Sprite Editor

[DrDerekDoctors]

So I had a look at the wiki and other than the gimp there doesn't seem to be anything particularly geared towards sprite and tileset editing so I was wondering whether there was much call for such a tool other than from myself? I've a Pandora on order and assuming that SDL is easy to get into (Allegro was a cakewalk) and there's some nice libs for saving stuff out as BMPs/GIFs/PNGs would this be something people were interested in?

There's no chance I'll be able to write it as a proper utility which runs in Linux as an application so it'll be a full-screen jobby, but I was thinking it would have a reasonable set of features and really be designed for spriting on the go, i.e. simple intuitive controls (almost game-like rather than loads of menus), animaton support (with preview window), arbitrary size/numbers of frames, palettes, multiple layers. Kinda' like GraphicsGale, really, only way shonkier looking.

So, is it worth doing something like this? I can't see it being a terribly big project, tbh.

Graham

 

[lulzfish]

Yeah, SDL is extremely simple to use if you have any C++ experience.
You could get started on it. I personally would use Qt to handle mouse input and that sort of thing, but you can do all that with only SDL. You'll have to re-invent a couple of wheels along the way.

 

[Sphinxter]

What is it the gimp is lacking?

 

[Ravnos]

What is it the gimp is lacking?

Simplicity. It's a good tool, but it seems like overkill for sprite art.

I'd really like to see Pixen ported to other operating systems (specifically Linux), but it doesn't appear to be maintained or updated any more. Worth looking into for Mac users, though. Grafx2 looks like a solid second choice for people not using a Mac, it seems to run on just about anything but I haven't really played with it. And there's JDraw, which seems to be primarily aimed at drawing icons, but it should be suitable for sprite art, as well. And of course, stuff like MS Paint, mtPaint and others offer a stripped-down interface that is friendly to a sprite artist. If you want to write a new tool to add to this list, go for it. There's definitely room for another tool if it improves on what's out there now.

 

[samuraicrow]

For a ready-made tile engine with windowing capabilities in SDL, you might look into http://www.libagar.org/ and its raster graphics (RG) library.

 

[lulzfish]

I don't think GIMP has animated preview, does it?
That alone sounds valuable.

 

[Archaemic]

What is it the gimp is lacking?

Simplicity. It's a good tool, but it seems like overkill for sprite art.

I'd really like to see Pixen ported to other operating systems (specifically Linux"], but it doesn't appear to be maintained or updated any more. Worth looking into for Mac users, though. Grafx2 looks like a solid second choice for people not using a Mac, it seems to run on just about anything but I haven't really played with it. And there's JDraw, which seems to be primarily aimed at drawing icons, but it should be suitable for sprite art, as well. And of course, stuff like MS Paint, mtPaint and others offer a stripped-down interface that is friendly to a sprite artist. If you want to write a new tool to add to this list, go for it. There's definitely room for another tool if it improves on what's out there now.[/quote]Sorry to burst your bubble, but Pixen is a buggy, broken mess. I've used it. I no longer use it. It's just that bad. It's got a nice feature set, but it's just done so wrong, I can't use it anymore.

Writing a new one in Qt might be an interesting experience, but I don't really have the time. I have my hands full between a job and two games right now (not Pandora games, but they might be port-able to the Pandora. I know I plan to port one of them (it uses next to no resources at the moment, so that's nice), and the other one might work pretty well too). Other people are welcome to it, though.

 

[Sphinxter]

What is it the gimp is lacking?

Simplicity. It's a good tool, but it seems like overkill for sprite art.

I'd really like to see Pixen ported to other operating systems (specifically Linux), but it doesn't appear to be maintained or updated any more. Worth looking into for Mac users, though. Grafx2 looks like a solid second choice for people not using a Mac, it seems to run on just about anything but I haven't really played with it. And there's JDraw, which seems to be primarily aimed at drawing icons, but it should be suitable for sprite art, as well. And of course, stuff like MS Paint, mtPaint and others offer a stripped-down interface that is friendly to a sprite artist. If you want to write a new tool to add to this list, go for it. There's definitely room for another tool if it improves on what's out there now.

Maybe you should get to know gimp better, it's pretty good even for just picking pixels.

 

[LineOf7s]

ZOMG. It's DrDerekDoctors!!!11 *swooon* Arsecast! Wizball! Scrolling tile-map Blitz code on BlitzCoder! Yay!

But enough of that.

To answer your question, yes, that would be sweet. If it supports animation, then onion-skinning would be an excellent (mandatory?) addition too. It still amazes me how relatively uncommon onion-skinning is in paint packages, considering how gobsmackingly useful it was in Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker back on the C64.

GIMP is nice, but it's a serious sledgehammer-to-open-a-walnut situation for "spriting on the go", surely.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Tile Studio is pretty good, and it's free too!

 

[surt]

Worth doing.

I've planned on doing the same but like most my plans nothing is likely to come of it.

I'd like to see something heavily tailored to the P's controls, with minimal gui for maximal work area.

Otherwise, there's always GrafX2 which should be a straight build or Allegro Sprite Editor given Allegro is ported.

Kinda' like GraphicsGale, really, only way shonkier looking.
Sweet! Lack of shonkiness has always been one of my major gripes with GGale.

 

[DrDerekDoctors]

addition too. It still amazes me how relatively uncommon onion-skinning is in paint packages, considering how gobsmackingly useful it was in Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker back on the C64.

GIMP is nice, but it's a serious sledgehammer-to-open-a-walnut situation for "spriting on the go", surely.

