Boss encounters without monster sprite

[Hammerklavier]

Hi,

I know a lot of people use monster graphics other than those by the RTP.  If you were making a game consisting entirely of those graphics (Thalzon's for instance), I always wonder how people handle boss battles in their games.  Traditionally, there is a monster sprite waiting for you at the end of the dungeon, which works nicely with the RTP since there are sprites to match several of the battler graphics.  

What do you folks do when there are no matching sprites?

 

[ArcaneEli]

Use the Dark Ghost dude with the black head and like a sheet for a body.

(The First Sprite in Monster Sheet.)

 

[bgillisp]

Hire a spriter to draw you a matching monster sprite. That's what I've been doing in my game.

 

[Vox Novus]

Well typically  this is something you would figure out ahead of time rather than during the actual development process. In some situations I might have the monster appear out of nowhere depending on the setting so it surprises the party without seeing a sprite. This can work in some circumstances (in a room with little light or appearing from underwater) but would get old if used a lot or in a spot that didn't make sense. I've been editing rtp sprites to fit my needs for my current game; really simple stuff like taking a captains hat off the captain sprite and throwing it on the skeleton and recoloring to make an undead pirate captain or drawing in some minor edits like wings. I've only just started dabbling with edits so I knew ahead of time my limited skill set and so choose my monster designs based on what I could implement in my game rather than trying to find away around it later.

 

[Miss Nile]

A nice idea that I saw implemented in Enelysion Redux game was having a single sprite for all enemies, namely a flame sprite walking around. For boss battles, it was colored blue. So players could know normal enemies from boss battles.

It's a simple way if you have limited skills, but it always looks better of course to have special sprites for enemies, especially bosses.

 

[Matseb2611]

Frankenspriting and editing are my forte, so that's what I do. But I started off with virtually no skill in pixel art. Necessity is the mother of invention. Little by little you start to get good at editing sprites when there's something you really need for your game. You start to look for ways you can achieve what you need and it's pretty fun.

 

[Hammerklavier]

Hire a spriter to draw you a matching monster sprite. That's what I've been doing in my game.

How much do you pay?  Are there plenty of people creating these sprites for money?

 

[Hammerklavier]

A nice idea that I saw implemented in Enelysion Redux game was having a single sprite for all enemies, namely a flame sprite walking around. For boss battles, it was colored blue. So players could know normal enemies from boss battles.

It's a simple way if you have limited skills, but it always looks better of course to have special sprites for enemies, especially bosses.

The only issue I find with this is that boss battles are often preceded by a dialogue between the boss and heroes.  It would seem a bit clumsy to have some blue fire telling me what a powerful ogre he is.  

 

[Hammerklavier]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!  Sounds like a lot of you are mastering spriting/frankenspriting in order to get what you're looking for.  I can't imagine being able to produce a boss sprite as spiffy looking as some of the boss sprites in the RTP, so I'm hoping there is another way.  

 

[jonthefox]

I have a similar issue/problem, and I'm honestly limiting my bosses based on what I have sprites for.  It's kind of unfortunate, but them's the breaks for those of us without pixel sprite editing skills.  I think the biggest criticism I have of RPG Maker is not enough default resources, like they have 4 medium size boss sprites and 4 large boss sprites, but they don't even really work correctly because they can't move around without turning into a different sprites.

Honestly, it makes me think that random encounters might be the way to go, and then use the regular monster sprites for boss sprites (because you can find a good selection of these online, and it's also easy to edit these just in terms of like color).

 

[bgillisp]

How much do you pay?  Are there plenty of people creating these sprites for money?

Depends on the spriter and size of the sprite. Hiddenone is pretty popular around here, and you should be able to find their thread. I'm currently using Kaijira. Don't let the fact that the thread is a few months old deter you, he's still answering PM's and doing work as I've ordered it.

Prices vary too much to post exact values on here, but both have their current prices for standard size sprites on their threads.

 

[Kes]

I used only Thalzon's battlers in Undefeated and The Tale of a Common Man and gave the player the choice between visible and invisible enemies, so I had to come up with on-map sprites.

Undefeated was easy - I used the ghost sprite that has already been referred to.  Almost as soon as it was released I wished that I had used the flame option instead.  However, it was too late really.

Tale of a Common Man is different. Like Undefeated, each troop has a mix of enemies to give more variety and strategy in battle.  In each location I had one enemy who was in all troops, and that was the one which I then showed via the sprite.  This enabled me to have some extraordinary other enemies as I didn't have to worry about finding sprites for them.  It meant that I could also select to have the troop generate randomly from the troops for that area so that again there was variety for the player.  When it came to the sprite for the troop, it just needed to be "close enough".  In fact, with Thalzon's battlers, if you tried to have exact sprites then a lot of them wouldn't be able to walk!  With frankenspriting, recolouring etc. I managed it without having to commission any sprites.

 I did, however, have to commission some boss faces for both games, and these were based directly on Thalzon's sprites.

 

[Sharm]

Hammerklavier, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

 

[orochii]

Well, I have nothing to say since I make my own stuff, but I can say I started just like Vox Novus and Matseb2611. Frankenspriting characters, battle characters (it was the dark era of 2k3), some attempts at monsters... But mainly it was character sets. I had some templates too, for people.

Monsters on the other hand, I learnt the hard way: from scratch. You see, people have a very specific anatomy. Monster on the other hand, is a little less rigid, because people are always looking at people, but not monsters, not even at animals (still I love Dali's horses and animal anatomy).

People can differentiate if a person has anatomical problems, but its less often they see the evolutive disaster your monster is, and the weird protuberances it has that make no sense whatsoever.

So, frankensprite people! Or hire me <3. I could make a living making character sprites...