Sprites and views -- how should they work?

[Pumaman]

Hey,

I'm looking into doing a bit of rework to the Sprite Manager and View Manager, and I know that people have expressed various ideas for how these could work better -- so I thought I'd just post this thread to see whether this is still the case.

If you think the current Sprite and View Managers are fine, then great. But if you have any different ideas on how they should be organised, I'd be interested to hear them.

Cheers
CJ

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Great!  I'd really like to see the view list more or less mirror how the sprite manager works, ie the creation of topic views and then sub-views so you can efficiently localize views by character and such.  Also, making both the view list and sprite folder creation dynamic (ie, not based on a static limit) would be a definite plus since I've already run out of folders I can create in Drug Bust and only have about 3/4 of the content in.  The ability to copy and paste individual and group items would also be good and would save on repetition when creating similar blocks (like walk, talk, etc).

So to summarize,

View lists function like the sprite manager folders, in that you can create, delete, copy and open and close nested groups. 

HERO
       -Walk View
       -Talk View
       -Action Views
                   -Punch View
                   -Take View
                   -etc
VILLAIN
        -Walk View
        -Talk View
        -etc

And here is a screen to put this in visual terms and to give you an idea of how I organize things:




Also, thanks!

[monkey0506]

I don't really have any complaints about the Sprite Manager, but it would be nice if the Views pane could be set up so that you could create the loops in any order. Basically my idea would be that instead of statically defining "Loop 0 (down), Loop 1 (left), Loop 2 (right), Loop 3 (up), Loop 4 (down-right), Loop 5 (up-right), Loop 6 (down-left), Loop 7 (up-left), Loop 8+ (no special purpose)" there could be a drop-down menu containing "down, down-left, down-right, left, right, up, up-left, up-right, other" and we could simply assign one of these values to the view. The editor would have to prevent duplicate loops for the same specific purpose (i.e., preventing dual "left" loops) of course but it would make it easier to assign the loops (IMO).

Prog's suggestions sound nice as well.

[EDIT:]

Regarding Bernie's idea, "other (intro), other (main), other (outro)" (for the drop-down menu)?

[Bernie]

Do additional feature suggestions also count? If yes, I'd like to make a few:

-An animation loop could have a main loop and Ã, 2 optional subloops - an intro loop, a main loop (repeating until, say, the character finished talking), and an outro loop. This would be easy to use, would save quite a few loops per view and look pretty cool ingame. It's pefectly possible to do this through scripting, but it would use up 3 loops per animation. If I did this for an 8-dir character, I'd run out of loops and would need an additional view.

-A feature to change the speed of a whole loop

-Copying/Pasting/Flipping whole loops

Thanks!

[Joe]

This could sound a little stupid, but, what about an option to delete views??

I know you can delete everythig into a view but I'd really like an option to delete it completely

Thanks

[strazer]

To keep this thread concise, before making suggestions for additional features, please review the bug & suggestion tracker first. Two of these are already on there:

-An animation loop could have a main loop and  2 optional subloops - an intro loop, a main loop (repeating until, say, the character finished talking), and an outro loop. This would be easy to use, would save quite a few loops per view and look pretty cool ingame. It's pefectly possible to do this through scripting, but it would use up 3 loops per animation. If I did this for an 8-dir character, I'd run out of loops and would need an additional view.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=472

In fact, I think it was you who suggested it in the first place.

This could sound a little stupid, but, what about an option to delete views??

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=160

[Radiant]

Some things that would be nice...

In the sprite preview, a way to halt the animation and step one frame backward and forward.

Also in the sprite preview, a way to 'nudge' the current frame one pixel up/down/left/right, to make it easier to align animations properly. This could be done via SetFrameOffset, by scrolling/wrapping the graphic around (like it does in FontEdit) or by widening the sprite a bit.

In the sprite editor, it would be nice to be able to insert an empty spot in the middle (right click on any frame, select "insert before this one").

Also, it would be nice to be able to overwrite a loop or an entire frame with the content of another loop or frame - sort of like copy/paste.

$.2

[SSH]

To generalise Bernie's suggestion, it would be nice if a Loop could include another Loop:

Loop: Do 4 pushups
Frame 1: Include Loop "Get down on ground"
Frame 2: Include Loop "do 1 pushup", repeat 4 times
Frame 3: Include Loop "Stand up again"

Also, while we're here, vertical flips might be handy for frames, too

And on DaveGilbert's behalf, making a game with lots of voices is a real pain. The whole speech file handling could do with some friendliness! Ideally looking for a filename that exactly matches the speech text...

