Brightmaps Plus v1.9

[NightFright]

The Lost Souls work as intended. In fact this was changed on request since before the entire sprite was fullbright and it looked boring.

[Nash]

I quite like how the lost souls look with BM+. They look awesome in the dark, with only parts of it glowing.

[NightFright]

In earlier releases, the flames were fullbright and the skull had an orange tint. Not only did that not make sense since brightmaps don't recognize colors, it looked weird in general. The way it is now is much better, just the flames and the eyes are highlighted. It's more realistic and as Nash pointed out also looks better. It's definitely not a bug, that's all I can say.

[Nash]

Widescreen Heretic and Hexen need some brightmap lovin'. :D bmplus_wide.pk3 maybe?

[NightFright]

Thanks for the reminder, Nash! It is done. In Heretic, only one sprite was affected, while there were 11 adjustments needed for Hexen.
Since it is safe to assume most people will use widescreen graphics, I have decided to activate them by default.

Changelog v1.8 (May 25, 2021):
[bmplus_spritefix.pk3] [HERETIC/HEXEN] Added support for Nash's GZDoom v4.6.0 widescreen weapon sprites
[bmplus_vanilla.pk3] [HERETIC/HEXEN] Added support for Nash's GZDoom v4.6.0 widescreen weapon sprites

Notes:
- No changes for bmplus_textures.pk3 in this release.
- Widescreen brightmaps are activated by default. To turn them off, you would have to edit heretic/gldefs.bm and/or hexen/gldefs.bm.

[Nash]

Did you check the folders I linked you to, in my previous post? There are more sprites affected for Heretic (the crossbow, hellstaff and Phoenix Rod), as well as the frost shards for Hexen.

Those are new sprites committed two days ago to fix this issue.

(TL;DR is that several of Heretic and Hexen's weapon sprites were drawn too short, that people with small status bar scales will see gaps. I had to extend them downwards)

[NightFright]

I will wait with further adjustments until another official release is made. I am not a fan of creating content for dev snapshots.

[Nash]

Ah, alright, yeah good point. Keep up the good work!

[NightFright]

Anyway, I can use the time until the next GZD version to prepare the new images. If you only extended graphics on the bottom, effort should be low since it's often just about adding more dark space.

Btw, you only did something for Heretic and Hexen weapons, but nothing for Doom, right? Just asking so I am not overlooking anything.

[Nash]

Anyway, I can use the time until the next GZD version to prepare the new images. If you only extended graphics on the bottom, effort should be low since it's often just about adding more dark space.

Btw, you only did something for Heretic and Hexen weapons, but nothing for Doom, right? Just asking so I am not overlooking anything.

No brightmaps needed:
- Doom: only 1 super shotgun frame extended to the right. Does not need brightmaps as there's nothing glowing here

Brightmaps needed:
- Heretic staff: is only extended to the right. The powered up version needs brightmap
- [GZDoom 4.6.1 onwards] Heretic crossbow, hellstaff, phoenix rod: extended at the bottom only. A lot of these need brightmaps
- Hexen weapons: extended in both horizontally and vertically. Added frost shard for GZDoom 4.6.1 that only extends it at the bottom. Several of these need brightmaps

Those are the full details. :)

[NightFright]

Outstanding. Couldn't have wished for a better checklist. Thumbs up!

*Update*
My adjustments are finished on Github. Unless you make more changes, we now just have to wait for the next GZD release and we are ready to go.

[vaa44]

In Hexen, brightmaps do not work on 4 objects : Falcon shield, Amulet of warding, Icon of the defender, Blue candle.
Frames need to be renamed : arm2--ar_2, arm4--ar_4, invu--defn, cand--bcan.
Perhaps there is something else.

[NightFright]

Thanks a lot for the report! Brightmap names have been corrected.

Would be nice to have a list with all assets affected by this (not only for Hexen, but all games) since it's kinda insane to browse through thousands of sprites manually to see if any internal actor renaming has been applied. I know it was done for the Iron Lich in Heretic (LICH) for example since it shares the same name with the Cacodemon (HEAD) from Doom in the original iwad.

Anyway, I have tested the renamed brightmaps ingame and all work now. Will be in the next release which will happen when the next GZDoom version is published.

[Warden]

It'd be nice to see another take on the Mancubus' missile state brightmaps. As is, he looks a bit dull in comparison with fullbright--I always imagine the fireballs lighting up his torso, like the revenant, and not just the muzzle flash of his cannons.

EDIT: here's my attempt, if someone else wants it. These are for the unmodified iwad sprites:

[NightFright]

Coming from different sources, some brightmaps look better than others. I'll look around, maybe someone did better ones.

In the meantime, I have identified shared assets in Hexen and Heretic and will now check if any other sprite renames are necessary.

*Update*
Checks completed. Looks like we caught all renamed sprites.