@gr3yh4:7I have a version of the fire, ice, and lightning spells, but the ice one took too long. I did a (bad) full paintover since I couldn't get gimp to give me something useful automatically. I'm not too crazy about how these are turning out, and the judges won't be too impressed with bad pixelized versions of good art, so these are very low priority.
@wulax: Very nice! I don't think there are better ways than that. Imagemagick has a bunch of language bindings to use them in game, or you could just use these scripts as-is on Linux and OSX (though you might have to write separate batch files for Windows).
Gah, running out of time... I was hoping to have a full mage set, but I don't think I'll have time to do male clothing. So my submission will (hopefully) be a full female mage set of clothing/accessories plus a few spells for her to use. Maybe a staff, too, but no promises (on any of that).
@gr3yh47: I will definitely be submitting GIMP .xcf files with separate layers. I have robes, shoes, belts, belt buckles, necklaces, and hair all on different layers right now, and I'm hoping to figure out a way to add different headwear (circlets/crowns/tiaras and probably hats will be easy, but I'm not sure how hoods will work with the hair). I'm making an eye color overlay as well, in case you aren't a fan of the original. Long term I was thinking of making it into a web app eventually, where you can choose different colors of each item (or not include certain items) and download ready-made spritesheets. That probably wouldn't be until after the competition is over though.
As for spells, I can certainly continue to adapt what Clint has already posted on OGA from FLARE:
I guess non-pixel art spells are a possibility, but for my game I think I'd prefer a consistent look. I might just convert those things to pixel art, since that would be faster.
Didn't get to work on my mage set much, but I haven't been completely idle. I did the spellcast animation with a robe and started some separate accessories. The spellcast doesn't look too awesome by itself so I added a bit of motion blur and some quake animations from here (though it's not pixel art):
@Anon: it simplifies things for the artists making new poses and those making clothing (I said the same in my previous post).
I've been playing with Imagemagick again, and now I've got a script that takes the hair samples (and any file formatted similarly) and turns it into an overlay for the walk animation. I'll post it separately, but here's what it looks like layered on top of my robe animation (I did some palette swapping and this is my light blonde version).
It's a good starting point I think, but the hair needs some work and a bit of animation.
My second script was much more complex: it turns the hair samples into overlays of the walking animation. The animation shown above uses the output directly. Here's the code:
If you provide a row, it only converts that row into an overlay sheet. If you don't provide a row, it converts each row into its own, separate overlay sheet.
Attached is the before and one of the output sheets (the last row, in this case). Note that the hair is offset with the animation, e.g. the second sprite from the left in the bottom row is 1 pixel lower than the first one in the row, and the hair is offset the same way. The output will need a bit of tweaking for best results, but hopefully it's a good starting point.
Regarding number of frames, there are many shortcuts for clothing: the left and right animations *should* be mirrored left and right. This isn't quite ideal since the characters all appear to be ambidextrous, but I'd rather have more animations than to get that right.
The forward and back walk animations are also nice because you can just flip the second frame to get the sixth, the third frame to get the seventh, and the fourth frame to get the eighth, as long as you have symmetrical clothing. It looks like that's what the artist of the base sprites did.
In terms of animations, I would vote for firing a bow, thrust, and throw animation. We could also reduce the number of frames to simplify clothing them, especially for new ones. Firing a bow is probably going to require the full set, but throwing could be four frames or so.
My robe still seems a bit too shiny in the backward facing animation, and it looks like she's suffering from a wicked case of static cling in the sideways walk. And the movement in the upper part of the robe didn't turn out like I hoped, so I've got a lot of work to do. I'm planning on adding other pieces of the outfit in separate images, if anybody was wondering why mine is so boring.
There's probably a fancier way to do this, but I was getting errors trying to chop off the first part and combine the two convert commands.
@Redshrike: There's a hitch in the female rear-facing walk animation as well: the second walking frame (third sprite from the left on the sheet) is one pixel down but it should be even, and the third walking frame is even but it should be one pixel down. I fixed this manually in my previous gif.
The attached image (hopefully) shows the results of the above commands, along with that animation issue.
@gr3yh4:7I have a version of the fire, ice, and lightning spells, but the ice one took too long. I did a (bad) full paintover since I couldn't get gimp to give me something useful automatically. I'm not too crazy about how these are turning out, and the judges won't be too impressed with bad pixelized versions of good art, so these are very low priority.
@wulax: Very nice! I don't think there are better ways than that. Imagemagick has a bunch of language bindings to use them in game, or you could just use these scripts as-is on Linux and OSX (though you might have to write separate batch files for Windows).
