To: Boingo Subject: Weapon skins

[Tzar Sectus]

I checked out the two skins you've made of the marine (pistol and shotgun). And I'm just wondering, are you still working on the rest? It would be so cool to have the feature in the game where one can see other players when they change weapons, and actually use it (instead of seeing that boring rifle all the time... there isn't even any rifle in the game!).

Boris or Hurdler, are any of you up to do the code part? I've checked the source code, it should be piece of cake to add the feature where the player changes skin accordingly to what weapon he uses.

-Remi

[=HELLION=]

uhh hey a shotgun is a rifle .. guess you didnt know that

[Boingo the Clown]

Actually, a shotgun and a rifle are not the same. A shotgun expels a mass of small projectiles (shot) from the barrel in a brute force sort of way. The individual pieces of shot are not very areodynamic. They tumble, causing their paths to be unstable. The result is a cone-shaped scatter pattern typical of shotguns. A rifle, on the other hand, fires a single bullet, which is much more areodynamic than the spherical shot. Ordinary guns fire bullets too, but a rifle has a spiral scoring pattern on the inside of its barrel. This spiral pattern puts a spin on the bullet, much like the spinning of a gyroscope. This makes the bullet more stable in flight, allowing it to travel much farther with much greater accuracy than a bullet fired from and ordinary gun. The scoring pattern is refered to as rifling, and it is why a rifle is called a rifle.

(Note: At the begining of nearly all of the James Bond films, there is a scene showing an assasin aiming his rifle at Bond, who then turns and shoots the assasin. The camera's view is looking through the assasin's rifle barrel, and we never see the assasin himself, but the rifling inside the barrel is plainly seen. I believe that you can see the inside of that ill-fated rifle barrel on the splash screen graphic on the Goldeneye site.)

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Boingo the Clown]

Oh yes. I almost forgot the original questions.

Yes. I will be adding more versions of the marine to the skin pack in the future. I am afraid that it may take a while, because I am now back at college, and that means that I have a fairly constant parade of assignments that I have to work on (I am currently working on assignments for five different classes), so my time is rather limited. Cybergeeker did point out a pwad to me, that has a chainsaw trooper in it, which I may use to build a chainsaw marine in some time in the next few weeks, but my school work comes first. After all, I have paid a lot of money to be here, and I currently owe about $10,000.00 in student loans. I can't afford to let the school year slip.

I regard to your second question; I and the other Legacy guys attempted to set up the skins such that they would act as vweps (visual weapons), by binding the skins to keys. We could not bind them to the same keys as the weapons themselves, because the keys would no longer change the weapons--just the skins. The best we could do was to bind the skin changes to keys close by the weapon keys. This sort of creates an honor system, where you and your opponent must change to the appropriate skin when ever a weapons change is made.

This was all discussed way back in July on the old Legacy forum, before Legacy moved here to newdoom.com: It may be possible, although far from garrenteed, that when I finish my marine skins (heaven knows when), they may be incorporated into Legacy in order to provide vwep support.

I will continue to work on my marine skins as I get the time. Trust me. There will be more.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[This message has been edited by Boingo the Clown (edited 10-05-2000).]

[Tzar Sectus]

"I regard to your second question; I and the other Legacy guys attempted to set up the skins such that they would act as vweps (visual weapons), by binding the skins to keys. We could not bind them to the same keys as the weapons themselves, because the keys would no longer change the weapons--just the skins. The best we could do was to bind the skin changes to keys close by the weapon keys. This sort of creates an honor system, where you and your opponent must change to the appropriate skin when ever a weapons change is made."

Really? As one with programming experience and with some insight on the Doom code, I'd assume it'd be piece of cake to do it. That's just to call the skinchange function whenever a weapon is changed (of course, there would have to be a check which checked if the player uses something else than a marine skin, which in that case the procedure would get cancelled).

If the system's going to be something like that the player has to click on *separate* buttons to change skins I'm really not going to use it, that would just be too bothersome. And when I'm deathmatching, I really don't have the time to click on another button when changing weapons.

Good luck with making the skins, and I hope the coders manage to find an userfriendly solution to this.

