Crazy Taxi 3 High Roller

January 7, 2014, 1:54 pm

≫ Next: Earthbound Custom Sprites (Work in progress)

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I've wanted to get a hold of these models for a while now, its a shame that the game has everything in some sega proprietary format. Fortunately the game is able to be ripped with 3D ripper DX (suprising because I can almost never get it to work) This is also my first submission so hopefully I did everything right. ATM I've only got one of the taxis ripped and one of the driver. It's taken me a while because I first set up the model with the cycles lighting engine and those shaders don't export well at all. Anyway that's enough blathering from me here's the model

Game Icon



Axel's taxi Icon



Large Version of preview (I believe this is needed?)



Model Download Link
Model Link

Hopefully I didn't mess too much. I'm looking forward to uploading more from this game... once I convert from cycles *Facepalm*

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Earthbound Custom Sprites (Work in progress)

January 7, 2014, 5:50 pm

≫ Next: model textures not fully covered

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I started spriting literally yesterday (from time of posting) and I wanted to tackle something relatively simple for my first sprite. So I made myself in the style of Earthbound. I think I stayed within the color constraints of the SNES, but correct me (and I'm sure you will) if I'm wrong. These aren't going into a game or anything so they aren't "optimized". Lastly, these are very much a work in progress, I'll update with more sprites as I complete more of the sheet. Constructive criticism welcome! Without further ado, my very first sprites.

model textures not fully covered

January 7, 2014, 6:55 pm

≫ Next: $100 for Smash Bros Luigi Sheet

≪ Previous: Earthbound Custom Sprites (Work in progress)

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First off I'm new to this and only the models to look at for reference in propmaking.

I've downloaded some KH1 keyblade models and looking at them in Noesis, and each includes an OBJ file and some PNG textures. The OBJ files aren't fully covered in the textures and I can only see the complete outline of the model by using the cycle blend option.

Is there a way for me to apply or assign the textures to the model so I get a complete image?

$100 for Smash Bros Luigi Sheet

January 8, 2014, 8:50 am

≫ Next: [GMS] Mario & Luigi DOS Remake

≪ Previous: model textures not fully covered

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We are moving into season 3 of Super Smash Champ. Main characters will be Kirby, Bowser, and Luigi. We already have Kirby and Bowser custom sprite sheets but we need a quality custom Luigi. We want it done in the same style as Dustination’s “Mario” sprite sheet for SSF2.

Payment would be $100.



Please note, the Mario in the SSF2 sprite sheet is way too small for the characters we are currently using. Here is a size comparison page to help you know how big Luigi needs to be.



Please contact me at pikaparody @ gmail . com if your interested in this project.

[GMS] Mario & Luigi DOS Remake

January 9, 2014, 12:37 am

≫ Next: 16 bit Train sprites?

≪ Previous: $100 for Smash Bros Luigi Sheet

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I think you remember that MS-DOS Mario game made in 1994.




Well, this game I have here will include the six original levels plus a level editor to create and share levels.

If you want to give the game a try, here's an engine test of it.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/gbu7z99dd9cirpl

The controls are Z for running / shoot fireballs, x for jumping and Arrows for moving (You can't duck on this game, sorry )

Enjoy!

C+C is appreciated, stuff like "OH, THIS GAME IS BORING" will be ignored.

16 bit Train sprites?

January 9, 2014, 11:06 am

≫ Next: Fire Emblem Awakening: Confession Scenes

≪ Previous: [GMS] Mario & Luigi DOS Remake

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I'm looking to make a train based level in Super Mario Bros X and was hoping to get suggestions on Snes or Megadrive games that have trains in them so I can have a look through.

Fire Emblem Awakening: Confession Scenes

January 9, 2014, 4:24 pm

≫ Next: The Full Story Behind Our Recent Disaster

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HI SUP

Male Confessions (Gen 1) (Click to View)

Female Confessoins (Gen 1 w/ Lucina) (Click to View)

the reason i've formatted it this way is because the sheets with children will be kinda huge on their own

for example (Click to View)

FUN YAY

someone better than i could probably make better icons they look kinda blah

DLC stuff relatively soon i hope maybe

The Full Story Behind Our Recent Disaster

January 9, 2014, 5:44 pm

≫ Next: Tom has a birthday, don'tcha know

≪ Previous: Fire Emblem Awakening: Confession Scenes

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So, as promised, here are all of the details regarding the deletion of our sprites table and its subsequent recovery.

