marshall

Don't use MS Paint ever. Try Paint Shop Pro.

And here I am. How to make them carry weapons? For, say, the Sectoid, there are 32 arm frames at the end of the sequence. I assume they comprise of a left and right arm for carrying, and a left and right arm for shooting, for each of 8 directions, although I don't know which is which. I'm looking at handob.pck for the weapons that I presume they carry but can't figure out where to place them (this time, using the top-left pixel as the origin doesn't seem to work). Also, I imagine a different weapon image is used for when they are shooting as opposed to when they are firing (although I suppose this could just be a different facing of the weapon from handob) Solutions?

Now that I know how it's done, maybe it won't take me too many years to finish this mod I'm gonna see if I can get a colleague to write a program to do it all automatically now but, failing that, it shouldn't be too hard to do by hand. I expect I'll have to do some more thinking/posting when I get around to doing the aliens carrying weapons.

Below is a gif for each of the 2 methods (arms relative to legs [1], arms relative to torso/head [2]) http://marshall.cannis.net/v1.gifhttp://marshall.cannis.net/v2.gif I think you'll agree that the first/left animation looks correct whereas the second one doesn't. The first/left anim is in fact with arms relative to legs (which would be effected by doing the pixel shift that Pumpkinhead used, which is also the simplest for piecing them together) Note that the above animations only have the first seven frames (rather than all 8) - I just couldn't be bothered to do the last one. Does everyone agree? Any other comments?

If you did the shift by 41 pixels then they would be relative to the legs in your gifs. I agree that attaching the arms to the head would make more logical sense but to be sure I guess I'm gonna have to do a complete anim cycle for each method and then compare them.

http://marshall.cannis.net/v1_1.jpghttp://marshall.cannis.net/v1_2.jpg http://marshall.cannis.net/v2_1.jpghttp://marshall.cannis.net/v2_2.jpg These images illustrate my confusion. Each row is the first and second frame of the Chrysalid walking NE. The first row has the arms relative to the legs, the second row has the arms relative to the head. Note that the second frame is identicle for each case because the head is not offset for that frame. I just wanna get this straightened out before I start putting the whole thing together. I'm not sure what people mean by the 'body' and I think different people think different things. I consider the 4 elements of each frame to be 'left arm' 'right arm' 'legs' and 'head'. I think the correct way is arms relative to legs but to be sure, I may have to do a complete walk anim for each method and compare them. Pumpkinhead: in your gifs, what did you put your arms relative to?

The head will not always be in the correct place if you just shift it by exactly 41 pixels every time. My point is that the head bobs up and down. Do the arms bob up and down with the head or do they stay in the same place relative to the legs?

So arms go relative to legs, not head.

So do I attach the arms to the head then the head/arms-combined to the legs (ie. arms are attached using head's origin) or do I attach each piece seperately (ue. arms are attached using legs' origin) ? ie. do the arms rise up and down with the head or do they stay level with the legs?

I think I'm starting to understand my earlier confusion now. Many thanks for all your helps! So, the head can be one or two pixels disjoint from the legs, in which case I should base the image on the legs and move the head to fit? Or start with the head and move the legs? As for, say, holding a weapon, is there anything different to be done? Or do I just have to superimpose everything in the right order, and, if so, what is the order?

I must not understand what you mean, because if you attach the top-left pixel of an arm to the top-left pixel of the head that can't be in the right place? And if you mean using the top-left pixel of the whole image as the origin for superimposing, that's definitely not putting the images in the correct place... Perhaps we could look at compiling the first movement frame (facing north-east) of the Chrysalid, so that w're all looking at the same thing.

The arms are the problem, because there doesn't seem to be any logical pattern to where you attach them, pixel-wise. The different image pieces aren't the same size and simply superimposing them (starting with any of the corner pixels as the origin) puts the images miles offset. Not only that, but I don't want simple 'unarmed' units - I need to have every unit holding a weapon (I need the unarmed ones as well though).

Actually I'm creating a mod for another game, but I need the images in complete frames (eg. 8 walking frames for each of 8 directions + other stuff)

Okay, so I've extracted the unit images [uFO] to bitmaps. I find that each frame is made up of 4 different image files [arm/arm/legs/head] rather than just 1. I try to piece together the images to make up a complete frame but can't seem to find any pattern at all. I end up with misalligned body parts and total chaos with the arms overlapping. Even when I do get one half-right it has taken about an hour - and there are hundreds of images per unit! Can someone please share with me the secret of putting the things together?

That's not a bad idea. Sound quality on my comp is awful though when playing UFO. Hmm... methinks tis time to unpack my 25mhz 486 from the attic