new Spriter vid! Alpha for current pro users

This is really awesome :)

A couple of questions, i just bought this and can't wait to start using it, am i right in thinking that because i bought this now, i get v1.x free..?

Also tweening is the thing i want most...

And how much are the art packages going to be...?

Yes, You'll get v1.x for free. Thanks for supporting our efforts.

I'm not sure how much the art packs will be...it depends on how long they take to make, and how robust they end up...I'll almost certiantly release free, less robust ones to Spriter owners to help get them started.

The art packs are still at least a couple months away though.

As soon as the new Spriter is tested and proven stable enough for daily use (which I'm sure won't take long knowing Lucid), I'm going to try and comission other pro artists to create art packs as well.. And of course, ANY artist is welcome to create art packs themselves to sell or give away freely without any obligations to us. If an artists makes a really high quality art pack, we'd be happy to help market it through what will become our official web-sites and marketting system. (whatever that becomes)

Thanks for the reply, i'm thinking of using GraphicsGale to make all the body parts etc as it's fairly easy to use.

Any program you're confortable using, so long as it exports PNGs you're all set. :)

For those who missed it, the current version of Spriter can be found here:

http://www.brashmonkey.com

Apologies for the bump. I'm just looking for some clarification on what this can do and this seems to be the most recent thread about it. I was watching the video tutorials provided on the site, so I think I have an idea... but it almost seems too convenient to be possible, so I just wanted to make sure before I jumped right in to working with it.

The first thing I'm wondering is if the collision rectangles work the way I think they do. If I understand right, it sets collision points before putting the animation into whatever game program, and then whoever does the programming can simply use those without having to implement collision masks in the program itself? Granted, what happens during those collisions obviously wouldn't be handled in spriter, but still, if that does what I think it does, I'd be amazed.

Another thing I'm wondering is if any additional programming is required for bone movement after putting the animations in the program. Is it really that simple? I know very little of bone movement in construct right now, so maybe this is a question best saved for later, but I'm just too curious I suppose.

Finally, will the current price for pro remain the same when the beta is released?

Hi Jim15,

I'll let Lucid answer in more technical details, but:

The whole point of Spriter is to not only let artists make highly optimized animations as quickly and easily as possible, to but to also allow artists and game designers to have very natural, visual ways to control other aspects of game play... This is why it allows for the placement of multiple "action points", collision rectangles, sound effects, and variable changes at any given frame of an animation.

It is meant to be the dream tool(one of them...I'm planning on a level editor as well) for 2d game makers.

Short answer to game engine implimentation, YES, with Lucid's Spriter plug-in for Construct (and eventually Construct 2) ALL variable changes, action points, sounds, and collision rectangles AND Character maps will be super easy to detect and manipulate within Construct!

Similar plug-ins to FULLY Support Spriter files are being worked on (but are not as far along) for Unity3d, Torque 2d and at least one other game authoring system at this time.

Thanks again for your support to all of you who have already purchased the current version of Spriter :)

Please help spread the word, because the more sucessful Spriter becomes, the more agressively we can evolve it AND begin work on the Level Editor. (Similar dreamy goodness as Spriter, but for designing levels...and with complete Spriter support as well of course ;) )

Apologies for the bump.

thanks for the bump

The first thing I'm wondering is if the collision rectangles work the way I think they do. If I understand right, it sets collision points before putting the animation into whatever game program, and then whoever does the programming can simply use those without having to implement collision masks in the program itself? Granted, what happens during those collisions obviously wouldn't be handled in spriter, but still, if that does what I think it does, I'd be amazed.

that's exactly how it works. you simply add SpriterHitBox to your project, and do nothing further. the spriter plugin will create and destroy them according to the frame of animation. so you can do events like

SomeSprite on collision with SpriterHitBox

----SpriterHitBox.Name = "swordtip"

-----------Do Something

they are invisible by default, but you can turn them on for debugging your game, and they appear in the color you specified in the editor. It's just random in this case, and for testing purposes, but if you look at the video, when a certain frame plays a red box appears. that's a hitbox

Another thing I'm wondering is if any additional programming is required for bone movement after putting the animations in the program. Is it really that simple? I know very little of bone movement in construct right now, so maybe this is a question best saved for later, but I'm just too curious I suppose.

it really is that simple. most of the actions/conditions/expressions are taken directly from the normal sprite object, with modified inner workings of course, but you'll see everything you would expect to see, like Play Animation, Pause, Set Speed, Set Angle, and you can apply behaviors, etc.

