Stopping image dancing?

[Jock]

I'm having a problem in my attempts to make games; my images seem to 'dance'.
They are all the same size however when they animate they jump up and down and gain weird borders and lose them and all sorts.
How do you best copy sprites into the program so that all borders and things are ignored and only the sprite itself is taken so that it will line up?

[Ishmael]

If the images are all the same size, are the sprites in the same position within the image?

As for the borders, sounds like anti-aliasing to me. Check that you don't have any aftifacts remaining around the edges of the sprites that are not exactly the same colour as the background.

[Khris]

You can crop the sprites in AGS, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll line up afterwards.
Ideally you draw boxes of the same size in the graphics program and use those to align the sprites. Even better, use an animation program that supports onion skinning, e.g. GraphicsGale.

If they have weird borders, you need to make sure you're using only one background/transparency color. Don't draw sprites using alpha channels if you're not building a 32bit-game. I.e., disable anti-aliasing when drawing the sprites' outlines.

With object sprites, the pivot is at the lower-right corner. With characters it's at the bottom center.
So if say a character spreads his arms, you don't have to widen all their sprites as long as the graphic is centered.

[Tyr]

Just how do you use that grid import thingy anyway? I never figured that out- best I got was a area where I had to draw a square on my image then press it where different sprites existed.

[Ishmael]

With grid import you can import a grid of sprites from one file -- That is, when they're lined up the the same bottomline and are even distance away from each other in the image, you just need to set the frame size, and use grid import to grab all the sprites at one go. It's really about placing your sprites in the image to get them in right.

[Tyr]

With grid import you can import a grid of sprites from one file -- That is, when they're lined up the the same bottomline and are even distance away from each other in the image, you just need to set the frame size, and use grid import to grab all the sprites at one go. It's really about placing your sprites in the image to get them in right.

So the only way is with drawing the shape?
That renders it all a bit pointless...and I'd imagine would lead to this problem (certainly when I've tried that I end up with horrid dancing sprites).

[Khris]

Could you show us a sprite sheet you've used?

[Ishmael]

So the only way is with drawing the shape?
That renders it all a bit pointless...and I'd imagine would lead to this problem (certainly when I've tried that I end up with horrid dancing sprites).

I don't see what it renders pointless. It makes the importing process a lot faster if you're doing your sprites in a sprite sheet.

[Tyr]

(sorry for hijacking Jock!)

I used:
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8884/sittingss.png
Is there a automated way to take all these or must you do the long drawing squares yet again then lining them up exactly right thing that I have had to do (With horrid effects)

[Tyr]

Just to bump up as I've got computer access back but haven't figured it out.