The image generators on this site work but the interface looks uglier than a wet food stamp on a bowling shoe. I know this and I’m working on that. Here’s a preview:

Both generators share the same engine to make pictures but the layouts were unique to each one. That meant I had to fix one then copy and paste the new code from one to the other. This didn’t always work. This new version uses a template so I can improve all the generator designs at once. There will be more generators added this year so this will save me a lot of time. There’s still a bit of work to do to make the size more adaptable to different resolutions but it’s mostly done now. This new version will hit the site some time this later month.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Lab by PrimeOp
Tags: gfx generators, vs. maker
Comments Off on The lab: GFX Generator design

Ten years ago today, the website ScrollBoss was born. Ten days ago, this site reached it’s 100,000th hit since mid-2005 when I had to reset my counter after moving to Dreamhost. Not bad for a place that I really don’t promote much. This big update wasn’t made to pat myself on the back. It’s a gift to you people who stop in to see what’s new and haven’t just given up on waiting for this place to get it’s act together. You really keep this place going by showing up, linking to it, giving positive feedback and more. The updates haven’t been as big as they used to be since I’ve been busy with so many other things, mostly my non-pixel art, so I think I owe you all a big, crazy update like this.

Almost the Entire Site – Just another slight update with more visual touches than the last one. There will be more tweaks as time go on. Please let me know if there are any broken pages due to the changes. Certain areas are being grouped together with pagetop navigation that will hopefully make casual browsing a bit easier. The biggest change is the “Info Center” group with the S-File character profiles, Game Index, Company Index and Vernacula-X glossary. Other little changes include the new graphic in the corner of some pages. Yes, the jumpkick-S is gone.

Custom Sprites – First of all, the entire Custom Sprite section got a big rewrite. Except for three pages, every gallery was converted to the same system used for many of the regular sprite galleries. This system lets me reuse gallery parts on multiple pages and other crazy things you’ll see as this site continues to evolve. There are also a lot of new edits and sprites in this update. Here’s a page-by-page breakdown on where to find the new stuff:
Activision (new page!): Pitfall Harry
Atlus (new page!): Allen and Sheena from Run Saber
Capcom: Cody (FF flyer pose), Radd Spencer (from scratch)
Jaleco: Douglas Bild, Kazan and Lord J (from scratch) taunts added, Rick Norton fighting pose added and taunt improved, Dieter/Iceman (Brawl Bros/RBR Final Boss) and Ride (Rushing Beat 1)
Konami: Sledge from Crime Fighters 2/Vendetta. Blood’s jab (from the Brawlstreet banner) finally added.
Namco: Albatross and Leila from Rolling Thunder
Nintendo: Samus in her NES & SNES non-armored forms and the Zero Suit.
Sega: Joe Musashi, Ax Battler and Gilius Thunderhead in magic-use pose. Solo versions of the SoR1 Adam and Blaze intro sprites added.
Taito: Sonic Blast Man
Technos: Jeff (headswap version from DD1) added along with new Billy and Jimmy Lee sprites. Also, the CvS Alex and Ryan sprites seen in the Vs. Maker were added to the Kunio-Kun section.
DC: Green Lantern John Stewart, Darkseid
Marvel: Deadpool (yes, finally) in a familiar pose.

Minilogos – Charlie (Capcom), Moon Knight, Rick Norton, Douglas Bild, Kazan, Sonic Blast Man (even if you can barely read it)

the Minus World – One of the last articles from the 2000-2002 time of the section has just been remastered. It’s all about The most evil man in video game history. The Minus World is another site section that got a slight style update.

Graphic Generators – Vs. Maker got a slight engine update that you’ll barely notice except that you can click on the small screenstyle pictures and see the full-sized versions. There are also new characters but I’ll save that for later. The biggest news is that there’s a NEW generator called the GroupShot Maker:

It’s a lot like the Vs. Maker but you can make group shots with sprites. You’ll find more variations in the pictures sizes with this one. There’s one screen that lets you recreate a classic title screen formation in a 160×160 pic.

Characters (for both):
New characters: Bionic Commando, Charlie, Darkseid, Deadpool, Douglas Bild, GL John Stewart, Kazan, Rick Norton, Sonic Blast Man
New sprites: Cody, Lee Bros., Adam Hunter, Blaze Fielding, Gilius Thunderhead, Spider-Man
New sprites + pal enabled: Ax Battler, M.Bison (CvS)
GroupShot New sprites + pal enabled: Albatross, Leila
New characters (GroupShot only): Kazan, Wendy Milan, Lord J, Blood, Sledge, the Brave One (Magic Sword)

1989 – the Beat-em-up article was improved.

