How do you make the Infantry big in Tiberium Dawn?

[truxton]

So I want the men to be the size that they were in RA how though?

[cn2mc]

Umm, TD comes before RA, and infantry in TD have always been small. I'm not even sure if they can be made larger (plus it would look stupid).

[AchromicWhite]

Haha, I always patched RA1 to make them small xD

Yeah, I don't think there are any files of them enlarged. I guess SOME of them could be simply converted from RA1 over to td, like the gren, rocket inf, rifle inf etc, but I don't think anyone has.

 

  -Liam

[MattAttack]

Make the resolution lower would be the simplest solution.  Seriously, I'm not being a smartass. 

[truxton]

Thanks anyway guys.It doesn't really matter I was just asking if it was an option as I was used to big infantry from RA,but I don't mind small infantry anyway,I'm starting to like the small infantry in RA too,but I have one question,when I play with small infantry for RA its not as smooth as small infantry in TD is this normal? It's like RA was made for big infantry its just a bit rough on RA.

[Nyerguds]

C&C95 was released after RA, so it seems they consciously decided not to put in ugly resized infantry in C&C95.

 

And yes, the RA infantry are ugly resizes, not actually higher quality.

[sylandro]

Hi, I'm interested in creating "ugly resizes" of the TD infantry just for fun. I tried scaling up the images but they distort horribly, and it seems that manual work is inevitable.

 

I found the following thread, where Nyerguds mentions that he was experimenting with enlarging unit sprites the same way RA units were, were any sprites finished? Also, I'd like to know the original algorithm for scaling the sprites in the same way the RA sprites were scaled.

 

http://cnc-comm.com/community/index.php?topic=449.0

[Messiah]

Sylandro, if there is an option like this, try to set the "Interpolation" algorithm to "none" when scaling up.

 

Else, use the images from RA and convert them into the TD palette. I barely remember there were upscaled graphics for the Commando and the Chem trooper too somewhere out in the internet.

[Blade]

You can't just back port the larger RA infantry to C&C, the sequences are different even for the same units as the C&C versions have additional hand to hand combat animations that are almost never used but that do figure into frame calculations. The only one you can is the chem trooper that isn't even used in RA but is resized and in the mix files and still has the fighting animations IIRC.

[TaxOwlbear]

I prefer the smaller infantry. It's already pixelated and off scale enough; there's no need to make that worse.

[AchromicWhite]

Yeah, I am kinda surprised about the replies here... Don't get me wrong, I like the smaller inf, but that's not what this thread is about.

 

[sylandro]

You had an opinion that has upset the status quo now enjoy your torrent of abuse innocent one! xD

 

Well, saying "I want to create something ugly on purpose" is always controversial  , but I really do!

 

I don't want to get off topic here, but regardless of the fact that C&C gold came after RA, it seems to me that it was Westwood's intent to ditch realism in favor of giant infantry to make them more recognizable. In D2K (another game with low res infantry), TS and RA2 the infantry are bigger than tanks. Also RA1 for DOS, which has small infantry, features dogs the size of a human, which looks weird.

[Nyerguds]

Right. If anyone really wants to do this... I looked into this ages ago, and this is the resize used in RA1:

 

 

Each infantry unit in RA seems to be resized from the size of the inner coloured box to the size of the outer coloured box. So, if you align this image with the infantry feet, crop to that internal size, and then resize to the full frame, it should be done.

 

Not sure if all animations fit inside that smallest box though. If not, you may need to work with doubled dimensions for everything, and make sure to crop at the end (preserving the center by cropping the same amount of pixels at all sides).

 

As for algorithm... as has been mentioned already, it's pure unsmoothed pixel resize.

[TaxOwlbear]

This will make the Soviet war dogs look even more monstrous than they already do. 

[sylandro]

Right. If anyone really wants to do this... I looked into this ages ago, and this is the resize used in RA1:

 

 

Each infantry unit in RA seems to be resized from the size of the inner coloured box to the size of the outer coloured box. So, if you align this image with the infantry feet, crop to that internal size, and then resize to the full frame, it should be done.

 

Not sure if all animations fit inside that smallest box though. If not, you may need to work with doubled dimensions for everything, and make sure to crop at the end (preserving the center by cropping the same amount of pixels at all sides).

