Using as a Base (And other question(s))

[Eliwood]

((I wish to apologize beforehand for my possibly rather... n00bish behavior. I have not dealt with the SRB2 community for the longest time))

Hello! Some of you may not even remotely remember me at all, but for those who still do, awesome! Pointless introduction aside, I want to waste everyone's time to point out that I want to make a character wad again. So I bet you're all reading this thinking "Okay? That's neat?" but I wanted to ask, is using the original Sonic Sprites as a base totally acceptable?

I ask this because I think I plan on possibly submitting it to the srb2 forums as a character people can use? But you know, if not I guess it will just be personal use. See the reason I want to do this is because a super long time ago I made a poor excuse of a character wad and got really defensive about it so I kind of would like to redeem myself by making a new (and decent) one using one of my original characters.

This is just a mockup sprite of what I have thus far as just a "test". I'm not even 100% sure if I will be motivated to actually do this due to my poor ability to sprite (let alone properly in the srb2 style).

But to one final question, does anyone know how to get around this color limitation? I tried using EXACTLY the same colors as found on the srb2 wiki, directly picked up the color and used the exact same color on the sprite, but it was completely different from what was in the palette. Why is this? I ripped Sonic's sprites directly from the game saved as a .bmp. Could that be why? Do I have to use a .png?

Sorry if this is a complete mess of a... question thread I guess? Hope I don't confuse you all with my horrendous wording.

 

[Scizor300]

Seems like an alright thing if it looks different enough from the original sprite, in which your case it does.

 

[Eliwood]

Would you happen to know any way to fix the palette problem? Am I able to use .png's for the sprites or do they have to be .bmp's no matter what? Because I think it's the .bmp extension of the file which causes the really limited palette and I don't know how to fix this since I haven't messed with making characters since 2006.

 

[Sparkxster]

http://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/Palette

Have you tried checking this?

You might be able to screenshot it and just use MS Paint to copy the colors from the screenshot shown on the palette.

http://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/Character_WAD

 

[Prime 2.0]

SRB2 itself uses a palette, and you're stuck adhering to that no matter what file format you use prior to importing and converting it to DooM GFX. More information on making character wads in general can be found here.

So no, there isn't really a good way around the color restriction in vanilla SRB2. SRB2CB doesn't have that restriction, but your character probably wouldn't get a lot of use if you just made it for that.

Finally, yes, it is appropriate to use SRB2 sprites as a base for editing, provided that the changes are extensive enough. While unrelated to actual sprite production, you should also give some thought into how to make your character play differently... any character wad with lasting appeal needs to provide a novel gameplay experience. Even better if you make a level designed specifically around it to be released side-by-side!

I hope that clears everything up for you.

EDIT: Some image editing programs such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro can import palettes from a file. I've uploaded the palette in two different formats here.

 

[Eliwood]

Oh. Sorry. I think I misworded what I was meant to say, what I meant was that I can't actually USE the srb2 palette. Whenever I try to use those exact colors using a color selector it doesn't display that color. Instead there is an even more limited forced palette that I can't visual see the whole thing of and I was wondering how I could get around this? Some shading and coloring I literally cannot do due to this and I can't shade and color like I want to. I ripped some Sonic Sprites back in 2006 using XWE and they all came out as .bmp's. Could this be the problem?

 

[Prime 2.0]

Well first off, I can't tell you how to change what palette you're using in your image editing program without knowing what that program is. But regarding where you got the sprites from, 2.0.x, which was first released in 2009, uses a different palette from previous versions, and may contain other changes to the sprites as well. In fact, the image editing program may be restricting you to the DooM palette because you're starting from those old sprites since they use that palette.

So, start by extracting the sprites from 2.0.6's Sonic.plr, and work from there. You may want to learn how to use Slade3; it won't randomly corrupt a wad you're working on like XWE will.

 

[Eliwood]

I am currently using Gimp. If I can't change the palette in that, then I can always rework it from the 2.9 and up era of the sprites. Thank you for the assistance thus far!

I want to make a unique ability with Soc'ing but by the time I finish all of the sprites (and make them look decent) they would have changed to the new LUA scripting.

Also due to not wanting to double post I'd figure this might go in here.

Thanks to you all (especially Prime) I managed to get the better working palette. When I exported all of the sprites out of Slade though, they all came out as pngs. Can I still use these for Vanilla srb2 (as long as I use the cyan for the transparency color) or do they HAVE to be .bmp's?

((Also if you could, a critique on how I could make these sprites better would be helpful, although I'm not sure if this is the right board for that.))

 

[Eliwood]

Okay sorry if I'm breaking the rules by double posting (even though the original post was made at least a day ago) but I've run into a snag.

As a temporary power (before I add in the soc'ing ability) I wanted to make her ability swimming. Swimming and Water-running seem to both get piled into one ability it seems, and that's great and all, but I feel like that's a bit overpowered a bit? I mean I know swimming isn't much of a power in itself but it can be useful. Anyways to cap this I wanted to make the "runspeed" significantly higher than the normal speed, making it require speedshoes to use. However this can never seem to be the case. It seems like no matter what I change the acceleration, normalspeed, or whatever, as soon as I reach the peak of the normalspeed it just automatically goes into the running animation allowing water-running. Is there anyway I can fix this or does it force that because of the swimming ability?

