The Mana World Forums

As you saw with the introduction of the scythe as a 2nd melee weapon it is now possible to create new weapon animations. So everyone who always wanted to see swords, axes, polearms or other weapons in the mana world can now create animations for new weapons.

Note that it is best when your weapon animation fits the current archer or melee attack animation sequence. In that case they can theoretically be released immediately.

When you can create an animation consisting of existing frames of the playerset in a different order it is still usable but it would require a slight change at the program and thus would have to wait until the next version.

When you have to create new playerset animation phases for your weapon to work it is still possible to do but you have to create the new animation phases for all existing leg and body equipment pieces, too.

At least someone will have to and we will have to do most of those anyway.

Try to conserve effort, but don't be afraid to produce quality.

Does this mean that the player sprite sheet is now larger?

No, there haven't been any expansions to the playerset since its introduction. It is just possible now to have different weapon sprites for each weapon.

Hello!

As you saw with the introduction of the scythe as a 2nd melee weapon it is now possible to create new weapon animations. So everyone who always wanted to see swords, axes, polearms or other weapons in the mana world can now create animations for new weapons.

I wanted to make a new animation with the broadsword item in the items reference.(i took the weapon2.png as a template for this) Unfortunately its very hard for me making the animation work correctly.
Is there any source, where the 32x32 pixel items are exactly located on the 256x256 pixel 'map'?

Im working with Gimp under Debian, any help would be great!
Thanks

Blue

I will create one.

Here it is:


Here the gimp file with the background, player and weapon on separate layers: http://www.crushnet.org/imageshack/weapontemplate.xcf

In case 64x64 pixels aren't enough for some weapons i will create a larger template with and the animation definition for it.

Yeah thanks!

Ill try it out and will post the files after testing either here or where you want it!

Here a template for 128x128 px. This should be enough for most melee weapons:


Gimp file: http://www.crushnet.org/imageshack/weap ... _128px.xcf
Animation file: http://www.crushnet.org/imageshack/weapon-128px.xml.txt

When you want other animation sequences (remember: you can use all frames of the playerset in any order) or another size - it isn't hard to create one yourself. All you have to watch out for is that all "cells" are the same size and that the player character is placed at the same position of each "cell" (the last one is not really necessary as the positioning can be corrected in the animation file, but it makes it much easier).

Original Item:


Animation File:


Animation xml:
http://themanaworld.th.funpic.de/weapon-dagger.xml

Not too bad for my first try i think, at least it works; I resized the Original Item to 20x20 pixels and cut off the handle.
It seems to me that the resized picture has lost some colour - is there a way around it?

EDIT: i just read a post from a developer that suggests not to resize the items, but if i wont resize them, they would be too big for the playerset and look very unreal...

Please reply your thoughts.

The final result is not that bad. But the sprite on the third row, first column will need absolutely need some manual retouch.

blueberry wrote:EDIT: i just read a post from a developer that suggests not to resize the items, but if i wont resize them, they would be too big for the playerset and look very unreal...

automated resizing and automated rotating are both big no-nos in pixel art because they result in extremely blurred images. Just take a look at the animation phase in the 3rd row 3rd column. It is so blurred that it is barely identifiable.

In this case i would use the inventory image only as a reference and pixel new sprites from scratch based on the original.

Now ive made the item from scratch with the original colours (done with mt-paint):




Its okay i think...so how could i make the animation if i cant rotate it automatically?
Is the only way to paint everything from scratch??? If yes, i'd have some work for today

blueberry wrote:Now ive made the item from scratch with the original colours (done with mt-paint):




Its okay i think...so how could i make the animation if i cant rotate it automatically?
Is the only way to paint everything from scratch??? If yes, i'd have some work for today

yes... it's the only (proper) way.

Why are you using paint and not gimp? Gimp can do everything paint can do - just better - and a lot more.

Rotations of exactly 90° or mirroring are safe when you switch off interpolation. Rotations by other angles without interpolation can be used as a first step but afterwards you usually have to do a lot of manual correction. When you do pixel art and you want to use automatic tools always switch off interpolation.

When it would be easy to create new weapon animations we would have plenty of them by now.

Oh, by the way, you really did a god job at resizing the original graphic.