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SCI Programming => SCI Development Tools => Topic started by: Collector on March 28, 2016, 10:47:23 PM

Title: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on March 28, 2016, 10:47:23 PM

Threads have been ending up in the wrong forums lately, so I am creating a new thread for the SEQTool in the SCI Tools forum.

Here is the latest build. It is nearing completion. I want to add file overwrite warnings when extracting or exporting images from an existing SEQ. I have an preliminary Wiki page for it for those that want to see more details on its features and how to use it.

http://sciwiki.sierrahelp.com/index.php?title=SEQTool

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 04, 2016, 06:05:13 PM

Since I got no input I am considering it done. Anyone who wants it can get it from the Wiki. At least let me know if there are any issues.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: MusicallyInspired on April 04, 2016, 07:06:55 PM

I haven't used it because I haven't had any need to yet. It's a fantastic tool to supply yet another SCI feature so it's a must that it needs to exist, but putting together a movie file to make into a SEQ (coming up with the frames) is a job in itself and I haven't gotten that far with anything yet and I'm still trying to figure out how I'd go about it. Once I get there I will use it, though. Appreciate your and Kawa's work, Andrew.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 04, 2016, 10:52:13 PM

One thing that I do want to finish is to have it detect a project's aspect ratio to automatically match the tool's view with that of the user's project, but that will have to wait until if and when Phil can add the 'OriginalAspectRatio' setting to the game.ini. Otherwise about the only things are long range things, like syncing audio or animated GIF/AVI export that may never be done.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: MusicallyInspired on April 04, 2016, 11:57:22 PM

You could add an option to set it manually for the time being. It can be cumbersome to convert frames to a 4:3 320x200 ratio. Having the option to do it automatically would be welcome. Or vice versa. Perhaps if the image is too high you could enable crop settings. Conversely, if it's not high enough you could have it choose to zoom in or at black/white/colour space around it. I don't know what's possible, of course.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 05, 2016, 01:01:54 AM

You can already set aspect correction manually (View > Aspect Correction). It only sets the aspect for the SEQ play for inspecting the resulting SEQ, so you will want to view it with the aspect that your project uses. All of the SEQs will be 320px x 200px. The thumbnails have no aspect correction, though they are just for the visual representation of the frame order. It wouldn't take too long to add aspect correction to the thumbnails for aesthetic reasons. Regardless, the input images need to be 320px x 200px.

There are no image editing capabilities in the tool as that would  be project in an of itself and would be reinventing the wheel, but you can right click on a frame in the list or its thumbnail and choose "Edit" to open the image in your default editor. Since the user has to edit the images outside of the tool he would have to deal with aspect correction from his photo editor, i.e. create the images in 320px x 240px and down sample to 320px x 200px before assembling into a SEQ.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Kawa on April 05, 2016, 03:44:28 AM

I'd been thinking about how to support inputs that aren't 320x200, and my idea is to crop down or letterbox as needed. For example, a 320x240 input would have the top and bottom 20 lines cut off, while something like KQ6's intro would be centered in a field of 0. By default, that is, so you can specify at the command line that you want to cut the bottom 40 lines, or place the smaller view off-center.

Assuming of course that all inputs are the same size.

But no scaling, holy shit.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 05, 2016, 10:42:24 AM

I would question the use of automatic cropping without any control. Automatic resampling with letter boxing/pillar boxing would lead to fewer undesired results. Even so, an external image editor will be required to create the frame images and resampling/cropping would be trivial. Most of the better image editors have script or macro recording for batch processing. Also, I would think that you would want an editor that has layers for creating animations.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Kawa on April 05, 2016, 01:28:00 PM

Where'd you get "without any control" from?

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 05, 2016, 05:18:29 PM

If it is automated. Perhaps you set certain parameters, but it would still not be as much control as you would have using a real image editor.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Kawa on April 05, 2016, 05:47:11 PM

If you look at GK1 and KQ6, centering smaller-than-320x200 images makes sense. Being able to overrule the centering on top of that is nice, because having control is nice. Adding support for larger images... why not?

seqmaker 320x200-0001.png	As before.
seqmaker 320x240-0001.png	Top and bottom 20 lines are cut off.
seqmaker 320x240-0001.png -top 0	Bottom 40 lines are cut off.
seqmaker 320x110-0001.png	Letterboxed like KQ6.
seqmaker 320x110-0001.png -top 0	Top-aligned.
seqmaker 320x190-0001.png -top 10	Like the default SCI viewport.

And of course the same deal for -left. You might think resampling also makes sense but I'm not gonna try and do that. Not in 256 colors.

In the end, this could let you produce images -- Flash export? Render? -- directly in a non-320-by-200 size without having to letterbox it afterwards in a third application, even if it's got batch processing. Export, convert, bam you're done.

Of course none of this is in the thing yet; I'm just arguing about it.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 05, 2016, 06:23:20 PM

I have just seen too many examples of attempts to get rid of letter/pillar boxing that have ended up cropping off the tops of people's heads. In an image editor you can more easily control how much and where an image is cropped. I would rather see letter/pillar boxing than poorly done cropping. Again, I do not see it that much of an issue since you would be creating the frames outside of the tool. For the ani GIFs I was importing all I was doing was resampling the the entire GIF file to fit within the 320x200 dimension and padding out the other dimension with black. Quick and easy with nothing lost due to cropping. For producing your own it makes sense to do it in an even multiple of 320x200 in whatever program you want to use.

I have given some thought to checking the dimensions and color depth of the images as they are added, not just during the SEQ creation process. As it is, currently the GUI only filters based on file type. Anyway, it is good to kick ideas around.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Kawa on April 05, 2016, 08:03:09 PM

Indeed, my tool actively refuses to process anything not 320x200 256 colors. If I wanted it to be really pedantic I'd have it check for palette differences too.

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Collector on April 05, 2016, 10:23:36 PM

Quote from: Kawa on April 05, 2016, 08:03:09 PM

Indeed, my tool actively refuses to process anything not 320x200 256 colors.

Mine inherits that from your classes, too.

Quote from: Kawa on April 05, 2016, 08:03:09 PM

If I wanted it to be really pedantic I'd have it check for palette differences too.

It would be nice, but would it even be worth the effort? If importing an ani GIF it would use the palette of the GIF. If the user has been working in the editor of their choice using paletted images it would be easy enough to use the same palette. If there were any palette anomalies in the resulting SEQ, the user could make correction and optimize in their editor.

Do you know if Flash lets you work in 8-bit color?

Title: Re: SEQTool
Post by: Kawa on April 06, 2016, 03:45:54 AM

Work, no. Export, I think so.