Messages

True!

Thanks a lot, Darth

The Kickstarter is over and I am fully concentrating on the first beta build. 

The final countdown is running, there are 24 hours left to grab the tool at the Kickstarter backer price and to jump in for the beta.


"Skull Plant", ©2013 Kevin Chaloux, normal map and dynamic lighting preview of Sprite DLight

There are various normal map generators and plugins for image editors, but...



1. Original sprite
2. Normal map created by the GIMP plugin (same as PS plugin)
3. Normal map created by a common normal map generator with the original sprite used as height map, followed by shape enhancement
4. Normal map created by Sprite DLight in one click

#3 is the best result you can achieve with current automatic normal map generators combined with clever techniques, although the result is still pretty poor, it's more of a bevel effect, which is randomly concave or convex, particularly at the edges of the shape.

Update:
Stretch goal #3 just has been reached today, so the re-rendering feature is now official!


"Wolf where?" sprite sheet, ©2014 Kevin Chaloux, re-rendered for different environments with the normal map and lighting of Sprite DLight

A short update: Less than 450$ missing for the re-rendering stretch goal.

For this, the diffuse light is reduced to its directional component (the angle can be set), which means that sprite sheets can be re-rendered consistently, based on the normal map.
Ambient colors can be set for the cardinal directions, too.



The re-rendering feature will synergize with the batch processing option of the Pro version.

On your site there's a video of a platformer that takes place in a cave, with torchlights. Whenever the character walks in front of the torches, he does not obstruct the light, and he doesn't appear all black. Quite the opposite: he's fully enlighted, like he's standing behind the torch.

Okay, I get it. This actually has nothing to do with the used normal maps, but rather the z-value of the light source set in the shader.
I think the developers of "Bravery and Greed" did this on purpose and I like the effect, even though it is not perfectly realistic, but as you said...

Thank you, Monsieur OUXX
Painting multiple lightmaps by hand and combining them to a normal map can of course lead to better results than processing a single input sprite, but as you said, if used properly, it is good enough for a great improvement.
And it saves a lot of time.

Regarding the light coming from behind: Sprite DLight's normal maps have the same range like those of Sprite lamp and other tools.
Are you referring to the preview shader? This is a new horizontal orbiting light source of Sprite DLight's lighting preview, including light from behind the sprite:


"Sprite DLight Title Art" ©2014 AlbertoV (DYA Games), normal map and dynamic lighting preview of Sprite DLight

@dbuske: If there will be a free demo, which I am not yet sure about, it will have a watermark on the output maps.

Hey everyone,

I would like to introduce the tool for game developers and artists I am currently running a Kickstarter campaign (already more than 650% funded) for:
Sprite DLight on Kickstarter

The main use of Sprite DLight is the generation of normal maps from 2D sprites in one click, which allows for quick and atmospheric dynamic lighting effects in 2D games:



This way, you could create a game featuring dynamic lighting on pixel art characters and objects, simply by processing the existing game art and using the normal maps in combination with a shader.
This is a preview of a pixel art sprite sheet with dynamic lighting via instant normal maps of Sprite DLight:


"Selen Run Animation" from the game "Timespinner", ©2014 Lunar Ray Games, animated dynamic lighting preview of the sprite sheet in Sprite DLight

I know, real dynamic lighting is not possible (at a reasonable performance) with AGS at this time, however one of the already achieved stretch goals brings amazing possibilities for AGS users:
It is a feature, which allows you to re-render sprites for different environments, based on the 3D information from the normal map.



"Squirrel", ©2010-2014 AlbertoV from DYA Games, normal map generated by Sprite DLight and different lighting applied in the Sprite Lamp shader

One use of this could be day and night versions, achieved by batch processing all sprites in a few seconds with different lighting conditions.

There are 24 hours left to pre-order Sprite DLight at the Kickstarter backer price and to get in on the backer beta (planned to start by the end of December).
The tool is also on Steam Greenlight here!
Any support and feedback is highly appreciated.



"Ghost Pizza", ©2014 AlbertoV from DYA Games, normal map and dynamic lighting preview of Sprite DLight

Cheers,

Dennis

Thanks so much for backing and for the nice feedback.
In addition to the update, and the small preview video, I have also updated the complete middle part of the pitch video.
As I have been busy working on the preview for the male toon, I haven't yet had the time to promote the new customization features enough, but I am working on this
Thanks again for bringing me on the right way with the customization feature.

[Great news: I have updated the project with a custom character maker option.]

Great news: I have updated the project with a custom character maker option.

