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New Version of Ashikaga

Version 2.40 of my Ashikaga mod is now complete. New changes include:

Chunin and Genin attack, defense and strength have been reduced.
Samurai Horseman lost his katana.
Daikyu now works thanks #flyspr. Samurai Bowmen and Taisho Daimyo now use Daikyu.
Arryn's new unwise-compatible flag for Ashikaga is included.
Shuriken now use the blade wind projectile sprite.

Also, work has begun on a new mod!

[ April 08, 2004, 19:09: Message edited by: Potatoman ]

Re: New Version of Ashikaga

Sweet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif This has always been my favourite mod, bar none. Great work.

Re: New Version of Ashikaga

I've only just downloaded the mod but find it fascinating. Very well done indeed! I'm going to give it a spin in a single-player game shortly, but I just wanted to extend my thanks for putting together such a professional-looking product.

Can I ask if you have any tips on how you went about rendering your sprites? They're immaculate and, as an aspiring modder, I'd love to know what you used to make them look so fantastic.

BTW, given your address, it looks like you're in Seattle at UW. I'm extremely envious. I worked out there for two years at Wizards of the Coast and miss it immensely. I'll be coming back soon though, I hope. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Version of Ashikaga

Thank you very much! I created the majority of sprites mostly from scratch using Jasc Paintshop Pro, although several were adapted from graphics I found on the web, had suitable color and I thought looked neat.

For creating sprites, I use at least an 1200% zoom and work pixel by pixel, using an unzoomed preview box to keep track of how the sprite looks normally. Some tips:

Keep in mind that most of the time your sprite will be seen against the light background of a menu rather than the dark one of combat. Always check out how the sprite looks in light gray/brown before finishing it.
Take screenshots from DomII and use the eye dropper tool to ensure the skin-tones of your humans look alright.
A normal human uses close to or all of the 32 pixels of height alloted him or her. The first set of sprites I created for Ashikaga were a full 16 pixels too short, and looked like dwarves.
Horses are really hard to draw in such a way that they don't look shabby when compared to the ones Illwinter made. Cut what you need of a horse from screenshots then resize or modify them as necessary.
Texture is really important for clothes, armor, and metal weapons. Even small areas of monotone color are usually obvious and tend to look shabby. A cheap way of avoiding this is to add a texture filter to your brush, but I would advise against it unless you're trying to fill a truly large area because the difference in quality is significant.
The magnified sprite looks very little like what will appear in game, always judge your progress by the unzoomed Version.

Re: New Version of Ashikaga

Thanks for the advice! I definitely appreciate the pointers, especially since navigating old threads for them seems to be a bit difficult.

As a side question, is there any utility in Photoshop that allows you to simply swap out pixels of one color for another? As in you select a color and all pixels that match that color automatically recalibrate to another swatch? If so, that'd be -tremendously- helpful.