RagnaToS

Ranger demo

30 frames per movement. True ToS frame rate.

Disclaimer: I didn't care about optimizing, performance and possible lug, all at the maximum. In total, for running in all 8 direct...

Disclaimer: I didn't care about optimizing, performance and possible lug, all at the maximum.

In total, for running in all 8 directions:
240 frames, 150 sprites. And I was wrong about files size. It's about 1.6 MB now.

Head still as headgear. Original head sprites are disappears after 9th frame and just blinking while moving 30 frames. Looking for solution.

Visible items. So, it's really bad news. It's required to edit every visible headgears, shields, weapons for a new sprite. Good news is almost all headgears are half-compatible with new sprite. And needs just adding 30 frames for every animation (need test attacking, picking, dead statuses), and can be solved by script, may be. I just picked some for example.

So, that's all for now. Enjoy my video I'm testing headgears and running:

And my questions:
Is any solution for render all 30 frames of head? Not only first 9.
About frame rate. How it would affect for performance and gameplay?

Next step I think to try animate an attacking moves.
Thanks!

Framerate and file size

Any sprite-based game requires careful balancing between quality and performance. Let's think about framerate. It's very low in ...

Any sprite-based game requires careful balancing between quality and performance.
Let's think about framerate. It's very low in Ragnarok Online, max 8 frames per one movement of character in one direction. What if I'll greatly increase the frames? I want to calculate what will be size of new file.
I have a Ranger's .act and .spr files. It has very small size of 204 kB, because pixel art, low framerate. And contains only 116 sprites for all character's movements.

Idle - 5 sprites
Walking - 40 sprites
Sitting - 5 sprites
Picking Item - 4 sprites
Standby - 12 sprites
Attacking 1 - 8 sprites
Receiving damage - 2 sprites
Dead - 2 sprites
Attacking (knife) - 12 sprites
Attacking (bow) - 16 sprites
Casting spell - 10 sprites

So the size of one sprite is approximately equal 1.75 kB (compressed). My ToS sprites are x3 bigger.
I'll Increase next animation positions like this:

Idle - 5 sprites
Walking - 150 sprites
Sitting - 5 sprites
Picking Item - 20 sprites
Standby - 60 sprites
Attacking 1 - 20 sprites
Receiving damage - 20 sprites
Dead - 2 sprites
Attacking (knife) - 60 sprites
Attacking (bow) - 60 sprites
Casting spell - 40 sprites
Total - 442 sprites

773 kB (normal size) * 3 (ToS size) = approx 2.3 MB of .spr file size.

Result:

Normal RO framerate:

With the addition of frames:

Looks very smoothly.

But I can't say anything how will this affect to performance. Because I'm not a developer.

Well, testing will tell.

Act Editor and Anchors

Act Editor is really awesome tool for RO sprites editing. And the Anchor Points makes working process so much easier. For example I picke...

Act Editor is really awesome tool for RO sprites editing. And the Anchor Points makes working process so much easier. For example I picked this sprite:

Which consists of three sprites:

Accessory, Head and Body

Let's look how Anchors works:

Accessory snaps to Head anchor

Accessory + Head snaps to Body anchor

Does it mean that I need to adjust only last anchor (Body) for complited animation of whole sprite?

So why they have unnecessary frames in Accessory and Head files?

About heads in Ragnarok Online

Almost all visual changes with character in RO are manifested on heads. You can see thousand headgears which appears when you equip it...

Almost all visual changes with character in RO are manifested on heads.
You can see thousand headgears which appears when you equip it. It's therefore important to save the size of head sprite. This will avoid tons of work with head accessories.

So let's take this ToS female head:

And resize it to normal RO size:

What we got:

And then adjust body:

to be continued..

About heads and hair in Tree of Savior

ToS heads are not 3D model, but only textured planes, which changes according to angle of view. Let's look at long hairstyle ingam...

ToS heads are not 3D model, but only textured planes, which changes according to angle of view.

Let's look at long hairstyle ingame render:

Looks like 3D head on body.

But actually it's just layers of planes:

This is a good solution, given that gamer sees the character only from 8 angles

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Just like RO right?

But main problem for RO is long hairstyle. Because RO renders head over body.

ToS render:

RO problem:

For now I have no solution. And I'll try to import short hairstyle yet.

Hello

(copied from rAthena forum) Hello, guys! Today I want to share with you my project. I called it RagnaTos. I really love 2002 RO, and...

(copied from rAthena forum)

Hello, guys!

Today I want to share with you my project. I called it RagnaTos.
I really love 2002 RO, and for me there is no alternative to this game. RO2 GotW, RO2 LoTs was a failure. The most interesting option is ToS, but only graphic side. Very beautiful art which looks like classic RO (thanks An Jeong-won).
And the Idea of my project is to injecting some graphics from ToS to RO. I started with body sprite, and choose my favorite archer class. And this is the result:

1. No pixel art. Because 3D models are used in ToS
2. But more detailed sprites 
3. It is possible to increase framerate. And therefore more smoothly char's movements

And it's going to be a one problem. Very bid size of spr, grf files. Because frame-by-frame animation used in RO. I have no idea how that would affect the game.

So let's compare classic RO archer with ToS archer: