Would this be possible?

tinkthank · #1 February 13th, 2005, 10:07 AM

Just wondering, since I have no clue about programming:

Since every nation's and indy's units are used by the computer to generate spr1s and spr2s, they must be stored somewhere in some Illwinter archive -- right?

Do you think it would be possible as a help to us modders to somehow make these available to the public if we promise not to use them for any purpose other than dom2 modding?

(I mean so that for us to get spr1s and spr2s we wouldnt have to start a game, recruit that unit, put it into battle, make a screenshot, edit, etc. -- we could just download it from a friendly person's site?)

Do you think this would be possible, Oh Very Nice Keepers of the Very Nice Sprite Archive?

Endoperez · #2 February 13th, 2005, 10:23 AM

This has been asked before, but not much has happened. But I don't remember Illwinter commenting on this at all, so maybe they just didn't notice... It would certainly make life of modders much easier.

Thilock_Dominus · #3 February 13th, 2005, 10:26 AM

I'll sign that!

PvK · #4 February 14th, 2005, 04:20 PM

What Endro said.

I'll say again though that it would really help modding a lot to have those files, or to be have a mod command like:

#stealsprites <other monster number>

So if I want to mod a new Druid unit with the same graphics without replacing the old ones, I don't need to do an hour of PhotoShop work.

PvK

tinkthank · #5 February 19th, 2005, 12:29 PM

Actually, I meant the question honestly, not as some cheesy disguised plea to get what I want. (Sorry if it appears that way.)
So I guess that means it is not an easy task. OK. How are those images archived then?

Endoperez · #6 February 19th, 2005, 02:09 PM

Read the thread 'Looking for the <tgafile> for angels'. The pictures are not stored in a rational order, or as .tga files. They could, maybe, be extracted, but then we would just have all the sprites which would then have to be ordered. Not an easy task, as many creatures have sprites that resemble each other or, in few cases, are exactly the same.

tinkthank · #7 February 19th, 2005, 04:14 PM

Yes, I saw that -- but I had thought that Illwinter had a library of .tgas which were used in coding to make that "unordered" bit there in the game, so although some units may be identical, there were a bunch of tgas out there for all of them....

Endoperez · #8 February 19th, 2005, 04:52 PM

Quote:

[bold]Kirstoffer O:[/bold]

The sprites are not in tga format in the game. To make modding possible the game can read tga sprites, but in the game the sprites are stored in trs files. This is a format used by Spooky sprites (made by JK). Currenly there is only one way of extracting tgas and that is the one described by thilock.

Earlier it has been mentioned that the sprites have been done with that Spooky Sprites program. So the sprites have never been in .tga format!

That was new to me too. And if creating graphics has the same user-friendliness as creating unit stats (11,2,10,4...,+bers 2,+poison 100), I must wonder how much time they have used to make the game... And how much time are they using to create the sequel!