Sprites and views -- how should they work?

[Ali]

A thought struck me just yesterday, and I can't find it on the tracker.

I would find it immensely useful to hear sounds in the View Manager Preview. I'd be happy to have to wait a little while while the sounds 'render' or 'compile' but it would be worth it if it was quicker than having to run the game and cause a particular animation to play.

EDIT: Ahem... thanks for pointing that out Gilbot! That thread offers a work-around for OGG users, but I do think OGG-compatible previews would be a boon.

[Gilbert]

Well, since V2.72, the preview feature can play frame sounds if and only if they're in .WAV format. For more info. about previous discussions, see this thread.

[Pumaman]

I would be interested in what CJ has in mind when he asked. Perhaps we should ask him what we would we get in return for giving up the ability? Maybe some kick-ass feature that we can't live without, althoiugh we apparently are.

Basically, due to the current state of the code, I'm looking at almost rewriting the sprite/view editors from scratch -- therefore it's not so much that I want to remove features, but just not to have to re-implement them if nobody is using them.

Thanks for your replies; now I know that people are using the import window and tiled sprites, so they'll be staying.

Final question: does anyone use "Quick import FLC frames" or is it just GIFs that people import?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Just GIFs here.

Out of curiosity, is there some format similar to GIF that allows use of hicoulour modes?

[DemoQuest]

There was a thing called MNG that never really got widespread attention.  There is a new thing called APNG that may or may not get widespread attention.  Here is a brief discussion of the toipic by some of the mozilla folks.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/006301.html

Cheers
RickJ

[monkey0506]

Rick you fool you were logged as DemoQuest when you posted that!!!

As for me I use GIF for animated images.

[EDIT:]

Ahhh...prunage (pruning) prevention. It would still be better if you legitimately got away from getting pruned (a.k.a., finish Demo Quest ).

[DemoQuest]

Awhile back, Strazer told me that users with fewer than 20 posts are removed from the forum after awhile.   So, the previous post was intentionaly done the way it was done.      

Edit by strazer:

To be clear, AFAIK users only get automatically deleted if, in addition to having posted less than 20 times, they also weren't active (i.e. logged in) for a year or so.
I wrote a pm to the DemoQuest user in the hopes that someone would get an e-mail reminder, read the message and remember to log in once in a while.

[Gilbert]

But CJ would choose which members not to remove when cleaning, so the DemoQuest account would stay anyway.

Anyway, enough off-topic stuff!

[Joseph DiPerla]

I would only impprt GIF. Didnt really think people use flc.

[Radiant]

There is also a "Import animated GIF frames" option that allows you to import animated GIF files.

Last time I tried that it didn't really work as expected... the aniGIF contained "diff frames" (frames that were mostly transparent except for the spots where they were different from the last frame) and AGS imported them as normal frames.

So, another question from me to you -- does anyone actually use the feature to select a portion of the image file to import, or do you always just press "Grab entire image".

I don't use it, but that's because I find it unwieldy. It turns out to be quite a bit faster to open MS Paint with the sprite file, select a frame, hit 'copy', alt-tab to AGS, and right-click to 'insert new frame from clipboard'.

It would help if there was an easier way to change the size of the 'import box' (e.g. ^ v buttons) and if it was easier to select the edge of the image (if you click beside the image, nothing happens, but the first pixel of the image is only one pixel wide)

It would also help if you could just click the 'box' to import that frame, rather than having to 'drag' a line of boxes (first, this gets annoying if the screen needs to scroll; second, some artists add lines around each sprite frame, which need to be skipped).



Oh by the way - it is not visually possible at the moment to distinguish between a sprite with a transparent background, and one with a Pure Pink background. Through copy/paste mistakes it's possible to end up with a sprite that looks like it's transparent, but really isn't.

Oh yeah, it would be nice if, for "assign sprites to view", the loops were named even if they were new. For instance, loop 3 is normally named "walking down" (which is useful) but if it happens to be empty it is instead named "empty"; naming it "emtpy / walking down" would be handy.

[fovmester]

I always use the tiled import when importing animations. I do the animations in Gale, save it as a tiled tga, make the shadows transparent in Photoshop (a tiled pic lets me do this simultaneously for all frames instead of having to open several files and do one after another. This way I have saved many hours of work!) and then tile import it into AGS. So to put it clearly: I REALLY HAVE A NEED FOR TILED IMPORT. So please keep it, CJ!

Interesting, though, in how many ways people work!

[buzinaocara]

I would like to suggest a really huge implement...

Everything started when I used a hack program to see the sprites files of the Lucas Arts games, made for SCUMM, and they have a nice way to work with different actions for a same character, using some kind of layer thing.

Let's say that I am making a character, who speaks while he is cooking, I wold make a sprite for his body, sprites for the animation of his hands that are cooking, sprites for the smoke that come from the food, and sprites for his head... All this sprites get together in one view, and are animatedÃ,  simultaneously by one character, but I can control separately each part of him. Like make him stop talking while he keep cooking. This is Very useful to make characters with lots of animation without needing lots of sprites and lots of characters and objects to emulate just one single thing.

I don't know if I made my self clear...
----

Making it possible to rotate the sprites 90°, 180° or 270° is not a bad idea .

I also wanted to see a background manager that worked just like the sprite manager... This would help in the case I want to re use a background image in multiple rooms, just changing their palette configuration, ore just reusing them with different objects and areas...

