Hi everyone, I'm basically a total MUGEN newb. Heard about it for years but never really tried it until now. After seeing some of the awesome stuff that’s been created with it, I've now developed a full-game concept in my head and I've caught the MUGEN creation bug bad. I'm anxious to start bringing my ideas to life, but I need lots of help and advice because I’m just starting out. My main problem is, I want to create an original fighter with completely original sprites, but I don't have the kind of artistic talent to be able to do that. Luckily, in this glorious age of the internet that we live in, thanks to places like Deviantart, thousands of talented artists can be found who could do that part for me. So, I will try to enlist the help of some talented artist(s) to create the sprites for me, and I am not unwilling to do commissions for them if need be.But before I ask an artist to do drawings for sprites for me, there are some things I need to know:1. Is there any point to having an artist give me fully-colorized drawings for the sprites to begin with, or is that pointless and I should just have them give me uncolored sketches? Will converting a colorized drawing to a 256-color PCX file always make it look like crap? Will it always require additional pixel editing post-conversion to PCX to make it look good? What if I have the artist work with a 256-color palette and save their files as PCX files to begin with? Basically, is there any shortcut to go straight from a piece of colorized art to a sprite and have it look good or is this impossible without touch-up pixel editing on the converted sprite? 2. Since this is the age of widescreen HD tv's and monitors, I want to make an HD game with HD characters and backgrounds similar to SSFIIHDR. I'm realistic enough to know that I can't expect to get sprites and backgrounds anywhere near as detailed and polished-looking as that without my own Udon comics crew, but I'd like to shoot for something that's like half-way between that and the older, non-HD 2d fighters. What I would most like to be able to replicate though, if even possible, is how freakin' smooth the sprites and backgrounds in HD Remix look. What was Udon's secret in getting them to look that way? Is it simply years of hard work adjusting pixel-by-pixel until they looked absolutely perfect, or is there some special filter effect they used to get that look? Why is it basically impossible to detect pixelation on their sprites and backgrounds when I play HD Remix compared to a Guilty Gear XX game on the PS2 for instance? Why is pixelation visible in those sprites when playing Guilty Gear XX Accent Core on my HDTV, while it’s not for HD Remix, when both games’ sprites are considered HD? HD Remix is pretty much the only 2d sprite-based game I can even stand to look at on an HDTV because the sprites don’t get stretched –out and super pixelated the way any older games tend to look. So does Udon/Capcom have some magic filter that they used to make the sprites and backgrounds in that game look so good or is it just time and diligence on their part?3. If I’m going to have the artist do drawings that will be used to make HD sprites, what size should I tell him to make them? Is there a “correct” size for these things? Is bigger better and then they can always be resized down to whatever size is needed? 4. How realistic is it to attempt a creating a fully HD game with MUGEN? If I have a game with a large roster of say, 30 playable HD characters, and as many HD stages, along with assist characters, is it basically going to be unplayable on a PC because of slowdown unless it has a huge amount of RAM? How much RAM do you need to effectively run HD games? Does the HD factor even make that big of a difference or does it depend more on total number of characters, stages, characters on screen at one time, etc.? Sorry to ask so many questions but if anyone can help me get some answers to any of these I’d really appreciate it.
"Sprites" are simply pixelated pictures without a transparent "alpha" value. There are different methods to making sprites, but the end result is always to not use transparent/alpha/blurred edges. Diepod makes really good sprites and the way he does it is generally the same way Capcom made their old 2d games, by making a big sketch (colored or not) then drawing pixels over it to create a sprite. There is no way to convert a drawing into a sprite without doing certain things you have to do manually.The reason SSF2THDR doesn't look pixelated like Guilty Gear is due to resolution and basic filters. Winmugen is 320x240, Guilty Gear is about 640x480, SSF2THDR is about 1600x1200. SF2 probably use an antialiasing (transparency/alpha/blur, don't ask) filter on the sprites so that their pixels are blurred when resized, while Guilty Gear DOES do this, it doesn't add any detail that isn't already there.Capcom/Udon didn't make "sprites" for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, they decreased the color range for remake pictures of SSF2T to 256 colors and applied a global palette to them, causing them to have the necessary limited colors and then replaced the colors for palettes. Making a sprite required making the individual pixels manually, while this game did this with an automated function to get the job done. I don't think that anyone that studied sprites would call what Capcom/Udon/[third party] did in this game, "sprites".A key thing to making sprites is the bigger and detailed you make the original (art or sprite), then it's less work you'll have to de if you have to shrink it. Pick an intended screen size, then make everything in proportion to that.The more material the target computer has to load, the slower the loading will be. You can do hd in mugen but either way the performance will vary from person to person as the content will vary. Do whatever you can work with then if you want, you can reduce the resources so that certain people can play.You won't really find anyone willing to do the graphics while you sit back and tell them about your ideas, unless you're paying them really well, BUT you can get advice for making your own for free. I see good artists at Deviantart, but making a good picture is different from making a good sprite. When painting/drawing, you good a slightly smooth view and you don't really have any limits on your process; when drawing a sprite, you have to be precise on the edges and colors and it completely changes the process. You can hire an artist to draw for you, but you can't get the same quality of their art into sprites unless they can already do that quality in sprites.You CAN hire someone to draw lineart and the get someone else to make sprites of them, but you don't need the original to be colored because if you want sprites, then whoever makes the sprites are going to have to completely redraw the original anyway.And once you have your hands clean on the graphics, who's going to code it for you? Coding is another branch of the process that makes a game anything other than a bunch of pictures (gameplay), and then what about sounds?I ask that because your description tells me that you're yet another person that wants to make a game but doesn't want to pitch in anything but ideas.
