Adventure Game Studio

Creative Production => Critics' Lounge => Topic started by: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 25/11/2015 12:11:34

Title: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 25/11/2015 12:11:34
Hello, the game I'm working on is 32-bits but I'd like to simulate palette cycling for an animation.

Question 1: what software? I thought that'd be an easy one and launched GrafX2. However I can't seem to make the palette cycling work properly, and can't find any tutorial. However I'm almost certain that there's something fishy going on (a bug on the most recent Windows?)
I'm reluctant to use something that's not free or something that has a steep learning curve (I also have an efficiency constraint here). I could use Deluxe Paint in DosBox but I'm fairly certain there has to be a better way. I'm very open. If you're telling me that I can use Photoshop or After Effects with whatever filter, I'm OK with that.


Question 2: export process. Ideally, I'd like to have several cycles running simultaneously. If it turns out to be too complicated, I'll just make the longer cycles multiples of the shortest cycle, to get a perfect loop. Or I'll just export the image in several pieces, with one cycle in each piece. It doesn't matter, it'll all be AGS Loops in the end. But my issue is: I need to export the whole thing into separate frames and I wish to avoid as many bad last-minute surprises as possible.

By the way if you simply know a program that records the screen and exports it as a lossless video, then I'm in. This way all I have to do is to "capture" my Deluxe Paint window.


Just to make things clear: there will be no scripting involved. The plan is only to generate a regular animation, and then import it into AGS.
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: Fred Five on Wed 25/11/2015 12:31:46
VLC Screen Capture (https://pctonic.net/use-vlc-as-a-screen-recording-tool)

Fraps (http://www.fraps.com/)

Don't know if either of the above has the ability to export actual frames, but this can be done in After Effects.

Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 25/11/2015 13:05:25
Cool, thanks!

In the meantime I've finally understood how the palette cycling in GrafX2 works (that is a pile of super counter-intuituve interface choices, but eh, that won't be changed in 2015)
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: selmiak on Wed 25/11/2015 15:23:48
GFX2 is open source, you could always code a sequence-exporter function yourself...
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 25/11/2015 17:09:00
Quote from: selmiak on Wed 25/11/2015 15:23:48
GFX2 is open source, you could always code a sequence-exporter function yourself...
Yeah, RIGHT...

I think I'm gonna go brute force and whip up a very small program (based on some SDL tutorial, it shouldn't be too hard) that will just open my drawing, do the palette cycling, then export the frames one by one.
...Because so far, I've never ever managed to capture a video game animation using a capture tool (the game's fps never match the capture frequency).

EDIT: actually, I could do it with AGS ;-)
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: selmiak on Wed 25/11/2015 18:00:27
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 25/11/2015 17:09:00
EDIT: actually, I could do it with AGS ;-)

8-0
what about skipping the exporting and reimporting then and just colorcycle that inside AGS?!?!?!
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: Snarky on Wed 25/11/2015 18:23:55
Presumably because the whole game isn't going to be 8-bit. :P
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: selmiak on Wed 25/11/2015 19:24:59
good point :P :-D
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 27/11/2015 20:08:07
Selmiak, of all the people, how do you NOT know the color depth of "the game I'm working on"? ;-D ;-D ;-D ;-D ;-D ;-D ;-D := := := :=
Title: Re: How would you CREATE and then EXPORT palette cycling?
Post by: selmiak on Sat 28/11/2015 00:31:50
yeah, let's just convert everything to 8bit to make colorcycling possible for one room. Sounds about reasonable (laugh)