 

As for algorithm... as has been mentioned already, it's pure unsmoothed pixel resize.

 

Thanks for the detailed response, Nyerguds!

 

I've encountered a slight problem while following your instructions, though... when I resize the internal box to the external one (37x29 to 50x39) the sprite deforms in a different way than the original enlarged sprite.

 

I've disabled interpolation while scaling. I'm using the GIMP by the way.

 

This is what I mean. My scaled image is on the left, and the original "hires" sprite is on the right (they are on different zoom levels):

[Allen262]

WestWood's larger resizes look beter than any thing I could get from PSP6 or SHP Builder. The good news is that you sbould be able to convert most from RA1 with Nyerguds "purple palettes" and do the canvas resize if needed in SHP Builder.  The Commando is the only one that can't be convered from RA1.

[sylandro]

Would that work? Moving the SHPs from RA to TD and recoloring seems like the easier option, but Blade said that there are missing frames in the RA SHPs, so they wouldn't work.

 

You can't just back port the larger RA infantry to C&C, the sequences are different even for the same units as the C&C versions have additional hand to hand combat animations that are almost never used but that do figure into frame calculations. The only one you can is the chem trooper that isn't even used in RA but is resized and in the mix files and still has the fighting animations IIRC.

[Nyerguds]

I've encountered a slight problem while following your instructions, though... when I resize the internal box to the external one (37x29 to 50x39) the sprite deforms in a different way than the original enlarged sprite.

 

I've disabled interpolation while scaling. I'm using the GIMP by the way.

 

This is what I mean. My scaled image is on the left, and the original "hires" sprite is on the right (they are on different zoom levels):

That's pixel resize for ya. Can't really be helped. If you shift the whole thing a pixel to some direction you might get the exact deformation you need, but where these doubled pixels come depends entirely on how they implemented the pixel stretching, so it might even depend on the application.

 

I know I did that in Paint Shop Pro 3, back in the day, since I used that for absolutely everything (and I still would if it weren't a 16-bit Windows app, a gap between dosbox and Win32 that no one apparently made any solution for so far)

 

Do note that's just one single frame you got there. I know several of WW's frames in the animations look equally bad as the one you got there.

 

---

 

As for the RA vs C&C infantry, a lot of unused melee combat sequences were removed in RA1 since they were never used, meaning that even if you got all animations you need in the RA infantry, you're going to need to do a lot of re-ordering to get the RA frames to match the C&C infantry.

 

You can find those sequences here:

http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/cnc95upd/inirules/infanims.ini

[sylandro]

Ok, I've made progress, but as you said before, not all sprites fit inside the small box. If I understood correctly, infantry sprites can be larger than 50x39 pixels, as long as the center is retained and the aspect ratio is kept (so I can expand the canvas and then resize and recrop)?

 

EDIT: One more question... when are the E1ROT.SHP, etc. sprites used?

[Nyerguds]

Not sure how far the game refreshes these infantry SHP files, actually. Rule of thumb is to make sure the final file has the same SHP dimensions as the original, but you can experiment a bit. Though, a slight cutoff at the edges of the animations is better than bleeding graphics that stay behind on the screen, in my opinion. You can try either painting around the edges, or just try the actual more far-reaching animations (the commando smoking, and the various death animations, mostly) to see if they bleed, and how far.

 

The "rot" shp files are completely unused. Ignore them. In fact, before Olaf van der Spek brute-forced their name IDs to add them to the XCC Mixer file list, we never even knew their filenames.

[TaxOwlbear]

When I first went from cnc1 to ra1 it did disappoint me too, but only a bit, I was like arnt games supposed to get better and progress with time? Oh how naive I was!

It's a matter of taste. Back then on a 640x480 pixelated screen the different was IMO less prominent.

[sylandro]

I'd rather keep the 50x39 size then... I'd rather cut the extra pixels instead of having pixel bleed all over the map.

 

The cut pixels are when the Commando smokes (the smoke that goes up and when he throws his cig to the ground), as well as some death animations when the unit flies through the air from an impact. Inside the game, however, they look fine, and the lost pixels are unoticeable unless you're very picky.

 

So, I'm unleashing these deformities to the public, check the attachment... if nobody reports any error I'll upload this on the mod section.

TD_Large_infantry.zip