In addition to premade sprite packs, the toons now come with the skeleton and animation data, usable with the tool "Spine", where you can mix the parts of different toons to create your own.
For more customization, every toon now also has a custom head generator which is also a file for Spine that allows you to create unique faces for the toons by mixing different eyes, ears, noses, hair styles, head shapes and more.
The faces can even be furtherly customized by freely adjusting the skin color, position and scaling of the parts.

An example of a custom head generator of a simple female character:


A preview on the paper doll system to show how a toon gets dressed:

[*Edit:]

I have considered that kind of customization.
Unfortunately, this brings up some problems:
Implementing this with pre-rendered body parts for each animation would result in extremely huge file sizes, unless you are working with pixel art.
The only way I can think of to overcome this would be to provide the information for rotation, scale and color of the body parts as external data like skeleton and animation data for a tool like Spine.
However, this would restrict the usability of the characters to people owning such an animation tool.

Thank you for the great feedback, you are absolutely right. Maybe I can find a way to implement a "create from scratch"-feature (within the next 27 days )

*Edit:
A possible solution: I could provide some kind of interface on my website, where you could compose your toon by choosing from different body parts and select the color and maybe the size of them.
This way, people could design their individual characters and order them through my website. The data would then be sent to me and I could create the customized character and deliver it to the customer when it is finished.
So my question is: Would you back the project if I would add this as a stretch goal?

[InDee Toons]

Dear fellow AGS developers,

As a long-time AGS user and member of the community, I have to tell you about my project currently live on Kickstarter.
The idea behind InDee Toons is to provide a library of characters, game developers can freely choose from and directly integrate them into their games while being able to concentrate on other aspects of development.
I have used some scenes of a (unfinished) game I created in AGS in my pitch video.




The goal of the campaign is a pool of 50 game characters of high quality, in the form of sprite sequences for maximum compatibilty.
Update : The parts of the toons can now be mixed, and there is a custom head generator included for every toon.
The animations certainly cover everything you need for an awesome adventure game (like walking, talking, interaction and more).
We have also wonderful features and stretch goals like customizable lighting, which allows you to adjust the color of the character lighting to your game backgrounds.

For more information and previews, please check out the Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2dee/indee-toons-animated-game-characters



Thank you. You guys rock!

Okay, the object visibility issue seems to be caused by the smooth scrolling & parallax module (setting PxPos>0 leads to always visible objects, unless you script it), and does not have to do anything with 3.3.0 beta.
I apologize.

[the editor]

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention, this only affects the editor.
Setting the visibility through scripts perfectly works, and that is just my workaround (setting the object's visibility to false in room_load, for initially invisible objects).

First of all, I love the changes, especially the proper alpha blending now possible.
But I probably found another bug.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before:
Setting an object's visibility to false does not seem to have any effect.

Thank you very much, JJS, I didn't even know about the settings.
I played around with it, and it's getting better (around 30 FPS now).
This is so wonderful! (and character tinting isn't really that important)

First of all, this is really awesome and gets us all one step closer to cross-platform published AGS games.
Wonderful work, JJS, I just can't describe the moment I had when running one of my games on a tablet for the first time.

Actually I had some heavy performance problems (a maximum of 13 FPS) when testing a 1024x768 game (32 bit).
Even when deactivating room objects, so there are only animated characters, the frames capped at ~17, whereas my PC runs the game at ~140 FPS.
Is this normal, or can I do something to get a better performance?
I am just asking before resizing everything to 640x480 and deactivating all the good looking stuff.

Edit:
Testing devices (both at a very low frame rate) were:
-Asus Eepad Transformer tf201
-Samsung Galaxy Note n7000

So sexy!
Alan, you are the greatest
No flickering with ScaleMoveSpeed and all shadows perfectly displayed @40 FPS.
Draconian edition is back on my screen

Wonderful. But seems like it still does not like me

When trying to start the editor, there is an error: "System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The File or Assembly "AGS.Types, Version*3.2.1.111, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" could not be found..."
Replacing only acwin.exe in the vanilla directory produces this error when trying to start the game from the editor:
"Script link failed: Runtime error: unresolved import 'Region::Tint^4'".
I got this error before when trying to run a compiled acwin of your edition where i just removed the parts of code that produced the Character_ChangeRoom errors.

Thanks a lot for your help, Alan and Nefasto. I already feared I would have to put my dirty hands on the source code

So after a long night of downloading, installing and researching everything (I never worked with C++), there are only 3 errors left when trying to compile the original Draconian Source:
1>.\acchars.cpp(593) : error C2065: 'new_room_loop' : undeclared identifier
1>.\AC.CPP(20303) : error C2660: 'Character_ChangeRoom' : function does not take 5 arguments
1>.\AC.CPP(20313) : error C2660: 'Character_ChangeRoom' : function does not take 5 arguments

I really tried

Thanks