New Portraits/Small Pics!

[SilentThief]

Originally Posted by Uatu Can the designer control how long each frame is displayed? (Say, 5 seconds for the normal frame, and 0.1 second for each eye blinking frame) But yeah, you never know what the cuddly al-mi'raj will do... (Not evil, but stupid)

Well, if you had a long enough display time per frame, you could have like 4 normal frames and one blinking flame and that should work (theoretically)

ST

[manikus]

Even though it seems like it would take up a lot of memory, the way the Goldbox games did it was quite clever.
The first frame was the background for the whole animation. Each consecutive frame was an overlay. If you are showing the upper half of a dwarf and you want him to blink, you would only have to change the pixels for the part of the face that was a different pose. I don't think they could use blank frames, so there are lots of frames with like two or three pixels in it, because it was just to take up time.

The other "animation" that appears in all of the Goldbox games, is just color-cycling of the palette using LBM files which you could easily change into the TLB format that FRUA used, and, I believe, extract LBMs of the animated small pics.

[Uatu]

Ah - strange implementation... probably one that would be better to change We do have timing for spell icons and such, after all.

(Animation requires at least 3 frames for things to look smooth - for a blink, we'd need an open eye, and closed eye, and one in between )

[manikus]

It took some getting used to. If I recall correctly, the artists did their work, then the programmers took the frames and assembled the TLB files so that the artists didn't have to worry about it.

[Uatu]

Hmm - makes sense, as it is a rather strange implementation after all...

[manikus]

For it's day, it was pretty cool. Because of the limited palette, the files could be made very small.

Of course this was from the times when you put the whole game on a couple of 3.5 floppies and were amazed at how much space it required.

[Uatu]

Wow, you had 3.5 floppies? I am pretty sure I worked from those old 5.25 floppies... (Took 1 hour load Champions of Krynn, and 30 minutes for each battle... Why did I think that was fun again?)

Anyway, lots of new small pictures for today:
1. Aquatic Elf
2. Goblin (to replace the old one)
3. Giant Rat (looks kind of small, actually, but whatever)

I also retired some of the older ones that were "rough" (in my eyes)... If people want, I can make a "gallery of rejects" or something, though.

Actually, there is a full body version of the aquatic elf... ha ha... Doesn't fit in the 176 x 211 window, though...

[manikus]

These are very nice. If you don't mind, I'm going to call on Mr. Goblin to join the ranks of DC default small pics.

What would be really sweet, is if at some point in the future, you did a rat picture with a *whole bunch* of rats. And, it would be cool to see a picture of a giant rat coming out of a crack/hole in a dungeon wall. (You could even put most of the rat in deep shadow so that he would be very easy to draw (in relation that is).)

[Uatu]

What, more rats? Weeeeeeeell... I want to get more small pics (in terms of number) done, but... If I am in a ratty mood, I guess... (Even one small rat takes time to do...)

(Mr. Goblin accepts your invitation to DC's default small pics... I also like my goblin - put a good deal of time into this one.)

[manikus]

No rush on the rats. I was just thinking what would be cool to have.

Your goblin has inspired me to work on the goblin icon and re-do him.

Hey! I'm done with finals! Woo-hoo! (Just had to get that out there. )