The Dink Network

Creating Enemy Sprites

July 12th, 2002
v1.1
Score : 8.8 good
fish.gif
As being one of the beta testers of this excellent detailed tutorial, I would like to say that version 1.0 of this file (most of the people might not have the chance to see it) has been already very good, but SimonK took the extra steps to ask a few other fellow Dinkers to read it before the final release was even better.

Overall, this ia a well-organized and good-looking document. The biggest strength of this file is that you can learn almost all the tricks in DinkC, DinkEdit, and Dink.ini to make your new sprite graphics to work to perfect. The step-by-step descriptions are clear enough for anyone who starts to learn DinkC, also good for advanced authors to review and learn some advanced stuff about making a fancy new sprite alive. The looks of the document is excellent. It is well-organized. SimonK used his newly developed Eyeball Jr. monster as an example to explain everything you need to do for a brain 9 monsters with attack sequence AND dying animation. Besides the description from the Eyeball Jr.'s case, SimonK also touched a few different aspects about brain 10 monsters as well. And a few tips on how to render and create your own 3D sprites. All the information was well said, and I did not find any obvious error in it.

The main weakness of this file is that basically you can almost learn everything in this file from other pre-existed files, although none of the files covered this subject from the most basic stuff up to the seldom used advanced tricks. So although you might not learn any real new things from this tutorial, people who do not have an overall idea about how to make a new sprite work in every detail should download this file. The other thing is about the Title of this file. Although I did suggest him to change it while I was beta-testing it, SimonK may have his own reason not to change it. But to me, "Creating Enemy Sprites" might lead people to think that this file is meant to tell you how to "create new sprites' graphics" instead of "create new sprites in a dmod". I still feel that "Enemy Sprite Scripting" (but information about Dink.ini and DinkEdit are NOT parts of scripting. , and the file does give a few basic tips for creating new graphics) or something else might be better. But that is just a small unimportant bad personal taste. I still hope to see more information about brain 10 monsters since no files ever explain that well and correctly. But version 1.1 has already touched some of the key difference between brain 9 and brain 10 monsters. I'm hoping to see SimonK's new dragon work perfectly as a brain 10 new standard.

In short this is a very nice tutorial file that all dmod authors, even advanced ones, can learn something from it or at least refresh your memory about putting new sprites into action. One interesting side note: Simon claimed this file is "a basic tutorial" but it almost covered all advanced techniques you need to know about new sprites (DinkC and Dink.ini), while redink1's "Advanced Dink.ini Editing" in fact only had the very basic stuff. I guess Time did change.

I hope if anyone who wants to release some tutorial files that organize several different old tutorial files for the same topics should at least follow this file's path. Do it right and make them well-organized and easy to follow. Ask some veteran dmod authors, like redink1, Nexis, Paul, SimonK, and some others to name a few, to read it through before releasing it, even it was meant only for newbies. Newbies might not need advanced techniques at the beginning, but they should be fed even more accurate information since they do not know if the tutorial made a mistake!

This file would deserve a nearly perfect score in its own right, but since it does not have much new information, an 8.8 should be fair enough for this excellent tutorial file.