Part I: Creating the Skin File Using Wintex 3.4

 By Mark Quinn

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:.1.2 Adding the Statis Bar Face::

Although it is not necessary to change the face in the statis bar when you make your skin,  you may want to consider doing so.  It is much more fun for the player to be able to see the face of your new character at the bottom of the screen.  If the player is using a skin that looks like Lara Croft, for example (Mmmmm!  Lara Croft! ), it can be quite a disappointment if  he looks down and sees the burly face of the DooM space marine in the statis bar instead.  When playing Lara Croft, what the player really wants to see in his statis bar is Lara Croft (Mmmmm!  Lara Croft! )!

Before we get started, I had better warn you of exactly what you are getting in to.  There are 43 separate graphics used by Legacy to represent the player’s face (including the background behind his head).  You must create replacement graphics for all of these statis bar graphics.  If you don’t, Legacy will either refuse to load your skin, or will quit with the following error:

Below is a chart showing the different versions of the statis bar face which are required.  xxx represents the three letter name you must choose for your statis bar face. The marine, or character you replace him with, has eight different moves.  Each move is depicted in one of five different states of health.  In addition, there are three more graphics required.  These include the dead version of the marine, the marine in God mode, and the background that appears behind the marine’s head.
 

Marine Looking Left	Marine Glancing Left	Marine Staring Straight Ahead	Marine Glancing Right	Marine Looking Right	Grrrr!	Surprise!	Heh! Heh! Heh!
xxxtl00	xxxst02	xxxst01	xxxst00	xxxtr00	xxxkill0	xxxouch0	xxxevl0
xxxtl10	xxxst12	xxxst11	xxxst10	xxxtr10	xxxkill1	xxxouch1	xxxevl1
xxxtl20	xxxst22	xxxst21	xxxst20	xxxtr20	xxxkill2	xxxouch2	xxxevl2
xxxtl30	xxxst32	xxxst31	xxxst30	xxxtr30	xxxkill3	xxxouch3	xxxevl3
xxxtl40	xxxst42	xxxst41	xxxst40	xxxtr40	xxxkill4	xxxouch4	xxxevl4

Additional graphics required:

Marine Background	God Mode	Dead
xxxb0	xxxgod0	xxxdead0

The background (xxxb0) will usually be just a copy of the stfb0 graphic from your existing DooM IWAD.  All it is is a dark green background that will show your currently selected skin colour while you are playing.

Like the sprite graphics, transparent areas of the statis bar face should be painted cyan (Colour 247 on the DooM palette).

Now that you know what you are up against, it is time to create our wonderful mug.  If you haven’t done so yet, go make some faces in Paint Shop Pro, you fool!  (If you do not have a copy of Paint Shop Pro, you can download it from the Tools section.)  I recommend that you extract a copy of the existing marine face using Wintex (also in the Tools section) or New Wad Tools, as a guide for the size of your new face.

So, have you got your face graphics ready?

Great.

Now let’s add some faces to our wad.
 

To add the statis bar face to your wad, you need to go the the graphics editing window. Click on Edit in the menu bar of Wintex’s main window and choose Graphics.  This will open the graphics editing window.

You will find that the graphics editing window is similar to the sprites editing window.

At the bottom of the graphics editing window is an entry window.

Click  to open the window.  Scroll down and select “???????? = New Graphic”.  Click on the question marks to bring up the cursor, then type in the name of your statis bar graphic, based on the system described above.

If the name has fewer than eight characters, type spaces over the remaining question marks.

Click , then locate the statis bar graphic you created earlier.  Select the graphic, and click . Wintex 3.4 will make a copy of this graphic in its graphics subdirectory, and display it in the graphics editing window.

The graphic starts out with an offset of  0, 0.  We will have to change this.  In the upper right hand corner of the editing window you will find the controls for adjusting the graphic’s offsets.  If your new statis bar face is the same size as the original DooM marine face, use the two scroll bars to set your X offset to -5 and your Y offset to -2.  Adjust accordingly if your graphic is larger or smaller than the original marine face.  The background graphic (xxxb0) does not require an offset if it is the same size as the original (stfb0).  Click   for your changes to take effect. Click  to save the information to wadinfo.txt.

Repeat this procedure for each of the rest of the statis bar face graphics.

Make sure you have clicked on  before quitting the graphics editing window, to make sure that all of you changes have been saved to wadinfo.txt.  Then you may click  to exit to Wintex’s main window.

Here are a couple of little notes about the background for the face:  As I mentioned before, the background will usually be just a copy of the green stfb0 background graphic from your existing DooM IWAD.  If you are clever, however, you may want to change this background in order to enhance the look of your statis bar face.  In his Warblock skin, for example, Smithdawg drew the warblock’s face in green on the background, and only used  the eyes, mouth, and wounds as foreground elements.  In the game, Warblock’s face appears in the player’s chosen colour.

I have not tried this myself, but it may also be possible to to change the background to something more unusual, like a demon’s maw, which the player looks out of, or even enlarge the background so that your skin creates its own custom statis bar!  (If you try this and it works, please let me know. )

If you are just starting with changing the statis bar graphics, I would recommend that you not try these tricks until you have at least made a couple of faces in the usual manner first.
 
 

Adding the Sprites

Tutorials

Adding Sounds