TL;DR Was working on revisions, accidentally deleted all of the sprites, didn't have a backup, attempted to automatically scrape Google cache to no avail, wrote bookmarklet to pull data from cached pages and script to process that data, used script to rebuild sheet info.

Our story begins on Monday. I woke up, got on Skype, and called Dazz as I do every "weekend" (my days off are Monday and Tuesday right now). We talked for a bit about what we were going to work on and settled on finishing the revisions system so I started writing and testing the new code. After a few tests, I needed to clear the revisions table of the junk I put in it so I went to truncate it (a database term which basically means empty). This is where things took a turn for the worse.

Truncating a table is as simple as right-clicking on the table name, choosing Truncate, and then confirming in the following dialogue box. Having been working with the revisions table, I simply followed that procedure on the highlighted table and confirmed without reading. What I forgot, however, was that I had also opened the main sheets table to confirm a few column names. Unfortunately, that happened to be the last table that I interacted with so instead of removing the junk data from the revisions table, I deleted all of the sheet information. After realizing what I had just done, I immediately freaked out, told Dazz what happened, shut down the database server, and began frantically searching for the backup I was certain we had (spoiler: we didn't, but I'll get there in a bit).

Before continuing, a little background information is necessary to fully understand what exactly deleting the sheets table meant - what was lost and what wasn't. The way the new site is designed, all of the organizational data is stored in the database. This greatly simplifies the process of moving a sheet from one game to another or a game from one console to another. However, when I deleted this information, everything that was used to tell the site where the sheets actually belonged was lost. The only information we lost, however, was information directly related to the sheet (i.e. its name, the extensions of its files, the game it was in, and what section of that game it belonged to, among other things). The game data, submitters, sections, updates, and so on were all still in tact. This meant that if we could just figure out the what name, game, and section went with each sheet ID, we could rebuild that data and the site would be saved.

Now that that's out of the way, we can move on. So, after spending a while looking for a backup that didn't exist (we had automatic backups on the old server, and even copied over the scripts but we never changed the paths they were pointing at, an oversight caused by the fact that the new version wound up going live immediately after the server transfer - something we hadn't planned for - See Rob's post here), Dazz and I took to the internet to figure out if there was any way to recover the data. We spent the better part of a couple of hours going back and forth between research and frantically trying to contact Rob to see if he had a secret backup or some black magic he could work to recover the lost data. He got back to us, told us he'd jump on as soon as he got home from work, and left us to more unfruitful research.

That night, when he came home, he started scanning for the remnants of the missing data and we spent a good chunk of time comparing two very long lists of numbers to try to find the correct page files to restore from. After a while, we realized that the missing data couldn't possibly be here because the files were too small and gave up home on recovery, instead switching our focus to coming up with a plan to manually rebuild that data.

The first plan was simple. Manually re-upload every sheet. We still had all the icons, sheets, and games. We could reference Google, the forums, and our memory to try to ensure everything was correct. For obvious reasons though, this was not appealing. First, it would have been 56,000 uploads which would have meant an extremely extended downtime. Second, preserving the existing sheet IDs was desirable so we could keep the "sheets in this update" sections accurate. Seeing the futility in this plan early on, we moved to another.

Our most promising sounding plan was to write a scraper (i.e. a script that would grab data from a specified page) and set it to retrieve everything we could from Google's cache. If everything worked the way we wanted it to, this would have been an almost entirely automated process with just some manual cleanup at the end, plus whatever Google didn't have. This plan also quickly fell to pieces because Google doesn't allow automated crawling of its data (even though it's the biggest web crawler on the planet so this seems kind of hypocritical). At some point towards the end of this part, Dazz and Charlie had to go to bed but Rob and I stayed up and continued brainstorming. What we arrived at, was plan 3.