-Remi

[Boingo the Clown]

The Legacy guys might do the programming for vweps eventually. Don't bug then about it, though. They kind of have more important things to work on. Maybe they will be able to do it once I complete the whole set.

Until then...

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[=HELLION=]

ok yes you know your right they do shoot buck shot but did you also know theres rounds for the shotgun thats call SLUGS ? theres not any buckshot in them its a solid round ... thats why a shotgun is classified as a rifle

[Finite]

Ummm... no it's not classified as a rifle, it has no rifling in the barrel! Slugs are brute force still, accuracy is pretty shocking. Rifles can be quite accurate for over a 1km! A shotgun could never do that, without being transformed into a rifle itself. Also, by definition rifles use bullets. So :P (The rifle he is holding in the skin looks more like a pre-WWI 303 rifle than any of the shotguns in the game anyway...)

Anyway... I can't wait to get my hands on the completed pack. And as for the honor system... it wouldn't be difficult at all to code an automatic skinchange into the weapon selection commands... well... at least I don't think it would be...

[Jon the Frad]

We need a new forum specially for 'irritating anal technicalities'. Does it really matter?!? Some people's gun obsessions are very worrying...

[Stphrz]

Amen, Jon.

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I'm an atheist. No, really, I am. Swear to God.

[darknation]

I always called them shells...

[deathbringer]

The vwep skins could be hard-coded into the game,so that if the marine skin is selected the vwep change would be automatic-and if a different skin was selected then it wouldnt (unless different skins with vweps where made,there could be a reference in the s_skin lump,like if weapon=1,display sprite ARSE or something like that) oh yeah-legacy better support a skins directory soon!-like zdoom does (auto-loads everything in /skins on startup)

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im gonna go over the wall-i dont understand this bit at all,its like a b-movie,cheap peice of scenery

[Finite]

I was merely responding to post in order to show how stupid it is to compare a shotgun to a rifle, especially in doom since they look nothing alike... and hence weapon skins are necessary. http://www.newdoom.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Boingo the Clown]

The rifle is a bit of a strange weapon to have the marine carrying in DooM when you consider that the player does not even get a rifle during the game. The reason the marine sprite carries a rifle is because the Alpha versions of DooM used a riffle and a bayonet as the default weapons. These were replaced with the pistol and the fists, of course. Here is a pic of the bayonet in action from one of the DooM alphas.

http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/DeiM/News/bayonet3.gif

Cool, eh?

Once vweps are in place, however, the rifle will disappear forever. How sad. Sniff*

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Don Incognito]

Hey Boingo, how'd you rip the graphics from the alpha version of Doom?
I'd like to know so I can get more angles for the player sprites, because I remember that there are more in the alpha version.

About the vweps, it would also have to be programmed to change weapons when they are picked up too, otherwise it would be kinda silly.

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With Love and Admiration, (laced with Raw Passion).

[Boingo the Clown]

Actually, there aren't. In fact, the imps are zreo angle sprites and simply disappear when you shoot them.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Don Incognito]

Yes there are!
I'll edit this later to put in picture... I deleted them... (awww nuts)

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With Love and Admiration, (laced with Raw Passion).

[Boingo the Clown]

The wad files used by the DooM alphas and the DooM press release beta store their sprites in a different format than regular DooM does. The format uses a simple compression routine that removes the transparent background. I was planning to come up with a simple program to convert the graphics, but I never got around to it.

The DooM alphas and the press release beta have interesting graphics that were not used in the final game. For example, the game was originally supposed to have point scores, and so point related items, such as the unholy bible, demonic sceptre and skull chest were lying around the levels. When points were dropped from the game, these items were simply replaced with the little health and armour bonuses. There were also very different looking versions of the medkits and ammo supplies. The most interesting thing of all was the very different version of the lost soul that appears in the press release beta. this version looks like a demon's skull with a cheesy electricity effect around it. Rather than charging the player, it would flash its eyes, which would fire a pistol like shot. when killed, this version of the lost soul would crumble into a heap of debris. This effect was obviously not perfected yet. The debris almost never fell to the ground, and would just sit there, hovering in mid-air.