This is what I currently have it set up to be. Is there something I'm doing wrong that I just don't know about?

Spoiler

name = Ember
face = EMBLIFE
facename = EMBER
ability = 6
ability2 = 0
normalspeed = 30
thrustfactor = 4
accelstart = 120
acceleration = 40
startcolor = 80
prefcolor = 5
jumpheight = 100
runspeed = 50
superspin = 0
superanims = 1
actionspd = 100
mindash = 10
maxdash = 11
spinitem = 157

 

[Sky The Destroyer]

It seems like no matter what I change the acceleration, normalspeed, or whatever, as soon as I reach the peak of the normalspeed it just automatically goes into the running animation allowing water-running. Is there anyway I can fix this or does it force that because of the swimming ability?

This is what I currently have it set up to be. Is there something I'm doing wrong that I just don't know about?

Spoiler

name = Ember
face = EMBLIFE
facename = EMBER
ability = 6
ability2 = 0
normalspeed = 30
thrustfactor = 4
accelstart = 120
acceleration = 40
startcolor = 80
prefcolor = 5
jumpheight = 100
runspeed = 50
superspin = 0
superanims = 1
actionspd = 100
mindash = 10
maxdash = 11
spinitem = 157

I may be wrong, but I remember someone saying that there's a bug with SRB2 at the moment that forces the run animation or something.

 

[Senku Niola]

Yeah, currently someone thought it was a GOOD idea to make it so you can't set your runspeed higher than your normalspeed, so you can't get around that for now.

 

[Eliwood]

Well that sucks.

While I don't want to seem like a high-maintenance kind of guy, but is there anyone here that knows how to "code" socs really well? I'm trying to implement an ability or two to my character but I honestly have no idea what I'm doing. I mean I know what I want, but I'm not entirely sure it's possible. Would anyone highly knowledgeable in SOCs be able to help me out? I apologize in advance if I seem really needy right now.
((I need to clarify that I'm not asking that the soc be made for me, I just need to know if it's possible to even do))

 

[MascaraSnake]

Okay sorry if I'm breaking the rules by double posting

Double posting isn't against the rules.

While I don't want to seem like a high-maintenance kind of guy, but is there anyone here that knows how to "code" socs really well? I'm trying to implement an ability or two to my character but I honestly have no idea what I'm doing. I mean I know what I want, but I'm not entirely sure it's possible. Would anyone highly knowledgeable in SOCs be able to help me out? I apologize in advance if I seem really needy right now.
((I need to clarify that I'm not asking that the soc be made for me, I just need to know if it's possible to even do))

Well, what is the ability you want to implement?

 

[Eliwood]

Originally I wanted to add in an "rpg" element of sorts when it came to collecting the chaos emeralds in singleplayer (and I guess multiplayer) since getting the chaos emeralds as anyone other than Sonic is a complete waste of time. Basically as you collected the emeralds you would gain one extra "ability" so to speak, but you could only use one at a time, and only select one at a time via pressing the buttons that change the camera to the left and to the right (since to my knowledge it doesn't allow you to change the camera in 3rd person). Using these abilities would cost rings in an attempt to make it balanced in some way, because getting a bunch of powers to use at will with no consequences is kind of unfair.

Just as an example, successfully collecting the first green chaos emerald would grant you access to use an "instant shield" ability which at the cost of 20 rings gives you a shield (but I would plan to make it a custom shield, one that wouldn't have any extra powers) that lasts for 30 seconds or until you get hit.


Although due to my character's "under-powered" nature I also kind of wanted to increase the jump height to at least 130 or something. I ran into problems of "not being able to reach" due to being not fast enough. I know I should just do things like, increase spindash speed, but I wanted to sacrifice speed, spindash, and some other minor things a bit to replace it with other useful abilities. I don't know how to make the jumpheight any higher than 100, and I'm not even sure if it is possible to increase it.

If the earlier things I have suggested cannot be done, I wanted to be able to add in some better water-mobility, such as "better" control in the water such as not being slowed down as much. When pressing the spindash button while swimming, instead of swimming down you curl up into a ball (so you can protect yourself underwater). And due to being focused on underwater, a slightly (but only by a few seconds) longer underwater breath time so the character can stay underwater for slightly longer and it only work for Ember specifically.

I apologize if I seem like a chore right now. My knowledge of srb2 and its codes and limitations are wayy beyond me which is why I'm coming for help.

 

[Eliwood]

When I finish a couple more of the sprites, I think I'll release an early "alpha" wad then. It will be pretty incomplete, but from there I will take more suggestions, critiques and the such. I also hope to come to the community for a little extra help with at least possibly setting up things.

 

[MascaraSnake]

I apologize if I seem like a chore right now.

Nah, that's what the editing help forum is for.

Unfortunately I don't think any of the ability ideas you have are possible to implement. SRB2 is very restrictive in that regard, although Lua will hopefully remedy that a bit. I can tell you for sure that the jump height can't exceed 100. Regarding the other things, I don't see a way how that would be possible, but maybe crazy people like Prime 2.0 or Nev3r have an idea.