Lou Carcolh MOD PAGE

[ARamblingSpider]

So..anymore news about the mod?

[simplex]

So..anymore news about the mod?

It's still on track. But we kinda rely on @lifemare to proceed, so it's paused while he's away.

[simplex]

@lifemare@MilleniumCountDo you think we really need to have the Snail King to be four-sided? Just having it always face the camera would allow the Beefalo build to be used (but since this might compromise "geometrical immersion", I'd like to know your opinions on this).

[realitymeltdown]

You'd actually want to be sure the z layer is right for each element in a frame - most negative is the furthest behind. If that's all you wanna mess with, you might want to use the precise option (-p) since it's possible the full fille will get horked or shift slightly.

[TheDanaAddams]

Oh, hey, this might be helpful to you!If you're able to tweak the animation with that tool, and need to "flip" something, the easiest way to do that is to scale X (or Y) to -1. Or, if it were already scaled, to negative of whatever value it had been scaled.

 

It can sometimes cause issues with the direction of the Normals, but since DS uses flat planes... I think it will be fine.

 

This may have already been obvious to you, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me when I started learning about this stuff, so I thought I should point it out. =)

[lifemare]

Back earlier! Nothing to show you guys yet, need to get back to my studio for that (tomorrow). Will be off again in the weekend, but in the meantime...

 

Do you think we really need to have the Snail King to be four-sided? Just having it always face the camera would allow the Beefalo build to be used (but since this might compromise "geometrical immersion", I'd like to know your opinions on this).

 

Can you actually do that?!?Damn! I keep underestimating what is possible to mod in DS!

 

That is a god-sent idea! I don't think there would be any problem at all with not having a back-view. In fact, i'm not entirely sure, but i could swear there's a few mobs that don't have them. All you'd need for it to be a complete non-issue is to make the Snailking instantly aggro as soon as you step close to its mound (like a spider's web). If you can setpiece it with guard snails around the mound, so the player recognizes a threat there. Then have the King come out of the mound already charging and not chasing the player beyond the Slurtle Village, would mean that you'd have no time to admire its backside - you'd either be instantly fighting it or, in case you ran away and returned, it would be back in its mound and would charge again when you came near. Kitting it around wouldn't make any difference aswell since you'd expect the mob to immediatly turn towards you.

 

This is awesome, simplex, we might be able to ressurrect our best stab yet at the Snailking.I've been sketching a lot of crazy ideas for the Rook and i hate them all. If you can make this happen, i'm ecstatic!

 

@MilleniumCount, @Symage, @Lord_Battal, what do you say Team Slimy?Give me the green light and i'll have a beefalo-based texture-perfect Snailking in no time (tomorrow afternoon GMT at the latest). Custom Snurtle Guards and the King's Mound will follow very shortly after. And we could then concentrate on developing ideas for special drops, planning the Slurtle village layout, throw some extra speechs for the interactions - all of which i'm itching to tackle!

 

EDIT: The most problematic perspective would be when being chased by SK northwards. It would be very weird if the SK was facing south while running in the opposite direction. That might be slightly ameliorated by displaying its sideview instead, if possible. But it's the only issue i can think would break 3D immersion, and not a huge one.

Edited August 22, 2013 by lifemare

[MilleniumCount]

@MilleniumCount, @Symage, @Lord_Battal, what do you say Team Slimy?

Give me the green light and i'll have a beefalo-based texture-perfect Snailking in no time (tomorrow afternoon GMT at the latest). Custom Snurtle Guards and the King's Mound will follow very shortly after. And we could then concentrate on developing ideas for special drops, planning the Slurtle village layout, throw some extra speechs for the interactions - all of which i'm itching to tackle!

 

EDIT: The most problematic perspective would be when being chased by SK northwards. It would be very weird if the SK was facing south while running in the opposite direction. That might be slightly ameliorated by displaying its sideview instead, if possible. But it's the only issue i can think would break 3D immersion, and not a huge one.

This sounds like a good solution to me!

[simplex]

@lifemare@MilleniumCountAlright, I did it (huuuge amount of work, I changed a line that said "trans:SetFourFaced()" to "trans:SetTwoFaced()"). I'll record a video and post it here.

[simplex]

@lifemare

@MilleniumCount

 

 

The animation where he turns his back and waggles his tail ("mating taunt2") will have him turn his back anyway, but all we have to do is not use it!