It's very different than bone behavior. it will be an object like sprite, rather than a behavior, and will not use separate sprites to create the different parts like the bone behavior. it handles all the drawing internally.

on another note, the VRAM savings over normal sprites can be tremendous. For instance, assuming your character uses the same set of sprites for each frame(which won't always be the case), if you made a character with 500 frames of animation over the course of all their animations, it would take approximately 0.2% of the VRAM of the same character had it been a normal sprite. For example if a normal sprite took up 150MB of VRAM, the same thing could be done 0.3MB. This drastic VRAM savings means you can have larger characters and enemies, with smoother animations, and more different types of characters and enemies before vram starts becoming an issue

Finally, will the current price for pro remain the same when the beta is released?

The public beta is aimed to begin at a late November release. the price will remain the same until it's out of beta, which won't be until it's complete and stable.     the new price has not been decided yet.

To reiterate and make even more incredible the potential for file and v-ram savings here's some other things to consider:

1)Using Char-maps (a built in feature of Spriter) you can swtich out the body part images of a fully animated character to not only make diferent variations of the same character (diferent armor, weapons etc) BUT you can also use it to create entirely diferent characters.

2) This doesnt just allow for massive savings of V-ram and file space, it also allows for MASSIVE savings of TIME. An artist can create or change fully animated characters many magnitudes faster than drawing each frame by hand...and imagine if you want to change the design of a characters head...instead of editing it in hundreds of frames by hand, you simple change the 1 (or very few) head images that Spriter uses in all the frames.

3) Lastly, in combination with the art packs I (and other artists) will be making, It will finally allow for non-artist indie game makers to very easily customize professionally animated 2d game art for use in their own game...or, if you are paying an artist to customize your character, you might now be paying for hours of work instead of months!

The new UI looks like a great improvement, looking forward to it.

this is impressive!

my question is: we can make the caracter with this program and still have the separated parts functions. making it clear, the hotpoint/imagepoint of each part will stay the same or the editor will create a full image without the separated parts and turn into a single frame?

i'm asking this because if we want to make a "equipment change" inside the program this will not interfere the original character or other parts, like, if you allow the player to change the character boots or gloves, the other equipment stay the same till the player change, like some mmorpgs. full customization.

this is possible?

sorry for the bad english

this is impressive!

my question is: we can make the caracter with this program and still have the separated parts functions. making it clear, the hotpoint/imagepoint of each part will stay the same or the editor will create a full image without the separated parts and turn into a single frame?

i'm asking this because if we want to make a "equipment change" inside the program this will not interfere the original character or other parts, like, if you allow the player to change the character boots or gloves, the other equipment stay the same till the player change, like some mmorpgs. full customization.

this is possible?

sorry for the bad english

for now the plugin will create the whole image for you, and it will be one single object. what you're saying with equipment changes will be possible with what are called charmaps, which allow you to swap out certain parts of characters, or the entire character with named sets of images..

more to what you were saying though. probably not for 1.0. but I plan on making it so you can replace any body part with an actual construct object to do what you say, or take direct control of a body part for whatever reason in your game, and control it through events

Hi valdarko.. Spriter's Charmaps feature is for doing what you say...for using the same animation data, but pointing images from one folder to images in a diferent folder to swap out the appearance of a character, weapons, armor, etc. You can also hide stuff too..

For instance you could animate a character with a cape, but use a charmap to hide the cape at first...until the player earns the cape in game...then you simply un-hide the images from the cape folder.

You can see a video explaining how char maps work in the current Spriter here:

But yeah, as Lucid was saying...eventually you'll be able to replace a "limb" with an actual construct spriter for ultimate coltrol.

Hey everyone, just a small update. There's a small closed alpha going on now, finding the big bugs and ui issues before the public beta. So we're still on track for late november public beta.

Can we see a new screenie of the UI yet? <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> (or is it just that small screen in the video?)