Becky Blaze... in a Run through the Forest!

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Scarlet
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Becky Blaze... in a Run through the Forest!

Post by Scarlet »

Well. Here are first results of my modding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwIaDjh6uyo


I am still in the very very early stages. Have to thank Ceilick for the initial Kelly sprites... I made some more. But there are still more that need to be made. :/
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Not much to say here as it really is just the very start of a mod, but keep working on it, it has great potential.
Scarlet
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Post by Scarlet »

levellass wrote:Not much to say here as it really is just the very start of a mod, but keep working on it, it has great potential.
Yeah, it's like barely beyond the starting line.

I have to thank you though, because you gave me much inspiration and thought me a couple things.




As of now I am not up to this task alone. So I will hopefully learn some of this stuff. As of now my main goal is the title screen and sprites. One of my friends who is not in the keen community is interested in helping a bit on the sprites. So yay for that. Most sprites in the game will be animals of some sort.
I have tried contacting Ceilick... alas it was not to much avail. I need some advice and stuff... so if anyone is interested in giving advice and talking to me regarding sprites that'd be much appreciated.


But anyways, all work on this in the near future will be on the graphics.




edit: Perhaps this topic should have been in "Galaxy Requests and Discussion"...
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Post by EricMushroomWilson »

My advice regarding Keen sprites: study cartoon animation. The style of Keen: Galaxy's sprites is rather cartoony as has been observed many times in this community, and game sprite craft is adapted from techniques used through the history of animation. In particular, a solid walk cycle is vital to well-animated sprite. Perhaps try drawing out a rough idea of what you want for the sprite on paper, maybe making a simple flipbook with it. If you have software that can be used to create any sort of animation, try using it for some preliminary sprite movement ideas.

Study cartoon aliens. For just one example, the show Galaxy High is filled with them, several of which look like they could be at home in the Keen world. Observe them both still and in motion, compare and contrast with the creatures of the Keen games. This can be done with any animated show with a space setting/theme and aliens, I offer Galaxy High as an example primarily because many of its aliens are whimsical and silly in a way I find somewhat similar to some of the creatures of Keen.

Study the aesthetics of the canonical and fanmade Keen games. Without worrying yourself too much about what the general community considers "Keenish", compare and contrast between games and between individual sprites and the like. What works for you, what do you like to see in the sprites? What are you not so much enthused with? Again, if you let the vague concept of "Keenishness" worry you too much you will likely become frustrated by it. While of course it's great to get a positive reaction from the community, it's not so good to let worries of a negative reaction rule and stifle your creativity.

If you wish, study my mod Keen 0 for an example of very, very bad, rushed, lazy sprite work that relies on making the majority of creatures rectangular and has a baffling Neon Genesis Evangelion-like pseudo-symbolic cross theme that I intended as an anime parody but doesn't make any sense in the context of the mod. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have created Keen 0 and appreciate the encouragement and constructive criticism I was given by the community when I made it, but it still somewhat bothers me that it is to date my only full mod and possibly largest contribution to the Keen community given that it is transparently the work of a very young, naive amateur without much knowledge of game design.
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troublesomekeen
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Post by troublesomekeen »

How exciting! I'm making a Keen4 mod myself, and I'll share with you my two cents about Sprites. 4 main things about a sprites, in my experience: Behavior and Collision, Height and Length, Design and Coloring, Animation and Movement. Actually that's 8 things.

For Behavior, I recommend looking at all the Keen 4 mods out there, like Zoltan's Revenge and Keys of Krodacia so that you can see what can be changed and how it effects the sprite. I also like to look at the unfinished XkyKeen4 mod, and Save the Quillsheep mod. Some cool creature patches in there. It's amazing what a few patches can do. You can change what 12 Inchworms spawn, or you can make the Skypest stunnable while it flies in the air.

One of the first spite replacements I worked on was one for the Poisen Slug. The first thing I noticed was the 2 frames -- the way one frame animates to the next. Since the Slug has only 2 frames for walking to the Right (and 2 for the Left), I decided to replace the Slug with an upright worm, which moves in a very similar fashion.