Our third and final plan consisted of writing a bookmarklet (a bit of JavaScript code that you can run from a bookmark in your browser, usually on the bookmarks bar) to grab the sheet IDs and section names from each game page and then use that data to manually rebuild the database entries. The initial plan was to have a form where you select the game from a drop down, then select the section you were adding sheets to, and finally add the captured list of sheet IDs and sheet names in the last two text boxes. After coming up with what seemed like a workable, if not a little tedious, idea, we both went to bed (and major kudos to Rob, who stayed up until 70 AM to finish planning this out).

This brings us to Tuesday morning.

As with Monday, I got up, got on Skype, and started talking with Dazz about our plan. We bounced ideas off of one another and refined it further and further until it was condensed down into basically one step with no manual entry (at the cost of the hit counts for the sheets, a small price to pay). The end result was a bookmarklet that called some JavaScript that we would run from the cached game pages. What it did was take the console and game short name from the URL, generate a text box, and add them to the first line of that box. Then, it would scan the page for all of the section headers and then all of the sheets under them, compile that data, and insert it all into the text box on lines two through however many sheets there were. A sample entry would have looked like this:

Code:

arcade|gamename
12345|Sheet 1|Characters
12346|Sheet 2|Enemies
12347|Sheet 3|General

Once we had that output, it was a simple matter of pasting it into a new form I created for this very purpose. When submitted, a script broke apart that information, grabbed the necessary game and section IDs, and automatically wrote the sheets back into the database, preserving their original IDs. The only problem was that we were missing a little bit of information about the sheets themselves, a problem that Rob was able to solve for us when he got home later that day.

To get that missing info, Rob wrote a script that scanned the filesystem where we kept the sheets and outputted all of the relevant into info an array. I then took that array, saved it, and attempted to include it in my script. At almost 56,000 elements though, it failed to load and I would up instead using that data to create a temporary database table with that information in it. Once that was complete, we were ready to begin. A quick test, a bug fix or two, and we got started grabbing everything we could from Google. I went to bed after about 20 games since I had to be up early for work but Dazz and Rob stayed up for a while and continued. By the time I got home from work the next day, Dazz and Charlie had finished everything they could grab from Google, leaving us with 124 games unaccounted for.

This could have been bad as there were still quite a few sheets remaining but luckily, a wonderful member of this community, Palculator, stepped forward to tell us that he had a complete archive from December 27. With his archive and a couple of tweaks to the bookmarklet, we were able to grab about 100 of those 124 remaining games, leaving us with just over 400 sheets that now needed manual recovery.

At this stage, Dazz, Charlie, Rob, and I sat down and prepared ourselves for the very manual process of finding a place for those remaining 400 or so sheets. After generating a couple of lists from the database and comparing it to the files themselves, we were able to figure out what the missing sheets actually were and from there, I was able to generate a page to display them all at once. This, combined with cached versions of the home page updates from Google (which let us at least see which console and game a sheet belonged to), let us fairly quickly cut that down to about 200 before Charlie and Rob had to head off.

Dazz and I stayed up, continued digging through cached updates, wiki pages, and anything else we could find to help us figure out what to do with these last few sheets. With so few (by comparison to the original 56,000 number anyway) left, we wanted to finish before bed and we did just that. A couple of hours of mind-melting work and some cleanup on the database (like figuring out what happened to all of the playable character sheets in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor - a process accomplished through some database detective work that I'm rather proud of) later, and we were done and almost ready to come back online.

We removed our rebuilding scripts, made sure all sections had sheets and that the site was functioning correctly, did one final check of everything to make sure we didn't miss anything, performed a full backup of every database on the server, and then brought the sites back online. We stuck around for about 10 minutes, marveling at what we managed to accomplish over the last three days (and making sure that the site didn't crash and burn once we were hit with visitors again) and then went to bed.

And that's pretty much it. I don't think I left anything out but I'm still pretty tired so Dazz, Charlie, and Rob, feel free to let me know if I skipped anything once you've had a chance to read this.

I know we originally said we'd be asking for community help, and we certainly appreciate all of the offers we got from you guys but our final process was easy enough that the four of us (mostly Dazz and Charlie) managed to get it done quickly enough on our own. Still, thank you for being so eager to help us resolve this.

