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Lighting

chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
edited November 2017 in General Modding
[Archive on the bottom. No installer, pick and choose. All files go in the override folder. For some of the effects vanilla versions of the spells have been provided for BG: EE and BG2: EE.]

I've never even looked into this before, but there is so much more that can be done with lighting in the Infinity games. During the day, no one may notice, but at night, it makes a whole lot of difference. This much:

Standard fireball



With a tweaked FIREBALL.PRO



That's just something I've done to that particular projectile, out of curiosity. But if there is a mod that applies changes like that roundly, please direct me. I don't know if I can pick a custom palette for light, would be nice.
Post edited by chimeric on
RVNSDoubledimassemiticgoddessGusindaIllustair[Deleted User]AndreaColomboAmmarinethButtercheeseFlashburnlolien

Comments

  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited October 2017
    The updated archive has some more fires: Holy Smite and Unholy Blight, Holy/Unholy Word, Protection from Evil, a few color changes (ankhegs spit gray acid now to fit the splash damage). And I've found a nicer fire splash animation and a completely unique animation for Shield.







    The next one was not implemented, but it would be good in a cutscene. Note: a couple of Smites and Words had to be included for override to use the special effects here. They are standard versions otherwise, without anything spell-changing mods might have done to them. The same goes for the 6th level wizard spell, Globe of Invulnerability. It had to be edited to use the effect on the screen after.





    Finally, I added a small undershine to casting glows. They show in dark conditions. There is no way to color the light, and the timing isn't always exact, but on the whole it's better with them than without them. They look like this:

    Post edited by chimeric on
    AndreaColomboFlashburnlolien
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    I've always disliked the BG2 teleport/dimension door effect, with that shining pretzel in the air and that awful sound, so I made a fiery teleport in the tradition of Xena/Hercules and other shows. The engine casts several pseudo-teleport spells in cutscenes and to remove NPC. I edited all of those to use the fire effect with a little custom "oomph," so that's what people will see now frequently. Just keep in mind that the pretzel took a couple of seconds to form, and cutscenes were written to time. The fire puff is more sudden, so some of the appearances may be a bit off. I rewrote the two major cutscenes in BG where the party gets teleported to the Ice Island, and the area script of the island top to be smooth. They are all included in the archive. It's possible that there may be other visual glitches in cutscenes because of the timing difference. Decide for yourself if you are going to be bothered by that or not. I can overlook this, to me a more inspiring game look is more important.

    The new teleport en masse. How the Friendly Arm Inn was vacated:



    The new teleport personal - Shandalar teleports away. By the by, the NPC whisk-away spell is now properly called "Teleport" instead of "Dimension Door." No lighting halo visible in daylight. Well, it's a very old engine.



    I did not use the fire effect for the actual 4th level wizard spell Dimension Door, also used by hamadryads, but I returned the original door effect of BG, somewhat edited and with lighting. There are minor clipping issues with it, but nothing impossible to ignore. It looks like this:



    The spells had to be edited to use the new effects, so these are vanilla versions in the archive. They will overwrite your modded Dimension Door, but feel free to make them compatible. Shadow Door is also in the package, because it is supposed to be a simulation of Dimension Door. It was relieved of the pretzel and given the "Dimension Door" name, when it is cast and in the spellbook. It even uses the Alteration casting glow instead of Illusion's. This way NPC may make the player wonder.
    Post edited by chimeric on
    AndreaColombocbarker15
  • AmmarAmmar Member Posts: 1,295
    chimeric said:

    Illustration only. I should make spells to go with these effects.








    Looks interesting! I like the first two, the 3rd one not so much. Will keep an eye in this.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited October 2017
    Ammar said:

    Looks interesting! I like the first two, the 3rd one not so much. Will keep an eye in this.

    Better keep an eye out for my spell mod, then. If I ever make one. This thread only contains the archive with replacement and new projectiles and effects for people to take if they like, there is no installer. But the thread is only for illustration of visuals.
  • AndreaColomboAndreaColombo Member Posts: 5,524
    chimeric said:

    This thread only contains the archive with replacement and new projectiles and effects for people to take if they like, there is no installer.

    Hi @chimeric,

    in light of the above, I would ask your permission to use your BG1 Dimension Door animation in my mod. It goes without saying that I would credit you for its creation, of course.
    lolien
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163



    Hi @chimeric,

    in light of the above, I would ask your permission to use your BG1 Dimension Door animation in my mod. It goes without saying that I would credit you for its creation, of course.

    I knew I was right to mention that. ;) Sure, use it. It's not mine, though. It's from BG1! I did some editing for it to look better and pop up a little away from characters, so you should take the VVC, not just the BAM. Oh, and the DMDOOR_# sound is new too. You should make it play from inside the spell, though, as a Play Sound effect, rather than write it into the VVC, so it only plays once for the two doors that open.

    AndreaColombo
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,345
    chimeric said:





    What effect is this based on, teleport field?

  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    It's a zap with 1d6 electrical, save-for-half. And dodge the bouncing clouds of charges. I've made the spell now.
    Shin
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,345
    @chimeric I mean the graphics effect - like e.g. your altered globes of invulnerability are based on the spell protection removal globes as far as I can see, but this one I don't recognize.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    Because I made it.
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    These are neat! What tools/process are you using for these? I haven't done any spell graphics before, but I'd love to try.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    I'm using organic parallax lens, commonly known as eyes. And lots of green tea. Basically you get a starting animation somewhere - either draw up one yourself or look for an interesting GIF online. There are also some old games to take from, Diablo 2, for instance. You save the pictures as 256-colors PNG, each frame, or import the GIF directly into Near Infinity. Then you start centering the frames, recoloring them, turning-flipping them, darkening... Sometimes you have to issue them back out into PNGs and change them by hand. The result you save as a BAM file in override, then make a looping VVC file to play it, blended/not blended. For a glow, you play with the light spot, but there are tricks to know. Finally you create some kind of item that does Play Visual Effect (opcode 215) on a target. My character always wears a ring, created with the console, for custom spells and animations. I call it my Aladdin's ring. You go back and forth and see how the result appears, then adjust the BAM or the VVC until you get something that looks good and plays properly.



