Sprites Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project - v2.0 Release (updated 11/28/22)

Csonicgo said:r
But wouldn't it make more sense to edit the rest of the sprites to match the 1.666 face, while fixing the obvious "jitter" on the horns and chin?

This is contrary to the aim of remaining as minimally intrusive as possible when it comes to manual art edits. A majority of the art modifications in this pack are literally just a handful of pixels per sprite. As I mentioned before, there are only two main options in regards to the Lost Soul sprites that fit within the scope of the project: either include the pre-1.666 version sprites or do nothing, effectively retaining the 1.666 version.

If you do not agree with my judgement concerning the 1.666 sprites as being an erroneous introduction, then then I offer you to view the circumstances in a different manner: the 1.666 Lost Soul sprites pose a marked inconsistency in relation to its accompanying rotations and other sequence frames. This is not a supposition; this is a genuinely demonstrable matter. Of the two options I see available, one addresses this inconsistency while the other maintains it. I chose to go with the path that fixes the inconsistency which, I must reiterate, is achieved entirely with id's own untouched artwork.

And as has been pointed out, it is very simple for one to remove the offending 1.1 Lost Soul sprites from their own personal copy if they so desire. That is certainly an intended use of the pack.

It wouldn't be an extreme art change, as we've seen the v1.666 lost soul for over a decade and a half. staying with the v1.1 lost soul, however, is an extreme art change, hence the backlash.

I don't think becoming used to an inconsistency is a valid reasoning to justify keeping it. Barring a few community contributions, these exact fixes could have very well been made back in 1994.

Linguica said:

As the author of the mod, Revenant100 can ultimately do what he wants.

To be clear, although I believe I've exhibited a due amount of effort in continuing to maintain this project over the years (has it been two years already?), the end result is not meant to be "what I want." This is absolutely an endeavor in which every aspect is tailored for the end user. My goal has always been to remain as objective as possible to provide a thorough, meticulous, and compatible resource for the community to use and enjoy. I have never allowed my personal preferences or desires to trump that purpose. Although not particularly relevant to the technical side of things, this WAD is very much a celebration of the game I've grown up admiring so much and the fans that have kept its legacy everlasting.

Pardon me for waxing philosophical for a moment, but the game and the community has always been in the forefront of my mind when it comes to this project.

Just to add more fuel to the fire, here is the image of the Lost Soul used in the Doom 2 Official Strategy Guide, showing the 1.1 version of the sprite:

Very interesting. It hadn't occurred to me to check the official strategy guide before. That screenshot was taken in The Catacombs, for those who might be wondering, so this definitely originated within a build of Doom 2.

Looking for any hints of dates in the guide, the Acknowledgments section from the author is dated August 3, 1994, but I suppose that could have been written at any time during the book's writing. Going to the map walkthroughs, the bars in Underhalls are mentioned, suggesting the author was playing in a version no later than 1.666. The Gantlet secret and added platform in Circle of Death (called by its automap name 'O' of Destruction! here in the guide) are also missing, further confirming an older version.

Squint as I might, though, I cannot ascertain any other graphical differences in the few screenshots provided (many obviously running under low graphic detail), so I can't date them as being as old as any of the known pre-release screenshots. At the very least, the picture of the Revenant in the Bestiary section appears to use the final sprites rather than the earlier unrefined sprites, so the guide probably used a build in between what we've seen.

On a slightly unrelated note, there are a number of amusing quirks in the Doom 2 strategy guide. Combat data on the Arch-Vile is inexplicably missing, both spellings of "Specter" and "Spectre" are used, Gotcha!'s map overlay incorrectly places an Arachnotron as facing the Cyberdemon, Monster Condo's bestiary legend lists a "Final Boss" enemy (although the FB symbol itself is not placed on the map overlay), and so on.

I fail to understand what's wrong with the current Lost Soul sprite.

Are the rotations in yet?

Yes, the new rotations were implemented in 1.5, the version currently available to download.

