Bay 12 Games Forum

Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: chaoticag on August 17, 2009, 01:38:00 pm

Title: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 17, 2009, 01:38:00 pm
I have a one year old copy of gamemaker on my laptop, and it took me this long to decide to make a completely original game using it.

So here I run into my first problem:
I am really bad at spriting and I'd hate to recycle someone elses sprites without their permission (not to mention that so far that I know, this will be a somewhat new-ish concept, so any sprites I get will probably be out of place). They don't need to be animated at all, since it will be a 4x top down game.

So if you can help me out, that would be great.

This is what I will need to get a playable version out as soon as possible:

Spoiler: sprites (preferibly 32x32 pixels) (click to show/hide)

In case anyone wants to know what the plans are:

Spoiler: Short term (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Long term (click to show/hide)

I have no idea how long I'll be able to get this done, or even how to get this done, but the plan is to get a playable version within the end of this month and the end of the next. I hope you guys will enjoy it.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Enzo on August 17, 2009, 01:58:52 pm
Friendly advice : spriting is not your first problem. You can always use placeholders until you have something playable. Also, you should probably mention what size the sprites should be.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 17, 2009, 02:05:03 pm
Quote from: kinseti on August 17, 2009, 01:58:52 pm
Friendly advice : spriting is not your first problem. You can always use placeholders until you have something playable. Also, you should probably mention what size the sprites should be.
I knew I was forgetting something, thanks for the feedback. I've tried to get together place holders, which for me generally was more time consuming than I would have liked it to be. Plus, I'm something of a perfectionist, and I spent too much time trying to sprite the letter Z for a placeholder because "it looked a little off". I never was much of an artist...

I do have some stuff that I'm doing on my own though.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Boksi on August 17, 2009, 02:07:56 pm
Eh. I might try to do it. Not today, though. But I have a few days until school starts, so...
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 17, 2009, 03:24:35 pm
Quote from: Boksi on August 17, 2009, 02:07:56 pm
Eh. I might try to do it. Not today, though. But I have a few days until school starts, so...
Thanks!
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Derakon on August 17, 2009, 06:36:13 pm
Just use the placeholders. No sense spending lots of time on art if your project runs into difficulties after a month, as so many do.

That said, I wish you luck.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Sensei on August 17, 2009, 07:25:39 pm
Mkay, do the same thing 3D graphics placeholders do- they make a 'kork' (think cube meets trapazoid, or a steep pyramid with the top cut off) to occupy space as a marker and apply scripts to. The shape is generally conducive to identifying its angle etc, since  it looks different when you rotate it. Traditionally, it's small side down. Just do one and change the colors for more sprites as you go along, will take you seconds in paint.

THEN when the game is mostly done and you have the designs ironed out, you can do the sprites- suppose you have some cause to add or remove units before you're done. Remember, being recognizably a game is actually the last thing on your list. Figure out how it's going to work first.

At that point, sure I'd draw some crap if I have time.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Boksi on August 17, 2009, 08:10:38 pm
Heh, I was left with nothing to do for a while so I whipped up some placeholders for you in MS Pain.

(http://www.freewebs.com/bokaormur/zom_b_placeholders.PNG)

Zombies and 'umies and workers and buildings, oh my!
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Jakkarra on August 17, 2009, 09:56:31 pm
i MIGHT do this for you tommorrow, unless someone else does it, or my attempts look crappy.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 18, 2009, 02:17:52 am
Quote from: Boksi on August 17, 2009, 08:10:38 pm
Heh, I was left with nothing to do for a while so I whipped up some placeholders for you in MS Pain.

(http://www.freewebs.com/bokaormur/zom_b_placeholders.PNG)

Zombies and 'umies and workers and buildings, oh my!
I'll work on those right away.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 18, 2009, 10:49:18 am
Okay... it doesn't seem that game maker lite can split up those sprites automatically, so today was mostly finding out how to do the impossible, failing, splitting up the sprites, failing (damn you jpeg!), sulking followed by actually splitting up the sprites.

In all honesty, now that I know better how to split those sprites, it would take me a few minutes to do so, but the darned sprite option was awfully confusing on a lot of levels when dealing with anything with multiple sprites on it.