I'm really bad at drawing things from scratch, so I looked around to find something I could use as a guideline. Turns out Benny The Bookworm (from Word Rescue) was perfect! I erased his arms and umbrella, downsized him to fit the proper dimensions, and recolored him. Remember, you have a good deal of freedom as to how tall or short your sprites can be, but it's much more restricting how how long (length) your sprite is. Your Poison Slug could be as tall as a Council Member or as short as a Wormouth. This is what one of my work sheets look like:

Image

It's extremely important to Save as you go. Whenever you're about to make a big change to your sprite, always remember to copy and paste it somewhere else first. That way if your work doesn't turn out right, you always have your previous version of the sprite to fall back on.

Since the Poison Slug releases that green poison puddle every now and then, I had to make Benny Bookworm do something similar. There was nothing left to do but make him constantly barf. So that's how poor Benny got to be the Barfworm.

When Keen touches the Poison Slug, he dies. But it wouldn't make sense for Keen to die if he touched the Barfworm. So I switched out the Slug collision with the Bounder collision. The result is the Barfworm pushes Keen around the level much like a Yorp. Keen can also ride on the Barfworm's head, but it still scoots along the ground like a Slug.

The Barfworm is in the top left corner of this pic:
Image

It's really fun to mess around with sprites' collision. For instance, The Walking Tree you see in the picture above, is the replacement for the Berkeloid. The Walking Tree is no longer dangerous to touch, like the Berkeloid is, nor does it shoot fireballs. And the Bounder is now dangerous to touch but has the appearance of the Mad Mushroom.

So....yeah! Knowing what you can do with sprites in the way they interact with Keen (or in my case, Gramps), will affect the way your draw your sprites!
Scarlet
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Post by Scarlet »

Yeah, how the original sprites move is important. I thought about that already. Basically I probably won't even be using all the characters.



I am planning to have animals replace stuff. So for example I plan on making a bunny sprite.
I saw this for example... http://sdb.drshnaps.com/objects/17/777/ ... kBunny.png I am thinking about taking some ideas from there, but of course it would look different. The head on that thing is way too big for example.


I like that frog sprite.


Ugh... any advice on a squirrel sprite? And what a squirrel might replace? I was thinking the slug at first but I'm not sure. I don't want it to release anything like the slug does.



One more question... sorry if it is dumb... but... a sprite can be much bigger than the original one, right?
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troublesomekeen
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Post by troublesomekeen »

My frog turned out rather well. I used this sheet:
http://www.smeenet.org/randomselect/nxc ... d_frog.png
which isn't exactly ideal for the transforming process, but I could find nothing better. It was just a matter of reducing by the correct pixel percentage and then keeping the black outline of the sprite intact. Here's a pic of my worksheet:
Image

As for the squirrel, perhaps a good replacement would be the Lick or the Mimrock. Either one would need some patching. I think it's possible to almost flatten the Lick's hop. You could also shorten the Lick's hop too. That might help the way the Squirrel would scamper. Or, in the Mimrock's case, you could use the "Mimrock Always Hunts Keen" patch so that the Squirrel is always on the move. You could even replace the Berkeloid with the Squirrel, who throw acorns. You can make the Berkeloid stunnable, remove its hover, and shorten its height to make it shorter than Becky.

What I'm wondering is.... Why do some creatures attack Keen? So many vicious monsters attack Keen for no apparent reason! What did Keen do to anger them so? And why do adorable woodland creatures attack Becky Blaze? More still, why are frogs after Gramps? I'm hoping to work that into the Story...

And yes, a replacement can be bigger than the original sprite. When I was replacing the Mimrock, I needed more vertical space. The original 4SPR0266 is 72 x 23. Mine is 72 x 30 and it worked. Maybe if the height was 31 instead of 30, it wouldn't have imported, but I'm not sure. So far I've had no trouble enlarging the dimensions vertically, but I have had trouble when trying to enlarging it horizontally. I think Ceilick's Tutorial says something about this issue. The horizontal length has to be divisible by 8. Something like that...
Scarlet
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Post by Scarlet »

troublesomekeen wrote:My frog turned out rather well. I used this sheet:
http://www.smeenet.org/randomselect/nxc ... d_frog.png
which isn't exactly ideal for the transforming process, but I could find nothing better. It was just a matter of reducing by the correct pixel percentage and then keeping the black outline of the sprite intact. Here's a pic of my worksheet:
Image

As for the squirrel, perhaps a good replacement would be the Lick or the Mimrock. Either one would need some patching. I think it's possible to almost flatten the Lick's hop. You could also shorten the Lick's hop too. That might help the way the Squirrel would scamper. Or, in the Mimrock's case, you could use the "Mimrock Always Hunts Keen" patch so that the Squirrel is always on the move. You could even replace the Berkeloid with the Squirrel, who throw acorns. You can make the Berkeloid stunnable, remove its hover, and shorten its height to make it shorter than Becky.

