For hats I actually have a program that takes the necessary frames and spits out the spritesheet, which I think I've used a grand total of one time.
Still, it'll be useful if/when I get around to making my own head gear.
I have the Orc head split off on its own spritesheet for the frames I'm interested in. I also have an incomplete "carry above head" walking animation lying around somewhere. It's not hard to make these things (using existing frames), but it is very tedious to have to separate body parts first (and then fill in formerly occluded body parts).
There are some other issues with some of the assets that are worth fixing, but they can't all be done in software.
First, there's the Orc body. Because it has a bigger head, normal clothing doesn't work correctly (it goes over the Orc's chin). The easiest fix is to cut out the head in its own layer, and put the head above torso clothing in forward and sideway frames.
In general, it would be better to cut out arms, legs and heads and put them in separate layers, and then stacking them in the right order when composing the spritesheet. This avoids the need for cut-outs in strategic places that will turn out to be wrong if you use, say, a different type of clothing.
For weapons, it probably makes sense to maintain one version, and then shift it as needed for frames other than the male sprite.
@Spring: the Zelda-perspecitive is immaterial to this, really. If it looks ok on the back wall, it can be made to look ok on the other ones by rotating and mirroring (perhaps after retouching the lighting).
My own pixel-art skill is pretty non-existent, so any suggestions are seriously welcome. I don't really know how to draw thick and lush vines, for instance. ;)
You know what? I somehow missed the edit field for tags. I think that is because I was expecting it in the side bar on the left rather than in the main area where you also update the description. So I amend my previous request to suggest it be moved there.
Regarding the search, it does indeed work as it should from the advanced search. I never realised that typing in the search box on the main page does anything different from the search box on the advanced search (type "Lpc base" in the search box and it returns no results, but from the advanced search it does return stuff). So perhaps making the search box behave the same as the text search from the advanced search would work?
I'll second the better audio preview and font categories. I'd recommend against translations though, unless you can guarantee they're kept in sync with the English content. My experience is that the translations end up being half done, or outdated, which is worse than not having them in the first place.
I think the current search is still inferior to the "beta solr-search" we had a while back, which in my experience was awesome.
One thing I would like is the ability to mark a submission as being a derivative/fork of one or more other submissions. Not so much because I want to be able to trace it back to its origins (the author can include that information easily enough) but because I want to be able to do the reverse: see if there have been additions/edits/modifications to a piece. I know, it'll depend on the authors correctly marking the progenitors of their own work, but it would be really neat.
And one other thing: I just noticed that you can't add/edit tags on a submitted piece (I decided I had been a bit sparse with the tags on my modified wartotaur sprite). That would be useful to have.
It looks quite neat. I'd love to give this a go, but unfortunately (?) I don't have Windows. I'm guessing your program is Windows-only? Or is there a chance for a Linux/OS X version?
I spent a fair amount of spare time over the last day or two recolouring LPC artwork. Having a tool that can easily remap one colour ramp to another would be extremely useful (actually, a Gimp plugin would be the best thing). Bonus points if it can sensibly handle ramps of different length.
What you're describing is basically working with "indexed" images, where pixels correspond to a palette index rather than coding for a colour directly. You can use indexed mode in Gimp to work with those. It works ok.
I remember tools like PaintShop Pro and NeoPaint having good palette editing features back in the day, but of course 8-bit images and palettes were more common then. For tinkering with the palette as you describe I would probably write my own dedicated code.
For hats I actually have a program that takes the necessary frames and spits out the spritesheet, which I think I've used a grand total of one time.
Still, it'll be useful if/when I get around to making my own head gear.
I have the Orc head split off on its own spritesheet for the frames I'm interested in. I also have an incomplete "carry above head" walking animation lying around somewhere. It's not hard to make these things (using existing frames), but it is very tedious to have to separate body parts first (and then fill in formerly occluded body parts).
There are some other issues with some of the assets that are worth fixing, but they can't all be done in software.
First, there's the Orc body. Because it has a bigger head, normal clothing doesn't work correctly (it goes over the Orc's chin). The easiest fix is to cut out the head in its own layer, and put the head above torso clothing in forward and sideway frames.
In general, it would be better to cut out arms, legs and heads and put them in separate layers, and then stacking them in the right order when composing the spritesheet. This avoids the need for cut-outs in strategic places that will turn out to be wrong if you use, say, a different type of clothing.
For weapons, it probably makes sense to maintain one version, and then shift it as needed for frames other than the male sprite.
That's the princess sprite from the LPC base assets.
Thanks!
I like them, I'll try studying them and working out what works (and what doesn't). I may have questions later.
@Spring: the Zelda-perspecitive is immaterial to this, really. If it looks ok on the back wall, it can be made to look ok on the other ones by rotating and mirroring (perhaps after retouching the lighting).
My own pixel-art skill is pretty non-existent, so any suggestions are seriously welcome. I don't really know how to draw thick and lush vines, for instance. ;)
You know what? I somehow missed the edit field for tags. I think that is because I was expecting it in the side bar on the left rather than in the main area where you also update the description. So I amend my previous request to suggest it be moved there.
Regarding the search, it does indeed work as it should from the advanced search. I never realised that typing in the search box on the main page does anything different from the search box on the advanced search (type "Lpc base" in the search box and it returns no results, but from the advanced search it does return stuff). So perhaps making the search box behave the same as the text search from the advanced search would work?
I'll second the better audio preview and font categories. I'd recommend against translations though, unless you can guarantee they're kept in sync with the English content. My experience is that the translations end up being half done, or outdated, which is worse than not having them in the first place.
I think the current search is still inferior to the "beta solr-search" we had a while back, which in my experience was awesome.
One thing I would like is the ability to mark a submission as being a derivative/fork of one or more other submissions. Not so much because I want to be able to trace it back to its origins (the author can include that information easily enough) but because I want to be able to do the reverse: see if there have been additions/edits/modifications to a piece. I know, it'll depend on the authors correctly marking the progenitors of their own work, but it would be really neat.
And one other thing: I just noticed that you can't add/edit tags on a submitted piece (I decided I had been a bit sparse with the tags on my modified wartotaur sprite). That would be useful to have.
It looks quite neat. I'd love to give this a go, but unfortunately (?) I don't have Windows. I'm guessing your program is Windows-only? Or is there a chance for a Linux/OS X version?
I spent a fair amount of spare time over the last day or two recolouring LPC artwork. Having a tool that can easily remap one colour ramp to another would be extremely useful (actually, a Gimp plugin would be the best thing). Bonus points if it can sensibly handle ramps of different length.
What you're describing is basically working with "indexed" images, where pixels correspond to a palette index rather than coding for a colour directly. You can use indexed mode in Gimp to work with those. It works ok.
I remember tools like PaintShop Pro and NeoPaint having good palette editing features back in the day, but of course 8-bit images and palettes were more common then. For tinkering with the palette as you describe I would probably write my own dedicated code.
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