Re: [Enigma-devel] New graphics - reply to Ronald

[Raoul]

Hi,
> > The new fl-leaves look very nice. I have never been fond of the old ones
> > that show up the grid boundaries where nothing should be visible.
> I'm glad you like it.  I may still make a tiny little change to it...
> there's one area where I can just barely see a line, and where the 
> pattern
> looks a little too repetitive.  But I think there are plenty of other 
> things
> to work on first.
>
> One of you mentioned that some items don't have their shadows.  Can 
> you tell
> me which items you're referring to?
I referred to items like it-bag, it-surprise, it-string (that orange 
trefoil).
Sure, items that can't be picked up (for example it-magnet) don't 
require a shadow.
(Maybe only a little, darker outline on the bottom side.)
> I'm finding the shadows a bit
> confusing, mainly due to the inconsistencies... I understand that most of
> the "it" items (banana, coins, key, document, umbrella, etc.) - which 
> can't
> be moved without picking them up, and which the marble can't move under,
> only over - can have their shadow built into their actual graphic.  
> Anything
> that can be moved, like a ball or a stone, or anything the ball can go
> underneath, like the grate, needs a separate .png file for their shadow.
> Correct?
Stones and Actors have their shadows in extra files named 
"sh-objectname.png"
Items never have separate shadow files. Floors never have shadows.
> For the latter group - the ones that need a separate .png file for their
> shadow - how should the shadow be placed?  Should it be centered in
> the graphic, or should it be placed slightly down and to the right of 
> where
> the actual item would be?  Or is the placement of the shadows in 
> relation to the stones and other items built into the code of the game?
Let me show some examples.
Actor-shadows are centered (even when jumping, falling etc?) in files 
with a size of 5/4 * tilesize (f.e. 48 px -> 60 px)

For the stones, it's more complicated, I have just found, that the sizes 
are:
gfx32: 41px
gfx40: 51px
gfx48: 62px
But I don't know the exact rule here. Why 62 and not 61?
Then we could say, that the shadows are moved 11px to the bottom right.

For the placement of the stoneshadows, please look at f.e. "sh-shogun4.png".

@Ronald, Andreas: please correct me, if I'm wrong.
> > The current set of items is not very consistent concerning perspective,
> > shadows and quality. Concerning the size of the items we should take 
> > into
> > account that a marble picks up a non-static item only if it 
> > approaches the
> > center of the grid up to 0.3 grid-units (center marble - center grid).
> > Thus it may look strange if a marble rolls over a large item image 
> > without
> > picking it up. I did not check if the current graphics take this feature
> > into account.
> I haven't found that to be a problem.  Maybe someone else who has been 
> playing the game longer would have a better idea.
> > Another topic would be the marbles themselves. Have a look at the black
> > marble. Its boundary is really not a circle. The white marble looks like
> > some one tried to enlarge the marble by a fuzzy white ring. The small
> > white marbles look even worse. The shadows are a subject of improvement,
> > too.
> >
> > Please note that the actors should fit the physical radius. The 1.00
> > images do not always represent the real size of the actors. Furthermore
> > the actor images have to be centered. Me and Raoul did some minor
> > improvements on the development trunk concerning the last topic. But
> > improved images would be really nice.
> I've already started working on these.  If you can send me any 
> information that might help me regarding size, placement, padding and 
> so forth I would really appreciate it.  I should mention, though, that 
> I already have new fg-blackball, fg-whiteball and fg-whiteball-small 
> images that I'm testing in my game, and I'm quite happy with how they 
> look.  The only problem I've noticed is that my fg-blackball.png seems 
> a little too small for its shadow, even though I made it the same size 
> as the existing fg-blackball.  But it functions very well in the game, 
> and really looks good, in my opinion.  I haven't done any of the 
> variants yet - fall, jump, shatter, etc.  Those will be a bit harder, 
> I think.
Information, ok, where to begin with?

I think with the physical actorsize.
Here are the actor-radius for all the actors:
ac-bug: 12.0/64
ac-horse: 24/64
ac-rotor: 22/64
ac-top: 16/64
ac-black/whiteball: 19/64
ac-whiteball-small/ac-killerball: 13/64

These values are measured in percent of the tilesize:
gfx32: 32px
gfx40: 40px
gfx48: 48px

The actorimages are stored in files named "fg-actorname.png". They have 
the same size as their shadow images:
5/4 * tilesize, this makes f.e. 50px for gfx40.

The ac-blackball in gfx40 should have a diameter of 19/64 * 2 * 40 = 
23.75 px
This will be always rounded to the next _bigger_ integervalue (here 24).

For the reason that all actorimages have to be centered in the 
"fg-actorname.png" files, they should have an even numbered size. (That 
is the problem with many of the current images ...)

@Ronald, Andreas:
What do we do, when the size is f.e 22.5?
Round to 23 and then, to get an even number to 24, or down to 22?

I think thats enough for the moment. If I forgot an important thing, 
feel free to ask.

@Ronald, Andreas: please correct me, if I'm wrong.
> > The worst misfit between image and physics is the ac-horse. Its physical
> > diameter is 48/64 units. The image diameter is about 42/48. That is the
> > reason that horses can overlap. Please note the motif of the horse 
> > has to
> > be maintained. It is a platform on which a marble can ride with a border
> > that keeps the marble from falling off the horse as long as the
> > acceleration is slow enough.
> I don't seem to have an ac-horse graphics file.  Is it the 
> fg-horse.png?  If you'll send me all the information on it, I'll see 
> what I can do.
Yes, it's "fg-horse.png"
> > Please note that we may introduce higher resolutions in future. The next
> > image size would be 64 pixels. I guess it would be usefull to generate
> > directly this resolution for all new and improved images.
> It was about a week ago that you sent this email, and in that time 
> I've completed several items and begun work on several more.  All of 
> them will have 32, 40, 48 and 64 pixel sized images, as well as larger 
> images - usually about 200x200 pixels - that could be sized down in 
> the future if needed.  I've made it-banana, it-key, it-ring, and 
> it-brush and I'm currently working on it-pin, it-sword and several of 
> the other items.
Great news!

For the files, I think, we should take the 200x200 into the 
attic/gfx-templates archive.
With which programm do you work?
For GIMP, we would take the files in .xcf format. If you work with 
Photoshop or similar, what would be good to use for archive porpose?
> Regarding the it-key, is it necessary to have it both as an individual 
> file (it-key.png) and included in the items.png file?  I can easily do 
> both, but I'm wondering if both are needed.
No, only one is needed. As we plan to split the items.png file to 
several files "itemname.png" (reason is easyier administration), it's 
not necessary that you add them into "items.png"
> I think that's all of the questions I have for now.  I'll be sharing 
> some of the items I've finished very soon.
Ok, I'm glad to see them.


-- Raoul