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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Boingo the Clown]

BTW: I had planned on making up a graphics patch that would have restored the rifle and the bayonet as the default weapns, but I got busy, and didn't get the chance to do it.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Toke]

The problem with your idea is that skins are used for deathmatch and if you change the code it will only be compatable with that port and it wont be worth the time it takes to make it. Another problem is finding graphics for all the weapons to rip off, boingo didnt draw those skins himself, he took the pistol from strife and the shotgun from the doom shogun guy, there is nothing wrong with this but i dont think he can draw a player holding a bfg that looks at good as the other 2.

[Tzar Sectus]

"The problem with your idea is that skins are used for deathmatch and if you change the code it will only be compatable with that port and it wont be worth the time it takes to make it."

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Are you saying you're jealous because Legacy will have this feature and not ZDoom? Or are you saying you'll be too lazy and you'll not be downloading the latest version of Legacy with that feature? Or are you saying that this feature will "overwrite" the normal skin code and make normal skins obsolete? In the latter case, you're wrong, the normal skins will be usable, though it won't be visible they'll change weapons.

"Another problem is finding graphics for all the weapons to rip off, boingo didnt draw those skins himself, he took the pistol from strife and the shotgun from the doom shogun guy, there is nothing wrong with this but i dont think he can draw a player holding a bfg that looks at good as the other 2."

I have full confidence in Boingo, and he *does* have the normal weapons to look from, which should be enough. I, which has no graphical talent at all, managed to something very similar by just using the normal weapons as basis.

-Remi

[darknation]

Dude, boingo is the best artist I know. Check out his work on Deim if you don't belive me

[Hurdler]

The problem with your idea is that skins are used for deathmatch and if you change the code it will only be compatable with that port and it wont be worth the time it takes to make it.

Do you think ACS is compatible with lots of Doom source port? csDoom net code is not compatible with other source port either.

Doom source ports can have their own features of course, otherwise you would have limited improvement and all source port would be just the same

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Member of the DooM Legacy Team

[This message has been edited by Hurdler (edited 10-10-2000).]

[darknation]

Woot! Hey Hurdler, does this mean we will be seeing the vweps in future? http://www.newdoom.com/ubb/wink.gif

[Don Incognito]

I think from now on, *all skins* should have 8 veiw points/angles, just like the pistol marine because they look so much cooler. Here's what they had in the alpha version of doom....

http://www.geocities.com/dynamo_jones/doom/dma01.bmp

http://www.geocities.com/dynamo_jones/doom/dma02.bmp

http://www.geocities.com/dynamo_jones/doom/dma03.bmp

[This message has been edited by Don Incognito (edited 10-10-2000).]

[darknation]

That gun is neat.

I need stuff like that for my TC...

[Tzar Sectus]

Wow, those right frames really look neat. Boingo, I really hope you'll include these into your Marine weapon skin pack, that would simply rock.

-Remi

[Hurdler]

DN, hehe, well I don't know how much time it will take before we start coding that, but we are of course interrested by doing what Legacy users want the most. There are so much to do, that it's impossible to say what will be done the first. Our philosophy is something like: we begin by doing what the Legacy team wants the most and after that we are cleary open to other ideas if we think they are good as well.

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Member of the DooM Legacy Team

[Boingo the Clown]

Yes. They do look good. It is strange that I never noticed these extra views. I am glad that somebody did.


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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Don Incognito]

http://www.newdoom.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[BioRock]

hey..... where did I can find this alpha? it sound cool!

[Boingo the Clown]

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/historic/

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[darknation]

Hurdler: I love you. You know that, right? http://www.newdoom.com/ubb/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by darknation (edited 10-10-2000).]

[Boingo the Clown]

I'll keep working on weapon skins.

I am back in school now, but I will keep working on them.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Toke]

I did not say that boingo sucked at art or anything but drawing weapons like that will be very hard if you dont have anything to draw them from. He can get the chaingun from the chaingunner and he might be able to take the mancubus gun and modify the **** out of it until its a bfg.

Take those marin picks from the alpha doom and compare them to the new marine. There are alot of differences such as his shoulders. If I remember right that marine was not drawn from 8 angles, he just holds the rifle differently.

[Toke]

Maybe I will make a BFG marine and The legacy team/Boingo can use it or touch it up if they want.

