New art resources?

[Devon_v]

Is anyone actively developing new art resources for Gearhead 2? I've started converting some of the personal work I did on GH1, as well as making some new stuff, and I was just wondering if I'd be overlapping anyone else.

I have new blast64 and nodamage animations (anime inspired) which I did for GH1 about two years ago, some unfinished iso terrain for GH1's world map which might be salvageable as ground textures, I have a sprite for the Domino (it was my favorite mech at the time), and I'm working on a new space background that looks a lot more like space. I'm just studying the topography of the L5 region (the real one) to try to work out the best compromise between a realistic and visually pleasing background rendition of the region. (We are talking about the Sun-Earth system's L5, not the Earth-Moon's, right?)



My blast64 is some type of explosive plasma projectile. It looks a little odd in close combat. I'd be willing to do additional animations for melee, boomerangs, missiles, and lasers if the game would support them.


Plink! No damage!


The Domino was my favorite mech at the time I drew this. The legs remain the same in every frame because my concept for the mech was that the torso rotates 360 degrees and the legs just walk in whatever direction it's currently facing.

Edit: Now that I think about it, the leg design is based on the Dancing Insector, one of my favorite bosses from Starfox.


I'd be very interested if GH2 would support alpha channels for the sprites that don't color swap. (Like Damage64) I'd also be willing to draw weapon fire sprites if the game could switch to a method of using 8-directional sprites for the projectile (so that a rocket or fireball could be clearly traveling in a certain direction) and then play a damage64-like hit animation

[SharkD]

If you could upload the stuff (including the mech's model file) to the Yahoo! group that would be great.

[Devon_v]

Okay, they're uploaded. The Yahoo! group seems kinda dead though.

The Domino is a stock mecha from GH1, it just never had a sprite, and since I was piloting one...

[SharkD]

Which folder did you put the model in? I can't find it.

[Devon_v]

/files/Graphics/ara_domino.png

Oh, I thought you were talking about a design file. It's hand drawn, there isn't a 3D model.

[Devon_v]

Temporary new space background.


Two things I noticed: 1) the graphic is rotated 180 degrees in game (upsidedown and backwards); 2) the graphic is 512x512, but the area it fills is approximately 1200x800. This results in some stretching and causes the image to loop exactly twice in 360 degrees.

If the game could be changed to load a 1024x512 image, or better, an 1200x800 image (that should still not be a power of 2), I could assemble a full L5 panorama. (I'll probably do it anyway to encourage the change.)

Edit:
Widths and heights no longer switched.

Edit again:
No, it's not a power of two. This is why posting while tired and sick is not a good idea.

[SharkD]

Here's some of mine. I'll upload the ones I haven't uploaded yet. There's a bunch of other stuff available from my website.

[edit]
OK, I uploaded them to the Yahoo! Group.

[SharkD]

Joseph: You said you lost most of your LDraw models in a hardrive crash. Do you still have that hardrive? I heard there are some Linux tools that can sometimes retrieve data that Windows can't get to.

[Devon_v]

I love Legos... I really need to figure out how to use LDraw.

Protoype non-looping:


With this, if you look "north" from L5, you'll be looking into the space between the sun and Earth. Mars is behind you, to the South-South-East. (Or if it doesn't align that way, I can easily correct it.) I know the scale is off, and that's probably not the correct position for Mars relative to Earth in whatever year GH2 takes place in, but it's a visually pleasing compromise.

The heavenly bodies may be too large in game due to the stretching, but I can easily correct that, too, if it's an issue.

Currently the game will not render this correctly. Aside from being upsidedown and backwards, it also cuts the second 512 pixels off.

[SharkD]

Wow, that looks really great! I think you may need to make sure that each object fits properly within a grid, since GearHead is tile-based. I'm not sure how big the grid's cells need to be, however.

[SharkD]

Timothy Gould and Mladen Pejic also gave us their permission to use their CAD models.

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=ti    mgould
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=Ml    aden

Here's a screenshot after I modified them:
http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/pp292/SharkD216   1/GearHead/gh_mockup_newunits.png

And here are some special effect animations that I modified:
http://lib.povray.org/collection/gamesprites/shark  d%202.0/gamesprites.png

I also made a couple of buildings that could be used on the world map:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quadrant/3864/lego models.htm

[Devon_v]

Quoting: SharkD

Wow, that looks really great! I think you may need to make sure that each object fits properly within a grid, since GearHead is tile-based. I'm not sure how big the grid's cells need to be, however.

I've tested it, this particular background isn't tiled, it just loads a big picture, like the loading screens. It's just not set up to be used this way (yet). Currently it loads a 512x512 picture and scales it to 800x600 (the size of the default screen), repeating the image once to complete a 360 degree panorama.

Quoting: SharkD

Timothy Gould and Mladen Pejic also gave us their permission to use their CAD models.

Here's a screenshot after I modified them:

Those are great! If they could be used with alpha channels they'd be awesome.

Quoting: SharkD

And here are some special effect animations that I modified:
I also made a couple of buildings that could be used on the world map:

I like those sprites a lot. GH2 doesn't use iso sprites for terrain though... It's using basic 3D shapes with textures on them.

[SharkD]

Quoting: Devon_v

Those are great! If they could be used with alpha channels they'd be awesome.

Palette-swapping apparently doesn't work so well with 32-bit images. I'll play around in the GIMP a little bit to see if I can come up with other ideas.

Quoting: Devon_v

I like those sprites a lot. GH2 doesn't use iso sprites for terrain though... It's using basic 3D shapes with textures on them.

Heightfields would be cool too.

[SharkD]

Quoting: SharkD

Palette-swapping apparently doesn't work so well with 32-bit images. I'll play around in the GIMP a little bit to see if I can come up with other ideas.

Wow!!! The GIMP has a Hue/Lightness/Saturation adjustment tool that allows you to change the values of individual colors independently. That means you can change the hue of only the yellow areas, or the shading of only the green areas. In fact, there are 6 colors to choose from, whereas GearHead only allows changing 3 colors. This would be perfect for GearHead!!! And it works with 32-bit images! Is GearHead's license compatible with The GIMP? If so, the code could be simply copied/converted. It shouldn't be too hard since it mostly involves only maths. Whether it can be compiled to run quickly is a different matter. GH tends to be on the sluggish side...

[edit]
Here's an example of where I've shifted each color independently (you can also shift them all at once, but that's not what we want to do). I only shifted the hue; as I said, you can also shift the lightness and saturation.

[Devon_v]

The GIMP is able to do that because it's not shifting the colors the same way. As you surmise, trying to do Photoshop/GIMP style stuff in real time is not very doable. GH achives some speed by converting the image to 8-bit, so it has only 256 possible shades (and only around 64 or so that actually work), and by its nature no alpha channel. Then it applies basic palette swaping.

It might be possible to add alpha support using the current system via Pixel Shaders, but that's going to bump GH's system requirements quite a bit.