Custom Iconning for the New Fiend

Hey there, boys and girls.

So, now that the new Fiend class has been rolled out, and after some people have been playing it, naturally you're curious as to how you're going to make custom icons for it. It's actually not that difficult depending on how you do it.

First of all, I WILL NOT be going over icon creation basics in this post. I'd go so far as to say that if you are not competent at making your own icons, you have no business attempting to make a custom icon for the new Fiend. For those of you who want to try anyway, view https://legacygame.forumotion.net/spriting-iconing-f16/how-to-make-your-first-icon-v07-state-update-t13.htm first.

I'm going to assume from this point on that you already understand the basic requirements for an icon file in FFL. You should know what states are required for any given class icon. Keep in mind that's it's safe to include battle_magic_stance, battle_special_stance and battle_special_attack states in every icon you make just to be sure you have every situation covered. For the Fiend, this is so times 8.

So, pretend you've got your regular required states for an icon. They're all filled in as they need to be, everything's looking great and you've got it all arranged nicely in its own .dmi file. This is how you should have it for each form of the fiend. All 8 forms should have their own individual .dmi file. While this is not an absolute requirement, it will save you a hell of a lot of hassle later on.

Since the previous Fiend was fire-based, we've decided that the Fire form will be the default. At least, it'll be the form all Fiends start in. As such, treat the Fire form like you would any normal icon. No prefix. For all forms but fire, you must place a prefix in front of the name of every state for that form. 'normal' becomes 'holy_normal', 'battle_walk1' becomes 'water_battle_walk1', and so on like that.

The forms will be denoted as follows:
FIRE: (no prefix)
WATER: 'water_'
WIND: 'wind_'
EARTH: 'earth_'
ICE: 'ice_'
LIGHTNING: 'lightning_'
DARK: 'dark_'
HOLY: 'holy_'

So, earlier in the post I suggested that each of the forms have its own .dmi file. In each .dmi file, make sure you add prefixes corresponding to the form you're making. Once all eight forms are finished, the states are named properly, etc., you can compile them all into a single .dmi which you will upload through the vaccine verb. To do so, create a new .dmi file and use the Import tool (Control+I or Graphic -> Import) to import each of the eight separate .dmi files containing the separate forms of the Fiend. This will bring every state into the combined .dmi in order while preserving state names and arrangement, so everything will remain relatively easy to keep track of.

Provided you're a decent enough iconner to create eight good-looking custom forms and you're adequately intelligent to follow my simple instructions, you should end up with a legal and valid .dmi for the new Fiend.

Good luck.

- Dolph