 

 

obs.: I used older art for this test, but this shouldn't matter. I attached the new testing mod, using the latest art.

 

obs. 2: @lifemare, which program did you use to generate the png? My TEX <-> PNG tool was failing to convert it due to "iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile". GIMP failed to reexport it by the same reason (this warning is issued by libpng, so it affects basically every Linux program that deals with images). So I had to "semi-manually" strip the color profile.

Snail_King.zip

Edited August 22, 2013 by simplex

[lifemare]

@lifemare, which program did you use to generate the png? My TEX <-> PNG tool was failing to convert it due to "iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile". GIMP failed to reexport it by the same reason (this warning is issued by libpng, so it affects basically every Linux program that deals with images). So I had to "semi-manually" strip the color profile.

 

Great work, simplex! I have a few hours to dedicate to this right now, should post a new atlas in a little while, depending on how the tests go.

I'm using Matt's Tex Tool 1.3.1 and Photoshop. Photoshop will give me a warning when converting color profiles and i've configured it to preserve embedded profiles, but i'm finding it a little suspicious that the PNGs have the same profile has Photoshop's default (IEC61966-2.1)... Though every PNG i open after running Matt's Tex Tool has that profile...

Can you tell me on your side which is the default profile your PNGs are assigned after converting them from TEX?

 

EDIT:

---

Could it be due to Matt's Tool using system installed profiles to convert images? If that's the case i may have to install additional profiles. Let me know which one is the correct one and i'll test it.

Also apparently your API version is "in the future", my game is still version 2. Changed it in modinfo, but got a crash afterwards...

Edited August 22, 2013 by lifemare

[simplex]

Great work, simplex! I have a few hours to dedicate to this right now, should post a new atlas in a little while, depending on how the tests go.

I'm using Matt's Tex Tool 1.3.1 and Photoshop. Photoshop will give me a warning when converting color profiles and i've configured it to preserve embedded profiles, but i'm finding it a little suspicious that the PNGs have the same profile has Photoshop's default (IEC61966-2.1)... Though every PNG i open after running Matt's Tex Tool has that profile...

Can you tell me on your side which is the default profile your PNGs are assigned after converting them from TEX?

 

EDIT:

---

Could it be due to Matt's Tool using system installed profiles to convert images? If that's the case i may have to install additional profiles. Let me know which one is the correct one and i'll test it.

Also apparently your API version is "in the future", my game is still version 2. Changed it in modinfo, but got a crash afterwards...

I think Matt's tools are using the default system profile (he uses the default Windows libraries to do PNG compression, and I'm guessing this is their default behaviour). On my end, they're not embedding any profile, but I don't have any system-wide profile set. If you meant when using the tool I'm writing, it doesn't embed any profile, because it really shouldn't. Setting a color profile makes sense when you have a specific output device in mind, not when distributing an image to be displayed in many different ones.

But anyway, about the mod being "in the future" and the crash, it's because it was written for the latest game update, Stuff of Nightmares, which was released Tuesday. Haven't you received it yet? (are you running Steam or stand alone?)

[lifemare]

See if this PNG works. It shouldn't have any embedded color profile.

 

I was avoiding updating it so i wouldn't break my mods (and current world by consequence), i've also been using it for all the SK tests and was worried the update might mess with that.

But developing the SK on hunger was starting to bug me, since it could turn out to be incompatible with Nightmares, so i guess the time has come for the dreaded update.......

Installing.

Edited August 22, 2013 by lifemare

[simplex]

See if this PNG works. It shouldn't have any embedded color profile. I was avoiding updating it so i wouldn't break my mods (and current world by consequence), i've also been using it for all the SK tests and was worried the update might mess with that.But developing the SK on hunger was starting to bug me, since it could turn out to be incompatible with Nightmares, so i guess the time has come for the dreaded update.......Installing.

Yep.

