DeiMWolf Progress Thread

[MajorSlime]

Boingo, did you see my reply earlier about GZDoom blurring sprites?

[Boingo the Clown]

Yes I did.

Same answer as before.

As it is the file is going to be HUGE.  I can't afford to make the sprites bigger at this time.

I am saving all my files.  I can make higher res version at some point in the furture if there is a demand for it.

[MajorSlime]

...


I'm not saying make bigger sprites. I'm asking if you have checked if that specific setting is on. I'm saying your current sprites might not look blurry close up if you find that on and turn it off. It should be under the visual settings -> Gzdoom visual settings somewhere.

[Boingo the Clown]

Yes.  I looked, but I could not find a setting for it.

[75]

Boingo, I wanted to warn you about something, I had a hard time getting the guards in my brief work with my Blake Stone TC to work correctly...

I was able to get them to patrol, and I was able to get them to run, but I was not able to get them to walk when patrolling, but run when pursuing an enemy. If I recall correctly, the "See:" state is used for both patrolling and pursuing the player, so I believe it's up to you to tell the engine which is which, and I'm not sure how to tell you to do that.

You may want to post something on the zDoom forums asking how to do it before you take the time to make walking frames.

[Boingo the Clown]

I was thinking of implementing patroling guards in a different way than normal.  I was thinking of making seperate versions of the guards for patroling.  The walking guards are asleep and their walk cycles are part of their spawn states, not part of their active states, which would be the running version.  Instead, their movements take place while they are asleep and they would be moved by scripts.  The script would simply be something like this:

If guard is alive and asleep
{
     move guard from point a to point b
}
If guard is alive and asleep
{
     turn guard to face point c
}
If guard is alive and asleep
{
     move guard from point b to point c
}
etc.
...

I am not sure a sleeping monster can open doors, so that may have to be scripted too.  When a guard becomes active, its script terminates.

I will bet this method would work, and would even work in Legacy. My only worry is if a guard is killed while moving between point a and point b his corpse may continue sliding along the ground until it reached point b. Hillarious, but not what I want.

Meanwhile ...

I have good news and bad news.

I had been having a problem with DAZ Studio leaving a thin blue outline around my sprites.  DAZ Studio was saving the renders with transparency, but it was antialiasing the figures to the background colour of the editor, creating that outline.  I asked about it on the DAZ Studio forum and I was told how I can (mostly) eliminate the outlines.

That is the good news.

The bad news is I am going to have to go back and do all of those renders I did this past last week over again.


 

[Boingo the Clown]

Oops.  Accidental extra post.

[MajorSlime]

Well, you COULD do that, but there is a built in patrol system, where you wouldn't need another guard. http://zdoom.org/wiki/Thing_SetGoal


Of course, if you do want to do it your own way, you'll need these:


http://zdoom.org/wiki/SetActorState
http://zdoom.org/wiki/SetActorPosition
http://zdoom.org/wiki/SetActorAngle


And for the removal of the script upon death, use this [size=78%]http://zdoom.org/wiki/SetThingSpecial[/size] to set a script on the monster that terminates the original script. Since the special will activate upon death of a monster (unless that is changed in the monsters DECORATE code, but I see no reason as to why yours would be changed, so this should work).

[75]

@Boingo, I still can't quite figure out how you're going to do this; are you saying you're going to manually warp every patrolling enemy from one point to another while they are patrolling? So you'd get the actor's position, then set the actor's position, you're using that to make patrol areas?

Another question; how will you spawn the "running" actor when they "see" the player? A way you could do it is to spawn the "running guard" actor in the "patrolling guard"'s see state, but you'd need to be sure to make the running guard have the +LOOKALLAROUND flag to be sure that it would see the target.

@CM2109

The limitation with that is, actors that are patrolling use the See: state;  the actors move at the same speed and use the same sprites whether they are patrolling or chasing a player, and since Boingo is making walking sprites, it sounds like he doesn't want that.

[MajorSlime]

Fair point. Hence why I listed the resources for the other way. Hmm, you could have a separate guard that does the walk during the see state, and when it goes to its attack state to attack the player (which it would do when it saw the player) it could spawn the regular guard.

[75]

Hmm, you could have a separate guard that does the walk during the see state, and when it goes to its attack state to attack the player (which it would do when it saw the player) it could spawn the regular guard.

When would that alternate "running" monster be spawned? Remember that the patrol point is effectively a target; I don't know if the game knows the difference between the patrol point as a target and a player as a target.

[MajorSlime]

I don't think the actor attacks when it goes for the patrol point though... I've never seen one attack one when I used em, at least. It would be when the actor normally attacks. It just spawns the other actor instead of attacking.

[Boingo the Clown]

Do not worry too much about the patrols yet.

I need to get a whole heap of sprites done right now.

[Boingo the Clown]

Progress Report: July 29, 2013

It took two days, but I got the walk cycle for the mutant working.



This is the walk cycle tested with a temporary test object. I am not very satisfied with it.

I used an animation file to animate him, and had to do a lot of fixing with the poses.  I thought the animation was originally based on motion capture, but when I finally saw it in the game I could tell it was not.  The test object kind of looks like it is motoring along on a sugar rush, even though it is actually moving slower than the mutant is supposed to.

Still, I am going to accept it for now.  After all, It took two days of hard work to get it going.  I can change it at a future date.

Meanwhile, the screenie below is a three for one.

• I got hold of a program that is supposed to make seamless brick and tile textures. It is also able to textures with wood subtituted for brick, so I made a texture with the wood sample included with the program.  I used it to replace the wood panel texture I was using before.
  
  What do you think?  Does it look better?  Does it look worse?  Meh?
  
  
• When I switched over from Legacy to GZDooM I lost the Legacy based dynamic lights I was using at the time.  Now I finally got around to adding a dynamic light to the ceiling light.  Yay!
  
  
• I was experimenting with detailing in this hallway.  I was trying to see if adding beams and joists will make it look better.
  
  What do you think?

[75]

I think the black borders on the wood planks make it look too cartoony and high contrast, but aside from that, it could be useful.

Where did you find this tool? It sounds like something I might be interested in.