The Glenn Thread

[FaustWolf]

I think we could get the whole sword in by sacrificing a few shadowy pixels. The sprite would become a long L-shape, which is doable. I'm just concerned with the lack of freedom a Size 0 sprite assembly restriction places on the artist's part overall, which hinders quality.

[Chrono'99]

I don't think people would complain if some frames don't feel "perfect". Even if the spriteset doesn't have the best quality, the mere fact that Glenn is playable would be wonderful.

Is there any frame which is absolutely not doable in the current situation (like there's no room for half of Glenn's body for instance)? With creativity and a few compromises, I still think can make human Glenn playable.

[Agent 12]

As I mentioned I fully believe human Glenn will be playable one day but it is something that should be a standalone patch developed in kajar labs. We have few enough resources as it is here. When ce is done I plan on updating and making new applications that will speed development of this sort of thing.

Jp

[FaustWolf]

Here's some more frames that can't be done with current technical restrictions on player sprite size, just as examples.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[nightmare975]

As an example of my frustration fitting some battle sprites into size 0 sprite assembly...
Damn pixels... Most people probably wouldn't notice if they were cut out when not zoomed in, but still...

Perhaps...you angle the sword a little more?

EDIT: Damn, more discussion.

[Chrono'99]

Polishing the game is definitely the top priority, but I'm sure we'll find the time to do human Glenn after that, during the debugging phase for instance.

I don't think the sprite size is that much of a problem, at least not on the frames above. Cant1.png can fit if the tip of the blade is cropped by a few pixels (no one would notice this) and Glenn's left arm is brought closer to his forehead. Cant2 can fit with the L-shape trick. Cant3: just have the blade point to northwest rather than south. Cant4: either we just get rid of it and use the walking animation, or we re-draw it using Magus' climbing animation.

The situation is different than in 2006; we have all the knowledge necessary to do human Glenn now. We just need to crop some unimportant pixels and photoshop a few graphic tweaks on the existing frames, to make them fit groups of 4 tiles. This is something someone not coding could attempt, or alternatively I'll just try to do it quickly once all the code polishing is done. I can't see it taking more than 1 month at most if the photoshopping and sprite assembly work goes smoothly.

Anyone knows how many frames are missing for the complete Glenn spriteset?

[FaustWolf]

First step is to compile all the Glenn sprites that have been made thus far -- justin3009 had a 60 ~ 75% complete sprite sheet, but then TheOutlaw made some awesome frames separately. Anyone know where TheOutlaw went off to?

I'm not on the coding end of things, but I can do sprite frame insertion now (I'll still need to learn the animation format probably to be fully effective), so if someone wants to finish the spritesheet and tweak it I'll lend a hand.

Another matter is replacing Glenn's Slurp and Slurp Cut techs at the very least -- it would be very strange for Human Glenn to keep that loooong tongue.   Plus, we'll need a brand-new portrait.

EDIT: The most up-to-date sheet to my understanding, incorporating the latest frames made by TheOutlaw. Spacing isn't optimal yet, so it becomes crowded around Human Glenn's attack frames.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[justin3009]

He's been busy with real life and what not.

[Chrono'99]

Okay, everyone. I'm almost finished with the ending (it's coded but I need to write the dialogues), but I'm posting in this topic because we can possibly manage to get human Glenn implemented after all. I've been completing his spritesheet recently, with like 1 or 2 frames a day. The spritesheet is 85% complete and all frames fit in Size 0. FaustWolf will be able to do sprite assembly for Glenn after May 12, so that gives us at most 19 days. It might or might not be enough, but it's worth trying, as long as we have everything else finished, right?

Here are some things that would need to be done to allow for human Glenn:

* Completed ROM: This is a no-brainer: we will definitely have finished coding, music insertion, etc. by May, so that even if we don't succeed in implementing Glenn in time, we will still have the complete ROM to release.
* Human Glenn graphics: As said above, it's 85% done. Doing 2 frames a day doesn't impede my coding and I will do like 5 frames a day once I finish with the ending coding and Chapter 14 polishing.
* King Zeal (final boss) insertion: I can do the sprite assembly for it so that FaustWolf can focus on Glenn. It's pretty straightforward. However, I don't know anything about sprite animation, so I might still need help from everyone on that part. I'm hoping it can mimic the animation pattern of the arm of Lavos' 2nd form maybe.
* The actual sprite assembly/animation work for human Glenn: I'll let FaustWolf comment.
* Human Glenn portrait: I hope Darkken doesn't mind doing one.

Everything else seems okay.

[justin3009]

I really REALLY like the dead frames on him.  Those are awesome!  I might work on him again soon if we have this.  Since we now know how to expand animations and stuff, we can get this easily done.

Edit: Would it be alright if in a fresh rom that I moved Frog's graphics to the end of the rom and applied the 8th character fix to help?  Do you guys know some chunk of empty space I could put his graphics at?

[Agent 12]

Edit: Would it be alright if in a fresh rom that I moved Frog's graphics to the end of the rom and applied the 8th character fix to help?  Do you guys know some chunk of empty space I could put his graphics at?

I'm confused by this statement... You can do whatever you want in a fresh rom?  Please don't apply the 8th character patch to the CE ROM though. 

This is alright by me 99.  The graphics are uncompressed right?  Will human glenn fit into Frog's space or will it use unused space?  Obviously human glenn == totally worth using unused space but I'm just curious.  I can do King Zeal insertion since I should have some unused cycles.

We should really make a glenn standalone patch though if we do this so that other people can use it in their hacks.

--JP

[justin3009]

Human Glenn has to be unused space, his frames are way above and beyond the space.  And no, I don't mean the full blown 8th character patch, I mean the sprite fix so you can have Human Glenn bumped into the 410000 area, that's ALL it's for.

[Agent 12]

ok needing to use unused space makes since.  What does this patch do exactly? How many bytes does it change etc.  I'll personally do the chance when were ready but as i mentioned above I feel like it'd be rude/ silly  of us to not make this patch as general as possible so I think we should do everything on a fresh rom and then just repoint it when CE knows where in the rom it is placing him.

--JP

[FaustWolf]

The one thing I'm still concerned about in the revised spritesheet are a few of Glenn's weapon frames. For example, see here (each little box is 8x8 pixels and everything inside the dotted lines is within Size 0 space):



The leftmost frame is probably a matter of shifting the cape differently. In the middle frame, the problem is really minor, and maybe Glenn could even do without a sprite outline (it's the cape outline that sticks outside of Size 0 space). The rightmost frame is the one that's most disconcerting, because both Glenn's knee and jump shadow lie outside Size 0 space. Some space could probably be freed up by having Glenn place the broadsword against his back during the jump, sort of like how Cloud Strife does in "Braver."

But first, weapons and shadows do need to be part of the sprite frames, correct? Or are they externally applied in battle?

Also, I'll think of another tech to replace "Slurp" if this goes through. I secretly detested Frog's slurp attacks since I first saw him in Manoria Cathedral, so consider me motivated.

[Chrono'99]

Don't worry, I took the size in consideration and everything should definitely fit. Only two of the running frames don't, but that's because they were made before we know about the size constraint and I didn't get around to tweaking them yet.



I believe weapons are part of the frames since we can show them outside of battles. I think a shadow sprite is used by some techs, but not normal attacks. The shadows in this spritesheet (and Frog's) are integral part of the frames.

Concerning Slurp, a new tech animation could be nice, but if we're short on time we can also just use the animation from Marle's Cure tech as suggested by Justin earlier.

Justin, I have no clue what the problem is concerning the 410000 stuff (apparently Jsondag has none either)? Thanks for your help though. We definitely need all the help we can get.