Wow, thanks for all the advice. You've really helped to clarify some things for me here. That is what I suspected about sprites from everything I've been reading so far, but I needed it confirmed, so thanks for that. So there really is no shortcut method, and whatever Capcom did to make the HD Remix “sprites” look that smooth wasn’t excellent spriting, but excellent filtering. Gotcha. So has anyone figured out some filtering techniques for MUGEN sprites that can approach that level of polish, or does Udon/Capcom have their own special filters that are just better than everyone else’s? I do have PhotoShop CS3 and I’ve used some of its filter tools before to soften edges on images of real-life objects, but never tried it on sprites. You can get really nice-looking results with those filters if you have enough patience, but I don’t know how effectively people have been able to use them for sprites. I hear what you're saying about artists not wanting to do this kind of thing. It is a ton of work, but if I could find the right person and they were within reasonable price range I'm definitely open to paying. Even if it was just sketches or lineart, like you said, and having someone else "spriteize" them. That might be the way to go. I've also thought about having someone else do the backgrounds too, to split the workload even further. What I'm really shooting for is a game with a uniform art style, so I'd rather have fewer people involved in it than more, but I know I'll have to make compromises. Maybe I'll have to get a background sketch artist and a different guy to colorize them, etc. So long as the styles are not wildly different and everything jives together pretty well in the end, that's what I care about most. As for intended resolution, let's say I wanted to make the game so that it would look great on 1920x1080 tv's/monitors. Should I tell my artist to do the sketches on 8x12 sheets of paper, 1 for each frame and basically have the characters take up most of the page? Is that way too big? I don't want to have them made too small because I know you can't take an image and re-size it upwards without losing detail and making it look worse, but you can always re-size down without ill-effect. So I'd rather have drawings made too big to begin with than not big enough, especially because I have some characters in my planned game who will be much bigger than average size. I can see why you would think that I don’t intend to do much on this project myself, but actually I do plan on tackling at least 1/3 of it myself. I’m glad you mentioned sound, because that’s the part that would actually be the easiest. Let’s just say that basically ALL the sound AND music for the game I’m envisioning already exists, so it’s really just a matter of me putting in the time to choose and ‘harvest’ that material, turning it into correct file formats for MUGEN and coding it into the game. I actually want to do this part myself. And no, this won’t involve stealing any sounds or music from other people’s MUGEN characters or games at all, if anyone’s wondering. Not that kind of harvest, rest assured.Yes, aside from the graphics, coding will also be an issue as I’ve never done it before but I think given enough time I can learn some of it with tutorials and guides and such. For simpler things, I think I can probably learn how to do it, but when it comes to stuff like implementing complex hyper style moves, I’ll definitely need help with that. Might have to farm out some of the coding to others in the end too.
EVERY game on consoles can use the filter that Capcom used, it's just a blur, mugen can't use it because Elecbyte didn't add any "in-game" filters yet (to my knowledge).Most people have 1024x768/1280x1024 size screen, no one wants a game that's too big for their screen/takes too long to download/ and will lag heavily on their screen. Pick some intended resolutions then get some image templates and test them. I'm still developing my skill for anatomy and making 3d models for 2d purposes(see KoFXII), but after I put a lot of effort into making a portion of a model and was happy with its look, I peaked over to the next part of the process to see how it would be animated animated and I couldn't get it right because even though the portion that I did was ok, I didn't test the next step before I wasted my effort in the details. Right now (kind of earlier, or later) I'm going to/was/am making a blocky version of the model then try the animation BEFORE I go into details/accessories and colors. My goal of that is to basically get a guide for animation that I can later add details into while not having to redo a lot of the details or animation(ex.1/ex.2/ex.3)As I said, pick a resolution and work from there. When using 3d and Flash to make pictures, you don't have to really worry about resolution because their dimensions can always change and they'll still be able to show the highest detail. If you want my help any farther on the subject, you'll have to either start learning how to make art yourself or go get someone that's going to draw for you first, because the art department is best left to the 'artists'.Also, I neglected to mention a certain variety of sprites. The normal and unquestionable method of sprites is to draw every single pixel manually. However, it's possible to use Flash of 3d to make sprites. Flash and 3d are basically dots connected by lines and curves, and not limited to a specific location/color/and size. Normally when you view them in most areas, they will have blurred edges, disqualifying them to be called sprites but they both can use low resolution settings where the edges are always pixels and the colors aren't blurred, making them in all purposes "sprites".Example of 3d sprites, my extremely quick/crappy example of flash as sprites(right click and change quality to low), a far better example of flash (with antialiasing)I don't consider 3d sprites as actual sprites, but nothing about them says that they aren't sprites. Some people use 3d model renders with the textures and no pixel lines (such as the ones you'd see in 3d games) as sprites, but the only thing making them sprites is the limited colors and the pixelation.
