Need help making custom sprites Created 20 years ago2004-11-11 19:18:56 UTC by Gackt

Hello there, everyone!

This is a first-time-caller, long-time-listener type of deal. I truly need the insight of fellow mappers in dealing with a sprite issue I've been facing. You see, I'm creating a level in which I want to have people standing around that, of course, just stand there silently. I also want them to always face you so that the 2D effect isn't too obvious - thus why I want sprites. However, I've been doing extensive research and I cannot find a SINGLE program or tutorial that adequately describes the process of making custom sprites. Keep in mind that I have tried Sprite Wizard, to no success.

Your input would be most appreciated, and I thank those who reply in advance.

How can you not succeed using SprWiz? It's possibly the easiest and most user-friendly program ever.

What's the problem with it?

Side note, great job on the spelling and grammar part... unlike some '31337 h4x0rz'.

I do try my best to communicate as clearly as possible - as Claudius is reknowned for saying, "brevity is the soul of wit"!

In any case, Sprite Wizard - when opened - goes to a windowed DOS prompt for about 1 second and then disappears. Also, the documentation is confusing - what kind of format/size should my images be? I really could make no sense of it all. Am I doing something wrong, perhaps?

I have done so...more times than I would like to admit to. I did have it coming up to a small white window once, but the way the manual says to format your images (something to the effect of "8-bit*1") is very confusing and I don't understand what it means. Has anyone learned what it is trying to say?

....My fellow HL mappers...would you believe that there are two, IDENTICALLY NAMED programs called Sprite Wizard? One is for Half-Life, and the other is for..graphing calculators. Guess which one I was attempting to use.

Well, now that I have the working program, I have another problem that I'm sure will be much easier to resolve. My people sprites appear in the game perfectly, only that the surrounding area of the sprite that is supposed to be invisible...is not. I have experimented with the transparency settings in SpriteWiz, but all I have been able to do is make it so that I can see other sprites through a particular sprite (oddly enough, brushes cannot be seen). Does anyone know how to make it so that the unused area of a sprite are invisible?

Haha, unlucky!

Use rendermode additive, or possibly solid. There's the tutorial on Sprites, y'know

I did as you said (setting the render mode to additive and fx amount to 255) but it produces transparency throughout the entire sprite, which - considering these sprites are of people - isn't good. I have a population of ghosts in my level at the moment, and I would like to change that. As an aside, the sprite tutorial on this site doesn't address this particular problem, so unfortunately it isn't of use. My image has a black background, I assure you, so I don't understand why it is still see-through. Mind you, it's less transparent than the 3D textured view in Hammer makes it out to be, but it could still be improved (I have a person standing in front of a fireplace, for example, and I can see straight through their waist and clearly make out the burning logs). Any suggestions? Are all sprites doomed to eternal transparency?

I'll give that a try right now - I had been pondering whether I would be relegated to texture-people because of the "blue screen" advantage, and I didn't know it might be possible in sprites. I'll let everyone know if it does work.

Unfortunately, that was a no-go. I tried various transparency settings and configurations but the effect was still the same, only worse (the blue was visible, whereas the original black was not). Does anyone remember seeing a non-transparent sprite when playing the actual game? Furthermore, do you think Valve would answer this sort of a question (perhaps I'm getting too hopeful here)? I'm going to see if I can get answers from VERC as well as here on TWHL, so please, if you have any suggestions, continue to post!