What I'm wondering is.... Why do some creatures attack Keen? So many vicious monsters attack Keen for no apparent reason! What did Keen do to anger them so? And why do adorable woodland creatures attack Becky Blaze? More still, why are frogs after Gramps? I'm hoping to work that into the Story...

And yes, a replacement can be bigger than the original sprite. When I was replacing the Mimrock, I needed more vertical space. The original 4SPR0266 is 72 x 23. Mine is 72 x 30 and it worked. Maybe if the height was 31 instead of 30, it wouldn't have imported, but I'm not sure. So far I've had no trouble enlarging the dimensions vertically, but I have had trouble when trying to enlarging it horizontally. I think Ceilick's Tutorial says something about this issue. The horizontal length has to be divisible by 8. Something like that...

Could I maybe use your frog? :) If not it's okay. But it would be cool to.
I am guessing that it replaced the lick?

A mimrock is probably a good squirrel replacement.





Didn't the page say that the shikadi or someone left all these monsters on that planet? That's why they're not friendly to keen...

...perhaps Gramps likes to eat frog legs? XD
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Scarlet wrote:Could I maybe use your frog? If not it's okay. But it would be cool to. I am guessing that it replaced the lick?
Yes, that's my Lick replacement. The reason it's a Frog is because of the Pogo replacement. There was an old DOS game called Skyroads I used to play all the time. I'm sure a few people around here have played it. Spacebar is the jump, and when you hold it down, your space-vehicle would jump and jump and jump, nonstop like the Keen on his Pogo. My siblings called this the "Froggy."
So I replaced the Pogo with the Flippy Froggy Shoes, since I decided Gramps shouldn't have a Pogo like Keen. The Frogs are undoubtedly upset about a Council Member jumping around in Froggy Shoes. Or sandals?

But yeah! You can see if you wanna use my frog sprites. I use Photobucket to upload stuff, but that only does JPEG, which is bad for bitmaps. Hopefully I'll find a different method so that you can properly get all my Frog sprites.
Scarlet wrote:Didn't the page say that the shikadi or someone left all these monsters on that planet? That's why they're not friendly to keen..
If all the monsters that attack Keen were from the Shikadi, how many native creatures does that leave us? Actually, there would be quite a few. The Arachunt doesn't know any better (and neither does the Dopefish), the Blue Birds could be protecting their Eggs, the Wormouth is probably hungry, etc etc etc. The Thundercloud has a good reason for attacking Keen. So yeah, it doesn't look like the Shikadi dropped off very many different kinds of creatures.
I found this discontinued series kinda funny, and interesting. It shows that the Shikadi only left Slugs on Gnosticus IV. But by judging by the game, I'd say that the Lick is definitely from the Shikadi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V7fOKTK5U0
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troublesomekeen
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Scarlet wrote:Could I maybe use your frog? If not it's okay. But it would be cool to. I am guessing that it replaced the lick?
Yes, that's my Lick replacement. The reason it's a Frog is because of the Pogo replacement. There was an old DOS game called Skyroads I used to play all the time. I'm sure a few people around here have played it. Spacebar is the jump, and when you hold it down, your space-vehicle would jump and jump and jump, nonstop like the Keen on his Pogo. My siblings called this the "Froggy."
So I replaced the Pogo with the Flippy Froggy Shoes, since I decided Gramps shouldn't have a Pogo like Keen. The Frogs are undoubtedly upset about a Council Member jumping around in Froggy Shoes. Or sandals?

