Question about Character modding

[nanostrike]

I've been working on modifying the existing characters to pop in sprites from various video games I like and so far it's going well, but I have one question.

It's regarding the Walking Animation.  It's a page of sprites.  And there are enough sprites to make the animation last for 22 frames.  However, there are blank spaces on the page after it.

So my question is...are the walking animations locked at that 22 frame limit, or will the game look for more than 22 frames?  And would it work with LESS than 22 frames?

I ask because 22 is somewhat of an odd number for animation frames.  Most that I'm stumbling across have either 8, 12, 16, 18, or 24 frames and trying to convert those to 22 frames can be troublesome and look awkward.  Any input from the devs would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[Tallgeese]

I have a related question: will PNGRenamer suffice for creating walking dictionaries?

I ask because it seems to only create square dictionaries. It'll create 1024x1024 dictionaries with 32 frames, but refuses to create 1024x512 walking sprite dictionaries.

It's simple enough to splice them together, but still.

[x4000]

1. The animations are always locked at whatever number of frames they actually have visible.  So for characters that's usually but not always 22.  For particle effects it varies.

2. Yes, the PNGRenamer will work great for creating the dictionaries, but the older version 2 that was previously posted was a little wasteful with space.  Still would work just fine, but that would account for the differences in shape and so on.  I've attached v3, which is much better.

[Tallgeese]

Thank you for the new PNGRenamer.

[x4000]

You bet!  I also updated the original thread about it.

[Tallgeese]

Just for a clarification, you can't use anything other than 22 frames for the walking animations, right?

I'm asking again because I'm not sure if you meant that, or if you meant "the game will check the sheet you have for the number of visible frames and lock it at that". To me it could be read either way.

[x4000]

Just for a clarification, you can't use anything other than 22 frames for the walking animations, right?

I'm asking again because I'm not sure if you meant that, or if you meant "the game will check the sheet you have for the number of visible frames and lock it at that". To me it could be read either way.

Whatever number of frames are in the original animation, you need to keep to that.  For all the human characters that's 22 frames; for some of the monsters and I think the neutral skelebots, that can be 23 or 30 or other numbers.  As long as you match what was originally there, you're good to go.

[Tallgeese]

Thank you. I am sorry to have made you answer again.

I wonder... would it be technically possible to allow for some kind of override file with texture packs that would be able to change the default number of frames for some animations (mainly something innocuous like walking)? Or would that cause some kind of problem if one guy on an MP server has one character mod and another guy has a different one?

[x4000]

No worries on the response!

While technically feasible -- there's no desync risk with mods -- it would be a heavy overhaul to allow that sort of setting of numbers of frames and all that externally. That has other code implications as well, and I don't see a situation in the coming months where that would be of high enough priority to warrant doing that instead of other features, honestly. Not to rain on the parade, just also not to misrepresent our intentions.

[nanostrike]

Does PNG Renamer actually align the frames?

The big issue I have is that most of my walking animations come from Sprite Sheets, so I'm having to manually rip out the frames and try to line them up as best as I can.  If there's some way PNG Renamer can automatically do that if I can separate the images, that'd help things a LOT.  Sadly, I'm getting the impression that it probably doesn't do that.

Also, if you only have a few frames (Like 12 or so), will PNG renamer duplicate some of them to fill in the rest of the 22 frames?  Or is that something that has to be done manually.

[Tallgeese]

What do you mean by "align" here? As in center them? It can do that if you trim off all the whitespace...

[x4000]

Does PNG Renamer actually align the frames?

The big issue I have is that most of my walking animations come from Sprite Sheets, so I'm having to manually rip out the frames and try to line them up as best as I can.  If there's some way PNG Renamer can automatically do that if I can separate the images, that'd help things a LOT.  Sadly, I'm getting the impression that it probably doesn't do that.

If you look at the original thread on PNG Renamer, it explains all its various functions.  Some of them like Trim Character, can be used for scaling stuff down and centering them at the bottom of the frame.  But that's not going to work if your art is already not quite the right size.  What you really want to do is make a photoshop script or similar in some other tool to align them to the bottom-center.

Also, if you only have a few frames (Like 12 or so), will PNG renamer duplicate some of them to fill in the rest of the 22 frames?  Or is that something that has to be done manually.

Nope, you'd have to do that manually.

[nanostrike]

If you look at the original thread on PNG Renamer, it explains all its various functions.  Some of them like Trim Character, can be used for scaling stuff down and centering them at the bottom of the frame.  But that's not going to work if your art is already not quite the right size.  What you really want to do is make a photoshop script or similar in some other tool to align them to the bottom-center.

Alright, that helps a lot.  I think I can rig up a script or something like that.  Thanks!

[x4000]

Sure thing!

[Tallgeese]

One more question about characters (and textures in general).

I remember you saying at one point that altering the size of textures is a bad idea since it would cause distortion. Does this prohibition still hold if you, say, exactly double the original dimensions? I'm assuming if you did it on characters it'd make them twice as large so that is a bad idea (due to hitboxes), but what about terrain textures?