Castle Paradox

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Allright then, listen up.

Fairly soon I'm going to uploading a LARGE number of sprite downloads of walkabouts, attacks, maps, and the like. The big question isn't what to upload... ...but whether to place them as 4bit color indexed sprite sheets for easy import, or have each image as an individual file.



I suppose what I'm eventually aiming at is a standard format for importing and exporting walkabouts and sprites to and fro the OHRRPGCE. Even if it's a separate program, like the one Ysoft built some time ago. So any ideas? A premade sheet to import files from for a "standardized" layout of sprites? Opinions and comments as always are welcome.

[Bob the Hamster]

The format you posted there looks nice.

We could look into implementing import/export in that style.

I guess the thing that makes me hesitate from throwing together a sprite-sheet import/export right now is that I worry about how what will happen to that sprite sheet format if/when we ever add additional frames in the future.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Perhaps the import sprite feature should be able to preview an entire bmp, then have the user select a space from it to import by showing a 20x20 box for walkabouts, 50 x 50 for enemies, attack, etc? In this way you wouldn't have to worry about how the sheet is set up, as long as you can just grab from a particular indexed sheet. Exporting it on the other hand would be a totally different affair. I liked the way Ysoft's program would place sprites on a sheet, EXCEPT for the lack of a dividing line on the sheets to indicate different animation frames.

[djfenix]

Hmm, that sounds a lot like importing tiles from backdrops. Doing something like that would make things really, of course with the 4bit limitations included.

[Newbie_Power]

I think a Bugzilla entry asking for the "cut from image" feature said they would rather import sprite sheets because the cut from image was "hacky" (though I think it would actually make more sense for cutting sprites from images than importing tilesets).
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[Bob the Hamster]

Although I see the appeal of a sprite cutting tool, I resist the idea because I hate the though of having to import sprites for four different heros from weel defined sprite sheet formats using it.

Instead of doing the import feature four times, I must:

* Import,
* Cut the walk 1 frame
* Cut the walk 2 frame
* Cut the attack 1 frame
* Cut the attack 2 frame
* Cut the casting frame
* Cut the hurt frame
* Cut the weak frame
* Cut the dead frame frame
* Repeat all of the above three more times.

Something that should be one-step becomes nine-step

How about this for a compromise?

We could implement a generic cutter that was smart enough to guess the right default positions for a well-formatted image.

So if the image you import is the right shape to be a full sprite sheet, it will default the cutting position to each frame in turn-- so the above import scenario I described would require you to hit ENTER 8 times, but at least you would not have to use the arrows (or mouse) to pick/align each of eight frames if you didn't want to.

[djfenix]

I see your point.

Most other sprite sheets would typically just have all the images lined up without division. So for a hero sprite sheet, one would just make a 256x40 pixel image, and have width 1-32 be standing, 33-64 be walking, 65-96 be attack A, etc, and so forth.

Something as such, imo, would be pretty easy to work with

[Ysoft_Entertainment]

Why not do it like I did with ohrgfx.
example,
if the image is 160x20 then it would go to walkabout
if its 50x50 it would go to medium sized enemy.
etc.

If it doesn't have any of the sizes, then launch a cutter.

This method seems better because even if we add more sprites, then we only have to change few lines of code.
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Try my OHR exporter/importer.
OHRGFX
Striving to become better pixel artist then Fenrir Lunaris. Unfortunately the laziness gets in the way of my goals.

[Moogle1]

Sprite sizes aren't guaranteed to stay what they currently are.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[jabbercat]

Then update the code when you need to. It wouldn't be hard.
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Moogle no longer owes prizes.

[Moogle1]

If your walkabouts are the same size as your hero sprites, you have a problem.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Bob the Hamster]

[Ysoft_Entertainment]