races

Do you plan to use the existing sprites? That is a major issue. If you are going to base them on a human, ogre, dwarf or halfling sprite, it shouldn't be that bad. Unless you want females and you want to use the non-human sprites and then it gets really sticky.

I may be wrong, but I think that you can edit all the .mes files you need to edit to create a new race, but you have to dig them out and find all the places where races are referred to and add entries for your new one. You'll need to basically extract all the files from all the .dat files and dig around and see where there are references.

I have looked at this a little because I want to created female halflings and real male and female gnomes, not just gnomes that look like halflings. I'll know more when I have a working graphics converter because it's a mute point until I can create the sprites to make them work.

Good luck!

 

the atr2bmp and bmp2art doesn't work?

BTW, I'm all for helping with the new race thing, I suck at art...but code/grunt wise, I can help anyway I can.

I want female dwraves/halflings/gromes/half-ogres

I also want fey-born (faeries), drow, undead and mechanical (like an automaton)

PM me if anyone needs help on a new race project

 

Actually, the sprites got left out for everything except dwarf and half-ogre females because of a space issue, not time, from what I've been told by those in the know. I think the same thing may be responsible for the gnomes player characters looking like halflings instead of gnomes - gnomes are taller and don't have as much of a pot belly, so they ought to look different from halflings. Maybe I'm just being a picky purist on that issue though.

The dwarf and half-ogre females are actually a game issue involved in the storyline, so to stick strictly to that, they shouldn't show up without some kind of explanation. Half-ogre females might be explanable, but there's some question about whether you would even know a female dwarf from a male if you saw one. Personally, I like the idea of having them available as characters, but I can see why they got left out.

I would like to see the ogre race as a playable race with both male and female characters possible, at some point. I also like the idea of being able to eventually find the half-ogre breeding area and setting them free so that there are female half-ogres abroad in Arcanum. :razz:

 

Sinbad, you might try using a TeamBG sprite editor, well, it would work if you have Baldur's Gate, or Baldur's Gate Two. My thought is that you could take the gnomish/dwarven/etc. sprite outta there, and edit it so it would work with Arcanum. That may be a huge amount of work, or it may not work at all, but it's worth a shot isn't it?

 

That might be worth a try, if I had either. Any tips on where I can get this TeamBG sprite editor or does it come with Baldur's Gate? Anything that would reduce the amount of work involved in creating the sprites is worth trying.

 

I will when we get there XZ, we've got bigger cans of spam to fry now.... http://www.teambg.com I don't know if that still works, since I haven't been there in months, so say so if it's wrong.

 

sorry! I wrote the message above, but I forgot to sign in!