Free views to use in sci studio

[jtyler125]

I hope we can create a place to post zipped files of views that we can easily add into our sci studio games.  I am sure Cloudee will fix it so this will be moot, but I just want to start it and see where it goes.  Here is a fairy that I created for a game for my daughter...it is supposed to look like Tinkerbell.

[jtyler125]

Here is what it looks like...in a word doc



* attatchment removed, it can be viewed in the public domain gallery under JT Fairy.

[Cloudee1]

I've attatched a poll to this thread JT. Your view as an sci resource can be found attatched to  your first post, while a bmp exported by scistudio can be found in the gallery.

If you are looking for something specific, which do you think would be the easiest way to find it.

[troflip]

I'm in the midst of polishing up SCICompanion so it's releasable.  I still don't have the c++ style syntax finished, but I can release it as is for now (I also thought these contests were having would be a good chance for people to use it in a small game, without comitting to it for a larger game).  It will basically provide a complete replacement for SCIStudio... it has the ability to create new games and edit the same kinds of resource as SCIStudio.

I realized one thing I was missing was having a library of "sample" resources within the game, so I started working on that today.  Which gets me to my point... if anyone wants to submit sample views/cursors/fonts/etc... that would be greatly appreciated (like tinkerbell - can I use that view?) and of course you would be mentioned in the "credits".

[Cloudee1]

Actually Troflip, If you visit the gallery you will find a special place for people to do just that. Submitting views for public use. One concern is though, that importing these bmp may not be so easy. I tried it with JT's fairy, I exported it and then tried to import it again, but it doesn't try to break it back up into the cels or views but paste the whole image into the current cel.

Would it be possible with companion to make importing a bmp of loops and cels to be more automatic. I didn't test it with companion, so I'm not sure about it's export/ import features, but I'm assuming it's alot similar.

On a side note about getting more testers and testing, I think alot of us oldies would be more prone to switch over if you gave it an "scistudio skin" I'm used to navigating my resources in scistudio and so it's hard to actually make the switch.

[Doan Sephim]

Attached are the following Sprite views (from my New Year's game) for use in games and/or Troflip's sample library. There are six (6) sprites (all those in the picture except the tuxedo guy) as well as a sword cursor I drew like the one in Quest for Glory I and an hour-glass wait cursor.

[troflip]

Would it be possible with companion to make importing a bmp of loops and cels to be more automatic. I didn't test it with companion, so I'm not sure about it's export/ import features, but I'm assuming it's alot similar.

I'm going to say it's "not possible"... the .BMP format is just for a single image.  The cels/loops thing is specific to the sci format.
You'd need some serious AI that could "guess" at where the cel/loop boundaries are.

One alternative might be to encode some metadata in the saved image, indicating the cel and loop boundaries.  But .BMP doesn't support metadata.  TIFF or PNG might work though.  Of course, that wouldn't be any help for programs that already exist like SCIStudio.

On a side note about getting more testers and testing, I think alot of us oldies would be more prone to switch over if you gave it an "scistudio skin" I'm used to navigating my resources in scistudio and so it's hard to actually make the switch.

What do you mean by scistudio skin?

[jtyler125]

Oh great I get listed as JT Fairy...I will not win any votes with that title.

Thanks a lot Cloudee.

Oh yeah, Troflip you can use the fairy if you wish that is why I posted it on the public domain.


JT Fairy Out...

[Cloudee1]

Instead of cycling through loops and views with the arrows, I always seem to get lost, something that more closely follows scistudios navigation layout.

As far as reimporting the bmp, following the logic of some of the captcha image decoder bots that read the registration images, the cel boundaries and loops are already there, visually. We just need to "read" the boundaries of the background color, as it surrounds every cel we need. a loop is all on a horizontal plane so when there isn't a next bounded area, then it is the last cel. In my head it seems easy    

But I'll leave you to dwell on that, but I'd much rather see bmps that were easily imported from the gallery than a proliferation of zip attatchments. Imagine Mt, considering so much code got buried in there, how much space would be taken up by resources that just get lost over time.

Maybe an option to save to bmp, or png. then we could upload the meta data'ed files here or use bmp, well since no one was sure how it even worked, I don't think anyone ever used the exported bmp's for anything. Easily importing image files of multiple loops and cels I think makes this a feature worth exploring regardless of scistudios support.

[troflip]

Instead of cycling through loops and views with the arrows, I always seem to get lost, something that more closely follows scistudios navigation layout.

That's a good point... it isn't very intuitive or easy to navigate.  I'll work on improving that.

Easily importing image files of multiple loops and cels I think makes this a feature worth exploring regardless of scistudios support.

One possibility is to mark the boundaries with a colour that isn't part of the SCI palette... e.g. an "almost black", with rgb values of 0, 0 and 1 for example.  The program would know it was special information, not part of the bitmap.

Actually, you could modify the rgb values of every pixel in the bmp by a single increment, and it would look the same, but you could encode any kind of information in it... e.g. the size/transparent color of every cel/loop.  Neat.

[Cloudee1]

It sounds like the ideas are churning. 

[troflip]

Thanks for the view samples Doan and jtyler.
If anyone has any more - or useful sample pics or sounds too - send them my way..

[troflip]

As far as reimporting the bmp, following the logic of some of the captcha image decoder bots that read the registration images, the cel boundaries and loops are already there, visually. We just need to "read" the boundaries of the background color, as it surrounds every cel we need. a loop is all on a horizontal plane so when there isn't a next bounded area, then it is the last cel. In my head it seems easy    

In addition, you'd need to figure out the transparent colour of each cel, and where the x,y origin of each cel is (it can be anywhere, not just at the feet of the character).  And it would be nice to preserve the mirrored-ness of some loops.
But I've got a solution working now that address all this - it encodes the entire view resource hidden within the .bmp file!  It could work for pics or fonts too.  Of course, if you took the .bmp into an image editor and made changes, the information would most likely be lost.

[troflip]

Instead of cycling through loops and views with the arrows, I always seem to get lost, something that more closely follows scistudios navigation layout.

Hmm... SCIStudio also uses arrows to cycle through cels and loops in views.

[Cloudee1]

Instead of cycling through loops and views with the arrows, I always seem to get lost, something that more closely follows scistudios navigation layout.

Hmm... SCIStudio also uses arrows to cycle through cels and loops in views.

I don't know I can't explain it, it's been awhile since i've used it. I've tried to use it a couple of times with fabulous las vegas, but it won't open vocab.000 and I'm not sure why that came about. In a couple of days  after I get the sierra games pictures finished (12 of 123 to go) and get my upload download script completely working (haven't added the database, nut seems to upload fine and try to download), then upload all the known sci games (after I download them again) and make a fan made games page that links upload/download script and then maybe if there is still time left in the month I'll try to use companion to make a "quick" competition entry so I can give you more in depth feedback.

 But we'll see, that's quite a run on sentence. 

* Update:
 I started a thread in the development tools page, serious critiques of sci companion. I have recently used the view editor and left my impressions of it.