Mugen Tips for Creating - Characters
INTRO & GUIDLINES:
Hello, this is to help anyone along who may find their current methods of creating rather hard or too complicated to be effective in their wip for mugen. During this time I encourage anyone else who may know something to post their findings such as alternate methods, different techniques that yield better quality, alternative tools, shortcuts, proper editing, etc.
Feel free to respond to any of these ideas to debate or clarify anything as well. You may request to add something to this list as well or post your own as mentioned allready.
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TIP#1.....PRE-CODED TEMPLATE?
To cut down on your time for coding a few features you know you'll need for your character, simply use a character that has most if not all of what you need to be coded anyway as a base instead of doing it from scratch. If changes need to be made then change them in your wip or completely replace them but features such as super jump, fly mode, and a projectile moves that would basically end up being the same thing but with a few differences then it may be a smart move on your part to start on something that is already 25% done for you or more depending on what you are trying to achieve.
TIP#2.....RECYCLING SPRITES?
An example of this is the re-using of a character's head on other animations as well. Say for instance the stance has a somewhat versatile head that could work for other animations as well. The stance's head would be perfect for the crouching animation head, s rather than spriting a new head on your wip, simply copy the head from that body and clean it up as a duplicate head for reusable sprite animations. Store the head sprite in its own spritesheet and paste it where your sprite may be needed again in your spriting.
Of course in some cases you'll need to create a brand new head where your current head sprite just won't work on your current animation. Though for the majority of your work that may be able to use a head in this position successfully then by all means use it. You may also re-use more than one custom part. Start a collection and the spriting process for your wip will be much faster. During gameplay the shortcut is hardly noticeable and usually doesn't look half bad at all.
This method may also be used for any kind of limb or body part such as an arm sprite, leg sprite, belt accessory, headdress, facial expressions, symbols, weapons, and designs.
TIP#3......REVERSE ANIMATION?
An easier way to cut down on spriting new frames is to re-use pre-exisitng frame sprites in the reverse order. For instance when constructing a walking backwards animation but only having done the forward walking animation, the forward walking animation sprite frames could be re-used in the walking backward animation by adding them into the animation, of walking away from the opponent, in the reverse order! So now an animation will function very well during display to show an effective alternative to spriting an entirely new but very similar walking back animation. A walk animation may at times be the longest and hardest animation to sprite so this shortcut will definitely save a lot of time in the wip process and still work and look very good.
This method can also be used in combination with new sprite frames. An example of this is a follow up punch animation. The next punch could start in the middle of your first punch's transition. Add in the previous frame to that until you get to the beginning of your first punch attack and then start adding the new frames to the rest of the punch intended to be a new animation of sprites. The result will be a longer animation for a more smooth and slower look that may visually demonstrate a different attack. SO in short, it's a short mid reversal of the first animation to start your new animation.
In other ways this can sometimes work for a jump animation. Reversing this animation may sometimes work for a coming down from jump animation. Or reversing some frames for a forward jump can sometimes work well for a jumping back animation. The landing from jump can be a re-used animation of the crouch animation. Just play it forwards to show the reaction to touching down onto the floor and reverse the frames transition to show coming out of the landing into the stance again for more fighting. This may also work for get hits, if you only have one animation for getting hit high, you can reverse it for a get hit low. Reversing in comination for with flipping can also yield new frames for anything else as well.
TIP#4.....MATCHING COLOR STYLE?
Picking out and creating new RGB colors for a palette can sometimes appear to look bad in comparison to the original style you may be attempting to match in appearance to. For example a Capcom character from MvC looks to have the same style as the others from his game but compared to your wip, somehow, your wip doesn't look like it would belong in that game at all. A trick for this is to copy he RGB color numbers from a pre-existing character that does match the game's style.
For instance, if you are making a Silver Surfer character in the style of MvC but can't get the silver color look and shades to properly match the game's look then copying the rgb colors of a pre-existing MvC character and applying it to your character will help create that illusion. So a good example for a Silver Surfer character's colors is to use X-Men Children of the Atom's Silver Samurai. In the Marvel/Capcom world and style, the look of silver would likely be the same with the game's art style so using Silver Samurai's colors on a silver surfer wip would work well to match the Marvel/Capcom style of those games and fit very well in that kind of roster.
Simply copy those numbers and recreate them in the same order and reuse them to recolor your sprites or create a palette for mugen and apply it as the default palette for your character. Multiple colors can be used with this method, such as Omega Red's color of Red, Cyclop's color of Blue, and Wolverine's colors of yellow to create a combined palette for a Superman wip in Capcom/Marvel's style.
MORE TIPS COMING SOON!!!
RESOURCES:
BASES
mugenmultiverse.fanbb.net/t2872-video-game-sprite-bases
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