Hey Revenant100,

I know you're still working on this project occasionally and you probably don't consider it "finished", but it would be really good if you could upload this to idgames. At the moment it seems you're hosting it on Mediafire and it isn't preserved anywhere more permanent. I think this is an important project that deserves to be put into the archive so that it doesn't get inadvertently lost in the future. You can always upload new versions in the future if you make more changes.

If you don't have time to do it yourself I'm happy to do it for you.

It's true that I've been somewhat hesitant on uploading any versions to the idgames archive since I don't consider these versions to be conclusively final, but one other concern I had was the potential trouble of including seemingly so much IWAD content. I can confirm that every graphics lump in the provided WADs is indeed modified in some manner, whether it be as minor as adjusted sprite offsets or a renamed lump, but I suppose the project as a whole could be seen as skirting too close to distributing IWAD resources. Of course, I suppose this judgement is up to the maintainers whom I haven't actually tried asking yet, so this may not be an issue at all.

Nonetheless, I would be most appreciative if you would be willing to upload the current WADs on my behalf. I'm a bit strapped for time these days, and I did always intend on uploading to the archive at some point, so you'd be taking care of the much-too-long procrastination on my part. I absolutely agree that a better permanence is needed, and idgames is the answer to that.

Yeah, I dunno if Ty would be happy with a file in the archive that has almost all the IWAD sprites in it on purpose.

Like, the "right" way to do it would be to write a program that generates the fixed sprites from the original IWAD through a list of new lump names / offsets and graphical overlays to apply, but I doubt anyone is going to go to all that trouble.

Since this thread has been sort of resurrected, I figure I might as well mention it and I don't see any change to these sprites listed in the change log.

The A0 frames of the tall blue and green torches have a red pixel on the poles that should probably be beige, as otherwise it's a perfect match for frame A0 of the tall red torch.

The poles on B0-D0 of all three tall torches are identical.

I have attempted to upload this project to the /idgames Archive, but it has been rejected due to the stated reason of "Contains unmodified id Software resources". I would like to contest this reasoning as it is patently and verifiably false, but I don't know where to initiate this discussion. Truthfully, the biggest disappointment for me here is this project has been now denied a proper home for permanent hosting and preservation. I've been supporting this release for years and can guarantee I will continue to do so for as long as I possibly can, but having it on the Archive would have been a nice happenstance.

Anyhow, the point of this bump is not to moan and groan about the rejection decision. The submission to the Archives was meant to commemorate the new, and potentially the last, update to the Sprite Fixing Project, version 1.6. I've done one final pass through everything, made some closing refinements, and repackaged it all into one concluding bundle. The last changelog is small, so here are the recent changes in full:

1. Fixed the red pixel in the Tall Blue and Green Torches, as reported above.
2. Adjusted a few sprite offsets in the Zombieman, Shotgun Guy, and Heavy Weapon Dude walking frames. I made a thorough examination that I did not have time for previously of the sprite sheets Romero supplied, taking a meticulous look at the offsets presented in the sprite cells, and made some according adjustments. Coming straight from the original artwork, these modified offsets for the human zombies are as authentic as can possibly be.
3. The Doom 2 sprite fix WAD has been renamed to "D2SPFX16" to be consistent with the Doom 1/Ultimate Doom-compatible WAD.
4. The Doom 2 and Doom 1 sprite fixes are now packaged together for convenience.
5. My minor DeHackEd fixes patch files are now included as an optional augmentation to the sprite fixes. I have since determined that these DEH patches are fully demo-compatible, thus there is no risk to running them whenever you'd like.

So without further ado for what could be the last time, here's the current download of v1.6:
(Outdated, see original post)

As for why this may be the last update, it just seems like there's nothing left! The last Romero graphics dump and the release of the 0.3 alpha yielded nothing that can be used here, and my to-do list is finally cleared. Unless more official assets are made available to the public, I can't think of anything else to attend to. It's been a long road to reach this point, but I believe it was well worth it. I sincerely thank you all for contributing in whatever way you have. Again, this endeavor has always been strictly for the community which has kept Doom alive for so long.

