2D sprites for 3D games.. how many dirrections is enough?

Legion

For example this is a Doom 64 sprite.
Notice how only 5 sprites are present yet there are 8 directions it can be seen if the yellow area is flipped.




Now in Wolfenstien 3D they only used a front and back sprites for the bosses mostly.
But most Npc's did have a full 8 sprite rotation!!!
Currently just doing the back and front views for sprites.
If the game is any good by any standard I will finish up the other angles.

But I started this topic to discuss how many angles are enough?

Should I eventually do the full 5 frame or can I simplify this to a 4 direction IE 3 frame rotation?

Would people feel bothered?

Or should I opt to work twice as hard, for twice the overhead for a tenth of the frame rate to add voxel based sprites?







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duncanbellsa

Well that would all depend on how symmetric your character is.
Is it really worth duplicating the sprites in a sprite set if all you doing is flipping them?

You could save some decent file size just by using some clever programming.

I would say use 5 (like the Doom sprite) and just code the sprite to flip when its from a certain angle. It also depends on the like you are going for. In general, the more sprites you can export out the more fluid and polished it would look. Having enemies look/interacting in different directions makes it a bit more believable too, makes it look like they have a purpose aside from bent on destroying you.

(But thats just my opinion :) )

Legion

True.
But doing the said 3 frame method will let me get a beta out faster.
I can always add the missing 2 sprites later once I have time to draw and animate them.

About the flipping code... that's what I'm talking about.
Wolf3D they actually drew 8 sprites for each direction.
Where as 5 could have done the job but in some cases this would make hans look like he swapped gun hands, so yes symmetry is important.

duncanbellsa

To be honest I think they didn't think about flipping it back when they did Wolf3D. Maybe part of their realisation and optimizing was changing from 8 to 5.

I think 3 could be fine, as you say its for beta. The extra frames would come into play when you polish the product :)

dislekcia

@duncanbellsa said:

To be honest I think they didn't think about flipping it back when they did Wolf3D. Maybe part of their realisation and optimizing was changing from 8 to 5.

That would be a little weird, seeing as they were flipping sprites like crazy in Commander Keen ;) It's more likely that they wanted enemies to feel like they actually had 3D representations instead of being obviously flipped sprites. These days we have the opposite problem: Anyone seeing a raytraced engine in a game with sprite-based enemies knows that they're not actually 3D. They're already bought in to the idea of pretending that they're seeing a 3D space, so you have much more leeway to play with.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with fully rotating sprites at all and just have 1 direction until the game itself was playable. Why do more work than you absolutely have to before you know if it's fun for other people at all?

Tuism

Yeah I think have as little work done on art as possible to start, then if you really want, go deeper.

If you make your characters symmetrical flipping isn't a problem. If you make your game style rough and rumble instead of refined you can get away with less sprites. These are all design decisions.... not gameplay decisions, and I think should only be bothered with AFTER prototyping, once you discover what your game needs. If you're cool with giving everyone two identical guns, as discovered in playtest, it'll be easier to decide to make symmetrical stuff. Less sprite work. Or the opposite, whatever.

If you go for, say, Bastion style, you'll need TONS. That game was smooth as a baby's arse, sprite based, and gorgeous. But not every game needs that. That was their approach, with a massive team. I'd love to see their sprite sheet. Whew.

duncanbellsa

That would be a little weird, seeing as they were flipping sprites like crazy in Commander Keen

True that, I doubt John Carmack didn't think of flipping the sprites haha...

dislekcia

@Tuism said:

If you go for, say, Bastion style, you'll need TONS. That game was smooth as a baby's arse, sprite based, and gorgeous. But not every game needs that. That was their approach, with a massive team. I'd love to see their sprite sheet. Whew.

There's a reason that well animated 2D games that aim for HD resolutions always have memory problems: The sprite data needed is enormous. Far larger than textures for a 3D game, which can be reused very easily.

Legion

I really wanted to opt for huge 512 x 512 textures.
But I'm running the engine on some quite limited hardware on R-pi and some smaller androids as well.
Will be using the 3 frame system for now.
Else some stuff will look crap.

But I really want to use 3D voxels for sprites, perhaps at another stage.