I'd just like to conclude this with one more apology for the inconvenience and the scare and one more huge thank you to Dazz, Charlie, and Rob for their immense help in fixing my enormous mistake (and for also only making fun of me every once in a while throughout the process, instead of all the time).

I know this is really long but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. If you take one thing away from this tragic tale, let it be the knowledge that you should always have a backup, in multiple places and from multiple times. If you guys have any questions or would like anything explained further, just let me know. Thanks for reading!

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Tom has a birthday, don'tcha know

January 10, 2014, 2:05 am

≫ Next: Are things slower around here?

≪ Previous: The Full Story Behind Our Recent Disaster

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Happy Birthday Tom Guicote aka TomGuycott! Sorry it's late, I wasn't home this morning and it appears nobody else could be bothered *stares at everyone else*

Anyway hope you had a great day

Are things slower around here?

January 10, 2014, 4:33 am

≫ Next: Sad update, sorry for bummin you out(im back)

≪ Previous: Tom has a birthday, don'tcha know

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So is it just me or has this place been... less active lately? It seems like there's less goings on than there used to. Members (including myself) are less active. Topics that should be buzzing with activity are kind of slow. The Fun-o-Meter is reading a 2 out of 10 here.

Is it just me? I mean it might be just me because I'm kind of a nut, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Sad update, sorry for bummin you out(im back)

January 10, 2014, 6:03 am

≫ Next: Cyber Psychosis [music+videos+junk]

≪ Previous: Are things slower around here?

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I'm back from Indiana (where I've been all the the last month)

Been sitting next to my grandfather's hospital bed for weeks, watching
him slowly fade away while trying to keep us smiling the whole while

He had terminal stage 4 cancer in his spine, which had spread to various spots in his body.
He also had COPD, which is a breathing disorder, and major heart problems.

We stayed with him for about 3 weeks until he realized he wasn't getting
any better, (not that the hospital didn't try, he was just too far gone) so
he decided he wanted to go home "to be comfortable," as the nurses put
it.

He was moved home to a new bed, and he was so happy to be there.
So we stayed around him, and shared stories and memories with him,
laughed and fought away tears.

As the night grew on, his condition worsened, as we knew it would. He
began to have real difficulty breathing, and the lack of oxygen caused
him to be confused and disoriented. There were brief moments where
he would snap back, but the pain must have been excruciating, all of the
medicine he was sent home with just seemed to stop having a response.

He fell asleep, and a few hours later, he passed. Less than 12 hours after
leaving the hospital, he died. This was about a week ago. We had the funeral,
I got to see him one last time. It was comforting, and sad that he looked
healthier in the coffin than he did in his bed.


I miss him very much, not much more to say on that


Anyway, I'm back home, although I don't really know how "here" I'll be
for a while yet; It's been a month 800 miles from my home, and there
are yet more things that bare further importance than sprites and such

Thanks to whomever the maker of my secret santa gift was, I'm sorry
that I couldn't participate. You don't know who you are perhaps, but
I'll make something for you in addition to whoever I get for the next
gift event, whenever that might be



In short: Shit December, Shit 2013. Here's hoping this year
is better than the last.

Cyber Psychosis [music+videos+junk]

January 10, 2014, 11:59 am

≫ Next: Mfgg TKO DevLog

≪ Previous: Sad update, sorry for bummin you out(im back)

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Whoops I put this out a while ago and realized I meant to post it here but I'm an idiot.
Fair warning, this has been out for a while now so it's pretty much set in stone, don't think that means I'm ignoring any feedback just that this project is closed now.
Oh, and there's a fair bit of material here, so think of it as getting value for money*

*may not involve actual money

What is this nonsense?
It's an album dummy, jeez, also a booklet, and some videos, you might describe it as a "multimedia experience" or a "post-modern experiment", if you're as pretentious as I am.
Let me get the official statement for you;

-=a love-letter to cyberpunk and hacker culture=-
-=from a mind that is more machine than meat=-
-=delivered with style and class for the hightech lowlifes=-

The Videos:
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuOb1nM13YU
and
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3vvZkbGhAw

(silly one-video-per-post rule)

The Link:

http://patientzero.bandcamp.com/album/cyber-psychosis
(note: this is a commercial release but all tracks are available to stream for free)

The Booklet (! important !):

DOWNLOAD
VIEW ON THE WEB

[NOW WASH YOUR HANDS]

Mfgg TKO DevLog

January 10, 2014, 4:10 pm

≫ Next: There (isn't) a 3DS emulator!! :D

≪ Previous: Cyber Psychosis [music+videos+junk]

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Okay so this is my first time making a dev log. I didn't want to start this off with a meh post but I needed to at least start the dev log...so a meh post it is!

