial demos.

[xracer]

Well it will be nice to have an artist on call

As for the project itself the main codebase uses data from the game to stay within the legal side of developing, so any new artwork or sprites would be added as mods in case someone doesn't like the project they would not be able to shutdown down due to copyright issues.

A lot of people especially me have been wishing for a update to the sprites, there is a version of the sprites done for TTS that one of the developers kindly passed on to this project. maybe you can look at that and expand on it since i believe it is not complete.

The team i think is on the fence to support or not higher resolution, I on the other hand already jumped the fence

[RSSwizard]

Its an old topic I know, but taking some advice from a Doom source port called Edge...

If you want to include capacity for HD sprites you can do it without messing with existing sprites.

Put something in the code allowing for a "Scale Multiplier" option for sprites. That means if left unspecified it defaults, but if specified it will scale based on the multiplier vs. screen resolution.

So if you got snazzy inventory gun graphics that are drawn to be 2x the usual resolution so they have more detail, the multiplier would be 0.5. That way say 640x400 resolution they would actually be displayed at 1:1 ratio while everything else defaulting would be at 2 pixel blocks.

Then you dont have to make Universal packs of re-sized graphics, you can just do it as you go.