#projecthazoid

Another wonderful take on Basilissa, done by my friend at @projecthazoid (nsfw) / @hazssafehaven (sfw).

He liked the magma lines on her and said that it’d be cool if she had a layer of rock/magma over her body to act as armor. That’s a pretty neat idea, Fran suggested something similar. Also I like that people are drawing Corzo all tiny, it’s adorable.

It’s a little bit more intricate than that. But let’s do a real quick crash course.Step 1, you draw a sprite in something. Let’s say a statue of a lady, drawn by @projecthazoid​ who is very good at drawing things and sprites and ladies. He’s very good. I want him to make sprites all over my face.

(Not a texture, a texture goes on the architecture of the level. A decoration is something different)

All right, cool. So we save it with the typical filename of a sprite, which is four letters, followed by a frame number, followed by an angle number.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/SpriteHere’s a little bit more in-depth of a look at it, but for now let’s just name our sprite FSTAA0. The name is FSTA (Female Statue), the frame is A (there’s only one frame), and the angle is 0 (there’s only one angle).

Now let’s say you’ve got a .pk3 with the resources for your map. If you don’t, well, get SLADE and make a new .zip archive.In it, go Archive > New Directory and make a folder named Sprites.

All right, cool.

Now, inside that folder, we’re going to import in FSTAA0, and position it above the horizontal line. When it’s imported in, it’ll be put in some kind of box, and we want to make it hanging above the top-left corner.

Okay, now we’ve got the sprite actually in. Now what’s next is to define it.

Go back into the main directory and go to your DECORATE file. If you don’t have a DECORATE file, make a new one.

Now, there’s a whole ton of different ways to code something, but for ease of simplicity, we’re going to take the easy way. We’re going to hijack the code for something that already exists.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/Classes:TallRedColumn

We’re going to repurpose the Tall Red Column in Doom. Take the code and copy/paste it into the Decorate file, renaming the name to a new name and renaming the sprite so that it reads off FSTA (the frame name from before) instead of the tall red column sprite.

Beauty.

Notice the number at the end of ACTOR FemaleStatue, however. THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT PART FOR ANY CUSTOM DECORATION.

You see, in mapmaking, items aren’t so much placed on the maps by their names or even what they are, but rather Number is placed at position X, Y, and Z. You’re not placing a SuperShotgun on the map, you’re placing Actor 82 on the map.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/Standard_editor_numbers

Here’s a complete list of actor numbers and what they correspond to, but ultimately any value above 10000 should be safe.

Anyway. So you’ve got the actor, and you’ve got the sprite, now all you need to do is put it in the map.

Save your resources (if you’re saving it for the first time, MAKE SURE TO SAVE AS A .PK3 INSTEAD OF A .ZIP!!!!!!!!!), and open up your map in GZDoomBuilder or DoomBuilder 2 or whatever. If you haven’t already, be sure to import your resources .pk3 as a, well, resource.

Then from there, it’s simply a matter of putting in a new Thing on the map, with the number corresponding to your new decoration.

Ta-dah.