Request For Information Regarding Sprite Pack Production

Mush_Mush

Hi guys, my brother works for Rocksteady as a character artist and 3D modeller (worked on Arkham VR) and he's now looking into a side venture with his partner into sprite production. He knows of my fondness for this community and has asked me to ask around on his behalf if anyone has any information on the subject either from a fellow sprite pack creator's perspective or from a developer-in-need's.

Any and all insight/info would be greatly appreciated, what kind of things are expected/required from the packs etc.

CrevsDaak

I'll give you what I have, which is my little knowledge on how IE animations work, it's not much because this is something I never got into, but I think it's OK to start with (it works as an introduction at least I guess).

I know that sprites are screenshots (or however you wanna call 'em) from different angles of a 3D model in-movement converted into a multiple state BAM (you can create them with NearInfinity) to create an specific animation action, that every animation has to start from a specific stance (if you want to know why, equip a long sword and a bow, on F2 and F3 respectively, then press those two keys alternately very quickly a few times and you'll see what the sprite does. It kinda twitches, IDK how to describe it, but it's to avoid stuff like that) and that some can be re-paletted in-game and some can't (for example, the Dragon animations vs the Elven Mage animations, the latter can have some parts of it of any colour while the former cannot) but I do not know how this is done (I'm pretty sure @Cuv knows about this, but he might not have the time to explain it) nor how the change animation colour opcode affects this.

A specific creature's animation follows a naming scheme after the animation's own name (which I think has to be 6 letters or less because the last two are the ones that tell the engine which part of the animation it is) and it has to be listed in a specific IDS file to work. For example, DEMON is the animation's name, and DEMONA1 is the one of the attack animations, which is composed by a multiple state BAM file (imagine a .gif for IE games, that's a multiple state BAM).

Also, animations can be 2d graphics converted to a 16 state BAM (or 8 BAMs and it gets mirrored by the engine while running, I don't remember this, but what I know is that you need a shitload of frames if you want it to be cool) for the standing animation, that's the least you need for an animation to work (otherwise I believe it crashes the game if it turns around).

Oh, and about the display speed... I have no idea about this, sorry, since I think it is one of the hardest if you look forward creating new sprites.