[Boingo the Clown]

Be patient, Toke. I am in the middle of an animation course, with lots of assignments to do, and no extensions. I can't crank out marine skins on demand.

I already have plans for the BFG marine. The depiction I have in mind is to have the BFG pretty much as a large strap on appliance. It would appear not unlike the cyberdemon's rocket launcher. It may be a while before I make that skin, however.

It is more likely that I will create the fists marine first. The most difficult thing about the pistol marine was painting in his body armour, which was blocked out by the rifle in the original graphic, so I would like to do a version of the marine with his armour in complete view, since it would make adding the other weapon easier. I can just paint them over top.

The fists marine may look a little strange at first, because I plan on depicting him with his right arm raised, much the way ninjas are depicted with their sword arms raised while running in animé cartoons. The reason for this is because DooM depicts a punch by alternating between PLAYAx and PLAYEx. If his arms were both down at his side, his punch would look like a half-hearted upper cut, but with his right arm raised, the punch would look more like a solid right hook.

Please don't complain and try to tell me about the marine being left handed. I'm right handed, and that left handed punch has always bugged me, so my marine sprite are righties. Okay?

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[This message has been edited by Boingo the Clown (edited 10-12-2000).]

[Tzar Sectus]

Yeah, when you mention it, it has also bugged me that the fists (and pistol) are shown as lefthanded. While the rest of the weapons are shown as righthanded... oh, brilliant idea just crossed my mind. Why not mirror the fists and pistol in the game to "fake" righthandness? And have an option in the player screen whether or not the player is lefthanded or righthanded, would be quite the difference and shouldn't be hard to program (I think). What do you think?

-Remi

[Boingo the Clown]

That has been done. I've seen it before.

There is something else I wouldn't mind doing as well.

For DeiM, I changed the BFG graphics so that the big green fireball was replaced with a big blue fireball, and the BFG had a simple lightning effect when it discharged. This would make a good BFG effect to use with the skin. Normally, DooM alternates back and forth between PLAYEx and PLAYFx a couple of times before the BFG fireball is launched. My BFG skin would have the lightning effect for both of these frames so that the BFG would actually appear to be charging up before firing.



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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Boingo the Clown]

Oh. I forgot to mention, that I won't be using the BFG in DeiM, so I will be able to put my lightning style BFG graphics into a patch wad. I'll see about doing a screenshot of the lightning graphics for the rest of you to see.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[darknation]

Hmmm.... I am gonna have a go at doing some VWEP leprechauns for my TC... should be fun

[darknation]

Dammit! 2nd page BAD!

[Boingo the Clown]

Yes. Who would have thought that this thread would have reached its second page?

BTW: I am working on a drawing or two of the space marine. I will display it when it is finished.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[Toke]

I messed with that bfg marine some and it will be VERY hard to make, if you can get it to look right your much better than I am. However in the skin I am making when I changed the deathframe to make his arm fly off instead of grabbing his neck i had no problems getting his armour to look right.

To make the bfg marine you are going to have to find out how the bfg is suposed to be held since it is not obvious, you will have to determine its size compared to the marine. And you will have to change his stance.

It is a bad idea make 8 angles since you wont realy even notice the differece and its much more work than it looks. The alpha doom marine and the finished doom marine are very different and if you try to use those frames it will look real stupid.

Maybe there should be a team for making these marines since Boingo has already stated that he does not have very much time and it will probably take him a while to make all the marines.

If there is a team then you could take this idea one step further and diferent death frame for every weapon used to kill that marine.

I would like to be on this team and I can send some of my work to show you that I would be usefull.

[Boingo the Clown]

The firing sequence for the BFG would just be a modified version of the pistol firing sequence. The walking sequence will take a bit longer. I will see about making up at least a partial BFG skin this weekend.

I am still trying to free myself from this firewall, whicch is keeping me from connecting to the site to update it. If I.T. does not get me connected up this week, then I will have to upload the new skin to my homepage.

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The Epidermis Emporium: http://www.newdoom.com/skins/
The Boingo Page: http://www.geocities.com/boingo_the_clown/

[derek]

Weapons pics on the sprites would be cool. As to code it I would suggest a mode that you can turn off or on.