[Ali]

This may be possible, but I've never noticed such a feature. I would like an easy way of identifying frame number in the View Manager, like a mouse tool-tip. I would also like to be able to drag and drop sprites from view-to-view and within views.

These are minor suggestions, but I'd find them useful.

[Jazz]

Ok, Xmas is getting near, been good all year, so I thought I'd make a wish:

Dear Santa (Pumaman?)

I would like "New Sprite"/"Replace Sprite" dialog that allows you to load a series of files, (say pic1.bmp ... pic25.bmp). Of course all files would have identical options,
i.e. "Transparent=topleft pixel" and "Grab Entire Image".
Source images could be selected using a file browser.

In case of "New Sprite", the loaded pics would occupy consecutive slots in the sprite manager. In case of "Replace Sprites", a selection of sprites would be replaced by the selected pictures. If the number of selected sprites doesn't match the number of selected files an error dialog could be displayed, or a default strategy could be applied.

This would greatly improve the rather cumbersome process of creating animation sequences using (a lot of ) source images, especially if you don't get it right the first time.

Yes, I know about the "multiple sprites in a file" capability, but that completely does not work for me. As far as I'm concerned you can delete that feature.
Also, I quickly browsed the "bugs and suggestion tracker" but could not find anything like this being requested, so excuse me if it's already in that list

Regards, Jazz.

[strazer]

I would like "New Sprite"/"Replace Sprite" dialog that allows you to load a series of files, (say pic1.bmp ... pic25.bmp).

Already on the tracker: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=328
Please add your comments there.

[SSH]

Er, Quick Import Multiple Sprites, Jazz. And as for my thing in the tracker, I think that was simply requesting that if you imported with Quick Import Multiple Sprites then AGS automatically extracted the numbers from the filenames and sorted them before import.

[RowdyAdventurer]

1) loading sprite from a file(or multiple files) rather than the sprite manager. have it imported then automatically into sprite manager.

2. vertical/horizontal flipping so that they can walk sideways and upside down flipping so they can walk on ceilings. saves us the trouble of getting more sprites imported.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Expanding on my previous post:  I don't know how workable this is, but a check box that would make the view list automatically create and fill views based on the layout you have in the sprite manager (even down to labelling them based on the sprite manager folder names.  Obviously not everyone keeps detailed folder selections and such so it would have to be optional, but for those of us who do it would really streamline the process.

[Scummbuddy]

Like a "New View Wizard" where we can name the top tier and then one could select any of the check boxes below that could have some corresponding text boxes filled in, and some blank. Obviously the ones already filled in could be walk, talk, pick up; and then the blank ones would be user generated. I suppose people would want to be able to rename the already filled in ones, if they would want to rearrange the second tiers.

[joelphilippage]

I think it would be handy to have a edit sprite option so you would not have to export the sprite, edit it then import it again. sort of like game maker. also I dont know if this is a bug or not but i cant clicking on the preview view button does nothing.

[SSH]

If not a built-in editor, there must be some OLE way to link to external apps to edit sprites...

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I don't suppose we can name views in the more friendly way we can now name oObjects, gGUIS and txtGuiTextboxes? It would be a fine thing, instead of having to deal with those capitalised letters all the time, not that pretty. Of course this is related to "objectising" Views, which might or might not be feasible and might or might not even be something you want at the time...

...anyway, if they *were* "objectised", wouldn't it open the door to more powerful possibilities like running an animation FROM a given frame instead of from the beginning (already in tracker, I believe)? And similarly TO a given frame instead of running the whole thing.

[Alynn]

Auto numbering based on the highest number in the folder the sprite is being imported into.

For instance, all my gui sprites are numbered from 1000-1999 I have all my gui sprites in their own folder. Currently any sprites imported is given the lowest number available. With this change it will look at the current folder and auto number the sprite the next highest number available in the folder. So if the largest sprite imported is 1324, the next sprite to be imported into that folder is 1325, or allow for giving the sprite a number at import time. In other words, 2 radio buttons, one for auto numbering (the default, or how it works now) or another radio button and a text box so you can tell the editor what sprite number the imported sprite should be.

The most difficult part of this type of implimentation, as far as I can see, it how to make sure that sprite number isn't already in use, which could be checked using the already existing code that checks if the sprite already exists when you manually change sprite numbers.

[rich]

A feature that I would absolutely adore is the ability to import animated GIFs as sprites. Right now, it will accept an animated GIF but only make the first frame into a sprite. With the new feature, an animated GIF would be imported as a series of sprites.