About Them Daemons (Patreon)

I thought it might be interesting to some folk to take a look back with me at my fascination with daemon type monsters, and compare these new/remastered daemons with their elder counterparts.

The new daemons, of which there are currently seven, are all in the release queue now, with one having been released just yesterday. These are all based off of one of my oldest and dearest models that helped kick-start my love of making game graphics.

When I was a teenager, I got heavily involved with a game called Ultima Online; for those of you who know it, you can easily see the influence it had on my graphics-making. One of my favorite (and scariest) monsters to fight was the daemon - spelled with an "a", which is why I spell it with an "a" to this day, it's just so ingrained in me! The daemon (and the more powerful version, the balron) was among the strongest of the regular monsters you could encounter, and there was some bits and bobs of lore and history about them scattered throughout to tantalize my imagination. Ever since those early days, I've always enjoyed creating new (and not-so-new) daemons for my games, and for other people to enjoy as well.

A Comparison

For fun, I dug up some of the older original versions of these daemons I am releasing presently. Let's take a look!

This is the classic daemon. On the left is the version from the High Fantasy remastered edition (and I believe the Monster's Legacy pack). Unfortunately I don't have the VERY old original High Fantasy that had a darker, blurrier, and smaller version of this guy. Let's take a look at their battler's, too:

Of note, the battler on the right (the newest version, remastered for Patreon) is only 1/4 scale. The real version is 2048x2048 pixels. 

The first and immediate difference between the old and the new is the size and detail. The older versions (on the left) are very small, can't be adjusted to be larger, and are rather grainy. This is an issue that plagues most of the assets from the early days of almost a decade ago.

The shading, detail, color blending, etc is all far superior on the new version on the right. Further, and very importantly, the shadows make sense and are consistent.

See, way back when I first started making graphics, I had to manually make every shadow. It was not too bad to do it for battlers (though obviously I never got the angle correct), for sprite sheets it was far more difficult and time-consuming. Over the years I have learned many tricks and tips to get consistent and accurate shadows (especially for sprite sheets).

And probably of the biggest note, the number of animation frames. The old assets, at the very most, had walking animations in 8 directions, with 3 frames of animation each, and maybe a side-view battler sheet if it was lucky. I just did not have the tools and experience that I have today to really go beyond what I had made back then. Now, each monster boasts 400 frames of animation, with a much larger pool of animations, each in 8 directions.

Let's take a look at a few more:

The Bone Daemon (or the Pit Fiend from the older packs):

This guy was always among my favorites, and even back in the old days I thought he came out pretty well. Of course, he looks a lot sharper now, even at 1/4 of his resolution!

The Howler Daemon (the Wargwolf from the older packs):

I was never super happy with how this guy came out in the older packs. He, like so many other monsters and characters and tiles, was just too dang dark! He had a complete lack of detail, and his poses were just never quite where they needed to be. 

Although you can't see it on the version on the right due to being scaled down so far, all of his fur is shaggy along the edges of his silhouette. That is not something I knew how to do back in the old days, so I ended up with perfectly smooth silhouettes for creatures that are supposed to be hairy. I am much happier with this reincarnation of this monster; in fact, I think he is one of my new favorites.

The Greater Daemon (or the Burnt One from the older packs):

The biggest difference between the versions (on the left is the original from the High Fantasy II pack, the middle is from the Monster's Legacy pack, and the right is the new version) of this monster is the color and contrast (plus the size, detail, yadda yadda). I might sound like a broken record here, but the older versions were just too dark! I am glad I found ways to take a creature that is normally very dark in nature and spruce it up with color.

And then there's this guy:

He is not a direct remake of any of the older monsters, but he IS the same exact daemon as all of the above creatures. Having learned a lot over the years, I essentially "glued" a bunch of gruesome objects to him and painted him up all nice and scary (very similar method to making the Skeleton Shambler). 

Anywho, I hope you guys enjoyed taking a little trip down nostalgia lane with me. All of these daemons are currently in the release queue, roughly 10-12ish days apart from one another. I spaced them out so it gives me time to add additional things in between their releases and hopefully not flood you with too much of a similar thing too quickly.

Thank you all for the great support and I hope you enjoy the rest of your week!

-Jesse