Megaman X (And more) Character Pack

[Tallgeese]

Wing Gundam? Not Tallgeese, which is the biggest and bulkiest (and best) suit in that series? For shame.

...Of course I may be slightly (but only slightly) biased.

[nanostrike]

Wing Gundam? Not Tallgeese, which is the biggest and bulkiest (and best) suit in that series? For shame.

...Of course I may be slightly (but only slightly) biased.

It was the first one I could find the proper sprites for, unfortunately.  You find me a good quality Talgeese sprite sheet and I'll definitely put it in instead.

[Tallgeese]

I see your point. Nobody's ripped Tallgeese from Endless Duel. Huh.

Or are you using Gundam Battle Assault or such?

[nanostrike]

I see your point. Nobody's ripped Tallgeese from Endless Duel. Huh.

Or are you using Gundam Battle Assault or such?

Nah.  Endless Duel.  This is the sprite sheet I used:

http://sdb.drshnaps.com/display.php?object=11602



They only have 4 complete sheets ripped that I've seen with my searches.  Epyon, Sandrock, Wing Gundam, and Heavy Arms.  Wing Gundam was the first one I stumbled across, so it was the one I did.  I might go back and use Epyon or Heavy Arms instead as I think they're cooler than Wing Gundam.

Unfortunately, the only Tallgeese sprite sheet I can find are the Chibi-style abominations from Super Robot Wars.  And I really don't want something looking like this in my game:

http://sdb.drshnaps.com/display.php?object=1735




EDIT: After a bit more digging, I think I found one.  This look about right?
http://www.majhost.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=647749

[Tallgeese]

Here's something for you that might be a bit better. Some person ripped the sprites into individual frames for MUGEN. Just magic wand the pink background off.

Here you go.

[nanostrike]

I'll see what I can do with those tomorrow

[nanostrike]

Done.  I'm a lot happier with how Tallgeese turned out than Wing Gundam.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71356504/TallGeese.rar


It replaces the Neutral Skelebot (Which is, oddly enough, the tall one.  At least in the game files).  Unfortunately, the skelebot sprites' large size means it had to be sized at 256x256 instead of the normal 128x128...so unless you manually halve the size, you won't be able to use it for anything but the Neutral Skelebot.

[Tallgeese]

That is pretty cool.

What is your resizing process anyway?

[nanostrike]

That is pretty cool.

What is your resizing process anyway?

It's very rare that I see a sprite larger than 64x64, so I select as close to the sprite as I can and paste it fully within in a 128x128 frame (Or 256x256, in the case of the Skelebot).

Then I select the entire frame and resize it to double it's size.  Then I crop around the sprite and center it.  So long as it's not bigger than 64x64, doubling it will still let it fit within a 128x128 frame.


If a sprite is too big (155x110, for example) to fit in the frame, I'll scale down the larger side enough for it to fit in the frame, but make sure to keep the aspect ration.  This can make some sprites look too awkward to actually put in (As long sprites will tend to be super-short due to this!), so I tend to have to look for the right sized ones.

I've been doing most of this manually because I'm really bad at GIMP scripting (My last 2 scripts crashed it!), but it could easily be scripted.  I'm guessing Photoshop probably has such scripts integrated.

[nanostrike]

Okay.  I've got it more-or-less finished because messing with sprites more than I already have is gonna make my head spin.  Some of the animations aren't perfect, but hell, they're the best I could do in about a day or so with an open source picture editor and google image search.  So, without further delay....

My improved character megapack.  If you're wondering why it's "Improved"...lets just say you haven't seen some of the atrocious walking animations in my old version.

Ever wanted to prowl the frozen wastes as a mutant crab?  No?  Well...now you can.


TO INSTALL:
Download - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71356504/A%20Valley%20Without%20Wind/Improved%20Megapack.rar

Extract the folder and place in steamapps\common\a valley without wind\RuntimeData\Texture Packs

Run the game.  Under Options-> Graphics, there will be a Texture Packs Option.  Select Improved Megapack from the list and click the Save button.