Compressing 1024x512 image into KTEX.	Premultiplying alpha.	Generating 10 mipmaps.	Generating mipmap #0	Generating mipmap #1	Generating mipmap #2	Generating mipmap #3	Generating mipmap #4	Generating mipmap #5	Generating mipmap #6	Generating mipmap #7	Generating mipmap #8	Generating mipmap #9Compressed.Dumping KTEX to `mags.tex'Dumped KTEX header.	Dumped header field compression		length: 5		offset: 4		value: 2 (DXT5)	Dumped header field fill		length: 12		offset: 20		value: 4095	Dumped header field flags		length: 2		offset: 18		value: 0	Dumped header field mipmap_count		length: 5		offset: 13		value: 10	Dumped header field platform		length: 4		offset: 0		value: 0 (Default)	Dumped header field texture_type		length: 4		offset: 9		value: 1 (2D)Mipmap count: 10Dumping (pre) mipmap #0	width: 1024	height: 512	pitch: 4096	data size: 524288Dumping (pre) mipmap #1	width: 512	height: 256	pitch: 2048	data size: 131072Dumping (pre) mipmap #2	width: 256	height: 128	pitch: 1024	data size: 32768Dumping (pre) mipmap #3	width: 128	height: 64	pitch: 512	data size: 8192Dumping (pre) mipmap #4	width: 64	height: 32	pitch: 256	data size: 2048Dumping (pre) mipmap #5	width: 32	height: 16	pitch: 128	data size: 512Dumping (pre) mipmap #6	width: 16	height: 8	pitch: 64	data size: 128Dumping (pre) mipmap #7	width: 8	height: 4	pitch: 32	data size: 32Dumping (pre) mipmap #8	width: 4	height: 2	pitch: 16	data size: 16Dumping (pre) mipmap #9	width: 2	height: 1	pitch: 16	data size: 16Dumping (post) mipmap #0Dumping (post) mipmap #1Dumping (post) mipmap #2Dumping (post) mipmap #3Dumping (post) mipmap #4Dumping (post) mipmap #5Dumping (post) mipmap #6Dumping (post) mipmap #7Dumping (post) mipmap #8Dumping (post) mipmap #9Finished dumping.

I could also release a version compatible with Hunger. The only incompatibility is the nolineprint, really, which is only important in Nightmares (since the new console will get heavily cluttered without it).

[lifemare]

Yep.I could also release a version compatible with Hunger. The only incompatibility is the nolineprint, really, which is only important in Nightmares (since the new console will get heavily cluttered without it).

 

OK, i'll remember to clear embedded profiles on the next atlas i send. I'm guessing Matt's PNG to Tex won't embed one, only the other way around, right?

 

Oh! Just an aesthetic function there? Good to know! If i happen to need to go back to Hunger for some reason i'll just clear that line of code then.

 

Update still running zzzzzzzzzz

 

EDIT:

---

Should have a new atlas in an hour, if i don't run into any new obstacles.

Edited August 23, 2013 by lifemare

[simplex]

OK, i'll remember to clear embedded profiles on the next atlas i send. I'm guessing Matt's PNG to Tex won't embed one, only the other way around, right? Oh! Just an aesthetic function there? Good to know! If i happen to need to go back to Hunger for some reason i'll just clear that line of code then. Update still running zzzzzzzzzz

Yes, TEX doesn't store color profiles. However, they affect the actual colors stored in the TEX, so it's best to always strip them. It's no big deal if you send PNGs with profiles, I can always strip them myself, but you should when generating TEXs yourself.To make it compatible with Hunger, nolineprint should be changed to print. But how would you roll back to Hunger? Do you keep a local snapshot of the updates? (I do that only for code, so I can't do a full rollback) Edited August 23, 2013 by simplex

[debugman18]

Yes, TEX doesn't store color profiles. However, they affect the actual colors stored in the TEX, so it's best to always strip them. It's no big deal if you send PNGs with profiles, I can always strip them myself, but you should when generating TEXs yourself.To make it compatible with Hunger, nolineprint should be changed to print. But how would you roll back to Hunger? Do you keep a local snapshot of the updates? (I do that only for code, so I can't do a full rollback)

Limited to the versions that were available in standalone format. Anything older than that, and the internet must be scoured for resources.

[lifemare]

EDIT:

---

Should have a new atlas in an hour, if i don't run into any new obstacles.

 

Always the optimist... I should stop that.

It's almost done. Still needs a little tweaking. Solving some problems raises others with textures, it's taking a little longer than i hoped.

Redrawing some things as i go also, the final SK version will be a little different.

