Rockford looks really weird sideways

[ncrecc]

when would the "taking bomb out of pocket" frames be displayed? when rockford walks onto a bomb in BD, he starts holding it immediately, it's not like dynamite where you can have them stored in your inventory and take one out later.

[TheOnyxGuy]

Not exactly sure myself if that can be done, because I don't know anything about BD engine's animatipn engine, but since Rockford doesn't walk everywhere with it and only holds it in his hands when standing, my idea was that it could potentially be an idle linear animation where Rockford takes it out and holds it in his hands in preparation.

[TheOnyxGuy]

Here's an outtake with Rockford having similiar evil bushy eyebrows but with not as wide pupils as the original from Holger was. On one hand, it does make him look more mischievous, on other, I can't stop seeing it as if he has very long pupils or something...

[TheOnyxGuy]

Recently found time to try to do my own version of Rockford with rocket launcher, which I haven't done yet, but at least did my version of rocket launcher separately.

Perhaps I overshot with it's design a little bit...

Literally

rockfard.png (65.7 KiB) Viewed 6708 times

EDIT: On second glance, it looks even more like a scope from a sniper rifle. Oops...

[Holger]

Haven't answered to this thread for too long!

It all looks great, I think -- both the improved "plain" player graphics and animations, and the new BD style graphics with the player holding the bomb and the rocket launcher!

Do you have modified version of the original PNGs available for me? Then I could just add them to the game right away!

[Holger]

... and some comments on the posts regarding slightly different colors (like shown for the different yellow colors):

This was caused by converting the graphics from old Amiga ILBM graphics files from Deluxe Paint IV to Linux using the netpbm graphics conversion tools (or maybe some other tools, like saving from XV). As the Amiga's ILBM files use 4-bit RGB color channels (using values from 0 to 15), converting them to 8-bit color channels sometimes caused color artifacts like converting, for example, the RGB color white (0xFFF) to either 0xF0F0F0 (done by correctly multiplying by 16) or 0xFFFFFF (which really is intended here), causing slightly different colors. These slight differences should indeed be fixed...

[TheOnyxGuy]

Do you have modified version of the original PNGs available for me? Then I could just add them to the game right away!

I do, of course, but I'm not sure if I should if I haven't finished with all Rockford's sprites just yet. I'll try to do em quicker during this weekend and at the start of next year.

Also, some more, including item sprites having a little sparkle for indication and also rocket projectile, which I may potentially change, because at least to me it feels a bit too small for such tile based game where projectiles should generally occupy more space, plus the flame behind them, as I just noticed while writing this post, doesn't look animated right, some of it's parts are basically matching. Maybe I'm wrong tho, we'll see.

rockhard.gif (623.91 KiB) Viewed 6601 times

By the way, yeah, actually ended up adding more bushy eyebrows, because they're much more noticeable and they indeed make him look much more menacing and mischievous.

[amirnatsheh7]

very nice graphics!

[TheOnyxGuy]

Yeah, I think that's all. Also, as you can see, I turned the idea of "Voodoo doll" into actual crude doll made of poorly stitched blobs.

rockingmore.gif (1.02 MiB) Viewed 6374 times

One thing, though, my pot player animation is fine by itself, but may be potentially wrong for BD engine itself, because you can stir it in four different directions, which all share the same silly animation, while I did just... him looking down with a bit more determined gaze.

[Holger]

Wow, all these graphics and animations look really impressive!

It's great to see what you can get out of the limited tile size and limited color palette!

These graphics should be added to R'n'D for the new BD engine!

[ncrecc]

One thing, though, my pot player animation is fine by itself, but may be potentially wrong for BD engine itself, because you can stir it in four different directions, which all share the same silly animation, while I did just... him looking down with a bit more determined gaze.

the pot has the same effect no matter which side you enter it from: it disables gravity while you're in it, and when you get out of it, it turns on all gravity switches in the level

also the pneumatic hammer animation needs to be 2 tiles wide, because the two tiles in the normal animation are actually separate tiles (rockford holding the pneumatic hammer and the tip of the pneumatic hammer itself):

pneumation.gif (116.36 KiB) Viewed 6364 times

[TheOnyxGuy]

also the pneumatic hammer animation needs to be 2 tiles wide, because the two tiles in the normal animation are actually separate tiles (rockford holding the pneumatic hammer and the tip of the pneumatic hammer itself)

I know, I did make them double-tiled, it's just not very visible here, but pneumaplayer animation is not aligned with everything else, because Rockford is indeed occupying both tiles

the pot has the same effect no matter which side you enter it from: it disables gravity while you're in it, and when you get out of it, it turns on all gravity switches in the level

I know, I basically meant that the original animation is basically directionless, while the one I designed looks more like it only works downwards. Perhaps I may think of a different solution...

[TheOnyxGuy]

Now that I finished the sprites, I have a question to Holger that I actually should have asked earlier... How are animations in BD engine treated? Does one animation reset each time it's initiated on every instance and element separately like if the global synchronization is off by default? Or is it treated the same way as MM engine does animate all objects globally no matter if you have global sync on or off?
The reason why I'm asking that is I made custom animations of Rockford taking out a bomb and a rocket launcher which I intended to play whenever rockford stops moving, because I can't really make rockford move around with the weapon the entire time since "rockford with bomb" and "rockford with rocket launcher" are separate objects that are replacing rockford's idle stance once obtained the needed item. So at least I gave rockford a little animation for pulling out the thing.

rckfrd_bomb.gif (719.4 KiB) Viewed 6278 times

rckfrd_rocket.gif (325.17 KiB) Viewed 6278 times

Anyways, my question is, is it going to be simple enough to just add such animations for the BD engine without any other coding shenanigans or is it going to be problematic because BD engine treats idle animations a bit different from regular RnD?

EDIT: Now that I think about it more, I'm pretty sure it should not be that problematic, because original Rockford technically has an idle animation of his own, the classic "blinking and patient foot tapping"

[ncrecc]

I can't really make rockford move around with the weapon the entire time since "rockford with bomb" and "rockford with rocket launcher" are separate objects that are replacing rockford's idle stance once obtained the needed item

actually... from a game logic perspective, this isn't true. e.g. when "rockford with bomb" moves from one tile to an adjacent tile, it just removes the "rockford with bomb" from the original tile and places a new "rockford with bomb" on the destination tile. well technically it places a "scanned rockford with bomb" tile to let the engine know this tile has already moved, but that's not really relevant. it's at no point replaced with a "rockford moving" object or anything of the sort.

i think the only reason the original BD hacks that had bombs & rocket launchers decided to use the same running animation for Rockford regardless is that there wasn't enough space to store a bunch of new variants of running frames. GDash inherits this probably because nobody was bothered to draw new "rockford running with bomb" and "rockford running with rocket launcher" sprites (which i imagine might be tricky in the original 8x16 tile size).

i don't know exactly how RnD implements graphics for BD mode but it seems like it should be pretty easy for "rockford with bomb" & "rockford with rocket launcher" to have their own dedicated running sprites (unless the whole "running animation" system is a kludge implemented only for the base "rockford" object and breaks when trying to extend it to other tiles).