Duck and Cover

I have contacted Domin (maker of the Spray sprite editor). Is anyone interested in a new version of the editor? If so, what would you like to see in it?

Seeing as you are a fellow Pole, you may have better luck contacting him. I would like to see an easier way to import multiple frames for animated sprites. Also would like a way to modify the names of frames. I have accidentally overwritten some original sprites because I forgot to change the file name and reopen the sprite. There were some discrepancies with directions that need to be fixed. Also the ability to have different palettes for different frames.

You can't have different palettes for different frames. It's the way the sprites are made...

Well how do you combine the palettes from a frame that has a red light and another frame of the same light but in green? In photoshop I can export the color table for use as a palette but I want to add colors that are not being used in one particular frame.

Make a temporary picture with all the frames you need, make it paletized. Save said palette, and then apply the palette on every frame picture.

how about a feature that would allow one to move the bounding box around the graphic like Red has on his editor. That feature is INCREDIBLY useful.

If he keeps the manual change that's fine, cause I'm used to the traditional method and wouldn't want it to be discarded just yet.

Also a way to import animated sprites(for characters) and see the ones of the actors without it crashing, would be nice.

Add support for people who don't have PHOTOSHOP.

This is the only reason why I haven't joined the FoT modding community really!

Also - My paint program (PSP5) wont handle alpha channels too well either.


My solutions/feature requests:
Ability to use .gif files (since FoT sprites are 256 anyway) instead of .png if you prefer.

(in the case of using .gif files)
Import a B&W .gif file to use as the alpha channel, dark values being opaque and light values being translucent/transparent.

Use the palette of a specific .gif file as the palette of your .spr file (ie, choose a file and it uses the palette in that file).

I know .gif files are abit... antiquated, but they're probably the simplest format out there, and they're damn small too. It'd probably be easy to implement, and almost everyone would be able to use them. The only way you oculd probably get any simpler is to use .bmp and those are huge.

Ability to use .gif files (since FoT sprites are 256 anyway) instead of .png if you prefer.

a) GIF use 256 colours, or 255 + transparancy. You loose 1 colour (Oh NO not really a problem but still an extra limitation)
b) GIF doesn't support Alpha trasnparancy
c) GIF requires a license for people to use in their programs or it becomes illegal in at least 4 countries (Canada, US, Germany and Japan). Although most people ignore that as Unisys'll probably never complain.
d) Sprites use 4 layers, each with it's own 256 colour palette - but it shared between ALL rotations AND frames. It's not really a problem for GIFs, but using GIFs just makes it unwieldy.

Import a B&W .gif file to use as the alpha channel, dark values being opaque and light values being translucent/transparent.

Doable but why bother? Use a TGA/PNG/RAW/ZAR format and it supports all that natively without the limitations above. You don't know it but you'lre actually adding a useless step to the process.

As for PSP, it supports both layers and Alpha transparancy, however it doesn't support Alpha paletized pictures (nor does Photoshop, I only found GIMP able to use this mode). It apparently also supports RAW format, but I never looked into that.

Also important is Act and I don't know if PSP supports it. I have ver 5 now, so i'll check. Also what people might not know, is that MF themselves probably used Alpha since they used Photoshop. Could you do what was said with PNG files? It's the format that replaced GIF after all..

Flamescreen wrote:Also what people might not know, is that MF themselves probably used Alpha since they used Photoshop.

Yes they used Alpha, but no they didn't use photoshop. Well, maybe they did for the GUI stuff, but all the renders were made in 3ds MAX...

Could you do what was said with PNG files? It's the format that replaced GIF after all..

Well see, the FO:T editor comes with it's own PNG->ZAR converter (and it supports all kinds of PNG, paletted or not, though I don't think the PNG format supports both paletted AND alpha, however you can decrese the depth to 256 colours in your editor and then save it as PNG. Be carful doing that however as often if you convert to paletted formar (256 colours), the problem auto-fucking-annoyingly changes to a GIF format (ie: 255 colours + transparancy) so you lose the alpha. Both PSP and Photoshop seem to do this)

The onyl program that seemed to handle all formats properly was GIMP. I didnt' try Corel Photopaint however.

I don't have a problem with it, as I have Photoshop 5 also. What I meant earlier was that they used Photoshop .Png images to import the renders into their versions os Sprite/tile editors. However, in a recent discussion with Senor Deluxe and when I asked him to make a tutorial, he said there was no problem with making stuff like tiles only with the use of Photoshop(ver 6 in his case).

Photoshop has nothing to do with the PNG standard... All it can do is save in the proper format. And MF/14dE never needed to go thorugh Photoshop.

Oh wait, you meant OTHER people diting tiles. oops. You can sue whatever you want as long as it saves in PNG. Heck, you dont event need PNG format if you don't mind the extra step of converting from whatever original format they were into PNG..

I talked with Ausir last night on IRC and he said that Domin may try an update but maybe much later or never. He hadn't received enough interest to keep him going on the project.

That's ............ to say at least. There are many things I want to do and am restricted by the abscence of a proper tool. You can never know how many people will use a tool unless you releash it. *Curses MF for not releasing the Sprite Editor*

Seeing how little people use my Tile editor, I know where he's coming from. Since basically the lack of interest is what made my viewer soon 3 years in the making... There's simply not enough interest to actually dedicate yourself to projets, hence I work on it when I can AND want where it would probably have a bigger priority if there was more interest.

Keep in mind that the image formats are quite complicated and you can't just add a new character into the game easyly, even with the proper tools available.

That's right, but you can make modifications to existing ones and add some critters, which aren't that complicated.