 

To make it compatible with Hunger, nolineprint should be changed to print. But how would you roll back to Hunger? Do you keep a local snapshot of the updates? (I do that only for code, so I can't do a full rollback)

 

I installed DS into two folders. One is Hunger for old tests and my dear little save. The other is Nightmare. Ugly way to do it, but doesn't seem to cause any problems.

[simplex]

Always the optimist... I should stop that.

It's almost done. Still needs a little tweaking. Solving some problems raises others with textures, it's taking a little longer than i hoped.

Redrawing some things as i go also, the final SK version will be a little different.

No problem. I'm just glad it's going forward!

I installed DS into two folders. One is Hunger for old tests and my dear little save. The other is Nightmare. Ugly way to do it, but doesn't seem to cause any problems.

I imagine handling the "user-wide" saves inside Documents may be a pain. But otherwise, it's actually quite clean!

[lifemare]

I'm 99% done with the main sprites!

This was tough!!! I'm up to my 12th take on the SK! Back and forth loading atlas and taking screenshots to zoom in on every nook and cranny to be sure there's no issues.

The only thing missing now are the death animations. They're just two easy sprites, but i'm very tempted to use the beefalo hair growth to make a very gory shell-bursting and slime-spurting gloriously satisfying end for the Snailking! Will need a lot more hours still, but i'd love to make it happen.

Do you guys think that would be a little too awesome much gore? Do you imagine we'll need the hair growth anims for some other purpose?

 

Here's a preview of the latest build:

 

 

I've had to make some changes i'm not too happy with, but were necessary to tie all the sprites together.

Is it passable in terms of DS aesthetic?

[simplex]

I'm 99% done with the main sprites!

This was tough!!! I'm up to my 12th take on the SK! Back and forth loading atlas and taking screenshots to zoom in on every nook and cranny to be sure there's no issues.

The only thing missing now are the death animations. They're just two easy sprites, but i'm very tempted to use the beefalo hair growth to make a very gory shell-bursting and slime-spurting gloriously satisfying end for the Snailking! Will need a lot more hours still, but i'd love to make it happen.

Do you guys think that would be a little too awesome much gore? Do you imagine we'll need the hair growth anims for some other purpose?

 

Here's a preview of the latest build:

 

 

I've had to make some changes i'm not too happy with, but were necessary to tie all the sprites together.

Is it passable in terms of DS aesthetic?

It looks really good! Great work, lifemare!

And about the hair growing animation, it really would be cool to use it. Don't worry about whether we may want to use it for other purposes, since we can always have more than one build file, just copying the atlas with a few changes between them. This kind of thing could get unwieldly for general use, but for things like death, which are pointwise, we could just switch to the "death build" before playing the death animation. But until (and if) we feel the need to use the hair growth for other purposes, we can just stick the death sprites in the main build.

[MilleniumCount]

 

 

 

I've had to make some changes i'm not too happy with, but were necessary to tie all the sprites together.

Is it passable in terms of DS aesthetic?

It is great, you are really good at this work! I like the stripes but shouldn't they also spread out to the body a little bit?

[simplex]

It is great, you are really good at this work! I like the stripes but shouldn't they also spread out to the body a little bit?

I don't know. I kind of like the war paint look it being face-only gives.

[Symage]

I'm 99% done with the main sprites!

This was tough!!! I'm up to my 12th take on the SK! Back and forth loading atlas and taking screenshots to zoom in on every nook and cranny to be sure there's no issues.

The only thing missing now are the death animations. They're just two easy sprites, but i'm very tempted to use the beefalo hair growth to make a very gory shell-bursting and slime-spurting gloriously satisfying end for the Snailking! Will need a lot more hours still, but i'd love to make it happen.

Do you guys think that would be a little too awesome much gore? Do you imagine we'll need the hair growth anims for some other purpose?

 

Here's a preview of the latest build:

 

 

I've had to make some changes i'm not too happy with, but were necessary to tie all the sprites together.

Is it passable in terms of DS aesthetic?

AWESOME

[Craig_Perry]

I really want to see this happen! if only I had any experience to help well good luck with further progress

[MilleniumCount]

I don't know. I kind of like the war paint look it being face-only gives.

I agree, but it looks therefore artificial, as you said like ''warpaint'', but where did he get it then? Thats is just my thinking when I look at it.

The look sure is awesome!