[Joseph DiPerla]

I know what your talking about. But I dont think its a good idea. It would help reduce space, yes, but there are drawbacks to that:

1)Anyone making their sprites in 3d, would really need to split their characters up well. It would be too hard.
2) Many of us are used to drawing the whole character.
3) Might take longer for Chris to implement.

I think for some this would be a good idea, but for most, it wouldn't. But who knows, maybe Chris will find a way to implement both and make us all happy.

[Pumaman]

I have always thought a view should be owned by the character or object to which it applies. I don't think the ability to reuse views acorss multiple characters/objects is of much benefit or even a sound practice.

What do other people think about this? My impression was that a view for something like an explosion might be reused by different objects in different rooms; or would people prefer to have views created within a character/object and not available for global use?

[SSH]

Let's say that I am making a character, who speaks while he is cooking, I wold make a sprite for his body, sprites for the animation of his hands that are cooking, sprites for the smoke that come from the food, and sprites for his head... All this sprites get together in one view, and are animated  simultaneously by one character, but I can control separately each part of him. Like make him stop talking while he keep cooking. This is Very useful to make characters with lots of animation without needing lots of sprites and lots of characters and objects to emulate just one single thing.

This is basically what my walkcycle generator does, so its quite possible to do this in AGS already.

[buzinaocara]

Many of us are used to drawing the whole character.

But you can stay drawing the whole character if you want, you can use just one "layer" of the view for all the animated parts of the character. It is an alternative for those who want to make things smaller, in terms of space...
I agree that it's harder to make sprites with different parts of the animation disconnected, but in the other hand, once you have the sprites done, you have lots of possibilities when animating your characters with less sprites, I mean, less things to draw...

And...
Well, I know thats not an easy implamentation to AGS, but I would realy love it...

[Joseph DiPerla]

I have always thought a view should be owned by the character or object to which it applies. I don't think the ability to reuse views acorss multiple characters/objects is of much benefit or even a sound practice.

What do other people think about this? My impression was that a view for something like an explosion might be reused by different objects in different rooms; or would people prefer to have views created within a character/object and not available for global use?

I would leave it for Global Use. It shouldn't really effect anyone making a game if it stays. It might just make more work actually. Besides, you know someone is going to request it in the future. YOu may as well let that stay. Thats my two blue cups.

[RickJ]

Ownership does not necessarily restrict accessability.  Perhaps I should have said that views should be properties of Characters, Objects, Cursors, or other entitoies that can be animated.  It seems to me that a lot of the Get/Set Loop/Frame stuff would be greatly simplified.   For those few situatuions where this is absolutely unacceptable could we not also allow "Game" to own a collection of views that would be just as globally accessable as they are now.   

If you were to do this it wouldn't be necessary to have folders to organize views.  They would already be organized.  However if you wanted to have something like a view manager then you would have one folder for each Character, Object, Cursor, or whatever that are auto-generated by ags.  I suppose there could also be user created folders as well.  Perhaps the auto-generated folder could have a different color or icon to differentiate them from the user created ones.   There could also be a Global or Game folder that could also contain views. 

From the character edit pane you would be able to edit the views that belong to that specific character.  You wouldn't be bothered by all the other irrelevant views.  You would still be able to assign whichever view to what ever purpose as is done now.  If you ewanted to use a global view for the character's walk animation then you would just  assign it like we do now.  It's just that most of the time you would only be interested in the ones owned by the character.   

Objects would work much the same way except that it would be desireable if the views were stored in the room file along with the rest of the object stuff.   This is important for group projects. 

For example, suppose Bob is working on a big group project and volunteers to work on room 42.   Bob jumps right in and before long he has a rich interactive environment with cooly animated gadgets.  He has drawn all of the sprites, imported them into sprite manager, created views, loops, etc and assigned them to objects, and wrote the supporting script code.   So Bob emails the Jim, project coordinator (i.e. the guy who maintains the main game file), and says that he is done with room 42 and attaches a zip of his version of the game.   So now Jim will have to unzip the game to a different folder, ropy the crm file to his game directory, re-import all the sprites, re-create and reassign all the views, and possibly modify Bobs source code to use the right sprite/view/loop/frame numbers.  Now suppose Bob gets 10, 15, 20 zip files at once.  Imagine all the duplicate work (and ensuing errors) in a 100 room game.   

Now ask yourself wouldn't it be much better if all Bob had to do was copy the crm file to the game directoy and compile?  The way it is now there is a negative impact on people who are working on group projects.  If something like I suggest were undertaken sprites and views would be better organized, it would much be easier to implement frame fiddling functions as oo properties and methods, and it would make group projects more productive and more likely to succeed.   

Perhaps in the past AGS's internal structure made implementing this kind of thing a hellish task, however, if the sprite and view stuff are going to be re-done from scratch then maybe what I suggest is worth considering.

Merry Christmass

RickJ

P.S.  I'll be on a plane in a few hours to vist my parents.  I'll be back on Feb 3rd, and will perhaps check in before that if I find internet access somewhere.

[Radiant]

I have always thought a view should be owned by the character or object to which it applies.

What do other people think about this?

I have various uses for several characters using the same view. The most obvious one is getting a group of "identical" NPCs and having them share their appearance. When adding a new character with no graphics available yet I recycle those from an existing character. And there's also some weirder uses I won't go into here