But yeah! You can see if you wanna use my frog sprites. I use Photobucket to upload stuff, but that only does JPEG, which is bad for bitmaps. Hopefully I'll find a different method so that you can properly get all my Frog sprites.
Scarlet wrote:Didn't the page say that the shikadi or someone left all these monsters on that planet? That's why they're not friendly to keen..
If all the monsters that attack Keen were from the Shikadi, how many native creatures does that leave us? Actually, there would be quite a few. The Arachunt doesn't know any better (and neither does the Dopefish), the Blue Birds could be protecting their Eggs, the Wormouth is probably hungry, etc etc etc. The Thundercloud has a good reason for attacking Keen. So yeah, it doesn't look like the Shikadi dropped off very many different kinds of creatures.
I found this discontinued series kinda funny, and interesting. It shows that the Shikadi only left Slugs on Gnosticus IV. But by judging by the game, I'd say that the Lick is definitely from the Shikadi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V7fOKTK5U0
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Since the Poison Slug releases that green poison puddle every now and then, I had to make Benny Bookworm do something similar.
We can patch the slug to snot leave slime puddles, or to slime much more often. Most of sprite's behaviors can be patched now, at least for Keen 4 and 5.

What I'm wondering is.... Why do some creatures attack Keen? So many vicious monsters attack Keen for no apparent reason! What did Keen do to anger them so? And why do adorable woodland creatures attack Becky Blaze? More still, why are frogs after Gramps? I'm hoping to work that into the Story...
Go out bushwalking sometime, whatever doesn't run away from you will attack you, believe me. Animals don't need a reason to attack you aside from 'Can I eat it?' or' Oh God, it's going to eat me!'


Sprites can be almost any size you want (See the Dopefish) the horizontal size of them has to divide by 8 pixels (EGA limits) but they can be as tall as you want. Be warned, bigger sprites take up more memory, and that means you must have simpler levels!
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troublesomekeen
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Sheesh, I go bushwalking every other day and it's always the same. Nothing tries to eat me; they all just scamper or fly away. *sigh* I find it interesting that birds know humans can't fly.
Anyways! That's entirely off topic! Uh, I'd like to comment about the name of this thread. I really like it. Becky Blaze in a Run through the Forest! It sounds so juvenile! So youthful! You don't have to answer this, Scarlet, but I was wondering where this Forest is? In other words, where would this mod take place?
I didn't know Billy Blaze had a sister. I don't know much about the Blaze family. Does Billy also have an older brother? I can't remember, but I thought I saw a thread about it at PCKF. I suppose I should searck the Wiki. Ah! Here it is! http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/The_Blaze_Family
What luck! This is great! I had not seen this before. :)
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Post by levellass »

Well that was an interesting comment, it was like reading someone's train of thought.


(Also, can I have some of your bush, I went bushwalking on saturday and still have some lovely nicks on my fingers from picking up a weta by mistake.)


Becky has appeared I believe in one or two mods previously, though nothing that made it to final release I don't think. The location question is a good one, as the location and backstory will determine everything about the mod pretty much, including what kinds of enemy are there.
Scarlet
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Post by Scarlet »

Uh, I'd like to comment about the name of this thread. I really like it. Becky Blaze in a Run through the Forest! It sounds so juvenile! So youthful! You don't have to answer this, Scarlet, but I was wondering where this Forest is? In other words, where would this mod take place?
I didn't know Billy Blaze had a sister. I don't know much about the Blaze family.
Actually this was originally meant to be a troll mod that would be made in one day. Just something to mess with people. The forest was going to be a few poorly drawn backgrounds/canvasses of lame trees. :/
But I decided to make this more serious.

Do you or anyone else have any idea/suggestion for where this would take place?

I didn't know either. I saw Becky being mentioned in some other topic and so I thought hey why not make a galaxy mod...


The location question is a good one, as the location and backstory will determine everything about the mod pretty much, including what kinds of enemy are there.
I thought about having only real life animal enemies...
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Scarlet wrote:Do you or anyone else have any idea/suggestion for where this would take place?
I thought about having only real life animal enemies...
If you want only real life animals, wouldn't the obvious option be to have the mod take place on earth? It seems to me that Becky took a wrong turn and ending up on a vacation in Yosemite Park.
Replacing everything from Gnosticus IV to Earth doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. I imagine it would run along some of the same lines as Suburb Shenanigans.
levellass wrote:I went bushwalking on saturday and still have some lovely nicks on my fingers from picking up a weta by mistake
What in tarnation is a weta? *googles weta* Wholly crows! There's no way I'm giving up my bushes for yours! I almost stepped on a baby rattle snake once.
Say! Do you think a snake could be a good replacement for the Wormouth?
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