Sprite Sheet Studio Preparing for Alpha Release

Alright it's been a long since I have posted on what's going on with my project. The truth behind why I haven't updated is that I have been wanting to get some sort of software that would allow me to record what I was doing so I could shot SSS in action but I don't have a Mic anyways so I will just go about it textualy

So here is a screen cap...



So what I've done...

-Windows now start in good positions not piled on top of each other

-Layer functionality added, you can use layers like in photoshop. So you can change the opacity and order etc. The idea behind this is you can do things like Design clothes to fit over a person etc. Easily the one feature that makes this better than characters mucker

-Hue, Saturation and Brightness Shifting: The ability to to refine a colour selection (light blue for instance) and shift it's hsl to make it something else (Dark Red) or Black or Green etc... Great if you wanna make npc's or want to simply take an existing sprite and re-Colour all or just parts of it. Say you make a red hat with a blue feather you can select out the red to make it green hat with a blue feather.

-Animate: Lets you take the sprite sheet and create it's animations, including the speed and what happens when it ends (go to a different animation, loop, freeze etc). This info can then be spit out to xml for use by a programmer

-Window locking. Windows now lock in place... Trav wanted this feature so I added it.

-Saving, Loading: Created a file format with the extension .sss, These files contain the layer and animation information. With them you can reload in development projects.

Finally an alpha candidate should be ready soon. If your interested let me know and I will make you a guinea pig.

Sprite Shop Tool Bar 95% Done.

Woot Woot

I'll make this quick as I have got to hit the hay.

The new screen shot:


And now the explanation.

-You can now flip areas both horizontally and vertically
-You can apply symmetry from left to right, up to down.
-You can now select colours using the colour sampler. Or simply press ctrl or alt. to grab the current color your mouse pointer is over.
-You can rotate images 90* at a time clockwise.
-You can bump images up down left and right. When pixels reach the edge of the screen they will wrap around.
-I got most of my problems figured out with what was happening with the selector. You can now select a region without problems. As well when you go to apply some sort of effect that affects an entire region it now only affects the selected region. If no region is selected then it is applied to the entire picture. An example of this is the burgandy box that has had many effects used on it.

This makes it so that all but 2.5 tools are now finished. What I have left to do is:
-Erase... this may be removed. If you paint/draw with a transparent color why do you need to erase?
-Polygon selector: honestly this is going to be a nightmare to implement and at this time I am planning for it to not be released with the Beta.
-Selector: While it is possible to select a region of the picture you can not move or stretch it. The next plan is to make it possible to do so, this is what I will not be working on tomorrow as I am getting my computer parts tomorrow.

I will finish up the tools and then most likely get started on the layering.

Sprite Shop over half done

Alright been awhile since I posted work.

My development has been infringed upon by several things. I've been hanging with friends a lot lately. Not that thats bad but it leaves me with less time to work. Plus I ordered new parts to build a computer and I have been looking at how to build it and when the parts would get to London. They got to London but were unable to be delivered before the weekend so I have to wait until Monday for that.

Which has given me time I was going to devote to fawning over my new piece of equipment to spending time with Rose and development time on sprite shop.

Here is an update in what has happened since last post.



As you can see I actually got into the whole "Drawing" thing that a program like this would be expected to do.

-I drew the "Woot" with the regular pencil tool.
-The outline was done with the outline tool. Click a colour and then the program will take the edge of that color and change it.
-The circle with the rectangle and lines in it were done with the Circle, Rectangle, And Square tool.
-I filled the rectangle with the paint tool.
-The burn tool changed the colour of that one random pixel in the middle of the white space.
- Travis and I decided that with the way the burn tool was functioning dodge would be redundant so I got rid of it.
-The dodge space has been taken by colour replace: to use simply click the drawing area and all pixels with the colour you clicked on will be replaced with the colour you clicked with. I used the colour gradient and colour replace to re-colour the dudes hair from brown to purple.
-As you can also see zoom is working as we are veiwing the picture at 2 times normal size. You can either use the side buttons to zoom in and out or simply scroll the middle mouse button.

I'm currently working on being able to select an area of the picture and move it etc. I hope to have it done tomorrow or Monday. It is being a little irritating so I will most likely intersperse it's development with the remaining features. After this is done I will begin working on layers.

Anyways as always let me know what you guys think I appreciate the comments and or praise.

Peeps were hate'n on it before I left my comment

When you surf the net as much as me this entertains you

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Tool Bar

Alright so I have finally finished the color portion of the program (or at least I am pleased enough with it that I will leave it for now). I am now going to move on to filling out the tool bar's functionality. I think I will begin with zoom as that could affect how the program actually functions. After that it will be simply be going one by one making the tools work.

Here is a screen shot of what I have done so far now.



So what I have added....

You can now drag and drop colours. Simply click on one and drag it to another location. Also you can grab colours from the chooser pallet below and then drag them into the working pallet.

You can generate a colour gradient between two colours. Right click the first colour and then drag your mouse to the other colour once you release it will generate a gradient between the two colours.

You can select colours now. A rectangular box will appear around the colours you select for the left and right mouse buttons.

The tools in order going top to bottom left to right...


-Pencil
-Line
-Outline (takes the colour you have selected and places it around your image)
-Fill
-Ellipse
-Rectangle
-Burn (takes the colour you have selected and makes the colour you are clicking more similar to it)
-Dodge (opposite of burn)
-Flip Horizontal
-Flip Verticle
-Lasso Select
-Rectangle Select
-Colour Select
-Erase
-Zoom In
-Zoom Out
-Rotate (90 degrees at a time)
-The remaining arrows all bump the image one pixel in their direction (wrapping around if necessary)


So that's it. If you are Travis or anyone who has any ideas on other features I could add feel free to comment.

More Active and Appropriate Blogging

This blog was created so I could muse about being a mastermind (aka talk about crap I do in a work sort of way). I have not really been doing that very much lately. So I shall update people on some actual work I have been doing.

Like most people I am prone to start a project strong and then get 50-75% of the way there and just never tie up the loose ends. So with Fantropics I promised myself I would not do that and I would get it done. Well low and behold my laptop bit the big one and it took Fantropics with it (I can get it back I just need a new fan).

Not to be one to be project-less I began work on a program I told Travis I would make. There really isn't a good tool if you want to design sprites. Or at least one that is commercially available. So I got to talking with Travis about what he would like in a Sprite designing program. We came up with a small features list here...

Bump
Flip
Copy
Line
Square
Elipse
Outline
Colour overlay (burn dodge mulitple colours)
Hotkey Eyedropper
Polygonal (multipoint) selector
Layers

it's a partial list as there may be stuff that we didn't write down.

So I've been plowing away and here is what I have.



As you can see you currently have the ability to load in an image.

Upon loading the image a pallet will be generated for it and displayed in your colors.

You can use the middle mouse button in the colour window to select any colour on the screen and a large variation of colours will be generated for it.

You can then edit the cell size so that your mouse will lock to the appropriate grid size.

Once the appropriate cell size is entered you can pick a portion of the image and it will be sent to the drawing window.

Thats about it. I am working on the pallet right now because if I do it properly than it will be quite powerful. Eventually I plan to get on to the actual "drawing" but the precursors must be done first.

An Interview With Dali

This was sent to me yesterday by a friend and it totally makes me laugh