Ogodei's D1 Monsterpack

[Ogodei]

Hi guys I'm almost done with my Diablo 1 Monster pack , and I wanted to share the result with the community by filming a video of it.
I hope you will appreciate my work. These are the major features:

- No frame has been cut;
- No offsets bugs;
- I haven't used palshift to create sub-types. I followed the body-part logic instead (I.E. Advocates - mages with black robe - are assigned a "HVY" token, while Cabalists - mages with green robe - are "DES")
- When not automatically possible, I worked on each frame to remove the shadow from them, in order to avoid a "double shadow bug" (IIRC, it's not avoidable by any other means, since if you set the shadow to 0 in monstats2.txt those animations would show a shadow which is always pitch black, no matter if you use the blended shadow, or, anyway, drawn differently from characters and other D2 animations).

Here's the video

[jetaman]

Good job, colleague! The admins must put this as sticky or add to Incadescence website, since the collection there is not finished.

[kpepp]

Awesome job! Looking forward to downloading them soon

[devurandom]

Wow very Impressive! Nice work!

[kpepp]

@Ogodei: Have you rendered from scratch the D1 animations? Based on the video some of them seem to be of better quality than those in incandescence. What about the Hellfire animations?

[Ogodei]

Hi kpepp
This is the procedure I followed

I start by opening the .cl2 animation (the equivalent of D2's .dcc files) with a program called TDG23. Once the animation has been opened, I apply a random palette to it, extracted from the D1's mpq : this action darkens the image, so that it can match D2 colours and environment. The next step is changing the palette by turning the black color into white, which means removing the shadow (yes, the shadow is drawn in the image and not in the game like D2 does :| ) .
If the black color can't be removed without damaging the image i open GIMP and manually delete the shadow for each frame. After I remove the shadow from the frames, I use GIMP again to pack the .bmp images into a GIF.
After the GIF is made, I open it with DCXtool, divide the frames per direction and then save as .dcc . In the end, I use CV5 with the .dcc plugin in order to resave my animation with proper offsets (in order for the animation to be centered and also to avoid offsets bug between modes).
The sub-types and bosses (like the blue mage which is my character in the video) are done by converting the base de-shadowed model in .cl2, then opening it with TDG23 and recolor it. After that, I repeat the whole procedure (apart from removing the shadow, which is only necessary for the base model).

About hellfire animations : I'm planning a triple release . The first one is almost done, and includes almost every D1 monster (all of the 4 subtypes with bosses too, in addition to some custom colors I invented).
The second one will include Hellfire monsters along with those who haven't been done in the 1st one and item images/uniques.
The third would finally bring D1 Characters to D2, but I need to think about how to do it (I already have some anims for the sorceror, in light,medium and heavy armor )

The problem is how to release it: I can't decide between an all-in-one plugin, which would allow the user to directly import fully working D1 Monsters into his/her mod (I already set many monsters to act as they did in D1) or simply share the animation, the sounds, the missiles, and the AnimData entries. I will think of it, but ideas are welcome!

[kpepp]

Dear Ogodei,
Many thanks for sharing the implementation details!
Looking forward to download the new animations.
Can you upload your work as a new mod?

BR

[Ogodei]

Small update

In theory, i'm almost done. I just need some time to:
- Find a suitable animation for the Balrogs GH mode (in vanilla D1, they have a mono-frame animation, identical for each direction -_-)
- Correct some animdata entries (mainly walking speed animations)
- Finish the rest of the Boss-related animations
- Finish with the icons renewal for each class

@kpepp,
Yes I will try to upload it as a mod, once i've finished. In the video linked below i'm testing the AI of some monsters and their animations

[kpepp]

Impressive work!

have you tried to import the old skeletons and zombies as well? They are not available in Incandescence.

[Ogodei]

Yes I'm still working on the animations. I'm now importing some animations from Tzar: The burden of the Crown, and then maybe I'll release every monster I made in form of plug-in. I don't have much time right now to complete my mod and every stuffs I want to do, so I'll work with anims




Small update: found the time to work with D1 monsters Magma Demons have been completed. I took a licence, though, and I created four types of magma balls according to the four subtypes (in vanilla D1, each subtype shoots the same type of ball)



Update: Done with the bat demons



All of the D1 monsters are complete now. I just need some more time to make boss related animations (basically, new colours) and then i'll release this pack

[kpepp]

Εxcellent! Have you resized the familiars? They seem to me bigger than the ones in Incadescence

[Ghaleon777]

Wow.. this is what i want to achieve... i need a tutorial on how to do this! my game crashes when i add the moves in animation.d2 file!

[ascar]

Good job but when you add those lines to tkt game crashes sometimes... (when start a new game)

[ascar]

and personnally i have a shift on 1 row that causes bugs in skills, missiles and monstat, cant understand why.. id are correct, its only when there is a lots of rows in those txt (a bit more than the original ones)

If someone know why by the way lol