Tommorow, I'll hopefully have humans moving about and having them selectable.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Sensei on August 18, 2009, 09:08:24 pm
Instead of using a spritesheet, split each sprite into its own picture.
Just use MS Paint to move/crop each one separately, reloading the entire sheet each time.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 19, 2009, 12:43:52 pm
Quote from: Sensei on August 18, 2009, 09:08:24 pm
Instead of using a spritesheet, split each sprite into its own picture.
Just use MS Paint to move/crop each one separately, reloading the entire sheet each time.
I did that, but saved the results as jpeg instead of png. I went back and fixed that.

In other news, development has come to a stop today due to a family tragedy. I'm getting back on it now, and will hopefull get what was planned today done tommorow.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Boksi on August 19, 2009, 01:42:57 pm
If you succeed in making a functioning movement engine I'll be convinced to do proper sprites for you.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 19, 2009, 03:08:42 pm
Okay, so far I've gotten the game to give you selectable units, provided that you click on the 1-pixel wide rendition of a human, and that human is in a group no larger than one. I'll do the same to the other units tommorow, then make sure that clicking units haphazardly does not cause your army to either grow or shrink. Once that is done, I should get them walking around as long as nothing is in their way.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Jack_Bread on August 22, 2009, 09:52:17 pm
I can help you. I can't play LaTale while my sister is on Maplestory. @_@
I'll work on it now.

EDIT:(http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu215/Jack_Bread/Zombies4u.gif)
How do these look?

EDIT EDIT: Damn forum bluring it up.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 23, 2009, 06:18:27 am
Quote from: Jack_Bread on August 22, 2009, 09:52:17 pm
I can help you. I can't play LaTale while my sister is on Maplestory. @_@
I'll work on it now.

EDIT:(http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu215/Jack_Bread/Zombies4u.gif)
How do these look?

EDIT EDIT: Damn forum bluring it up.
Too big, it needs to be 32x32 otherwise I end up with issues when the walk down a 32x32 "road". In other news, I'm going ahead and going to get them moving. This took a long while because I wasn't sure how to impliment range, and I've decided that movement by key presses will have to do instead of clicking for now.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Jack_Bread on August 23, 2009, 09:30:56 am
(http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu215/Jack_Bread/Zombies4u-1.gif)
They are 32x32, they're just all on a 64x64 picture.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 23, 2009, 11:05:31 am
Quote from: Jack_Bread on August 23, 2009, 09:30:56 am
(http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu215/Jack_Bread/Zombies4u-1.gif)
They are 32x32, they're just all on a 64x64 picture.
Ah!

I'll use them later on, but I'd rather have soldier sprites for now, seeing as how you have to click to select it. No presure on that though, a friend of mine is supposed to help out, but she is a little late with her batch of sprites.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: Snuffs on August 23, 2009, 05:50:09 pm
Importing sprites from a sheet is actually very simple in Game Maker, as long as you know where to look.

Create a new sprite, then, rather than clicking 'Load Sprite,' click 'Edit Sprite.'

Your sprite currently consists of a 32 x 32 green square.  To load your sprites from the sheet, either click "File > Create from Strip" or press CTRL+I.  A window will appear which will allow you to fine-tune everything about the importing process.



...Of course, at this point, they'll all be subimages of a single sprite.  If you want them to be in separate sprites, you can either save each subimage back out of Game Maker, or create a bunch of sprites and use the "Create from Strip" function as a sort of 'crop' tool to get each individual sprite.  Or, you can leave them all in a single sprite and use a little finagling with "image_speed = 0" and "image_index" to show the right image for the right unit.
Title: Re: I need sprites for my first game.
Post by: chaoticag on August 25, 2009, 01:50:56 pm
Weee! Update!

This is how your dudes work now:

If Lone soldier walks into another lone soldier, they become a squad.

Two squads make a Battalion.

Soon, I'll have the zombies move around into your guys, with a chance of demoting them at their expense or converting your squad to zombies.

After that, I'll see if they can manuver through cities to get to your guys, and follow that up by giving the humans a long range attack.