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I'm Mit's programmer for a game called Mfgg TKO. It's a 2D brawler platformer based around the members of MFGG. I'll try to post about progress whenever I feel I need some feedback, have done anything log worthy, or to just keep you guys in the loop.

Instead of writing of everything I've done so far in single post, I'll try to spread it out over a few days so it's not too overwhelming. For now, I'll just make a general post about what I've done so far.

Here are a few gifs of the game so far. The levels aren't apart of the final game, they're just for testing purposes. (which some have seen in the WIP thread)






Here is the animation tool I made which took a few months and still isn't finished. I just gave it out to mit and the others for use.



The tool supports palettes, skeletal animation, and normal frame-based animation. You can also animate tinting, rotation, scaling, translating, skewing visibility, and palette fading/changing/animating among other things. I also added subanimations which I had fun implementing. You can basically use and animate multiple subanimations within an animation. However, you can only animate the subanimation from a higher level. You can indirectly affect it's timeline so you can play it at arbitrary times or even speed it up or slow it down. It was originally made for Ridge Troopa's and Phaze's game which unfortunately went on hiatus before I could get any good progress done on the tool. I've made a few animation tools, and this one along with the sprite engine is my favorite so far, thanks Ridge.
The game itself is still in very early development. I'm still just laying down the core engine stuff.

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Videos:

AI pathfinding (very early WIP)




Random Pics (old)





In the engine, attacks have "scripts"(subactions) attached. The script is called once per animation frame. I love this system which I based off of how PSA's are done over at kc-mm. I can create offensive collisions, graphics effects, play sounds, whatever, etc within the script in order to create the move. -I gotta move the code out of C# later and into Lua so Mit and the others can code their own moves without needing to rebuild the game or directly need me. An idea we have is to have online multiplayer where your friend's custom characters will be loaded and can be selected by eachother. That should be fun to code when we get there.

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Team Members:
-Leader: Mit
-Spriter: Mit, ~CaMtEnDo~
-Programmer: TheShyGuy,
-General/Other(unsure, sorry): Shadow Kami, Genogenesis7, StrikeForcer

--------------------------

If you're interested, then please feel free to ask, suggest, comment, or otherwise contribute.

Thanks for your time.

There (isn't) a 3DS emulator!! :D

January 10, 2014, 7:07 pm

≫ Next: It's been way too long since I've sprited. I may be a tad rusty

≪ Previous: Mfgg TKO DevLog

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Involves spriting/ripping.

Apparently, there's a 3DS emulator! You can download it here :
[Removed ]
And some games here :
[Removed ]

This is awesome! :DDDDDDD

It's been way too long since I've sprited. I may be a tad rusty

January 10, 2014, 9:23 pm

≫ Next: Mario sprite edits

≪ Previous: There (isn't) a 3DS emulator!! :D

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He's supposed to be some bad-ass robin. It's been way too long since I've last sprited, so I'm pretty sure this'll need some good old fashioned C+C

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Mario sprite edits

January 11, 2014, 5:15 am

≫ Next: Improved Icons

≪ Previous: It's been way too long since I've sprited. I may be a tad rusty

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I wanted to use Gameboy's Mario sprites for my SMW hack, but SMW only allows Mario in a 16x32 grid with few exceptions, so I had to edit them. Criticism etc. is kindly requested as I'm not particularly good with spriting animations. Or people.