While that’s all there is to this update, it’s not all of what I wanted to finish. In fact, it’s not even close. Since I still considered this a year-long celebration, you’ll see a few more big updates sprinkled through the rest of the year like a big comic book-related update, a MUGEN-y update and so-on. I hope you enjoy this update and have more fun with it than I had making it. Enjoy the new stuff in the generators and please let me know if something got broken in the update. Thanks for showing up and I’ll see you later this week! Yes, that means there’s another update coming.

edit (1:51 PM EST) : I was so busy that I sadly forgot to add another kind contribution from Mrgrill247 and Anapan to the Sprite Rips page a few weeks ago. That has now been fixed because their pack of Castlevania:SotN Maria aligned sprites are now on that page.

I also updated most of the Company Index pages again because some were still linking to older versions of the Custom Sprite pages.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: 10th anniversary, 1989, gfx generators, vs. maker
2 Comments »

MugenBoss – I’ve been promising to improve MugenBoss’ look for years but never came up with anything I liked until now. There will be a few more things added in July but I really wanted to get the basics out there now to see how they look. Honestly, MugenBoss had been ugly long enough.

Vs. Maker Seeing as how I almost burnt myself out working on this last week, this update is really small. Thor got another sprite and another color set while Strider Hiryu’s palette was modified to include his helpers (options) which let me add another win pose.

Time for another two-color preview sprite:

You’ll see that whole sprite along with other scratch-made sprites, sprite edits and much more when the Anniversary updates kick in starting on July 19th.

edit: oddly enough, the hit counter was at 99500 when I originally posted this update and it went by twenty by 8 PM EST. I’m curious if the 100000th hit will be before or after July 19th. “Hmmm. I wonder. Oh well.”

Filed under: MugenBoss Updates, ScrollBoss Updates, Site Work, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: bionic commando, vs. maker
2 Comments »

Vs. Maker– characters updated: Lou (3 Wonders/MvsC), Magneto, M.Bison (SFA-Vs), M. Hart (Legendary Wings, MvsC), Shuma-Gorath, Ton Pooh, Ryu (CvS), Strider Hiryu, Thanos, Wolverine, Zangief.

This will be the last character update for a week or two because I need a break from it. I really need to work on things that aren’t this especially with the anniversary being one month away.

Tips – the Peace Keepers page was updated.

The updates are light now because I’m saving a lot of things for July. Here’s a preview of a few things I finished this week:

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: vs. maker
Comments Off on Vs. Maker and a sprite preview for July

I apologize for all of these low-content updates but certain things are being saved for next month’s 10th Anniversary shindig.

Vs. Maker – Dmitri, Gambit, Gilius Thunderhead, Kim Kaphwan & King (SNK) get alt-palette power.

Articles – I made a very minor change to the Resize Matters article since the sprites on the index page have been non-blurrified long ago. I got Pac-Man World 2 for the PS2 as a gift as a gift so that was added to the Game List.

If any of you remember what the Minus World humor section was like here from 2001-2002, you may remember the sprite edit this teaser pic was based on:

That article will be back next month and others will follow later this year until all of the old articles are back in some way, shape or form.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: vs. maker
2 Comments »

What? You guessed “The same damned thing you’ve been working on for the last few updates?” If so, then you are correct sir/madam/noun.

Vs. Maker – I’m not sure what caused the site to start getting PHP depreciation warnings between the time I updated last Wednesday and 4:32 as I type this but the main thing that got broken was the Vs. Maker. Well, that’s fixed now. I’m very, very sorry about it being broken for however long it was fubared but it’s back up and running.

Pal-enabled, new sprites, new palettes: Dan, Ken (CvS & SFA), Maki, Felicia
Pal-enabled, new palettes: Geese Howard, Solo (Strider)
New sprites, new palettes: Athena
New sprites: Cyclops
New palettes: Chun-Li (CvS)

Besides improving the Vs. Mode engine, I’m also breaking it down into smaller modules so I can also re-use the programming in future graphic generators. So while the updates may look weak in content amount, I’m working on new effects (sprite-based shadows) and getting ready to make whole new generators.

Site news – Two dates of significance are coming up in the next few months.
Next week: my birthday. There may or may not be an update next week.
July 19th: ScrollBoss’ 10th Anniversary. Expect new things to appear. Expect old things to disappear. Expect fun things. Expect surprises. That’s all I’m saying for now.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: vs. maker
Comments Off on You’ll never guess what I’ve been working on

Custom Sprites – Comic and MvsC style War Machine sprite edits were added to the Marvel page.