Nonetheless, I'll certainly remain on the lookout for further official content or alpha/beta releases, and I suppose I'll look into pursuing the Archive matter.

Nice, congratulations.

In light of the revelations discovered in this thread, I will soon be releasing an update for this project which includes a fix for the tall sprite wrapping error visible in the first person Shotgun graphics. While this works to address the longstanding error present in the TNT and Plutonia IWADs, the primary purpose of this update is to fix the project itself inadvertently introducing the error into Doom 1 and Doom 2, obviously rather unacceptable for a collection of fixes. (If you hadn't noticed it before, this error would only have been visible in the vanilla executables and Chocolate Doom.)

Before and after comparison of the fix in TNT as captured in Chocolate Doom:


If anyone has any last minute suggestions for any other changes, I welcome them now, since there will be a slight delay to the release as I'll be using this as an opportunity to attempt a second appeal for an /idgames Archive submission. If that fails again, then the updated download links will be provided in this thread, as always.

The offset seems to differ between both pictures: on the fixed sprite, the base of the gun is flush with the seventh black tick pixel, on the broken one it's closer to the eighth.

The offset difference is due to the weapons being centered, an earlier unrelated fix (but also the one that inadvertently introduced the wrapping error). The idle Shotgun sprite was shifted three pixels to the left so that its sight in the resting position is placed at the exact center of the screen, hence the subsequent firing frames were shifted as well to conform. I actually had to manually hex edit the offsets of the original pre-cropped Doom 1 graphic lumps to match the new centered offsets so as not to break the wrapping, only possible thanks to Linguica's instructions.

Revenant100 said:

If anyone has any last minute suggestions for any other changes

Not a big deal, but if helps:

Looking forward to the update. Also, has there been any progress of the Hexen counterpart? How much, if any, work has been done on it?

I love this project.

I'm sorry if this has already been covered in the thread...it's garnered a lot of well-deserved attention, but can people use this in their own wads? I'd love to use this...in general, and in my projects.

Revenant100 said:

If anyone has any last minute suggestions for any other changes, I welcome them now,

I just downloaded this and was kinda surprised you didnt make it so that the weapon sprites are fully visible (such as the BFG sprite being like twice as long as it is in-game and having a little BFG stamp in the lower right corner). is that not possible or outside the intentions of this project?

You mean, you want them to obstruct half the view?

Noiser said:

Not a big deal, but if helps:

http://s24.postimg.org/plb3tkgol/untitled.png

Thanks, I am keeping note of non-sprite errors. For now, though, I'm going to keep this project limited to sprites as expanding it to include patches and flats would mean more potential compatibility concerns, especially since the Final Doom IWADs would become additional entities to take into account. I did make an exception for the transparent pixels in Doom 2's RSKY2 patch, but luckily, this happened to not conflict at all with Final Doom's skies.

Cire said:

Looking forward to the update. Also, has there been any progress of the Hexen counterpart? How much, if any, work has been done on it?

The initial Hexen work has started, but it's still a very large and encompassing endeavor. In addition to possessing about as much content as Doom 2 and Heretic combined, I found I'll have to make some updates to the Heretic sprite fixes as well since the two share resources, and the widescreen weapons will require a great deal of cobbling together original art as they mostly haven't been tackled before.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that the Hexen fixes as a whole are on an indefinite hiatus which is, sorry to say, due to the Doom 2 sprite fixes being rejected from the idgames Archive. These sprite fixes were always a niche project for a niche audience, but I knew I'd eventually be able to upload them to a proper home on the Archive where they may be conveniently searched for and supported and the like. Or so I thought, at least. Since that plan didn't come to fruition, I'm afraid I simply cannot justify the time away from work necessary to devote a satisfactory amount of attention to Hexen knowing that it will quickly become lost in the annals of the forums while also relying on a volatile hosting solution.

