If an editor for the equilvaent of ganis is created that supports everything an animation supports, is there an actual need to edit these as plain text like levels? It kind of feels like we’re wanting things to be done a certain way because it can be (and in this case, used to), not because there’s an actual NEED.
Yes, I had projects for more complex ganis that would have required something like python to create a custom gani text file.
Like making a bigger playercharacter by repeating each pixel 4 times.
I think the warping gani I made was through the text editor.
Repeating each pixel 4 times…? Are you saying you made a sprite definition for the potential 512 or so pixels that make up a character in Graal and placed 4 times that many sprites in the animation? That is insanely inefficient and absurd. This isn’t going to be Graal, so there’s the option of adding scaling functionality to animations for scenarios like that.
The “splitting gani” that was attached might be slightly inconvenient to do through an editor, but not ridiculously so. Additionally, functionality to support some more tedious operations that arise can be added, if solutions like the one above aren’t an option.
You’re right.
But why encode a file while you can just make it a plain text file?
Well… as I started to answer this, I’m not sure the reason is actually all that valid. Aside from being more efficient for the engine to process, there are some relatively minor bandwidth saving considerations down the line, especially if this somehow ends up getting thousands of players. Realistically, those may be acceptable tradeoffs for some minor convenience. So many decisions…
Could always leave it open ended so if it needs that feature it could be tacked on as an update later <- not a software developer at all
The only reason why I’d edit a gani file using a text editor is to make use of a feature that editor doesn’t allow you otherwise. Examples being inserting of a script, or colour changing of a sprite.
Efficiency is a valid argument.
I’m just going to leave them as text files for now. If it demonstratably becomes significant, I’ll change it later.
Actually implementing the rendering of animations is kicking my ass, though. Specifically the ordering of the sprites, since it’s going to be expected that they render as a consistent group of objects. It’s too much to attempt to explain, as it requires some understanding of Direct3D rendering in general. I’m stumped at the moment on how to proceed, but will keep poking at it.
After the image layers discussion and some more work, animations are functional, but need some polishing before I show anything. I’m going to write a quick converter for ganis to the new format and put some of the more complicated ones I’ve seen into the video tomorrow.
Can’t wait 