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#1
06-20-2008, 01:46 AM
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Sprite Alpha'ing: An easy way to make a Color Customization system
I had an idea on how we could make a color customizer for a players plane during free for all deathmatch. The key is in drawing two sprites for one object and then coding in alphas for the separate sprites. I tried to explain to Lamsbro during a game, but im writing it down here to better explain my concept.
We all know that Altitude is made with sprites. Altering the Alpha of a sprite changes its color by adding a color to the color of the sprite. Now, im not sure how easy it is for you to do that, but when i use Game Maker, its just adding in a segment of code. If we take the Silver Plane as a base set (which is mostly white), it will allow us to have any color we want. White + Red = Red, White + Blue = Blue... you get the idea. Details will still show through cause whats darker than white will be darker than the color chosen. Now say we wanted two different colors. This will be harder, but i have an idea of how to do this as well. We would need to chance a bit, but it would work. Take the sprite of a biplane, and cut out the windows and stripe. Make those a separate sprite, but have it so that when both sprites are one on top of another, they form the starting image. It might sound like we didnt do anything, but since the two parts of the plane are a different file, the two files can have different alphas, which means two colors for you to choose from. Lamsbro mentioned something about you guys having 20 different sprites and how you snapshotted them from a 3d image. Thats all good; you can just texture the 3d model white and take another set of pictures, but thats time consuming. Also, im assuming that the gif's you have all have many subimages, since the planes arc and turn. If you are rotating the sprite instead of having an image of a plane turn, you could save space. All you need is the plane rolling. How many sprites do you have and how are you rendering them on the screen? I'd like to get a picture of what you are doing so i could better understand how to suggest my ideas to you in a more plausible manor. If i could help you with this color customization theory work, please let me know. 
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#2
06-20-2008, 02:15 AM
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Stopped reading at game maker.
but seriously im sure lam/karl knows how to do such a thing already. But tbh i don't think its worth the effort? i mean for a rts game with alot of graphics that need teamcolors sure. But i mean how many different plane colors do we need for ffa? 8? 10?(before it just repeats). It's not like size is an issue either, i'm pretty sure right now the majority of the download is the jre. just my 2 cents
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#3
06-20-2008, 03:44 AM
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Quote:
We tried several programmatic methods to changing the color and everyone agreed they looked bad.
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#4
06-20-2008, 08:09 AM
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I'm sure you've tried both of these already, but here are the two methods that I'm familiar with:
Strifeshadow: reserved 2-3 shades of magenta that would then be replaced by shades of player color. Had a big limitation in that you couldn't have subtle gradations of shading, but honestly it worked out okay. Dawn of War: used .psd (photoshop) files instead of standard image files for textures. several layer name was reserved for player colors (you had extreme customization of color in dow, example here: army painter). artists would make a grayscale texture for these bits that would then be saturated with whatever color the player color was. this worked great from my perspective as a player, although the art side was probably a bit of a pain. if you don't mind me asking, what exactly was the problem with the programmatic coloring methods? like erm... what about the art looked bad? too flat/unshaded or something else?
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#5
06-20-2008, 08:31 AM
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Yes, the main problem with programmatic coloring has to do with color quality / shading.
At this point we're thinking we'll just crank out 8 color variations and be done with it. The only drawbacks I see are a slightly larger download, no option for player customization, and (in big FFA games) the occasional color repeat.
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#6
06-20-2008, 09:41 AM
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As long as that horrible silver for the default team1 color changes to something else I'm happy. :P
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#7
06-20-2008, 08:58 PM
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I like the Silver as Team 1. I dont see it as Player 1 in FFA Deathmatches though. FFA-DM order to be this:
Red + silver windshields Blue + yellow Green + silver Yellow + blue Silver + blue Purple + yellow Pink + blue Black + silver
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#8
06-20-2008, 09:36 PM
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Since all the colors are going to be manually burned in, one nice thing is that you can get a little more creative. For instance, you could have the following "colors"... I mean, not that you'd necessarily WANT to, but it's a thought:
Desert camoflage Tiger stripe Black with skull icon on side Pink with glitter spackles Polka dot etc. Some kind of camoflage team color at least would be cool I think!
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#10
06-21-2008, 01:15 AM
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Another thought: this would be a nice thing to open up to modding. Not sure how it's set up now, but you could do something simple like have a directory structure like:
\colors\1\all red plane sprites \colors\2\all blue plane sprites ... \colors\8\last color goes here And players can just change up the images if they want. Not only would this let players change the color, but they could completely change the look of a plane if they wanted (although the hitbox would be unaffected, so they'd be idiots to change the silhouettes). Of course, this is only a possibility if you have the art divorced from collision... if you do some kind of edge detection on the sprite images for hit detection, this wouldn't work at all (not just abusable, but it'd mean that other players would have to sync to your colors... it just would be a big mess). You could also offer support for adding in colors beyond the original 8, which would be nice for big FFA games. Maybe even offer a free official "extended colors" pack later on once you can leech the best ones off the community. Then you don't bloat your original download, but you show that you're providing post-release support and keep ppl interested by offering a fun little new feature. Maybe even bundle it with some maps... have it be a Community Content pack or something like that. Give the modders some reward while letting you add more **** without doing any work. Win-win.
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#12
06-25-2008, 10:03 PM
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Alright then:
Chrome Silver Jet Black Airliner (something like a commercial jet: white with a logo) Shark (evil face on front of plane like the only fighters of WW2) Woodland Camo, Desert Camo, Arctic Camo Stars and Stripes Flaming Pink aka King! color and Standard Team Colors
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#13
06-26-2008, 12:02 AM
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One of the standard colors needs to be a really, really obnoxious pink. =D Not a pink skin a la King!, but just pink.
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#14
06-26-2008, 01:05 AM
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I think instead of worrying about what new crazy paintjobs we can give the planes, we should at least get back the original colors first (or as close to them as possible), and then go from there.
And by we I mean Lams et al.
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#17
07-02-2008, 10:30 PM
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Yah, I mean how ugly could it really be? I've played a zillion games that do this and it's always looked okay to me.
Also, one nice thing about programmatic coloring: it lets you make the player's plain subtly different than the normal color (like a darker red or whatever), so you can more easily tell who you are. No way is that going to happen if it means manually coloring double the number of planes. 
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