Vs. Maker – This is probably the biggest, chunkiest update since the alt. palettes first hit. I apologize for taking so long with the palette conversion work but many of them are truly pains-in-the-butt that take longer than you’d think. It takes even longer if I add a ‘smart palette’ to them for extra color combinations. A few characters, especially Captain Commando and Sodom, now have a ton of sprites to choose from.
Pal-enabled, new sprites, new palettes: Captain Commando, Colossus, Cody, Dr. Doom, E. Honda, Hulk, Mai, Sodom
Pal-enabled, new palettes: Damnd, Death Adder, Edi.E, Billy and Jimmy Lee (now one character), Rastan
New sprites: War Machine
Pal-swap enabled without new sprites or new color sets: Athena (CvS)

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: marvel comics, vs. maker
1 Comment »

Hey, it’s a rare Wednesday update just like the old days! Here’s what’s new:

Custom Sprite Packs – Dug (Final Fight) is now available in Alpha/Vs. sprite style and Bred was updated because I accidentally had the misaligned punch animation in there. If you downloaded it before, please download it again to get your proper punch action. I made another horrible video to show both drone sprite sets in action:

Vs. Maker – Cyclops and Rolento got alternate palettes and new sprites while Karnov, Ms. Marvel and Ryu Hayabusa just got alternate palettes.

This week’s special link is to 8-Bit Monkeys (MySpace account) where you can see some sprites brought into the real world using microbeads. You’ll see a lot of 8-bit examples there but you’ll also see some work with more colors in it. Keep an eye on the page because there’s more great work on the way!

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: custom sprite set, project:drone, vs. maker
Comments Off on Dug sprite pack and more Vs. Maker palettes

Just a small Vs. Maker update to keep things active until the next real site update. The following characters have been palette-swap enabled along with getting at least one sprite added: Balrog (with new sprite edit taunt), Blackheart (and Mephisto), Blanka, Cammy, Juggernaut, Psylocke, Rogue, Spider-Man (with Armored Spider-Man palette), Storm.

Also:
The Dug sprite set should be ready later this month.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: vs. maker
Comments Off on Vs. Maker palswap pack: X-ladies, B-boys and more

Vs. Maker 0.85 is now in effect. Two things have been added to warrant the increase from 0.80 to 0.85.

The first is the “NameGFX” option for games that use sprites that write the names in a single font instead of using minilogos or true in-game fonts that type a name out letter-by-letter. These name sprites can cheat in ways that fonts can’t by having certain letters overlap or use smaller versions of the letter. The first two Vs. Maker screenstyles to use this feature are X-Men: Children of the Atom and Street Fighter Alpha 3. I made a few custom names for each but most unconnected characters will still display either nothing (X-Men) or a custom secret character name sprite (“?????” in SFA3).

The big new thing: Alternate Palettes for sprites. Only a few characters have it right now but that will grow over time but you can now choose alternate palettes for certain characters. This is one of the biggest things I wanted to have working and it’s good to finally have it in place. Don’t expect many (or any) new characters until everyone has palettes enabled but some existing characters will get sprites added.

Alt. Palette characters: Andore, Altered Beast werewolf, Arthur (GnG), Bad Dudes (now one merged character), Capt. America (with U.S. Agent), Chun-Li, ESWAT’s ICE and File 96 (merged into one char that shares palettes), Guy, Iron Man/War Machine (also merged), Karate Champ, Megaman, Poison (& Roxy), Ryu and Sagat.

Added sprites: Capt. America (new poses + 1 U.S. Agent sprite edit), Chun-Li (CvS sprites!), Iron Man (with War Machine MvsC art sprite edit), Megaman (a few new sprites), Ryu and Sagat.

This was uploaded a week earlier than I planned so there may be some bugs. More characters will be palette-enabled in upcoming weeks, more NameGFX will be added and other fixes will trickle in with every update. This is still in test mode so please let me know if there’s something that isn’t working. You can leave feedback in the comments section of this post. Thanks and I hope you have fun with this!

edit: Something about the Vs. Maker update causes the modified characters to be botched in Internet Explorer. I don’t have a clue why other than, well, that’s the kind of thing Internet Explorer does, isn’t it? It works in both Firefox and Opera but it’s straight-up buggin’ in IE. I’ll look into why but don’t expect that to get fixed soon because I have NO idea why it’s doing this.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: vs. maker
3 Comments »