Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Moderator: Moderators

dullahan
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:08 am
Location: USA

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by dullahan »

Looks good. I would make the octopus bounce one frame out of phase with the body movement. When the player's body begins to move up is when the edges of the hat should show their dip. That way, the octopus's tentacles will appear to have inertia.
Thanks, I will give that a try.
This happened to the octopus in my game too; it seemed like in 2 dimensions it should only require 2^2 legs. ;)

Then again, Octodad only has four legs too. Maybe this is a video game thing...?

This sprite looks real nice, though, dullahan. Looking forward to whatever you come up with.
Thanks rainwarrior. Yeah, the number of arms/legs for me is strictly due to size constraints--I couldn't fit any more in a 16x24 space.
Looking good. Incidentally I'm stuck in my project because I'm trying to program a tool to generate animation code easily... you seem to have that already figured out so props to you :) :beer:
When I am working on animations I just do it all inside PyxelEdit which has a nice animation editor. Then when I am happy with the animation I export a sprite-sheet. With the sprite-sheet as input I run a ruby script to generate the CHR and ATTR bytes. Then I manually enter the frame def bytes in the metasprite/object definition.

I used to have a fancier workflow with ruby scripts detecting the palette, reading JSON animation defs, etc; but it was buggy and complex and not offering enough benefit.
dullahan
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:08 am
Location: USA

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by dullahan »

Made some progress with collision detection logic and reacquainting myself with the code-base (have been working mostly on pixel art commissions the past few weeks). I also cleaned up some of my metrics tools such as ROM and RAM usage.

So next week I hope to have collision detection working and basic player movement. After that will be Debs special ability--blinking through walls and enemies.
Attachments
metrics.png
User avatar
Guilty
Posts: 93
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2016 5:58 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by Guilty »

mikejmoffitt wrote:If you'd like, I would not mind sharing my metasprite animation format, which allows for variable frame lengths and arbitrary loop points.
PLEASE.
I've been struggling with animation code for so long. I wasted an entire month making a metasprite animation routine that ended up using an entire 30 rasters for a single instance. Then I started making high cycle efficiency code for each animation and my raster count is down to like 3 but I'm running out of ROM a lot faster. I need examples so bad.
User avatar
mikejmoffitt
Posts: 1353
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:43 pm

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by mikejmoffitt »

I'll see about cleaning it up a little, as it's only slightly coupled to how my game is built right now.
dullahan
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:08 am
Location: USA

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by dullahan »

Progress has been slow with collisions between the background and sprites, but I now have it working. See attached GIF. Up next need to experiment with Debs special ability.

- EDIT -
The embedded GIF preview looks corrupted, but clicking on it to view in another tab works fine for me at least.
Attachments
coll.gif
User avatar
Myask
Posts: 965
Joined: Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:04 pm

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by Myask »

Corrupted, makes me think of the old Animator vs Animation …animation.
User avatar
koitsu
Posts: 4201
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:28 pm
Location: A world gone mad

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by koitsu »

The "preview GIF" is corrupted because it's doing the Wrong Thing(tm) for "erased frames". Animated GIFs support multiple methods of frame disposal.

Preview GIF: download/file.php?id=6698&t=1
Full GIF: download/file.php?id=6698&mode=view

Please see:

* Frame Disposal Methods: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/anim_basics/#dispose
* Types of Animations: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/anim_basics/#types

I have not run ImageMagick's identify on either image (the extended metadata is what needs to be viewed, to determine disposal method), but I'm certain it would disclose the mistake.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8731
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by rainwarrior »

I don't think it actually has anything to do with disposal? I think it's entirely about scaling. After the first frame none of them are in the correct position or correct size. The size is even inconsistent (obviously every frame should get the same scaling).

If they were scaled correctly, you wouldn't see the "bad disposal" trails. The problem is the pixels that are supposed to hide the previous frame's sprite are at the wrong position and size.
User avatar
thefox
Posts: 3134
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:36 am
Location: 🇫🇮
Contact:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by thefox »

koitsu wrote:Please see:
Not all that useful, since it was almost certainly phpBB that wrecked the GIF when resizing it down.
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8731
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by rainwarrior »

Specifically, what it looks like is happening in the preview resize:

1. The X,Y offset of each frame is not being changed, instead of being scaled down with everything else.
2. The scale of each individual frame is adjusted to match either the width or height of the preview image (best fit), rather than the overall scale of the image.

This means that frames where only a small sub-rectangle changes, that rectangle gets blown up to the total width/height of the image, and also gets left in its original offset.

Basically the resizer makes the incorrect assumption that all frames are the size of the whole image and at offset 0,0, and generates a totally bogus GIF whenever this isn't true.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8731
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by rainwarrior »

There's two common optimization steps when preparing GIFs. The first uses blank transparency to cover any area not changed since the previous frame, and the second crops each frame to a rectangle enclosing the differences.

Because the second step is only cropping out empty transparency, the savings there is rather minor compared to the first step. If you want to work around phpBB's resizing bug, it's reasonable to leave out (or undo) that second step. I used a GIMP plugin to undo it for this test.

Here's the original image, but with that step undone. It's only 6% bigger than the original version and should preview correctly:
coll.gif with all frames expanded to the size of the overall image.
coll.gif with all frames expanded to the size of the overall image.
I think it has an additional "ghosting" problem from trying to use bilinear interpolation to resize instead of nearest neighbour, but we can only squeeze so much blood from this stone. It's a bad resizer and it should feel bad.
dullahan
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:08 am
Location: USA

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by dullahan »

Thanks everyone for the GIF detective work. Been working on cleaning up Debs run animations today by reducing frames and adding more personality.
Attachments
tmp-blink-running.gif
tmp-blink-running.gif (12.22 KiB) Viewed 14797 times
User avatar
koitsu
Posts: 4201
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:28 pm
Location: A world gone mad

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by koitsu »

thefox wrote:
koitsu wrote:Please see:
Not all that useful, since it was almost certainly phpBB that wrecked the GIF when resizing it down.
And what software do you think phpBB uses to manipulate images? *chuckles*
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8731
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by rainwarrior »

I have started a new thread for preview GIF corruption discussion, so we don't clutter dullahan's thread any further:
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14868
User avatar
thefox
Posts: 3134
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:36 am
Location: 🇫🇮
Contact:

Re: Progress Thread - Nebs & Debs Prequel

Post by thefox »

koitsu wrote:
thefox wrote:
koitsu wrote:Please see:
Not all that useful, since it was almost certainly phpBB that wrecked the GIF when resizing it down.
And what software do you think phpBB uses to manipulate images? *chuckles*
I don't know or care. What I'm saying is that it's not something that anybody posting GIFs on this forum should have to care about -- it should be fixed on the phpBB side.

(Maybe I misread the intention of your post? I don't know.)
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
Post Reply