It replaces quite a few different characters.  If you want to replace a different one with a different image, you can just rename them.  But the the ones I've done are:


BRONZE AGE:
Boris1 - Male Swordsman (Tales of The World 3)
Boris2 - Male Thief (Tales of the World 3)
Valeria1 - Female Cleric (Tales of the World 3)
Valeria2 - Female Archer (Tales of the World 3)

PRE-INDUSTRIAL AGE:
Justin1 - Iron Man (Altered Megaman X Sprite)
Justin2 - War Machine (Altered Megaman X Sprite)
Melody1 - Sparkster (Rocket Knight Adventures)
Melody2 - Samus Aran in Gravity Suit (Super Metroid) ((I had more Samus sprites, but I accidentally saved over them!))

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AGE:
Raya1 - X (Megaman X1)
Raya2 - Zero (Megaman X1)
Samantha1 - X in Armor (Megaman X1)
Samantha2 - Sage Harpula (Megaman Zero 2)

CONTEMPORARY AGE:
Jack1 - Special Ops Trooper (Metal Slug 5)
Jack2 - Special Ops Trooper recolor (Metal Slug 5)
Lawrie1 - Rifle Soldier (Metal Slug 1)
Lawrie2 - Rifle Soldier recolor (Metal Slug 1)

ICE AGE:
Darrell1 - Zero (Megaman X4)
Darrell2 - X in Blade Armor (Megaman X5)
Dave1 - X (Megaman X4)
Dave2 - Enemy Crab (Metal Slug 3.  See my profile pic!)
Richard1 - X in Falcon Armor (Megaman X5)
Richard2 - X in Shadow Armor (Megaman X5)

POST-HUMAN AGE:
SkelebotMale - Power Loader (From the Aliens arcade game)
SkelebotNeutral - Tallgeese (From Gundam Wing: Endless Duel)

OTHER:
Snowsuit (Male and Female) - Hawk Ride Armor (Megaman X4)
Heatsuit (Male and Female) - Kangaroo Ride Armor (Megaman X4)
Heatsuit Advanced (Male and Female) - Vile's Custom Ride Armor (Megaman X4)
Snowsuit, Heatsuit, and Heatsuit Advanced Icons are changed to their Ride Armors, as noted above.

GHOSTS:
Most characters I added in have a new, unique ghost for their model.  I forgot it for some characters (Like the crab!), but most have them.  And they're a bit more intimidating-looking than the Obi-Wan-Kenobi style Ghosts the game came with.



WHEW.  I think that's everything.  I probably left some temp files and assorted junk in there somewhere because I wasn't paying attention, so there might be some alternate sprites and whatnot.  Anyway, all credit for the sprites goes to the original designers of their respective games and whatever graphically-inclined folks ripped them out of those games.  Feel free to use 'em.  It really does give a different feel to the game.

[Tallgeese]

Just a tip: when you exactly double or quadruple sprite size, you want to use nearest neighbor resizing for best result. For some mad reason, that is basically the only time nearest neighbor is any good!

[nanostrike]

Yeah, I usually do.

Ugh.  Just fired the game  up and realized I uploaded the version where I had my Megaman X sprites crossed over.  The Megaman X4 model gets smaller when he's not walking due to a frame mix-up!  Whoops.  Most people probably wouldn't even notice, but I do and it drives me nuts!

[Tallgeese]

That has to stink... good luck fixing it.

Also, aren't the ride armors from X3, not 4?

[nanostrike]

That has to stink... good luck fixing it.

Also, aren't the ride armors from X3, not 4?

Probably.  I get all my numbers mixed up.  It was an easy fix.  I just had to scale up the non-walking frames.  The non-walking stuff is super simple.  It's the walking animations that are a royal pain in the rear.

A lot of walking animations aren't that great to begin with and when you try and stretch them out for 22 frames, they look atrocious.  In general, I've found that it's usually best to extend it into one really long animation loop rather than have a couple of little loops, though.  Otherwise it gets the "Spinning feet" effect of sonic the hedgehog and generally looks like the character is unsable and about to explode.


Oddly enough, I think I'm happiest with that Crab model from Metal Slug.  I dunno why, but it just fits.  It'd be really awesome to have an official crab-person Survivor you could play as, with natural Acid Gills.