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I want to experiment with editing unit graphics. Specifically I want to try doubling the resolution of the regular myth units in Photoshop. What files do I need to look at and how would I go about making a test with one unit (say warrior, so you can activate the tagset and it replaces the warriors with the high res version)

Making the unit sprites (images) bigger does not increase the quality of it. It will increase the dimensions of the images sure, but it can not add detail/quality to make them higher resolution.

Basically you would end up with a stretched out version of the same thing. Which you can do in Myth in a way. If you open Fear and modify the "object" tag of a unit, alter its scale and you will make it bigger. I know this isn't what you wanted, but it might show you why making it bigger will not yield the results you are looking for.

Pyro wrote:Making the unit sprites (images) bigger does not increase the quality of it. It will increase the dimensions of the images sure, but it can not add detail/quality to make them higher resolution.

Basically you would end up with a stretched out version of the same thing. Which you can do in Myth in a way. If you open Fear and modify the "object" tag of a unit, alter its scale and you will make it bigger. I know this isn't what you wanted, but it might show you why making it bigger will not yield the results you are looking for.

Yea I understand what you're saying but I have Photoshop image interpolation skillz. And I can try adding details as well. I want to get the sprite graphics for the Warrior opened in Photoshop how do I do that? What I want to shoot for is keeping the units the same size, but having more detail when zoomed in. This is possible right?

Replacing the graphics with bigger/higher resolution version and still look the same size in Myth is possible. Making them better detailed in photoshop without the original files Bungie used to make the graphics is not really possible. I suppose messing with their interpolation might make it look better... but by how much?

To extract the images of a unit you need a collection editor like Oak or Amber. Amber is a classic Mac OS program and Oak is a Windows/Mac OSX program that is currently in private beta testing. To get you started without having to wait to get access to one of them, I extracted the bitmaps of the warrior for you here.

Knock yourself out.

worth mentioning that it's not one image of a warrior that would need touching up (manual tweaking after interpolation) it's what - several dozen? hundreds? at least 8 for each 'frame' of animation, right? and there's a walk, attack, flinch, die, and hard death animation each with several frames? (i am sure i am leaving some out)


also, i seem to recall some of the units already being hi-rez-ified. didn't The Wind age have some hi-rez bungie units? and isn't the iron thrall unit a high(er) res thrall? i want to say i vaguelly recall some other hi-rez versions of bungie units but don't remember where at the moment.

vinylrake wrote:worth mentioning that it's not one image of a warrior that would need touching up (manual tweaking after interpolation) it's what - several dozen? hundreds? at least 8 for each 'frame' of animation, right? and there's a walk, attack, flinch, die, and hard death animation each with several frames? (i am sure i am leaving some out)


also, i seem to recall some of the units already being hi-rez-ified. didn't The Wind age have some hi-rez bungie units? and isn't the iron thrall unit a high(er) res thrall? i want to say i vaguelly recall some other hi-rez versions of bungie units but don't remember where at the moment.

Yea there is around 330 images, but I got them all done, doubled the resolution. Made a Photoshop action, then used batch processing. I think they look better but want to know how it looks in game. Waiting to see if Pyro can stick them back in the game to test it out...

If you upload them somewhere, I'll make the tag files for it.

They might look marginally better, but the trade off you're getting in increased file size of the finished collection against the actual negligible resolution increase just isn't worth while. It becomes not worth it for any more than a unit or two, as you're risking lagging peoples graphics systems for very little visual gain. The warrior, comparatively, has very few sprites at under 400. The average myth unit averages around 500 frames. So doing this task for many units really starts stacking up in megabytes.

What I'd suggest is actively stick around with Myth for a few months. Keep your ear to the ground, and when you start to hear quiet chatter about Myth 2 1.8 betas, poke the right people and get in on the beta testing. Magma has got a few very magical tricks up the sleeve for 1.8, and higher quality sprites is a portion of that magic.

Pyro wrote:If you upload them somewhere, I'll make the tag files for it.

Ok I'll zip it up and send the link

Graydon wrote:They might look marginally better, but the trade off you're getting in increased file size of the finished collection against the actual negligible resolution increase just isn't worth while. It becomes not worth it for any more than a unit or two, as you're risking lagging peoples graphics systems for very little visual gain. The warrior, comparatively, has very few sprites at under 400. The average myth unit averages around 500 frames. So doing this task for many units really starts stacking up in megabytes.

What I'd suggest is actively stick around with Myth for a few months. Keep your ear to the ground, and when you start to hear quiet chatter about Myth 2 1.8 betas, poke the right people and get in on the beta testing. Magma has got a few very magical tricks up the sleeve for 1.8, and higher quality sprites is a portion of that magic.

Wow that sounds magical. Ever since I saw the detailed landscape textures I wanted higher res sprites to match. Hope it's good and doesn't add too much more processing requirement (I like myth cause it doesn't overheat my MacOvenbook)
I'll try this sprite hack cause it's easy to batch process them, and I guess we'll see real quick what doubling the units resolution will do to performance.

fyi: there have been a couple of in development projects with much larger (and higher-res) sprites used for the units (The Wind Age, Carlinho's Greek Unit tagset) which work fine on a lot of computers, but which when playing Myth brings the 'framerate' of my 2009 Mac Mini to 30 second slide-show freezes.

I'd love higher-res units, but think that without a toggle-preference for 'Use high res sprites' (which given their past commitment to keep Myth II playable on as much hardware as possible, i have to assume is part of Magma's planned magic for 1.8 ) those kinds of units are going to fragment the community. so... i am keeping my fingers crossed for 1.8.

Hey Pyro did you get my message. I don't know if my messages get sent cause I don't seem the in the sent box......

No new messages in my inbox. Are you sure you are doing it right? I'll send you one to at least see if you can receive it fine.

Practice for practice sake is fine... learning photoshop is a valuable skills though teases aside the myth II warrior as well as most of the others have been re rendered at higher resolutions and should find there way into an update before too long... and if you dont want to wait you could play around with some batches in photoshop or just download some of the newer plugs.

Myth can always use PS experts, many ways to utilize someone with skills.
Unless you get with a Unit Collections person another aspect of interest may be map making.