Gah, running out of time... I was hoping to have a full mage set, but I don't think I'll have time to do male clothing. So my submission will (hopefully) be a full female mage set of clothing/accessories plus a few spells for her to use. Maybe a staff, too, but no promises (on any of that).
@gr3yh47: I will definitely be submitting GIMP .xcf files with separate layers. I have robes, shoes, belts, belt buckles, necklaces, and hair all on different layers right now, and I'm hoping to figure out a way to add different headwear (circlets/crowns/tiaras and probably hats will be easy, but I'm not sure how hoods will work with the hair). I'm making an eye color overlay as well, in case you aren't a fan of the original. Long term I was thinking of making it into a web app eventually, where you can choose different colors of each item (or not include certain items) and download ready-made spritesheets. That probably wouldn't be until after the competition is over though.
As for spells, I can certainly continue to adapt what Clint has already posted on OGA from FLARE:
http://opengameart.org/content/fireball-spell
http://opengameart.org/content/icicle-spell
http://opengameart.org/content/fire-spell-explosion
http://opengameart.org/content/freeze-spell
http://opengameart.org/content/lightning-shock-spell
I guess non-pixel art spells are a possibility, but for my game I think I'd prefer a consistent look. I might just convert those things to pixel art, since that would be faster.
Here's a quick heal animation, made with more of Clint's FLARE stuff here:
http://opengameart.org/content/heal-spell
http://opengameart.org/content/teleport-rune
These aren't pixel art, though.
Didn't get to work on my mage set much, but I haven't been completely idle. I did the spellcast animation with a robe and started some separate accessories. The spellcast doesn't look too awesome by itself so I added a bit of motion blur and some quake animations from here (though it's not pixel art):
http://opengameart.org/content/quake-spell
EDIT: My pictures are mangled for some reason but it appears you can click on them to see the animations.
@Anon: it simplifies things for the artists making new poses and those making clothing (I said the same in my previous post).
I've been playing with Imagemagick again, and now I've got a script that takes the hair samples (and any file formatted similarly) and turns it into an overlay for the walk animation. I'll post it separately, but here's what it looks like layered on top of my robe animation (I did some palette swapping and this is my light blonde version).
It's a good starting point I think, but the hair needs some work and a bit of animation.
EDIT: Separate topic here:
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/base-asset-tools-in-imagemagick
My second script was much more complex: it turns the hair samples into overlays of the walking animation. The animation shown above uses the output directly. Here's the code:
http://pastebin.com/5MAssxMM
It's used like this:
./HairSample2Overlay.sh [HairSampleFile] [OverlayOutputFilename] [optionalRow]
If you provide a row, it only converts that row into an overlay sheet. If you don't provide a row, it converts each row into its own, separate overlay sheet.
Attached is the before and one of the output sheets (the last row, in this case). Note that the hair is offset with the animation, e.g. the second sprite from the left in the bottom row is 1 pixel lower than the first one in the row, and the hair is offset the same way. The output will need a bit of tweaking for best results, but hopefully it's a good starting point.
Regarding number of frames, there are many shortcuts for clothing: the left and right animations *should* be mirrored left and right. This isn't quite ideal since the characters all appear to be ambidextrous, but I'd rather have more animations than to get that right.
The forward and back walk animations are also nice because you can just flip the second frame to get the sixth, the third frame to get the seventh, and the fourth frame to get the eighth, as long as you have symmetrical clothing. It looks like that's what the artist of the base sprites did.
In terms of animations, I would vote for firing a bow, thrust, and throw animation. We could also reduce the number of frames to simplify clothing them, especially for new ones. Firing a bow is probably going to require the full set, but throwing could be four frames or so.
My robe still seems a bit too shiny in the backward facing animation, and it looks like she's suffering from a wicked case of static cling in the sideways walk. And the movement in the upper part of the robe didn't turn out like I hoped, so I've got a lot of work to do. I'm planning on adding other pieces of the outfit in separate images, if anybody was wondering why mine is so boring.
Thanks for the comments pennomi and wulax, I'm working on getting rid of the shininess.
Also, if anybody wants a quick way to turn the character spritesheets into animated gifs using Imagemagick:
convert charsets_12_2ndsheet.png -crop 64x256 +repage steps.png
rm steps-0.png
convert -delay 10 -loop 0 -dispose background steps-*.png anim.gif
There's probably a fancier way to do this, but I was getting errors trying to chop off the first part and combine the two convert commands.
@Redshrike: There's a hitch in the female rear-facing walk animation as well: the second walking frame (third sprite from the left on the sheet) is one pixel down but it should be even, and the third walking frame is even but it should be one pixel down. I fixed this manually in my previous gif.
The attached image (hopefully) shows the results of the above commands, along with that animation issue.
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