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Making Sprites

Started by bravescharm Oct 8, 2003 at 9:21 PM 9 replies 2.1k views

Original Post

Oct 8, 2003 at 9:21 PM

Hello everyone, I have been thinking about making a game for awhile now and I think I''m going to attempt it. First question, I have been trying to make sprites and i''m just having a great deal of trouble trying to make them. I''m using PhotoShop and I just can''t get anything to look right. I''m trying to make a background with trees and hills; I also need to make a helicopter. I am just not a good artist and nothing is coming out right.

Even when I do have something going, I have trouble making each frame for the sprite. Anyway, is there any special progams that will help make the sprite animation for you? The other question I have is debugging. How do you debug a game? Do you just put it in normal window mode? Thanks anyone that can help. BravesCharm

Shadowflare

Oct 8, 2003 at 9:35 PM

In my opinion, worry about decent graphics after you have the basics for your game written. I usually cook up some horrible graphics just to use as a starting point for the game engine. Once the basic aspects of my game are working, I will try to improve the graphics.

Also, to anyone else who reads this post, I would like to know if there is a program which simplifies making sprites as well.

krez

Oct 8, 2003 at 9:45 PM

heh heh, i mainly use color-coded squares, or stick figures, or sprites i download from the internet, during development (since i can''t draw at all )...

you could always try to get an artist-type to help you in the "help wanted" forum...

prh99

Oct 8, 2003 at 9:49 PM

quote:
Original post by bravescharm
Hello everyone,
I have been thinking about making a game for awhile now and I think I''m going to attempt it. First question, I have been trying to make sprites and i''m just having a great deal of trouble trying to make them. I''m using PhotoShop and I just can''t get anything to look right. I''m trying to make a background with trees and hills; I also need to make a helicopter. I am just not a good artist and nothing is coming out right. Even when I do have something going, I have trouble making each frame for the sprite. Anyway, is there any special progams that will help make the sprite animation for you?
The other question I have is debugging. How do you debug a game? Do you just put it in normal window mode?
Thanks anyone that can help.
BravesCharm

Ari Feldman has GPL sprite library, you can use it with your game as long you follow the license agreement. At very least it would give you some decent graphics to work with.

http://www.arifeldman.com/free/spritelib.html

alnite

Oct 8, 2003 at 9:52 PM

my last successful attempt on sprite making was using a 3D modeling like Maya, 3DSMax, and such.

If I need animation, I just animate the object and capture each frame. Need different shot at different angles, rotate the object. The problem though, creating a model in 3D takes a lot of work. My model wasn''t hard it was just a piece of stone. But if you need a human model or an animal or a helicopter (a heli might be a little bit easier, you just assemble pieces of basic/primitive 3D objects), it can get messy.

bravescharm

Oct 9, 2003 at 9:29 AM

Thank you everyone for replying.

prh99:
Thank you for that site. I might just try to make a 1945 clone. Or at least use that as a example.

alnite
Can you make 2D sprites with a 3D modeling tool? Also, I really only know the basic paint features in a paint programs. With PhotoShop or PSP how do you rotate the object and make a sprite templete(I believe it's called a template?). I also have one last question, if you make a sprite templete, does DirectDraw have anything to parse each image from the template? Or do you have to make it yourself and how hard is it?
One other question, what is the best image format to use? bmp or some other type? Does DX work with some formats better than others?
Thanks,
BravesCharm

[edited by - BravesCharm on October 9, 2003 10:38:58 AM]

alnite

Oct 9, 2003 at 6:54 PM

quote:
Original post by bravescharm
Can you make 2D sprites with a 3D modeling tool?

Yes. I don''t know if you can do it with all 3D modeling programs, but the one I used was 3DSMax 3.1, and it had a feature to render your 3D model to a file at each frame. So, if you are animating, let''s say, an explosion, each frame will be rendered to a file. If you have 20 frames in the explosion, you will end up with 20 files.

quote:
Also, I really only know the basic paint features in a paint programs. With PhotoShop or PSP how do you rotate the object and make a sprite templete(I believe it''s called a template?).

I don''t know with Photoshop or PSP, never use them extensively.

quote:
I also have one last question, if you make a sprite templete, does DirectDraw have anything to parse each image from the template? Or do you have to make it yourself and how hard is it?

You do have to parse it by yourself. It''s not really hard to do.

quote:
One other question, what is the best image format to use? bmp or some other type? Does DX work with some formats better than others?

For DirectDraw, use BMP only. I have heard DirectDraw supports PNG too. I don''t know with that. For Direct3D, you can use PNG, TGA, BMP, JPG, and DDS.

evillive2

Oct 9, 2003 at 8:01 PM

For DirectDraw it tends to be easiest to use a bmp format image because you can use a call to LoadImage to load the file into memory. Other than that though, if you want to use another image file format, it is purely what is most convenient for you. The directdraw surfaces contain uncompressed image data so a gif,jpg,bmp etc all use the same amount of directdraw surface memory. While it is educational to write your own image file loaders or learn how to use the intel jpeg library, it really isn''t necessary for a directdraw application.

Evillive2

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ZoomBoy

Oct 9, 2003 at 8:19 PM

I use the 3D modeller TrueSpace for rendering my sprites frame by frame after I''ve animated them including the frames.
There are many free versions out there of this(version 3.2) and other 3D programs. It does take some artistic effort.
Until then I use stick figures(usually numbered)

ZoomBoy
Developing a iso-tile 2D RPG with skills, weapons, and adventure. See my old Hex-Tile RPG GAME, character editor, diary, 3D Art resources at Check out my web-site

bravescharm

Oct 9, 2003 at 8:20 PM

Thanks everyone for your replys,
I went with http://www.arifeldman.com/free/spritelib.html
1945 bmp template. I also wrote my own bmp loader and able to load it into memory. The only part i''m still working on is parsing out each sprite image, which i''m still looking for a way to find out when each image starts and ends.
The other thing i''m still working on is debugging. It seems you can''t step through the code when in full screen so I''ve been doing it in normal mode. However, it seems you can''t use a back buffer if you are in normal mode. Maybe someone can tell me how I can debug in full screen?
Thanks,
Michael

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