Creature Animation Shadows

[Sam.]

The large and medium wyvern animations do not have shadows, while the small and tiny wyvern animations do, which seems like an oversight.  I have attempted to generate some.  While they're not perfect, I'm of the opinion they are significantly better than none at all.  Two variants each are attached for the large and medium wyvern.  Take your pick of which you prefer.  If any true artist wants to tweak then, I can provide the component parts or help facilitate converting images into BAMs.

MWYV_Shadow_Sizes.zip

Edit:  However, due to this engine quirk, the large wyvern animation will not display a shadow in game even when one is added.  I have yet to test if adding "extend_direction_test=8" to the INI file is enough, or whether an engine edit is necessary.

Edit2:  It appears an engine edit is needed.

 

Vampire animations in the Baldur's Gate games have shadows.  While the developers clearly made them this way, it isn't D&D cannon.  I have made versions of the male vampire, female vampire, and Bodhi animations without shadows, cleaning up many bad shadow pixels in the process.  This may be more of a tweak than a fix, but here they are:

VampireNoShadow.rar

Edited April 3, 2022 by Sam.

[CamDawg]

I'm OK with both of these changes; here are previews:

I like the darker shadows on the wyverns, personally, though let's see what everyone else thinks.

[Graion Dilach]

Fine by me.

[Guest Morgoth]

ok with vyvern change (extra dark version). Not exactly sure Vampires shouldn't have shadows.

 

[Bartimaeus]

According to the AD&D Monster Manual, they cast neither shadow nor reflection. No reflection is strange enough, but no shadow? Uh, so like...if you have a light source right in front of you, and then a vampire walks in between you and said light source, you would see the light source straight through them? Honestly, that makes zero sense with the visibility of other objects and surfaces also being dependent on reflecting light into our eyes, so really, if vampires don't cast shadows (i.e. don't block, reflect, or otherwise interact with light), that would mean they should be completely invisible. Pretty weird and a probably not super well thought out idea, whoever came up with it (perhaps going back to some element of mythology before the mechanics of light were more generally understood?). As Sam pointed out, this probably doesn't qualify as a "fix" per se, since it's really an issue of AD&D vs. what the developer actually did...unless people agree that it does. I'm...neutral on the idea, I guess.

Wyvern: Darker.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sam.]

This went so long without a comment I just figured everyone silently passed on it.  For the record, the animation shadows on the wyvern use the normal pure black in palette slot 1 (counting from zero) which the engine renders as semi-transparent (probably ~50%).  When rendered over a white/light background, it looks grey.  The 70% vs 80% is referring to a scaling factor on the height of the shadows.

 

[Bartimaeus]

14 minutes ago, Sam. said:

This went so long without a comment I just figured everyone silently passed on it.  For the record, the animation shadows on the wyvern use the normal pure black in palette slot 1 (counting from zero) which the engine renders as semi-transparent (probably ~50%).  When rendered over a white/light background, it looks grey.  The 70% vs 80% is referring to a scaling factor on the height of the shadows.

That makes a lot more sense, I was really having trouble differentiating in that tiny and also bad quality jpg (who saves anything in jpgs these days?)...so let's blow it up.

The jpeginess is not my fault: *I* saved this in .png, . Looking at it this way...probably 70%? I'm still not sure, really.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[CamDawg]

Next time I'm taking a picture of my monitor with my cellphone and posting that.

[CamDawg]

2 hours ago, Sam. said:

This went so long without a comment I just figured everyone silently passed on it. 

It's still on my radar! I'm just slow and random in my work patterns.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Next time I'm taking a picture of my monitor with my cellphone and posting that.

Make sure you take it from a lopsided viewing angle as well, so there's an even better illusion of "one side is darker than the other", .