Improved Icons

January 11, 2014, 8:42 am

≫ Next: color [deadline: 01/13/2014]

≪ Previous: Mario sprite edits

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Hello,

I'd like to put forward some efforts that myself and the staff have been knocking about regarding the icons on the site. As it stands, we currently struggle - not just the staff - with not only consistency, but decent representation. For sprites, the area we give ourselves is far too small to suit recent games, post Playstation era. For models, the icons are practically useless due to their tiny size.

So, I came up with a few different options; but ultimately they all looked off. After collaborating, the staff and I have come to the conclusion of a design. This is still subject to change based on discussions that can occur in this thread, should one come about that ultimately works better.



On the left is our new icon style, on the right our old. The benefits of the left are extreme.

- Larger area for image.
- Separated backdrop from foreground; sprites are transparent images overlayed on the icon, instead of being a solid image.
- Text is rendered by the browser, not solidly attached to the image.
- Said text is called from the data. Edits made to the sheet from the database are called to the icon straight away.
- 3 lines worth of space on the text area.
- Wider text area for more input.
- Text is generated by a custom made font, that replicates Verdana but with a minor amount of anti-aliasing. This means that even if you have ClearType enabled in windows, the font remains extremely close to the original style.
- Full consistency throughout the site. No more random slightly-darker icons, or incorrect font size, or anti-aliasing, or wrong font all together.
- Easy to alter later in the game.
- We can theme icons for seasons if we want

With these changes means that, in years to come, should we wish to change any aspect of the icons, we can do so with great ease. A single change would be a matter of editing 1 set of files, instead of 56,000+


Now, the tricky parts;
- We cannot change the size of the sprite area later. What we pick now sticks until we do this again:
- We need to make new "icon images" for 55,000 sheets...

This is a big task, but not too hard. Sheet icons will now look like this:

148x125
Simple crop, with transparent background. This means that making new icons to put on the site after the initial batch will be incredibly easy. No longer will you need to write out the same name, twice, and try to compress the name to fit in the textarea.

We will also need to increase game icon sizes to relate to these larger icons; this is still a pending decision, but it'll be the exact same style as it is current, just... bigger.



This decision comes from the fact that these icons were designed when 800x600 resolutions were the norm, and CSS was but a weak, and PHP was but a developing language. We need to utilise these features, and we need to do it before we get into 100,000 sheets...

I will work with Pete to make a simple submission method for revised icons. If you'd like more information, or have any questions, or any suggestions, please fire away.


(That first icon has the longest name currently found in our database... That's how well it fits )


edit: I forgot to mention that the icon uploaded doesn't have to fit the resolution of the area exactly; if it is less, it will automatically be centred.

color [deadline: 01/13/2014]

January 11, 2014, 12:49 pm

≫ Next: The Reenactment Project

≪ Previous: Improved Icons

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Weird... someone sent me this bunch of solid colors.



Naturally I would discard them but since they're somewhat interesting, here goes a challenge for you all. try making a sprite with those 5 colors plus white.

obviously, the attempters won't be unrewarded, so I'll be sure to give you something if you try

The Reenactment Project

January 11, 2014, 3:09 pm

≫ Next: Earthworm Jim 2

≪ Previous: color [deadline: 01/13/2014]

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So I'm doing a thing, this thing in particular:
http://kats-pkmn-adventures.tumblr.com/

I plan to play Pokemon from Gen 1 to Gen 6 and document my entire journey. I encourage you guys to do the same, whether it is to reenact your original journey like I'm doing, or whether you just wanna do it out of fun or what have you, then please do so.

Obviously you can make your own blogs, websites, or even just post your journeys here with updates and images. (I'll likely make post updates with a link to the actual blog post.)

It's not a Nuzlock, whether or not you want to turn yours into a Nuzlock is up to you. The most basic thing is to have fun. You can hack, you can do whatever.

The biggest reason why I'm doing this is because lately I've been having the hardest time getting into Pokemon X and Y. A lot of it could be of recent stress and depression issues, but I'm really hoping that doing this will relight my spark to actually get playing them again.


EDIT:

I do the thing: http://kats-pkmn-adventures.tumblr.com/p...ith-my-own

Earthworm Jim 2

January 12, 2014, 11:31 am

≫ Next: Hello World!

≪ Previous: The Reenactment Project

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