Haha! Blimey, that edge update scroller is going back some time... (checks...) 6 years! Blimey.

Onion skinning is perfectly do-able, and you can just choose a number of frames to have in the background (up to a sensible maximum so it doesn't end up looking like an 80's pop-video using image-feedback).

Seeing as Allegro has been ported to the Pandora I shall just write it in that, I reckon. That seems a sensible option.

GraxF2 looks pretty good, and I shall probably go with a similar layout although I shall probably allow the user to choose which side the preview/animation window is on rather than it being just on the left. Dunno' about having special effects and filters and text and that, that's definitely straying into overkill, but point, line, shapes and floodfill would be a bare minimum. And probably UNDO/REDO although that'll require some careful memory balancing if the user is editing a really big image.

I'm thinking it'll be purely for palettised images, although I'll try to avoid palette editing during general use (i.e. you just choose a colour and only have to worry about sorting your palette out once it gets a bit full). Frankly if you're doing pixelwork and you're using more than 256 colours, you're basically evil.

I'll do some mockups in a little while to get an idea of the layout.

 

[WhiteFalcon]

As WarmFluffy says, Tile Studio is definitely worth a look.

 

[Sphinxter]

addition too. It still amazes me how relatively uncommon onion-skinning is in paint packages, considering how gobsmackingly useful it was in Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker back on the C64.

GIMP is nice, but it's a serious sledgehammer-to-open-a-walnut situation for "spriting on the go", surely.

In gimp onion skinning is done with, 'layers', and it's pretty fabulous. Done quite a few sprites with it, still can't beat it but there is a 2d animation SVG editor called, 'Pencil', may be more what you're looking for.

 

[DrDerekDoctors]

Tile studio looks alright, is someone porting it to the Pandora? Only it looks like a distinctly Windows program.

 

[DrDerekDoctors]

ZOMG. It's DrDerekDoctors!!!11 *swooon* Arsecast! Wizball! Scrolling tile-map Blitz code on BlitzCoder! Yay!

But enough of that.

To answer your question, yes, that would be sweet. If it supports animation, then onion-skinning would be an excellent (mandatory?"] addition too. It still amazes me how relatively uncommon onion-skinning is in paint packages, considering how gobsmackingly useful it was in Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker back on the C64.

GIMP is nice, but it's a serious sledgehammer-to-open-a-walnut situation for "spriting on the go", surely.

In gimp onion skinning is done with, 'layers', and it's pretty fabulous. Done quite a few sprites with it, still can't beat it but there is a 2d animation SVG editor called, 'Pencil', may be more what you're looking for.[/quote]Would Onion-skinning in that show the previous frames of the animation for reference, though?

 

[Sphinxter]

ZOMG. It's DrDerekDoctors!!!11 *swooon* Arsecast! Wizball! Scrolling tile-map Blitz code on BlitzCoder! Yay!

But enough of that.

To answer your question, yes, that would be sweet. If it supports animation, then onion-skinning would be an excellent (mandatory?"] addition too. It still amazes me how relatively uncommon onion-skinning is in paint packages, considering how gobsmackingly useful it was in Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker back on the C64.

GIMP is nice, but it's a serious sledgehammer-to-open-a-walnut situation for "spriting on the go", surely.

In gimp onion skinning is done with, 'layers', and it's pretty fabulous. Done quite a few sprites with it, still can't beat it but there is a 2d animation SVG editor called, 'Pencil', may be more what you're looking for.[/quote]Would Onion-skinning in that show the previous frames of the animation for reference, though?

You can set the transparency level of any layer from 0-100%.

 

[fusion_power]

If you want to test your tiles into an Game, environment, you can use the "scrolling Game Development Kit": http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/
Is for PC and AFAIk win only but I had much fun with it because you can easily play with many Parallax-Layers and such stuff and for me, it was much more easy to handle than other programs. But you better pixel your Tiles with an external Program and use the SGDK for composing and adding game-elements.
There is also a new version of this programm: http://sgdk2.sourceforge.net/ (Transparency and much more gimmics but harder to use)

I really would like to see something like this onto the Pandora, a simple Pixel-Per Pixel Paint program would be also great, I don't need the huge and complicated GIMP. Something like the good old MS Paint would do the Job for me.

 

[samuraicrow]

With some proper documentation, AgarPaint (which comes with the source distribution of Agar) could be a good alternative. The Agar RG library has tile map support in it as well. Unlike most of the others mentioned here, it's written in FreeBSD and Linux already so it would be an easy port. The only catch is that you wouldn't be able to use the OpenGL mode of it but if the SDL implementation is properly optimized on the Pandora, we won't miss it.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

All my sprite resources are .ini files + .png files. The .ini file is just an xml file that gives details about the .png, as in number of frames, frame size, animation speed, initial z depth (and xy positions), etc. I guess in some respects it isn't as nice as having a GUI menu to do it, but conversely sometimes it is really handy to be able to just open a text file and edit a single line to change something, rather than having to load up a program, go to some option in there, edit it, save it, etc.

The fact the .ini file specifies default xyz positions also means I have a animation preview tool that lets the artist position their sprites on screen and see them in action - there's a refresh button for when the artist modifies any files. It's all pretty basic stuff but it seems to work well (for the task it was designed for).

The biggest thing I like about it is that the artist can go away and add graphics, animate them, add frames, change animation speeds, etc. without any code changes. Also having it xml based is quite useful as it's easy enough to extend the format (for example initially there was no support for horizontally/vertically flipping sprites, but that was added later, which is handy for having animations of characters walking left and right).

Steve