    But before you set out to make whole new animations, you better have a good idea of the spell this will be for. And that spell should be original to some extent. There is no point to another "shoot for fire damage" spell book filler. The above is not actually for Protection from Acid, that's only a stand-in name.
    AndreaColombololien
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    Another spell revision. As the description of Spook says, "The Spook spell enables the wizard to play upon natural fears to cause the target creature to perceive the caster as someone or something inimical, which then appears to advance upon it in a threatening manner." Well, I can't provide an advancing, but I can get rid of the crude green missile and make it all in the mind, with a custom sound of horror as well. This is what the Bhaalspawn shows to people when he wants to scare them.

    All in the archive.

    Post edited by chimeric on
    AndreaColombololien
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    The best effect yet: another fiery teleport, but far superior to the first one, which it replaces. I had to heavily edit frames from a certain game, but I did it.

    Oopah gets an extra-large version for his performance. The nuke is somewhat smaller in spells.



    Post edited by chimeric on
    AndreaColombololien
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    This mod has been updated with SPLs with correct text for both BG:EE and BG2:EE.
    Post edited by chimeric on
    AndreaColombo
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    Normally I don't touch anything that would change game balance for this mod, but winter wolves have been asking to be fixed for 20 years. And now they have their breath. Beware, they are twice as deadly now.


    Post edited by chimeric on
    lolien
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    A big update of the fireball, to be finished and included in the archive tomorrow. Even after recolors above I was dissatisfied with the fireball, and the recolors were rather too bright. But I also wanted different graphics than what the games contain. After a long search and much editing I came up with a very nice explosion animation for what happens in the center of the fireball. By itself it looks like this:



    I also produced a more convincing ring flame and converted all of the fireball projectiles (there is the classic fireball, which is still used sometimes, the fireball that we get when we cast the spell, a green and a white fireball - which did not come with flames of matching colors). I edited them all and supplied all that. The flame tongues in the ring are not oriented outwards in every direction, like the default animation, but I may yet get to work on that. I'm not certain outward-looking flames (horizontal) are such a good idea, though.





    Then there was a question of what to do with the ring - keep it neat and round or make the spread wilder and more random. For the two projectiles above, I decided to keep the green ball's ring trim, otherwise it looked too much like a spreading gas, but white is wilder (the image doesn't really show it). The choice was the same for the "real" fireballs, projectiles FIREBALL and PFIRE2. This was the accurate-shape look:



    But in the end I decided in favor of a more violent spread:



    After this the center explosion started looking kind of out of place. It's still perfect and lovable, but the center of the new, uncombed wild fireball called for something more savage and maybe bigger. I'm still working on the frames of that animation, but this is what it will look like, petering out:



    The only thing remaining, except maybe orienting the flame tongues, is to find a better fireball for PFIRE2. I recolored the standard ball some more, so it's not as bright as before, but the Internet doesn't seem to have a good, "realistic" fireball animation. For now, players have to stick with the old missile, just a little less orange:



    P.S. If you are going to respond here, please edit the image links out of your post. When screenshots get quoted, it bogs down the loading of the thread.
    GusindaAndreaColomboShinlolien
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,345
    chimeric said:





    Any chance of dropping this one (spell and/or BAM) into the archive as well?

  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    Sorry. I'm making a spell with this, for my upcoming spell mod.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    Sometimes I outdo myself. Mostly by accident, but these accidents only happen if you really put in the time...



    And then there's this. :D



    All right, no more showing off. From now on this thread will be only about actual tweaks in the archive. The fireball is coming up... And I should mention that I moved the cold damage effect closer to white instead of the strange turquoise and improved blending for electrical damage. The original was almost pasted-on, pretty ugly.

    Post edited by chimeric on
    AndreaColombololienFlashburn
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited November 2017
    Work on the fireballs is done. Unless I decide to make oriented flame tongues after all... The replacement fireflash turned out inferior, so I'm sticking with the fireflash above, but improved and with bells and whistles. Of the two main fireballs, I decided to keep this effect for FIREBALL.PRO (the old projectile) and assigned it for use in Sunfire:



    Notice the fire missiles flying out. Creatures and items that use FIREBALL.PRO (I think wands of fire do) will still get this. However, for the standard fireball, the one in the 3rd level wizard spell, I ditched the ring animation completely and went for a different design - an enormous, smoky and bright-hot blast! Stay away!



    This is the default now. Those who prefer the spreading flame-tongue version like the one above have been taken care of, look in the folder with the appropriate name and replace. In addition, by a lucky accident I discovered that the explosion creates a wonderful, unbearably hot Incendiary Cloud that swells, bubbles and falls. This is what it is like indoors:



    And this is outdoors, with Shar-Teel in it.





    AndreaColomboArunsunGusinda
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    Have you come across a limit on the number of frames that animations are allowed?
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    I haven't run into that, if there is one. Some say there used to be, but not any more. I know that you can have good several seconds' worth of animation in one cycle.
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