Despite this, rest assured that the Doom sprite fixes will always be maintained. I will always make time for Doom. Also, I haven't fully given up hope on the Archive matter just yet.

volumetricsteve said:

I'm sorry if this has already been covered in the thread...it's garnered a lot of well-deserved attention, but can people use this in their own wads? I'd love to use this...in general, and in my projects.

Certainly, you and anyone else are more than welcome to incorporate the sprite fixes into your own projects. This is meant to be an open community resource as much as it is a functional WAD. Be sure to check the credits to ensure you're giving all of the contributors proper acknowledgment for their work.

Mr.Unsmiley said:

I just downloaded this and was kinda surprised you didnt make it so that the weapon sprites are fully visible (such as the BFG sprite being like twice as long as it is in-game and having a little BFG stamp in the lower right corner). is that not possible or outside the intentions of this project?

As Da Werecat said, there's no way to make more of the unseen areas of the weapon sprites visible without greatly obstructing the view, and that would also adversely affect the perspective of the weapons. Nonetheless, I included the full uncropped sprites just in case there are instances where these normally unseen areas could be viewed. Off the top of my head, I think this would actually make a difference in GZ3Doom.

Sorry if this has been answered before, but are you going to use the unused full Sprite rotations from John Romero's art showcase/leak?

Superluigieth1 said:

Sorry if this has been answered before, but are you going to use the unused full Sprite rotations from John Romero's art showcase/leak?

These have already been implemented as of version 1.5, so they're available to use now in the current release.

Revenant100 said:

These have already been implemented as of version 1.5, so they're available to use now in the current release.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Maybe there could be a way to have the modified graphics be present as patches to the original graphics and then let a tool automatically convert them back. I think that'd go over the archive maintainers' objection.

If you don't plan on working on Hexen for the moment, maybe you could release a preview version of what has been done as of yet? I would be really interested in it.

Are we allowed to use this in our mods?

Gez said:

Maybe there could be a way to have the modified graphics be present as patches to the original graphics and then let a tool automatically convert them back. I think that'd go over the archive maintainers' objection.

Yes, this was an option posed to me by Bloodshedder in my first appeal. However, I couldn't put together such a utility myself, so that would have to fall on someone else who would be willing to perform the task out of good will, and I don't foresee that as being a trivial effort. The task itself begs the question: How stringent will it be held to the rules? This project already meets the Archive rule of not containing "unmodified id Software resources", but that wasn't enough. Does every non-unique graphics lump need to be truncated into a patch? Will the source code have to be thoroughly inspected to ensure this is the case? I don't think any WAD file consisting solely of, by definition, modified or unique resources has received this amount of scrutiny.

And there isn't really a blanket one-to-one way to approach the matter since some lumps are renamed, some have offset adjustments, some have individual art modifications, some have changed image dimensions, or some combination of these. Barring the technical concerns that need to be taken into account such as the correct IWAD versions and even Linguica's recent sprite wrapping error discovery, this would also dramatically complicate the process of updating and maintaining the project. There's also cross-platform compatibility to consider, something that I don't think could be feasibly future-proofed unlike simply providing the WAD files.

That's a great deal of rigmarole to go through, much of it being for naught as the mere inconvenience of having to run a program to produce the WAD files would turn off many users from even bothering.

Cire said:

If you don't plan on working on Hexen for the moment, maybe you could release a preview version of what has been done as of yet? I would be really interested in it.

I have unfortunately lost the credits for the widescreen weapon sprites that I scrounged together over time which comprises the majority of what has been completed and implemented so far, so I wouldn't release it now without being able to provide due credit. I intend to find these credits again, but that will come when I resume progress on the fixes.

Superluigieth1 said:

Are we allowed to use this in our mods?

Yes, everyone is more than welcome to incorporate the sprite fixes into their own projects. Again, be sure to check the credits to ensure you're giving all of the contributors proper acknowledgment for their work.

Ah, OK, I understand. Hope you can find the credits again! :)

So, I've spotted an off-colored pixel on the radiation suit that this project doesn't seem to have found yet: