Charas-Project

Off-Topic => Really Old Stuff => Archive => Charas Project Support => Topic started by: Alex on November 16, 2005, 08:53:28 AM

Title: BattleChara Generator reopening tests
Post by: Alex on November 16, 2005, 08:53:28 AM

Hi everyone!
Yes, i'm still here.
I am working to reopen the BattleChara generator.
As you may know, the old structure is gone.
Now i have to find a way to "use" BC graphics with the new engine.

I do not upload all resources yet (and due to the crash we had, i'm still not sure i'll be able to), anyhow what i have is fine to test.

Within the generator (chara or face), on top, there is a generator named "Battlechar (TEST)".
To use the new engine i have to use only 1 image, so no more set A image + set B image.
This simply means that you'll have to split the resource by yourself to use it, it shouldn't be a problem.

The base image i create is essentially setA and set B horizontally aligned (so a single 288x384 image instead of two 144x384 sets).
Actually this is not that beautiful for flash preview (which mix frames), but i'm trying.

What i'd like to ask you is to try it and give suggestions.
One will surely be the possiility of changing the frame display order for flash preview.

Plz motivate your suggestions as well, we will all spare time.
Cya!

Title: Got templates and stuff....
Post by: Tezuka on November 16, 2005, 09:32:29 AM

Hey I've got some spare resources for ya battlechar generator i've split up myself! I could send you them for ya (By the way i can help you with your generator aswell if you want) so just post and give me the word.

Title:
Post by: Bluhman on November 16, 2005, 08:08:02 PM

Shadus' is going to explode when he reads this thread.

Title:
Post by: Andon on November 16, 2005, 11:12:58 PM

Just tried it out, seems to work really well.

I'll start converting the rescource lump for the offline one, making them one image. May take a while though.

Title:
Post by: GhostClown on November 16, 2005, 11:24:17 PM

It does seem to work well, great job getting it back online, Alex. :)

Title:
Post by: Linkizcool on November 17, 2005, 03:22:21 AM

Yay! Finally! I can make the basic b-char grapics for my games :D :D :D!!!111!!!111!!!111!!!111

Title: hmm
Post by: neb87 on November 17, 2005, 04:31:17 AM

deosnt seem to work says battle gen is down

Title:
Post by: Tezuka on November 17, 2005, 10:13:18 AM

I still need help using this b-char gen......

Title:
Post by: Tezuka on November 17, 2005, 10:24:15 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Tezuka
I still need help using this b-char gen......

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!

Title:
Post by: Osmose on November 17, 2005, 10:55:36 AM

Quote

Originally posted by neb87
deosnt seem to work says battle gen is down

Alex mentioned this:
 

Quote

Within the generator (chara or face), on top, there is a generator named "Battlechar (TEST)".

Title:
Post by: Tezuka on November 17, 2005, 01:00:09 PM

I can't find the gen test, were exactly is it!?

_______________
I'm Tezuka, I even pound myself till I make sense.(punch) OWWW!!!

Title:
Post by: Xaliber on November 17, 2005, 02:01:22 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Tezuka
I can't find the gen test, were exactly is it!?

_______________
I'm Tezuka, I even pound myself till I make sense.(punch) OWWW!!!

just want to help,
first open the faceset or charset generator,
and you will see the battlecharset generator [test] link there.

it is near the Faceset generator link

Title:
Post by: neb87 on November 17, 2005, 11:45:13 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Osmose

quote:

Originally posted by neb87 deosnt seem to work says battle gen is down

Alex mentioned this:
 

quote:

Within the generator (chara or face), on top, there is a generator named "Battlechar (TEST)".

 thanks should have had read that first

Title:
Post by: Tezuka on November 18, 2005, 10:05:59 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Xaliber

quote:

Originally posted by Tezuka I can't find the gen test, were exactly is it!? _______________ I'm Tezuka, I even pound myself till I make sense.(punch) OWWW!!!

just want to help,
first open the faceset or charset generator,
and you will see the battlecharset generator [test] link there.

it is near the Faceset generator link

Thanks for that, i'm such a god damn N00b

Title:
Post by: Razor on November 18, 2005, 10:34:56 AM

I'm trying to figure it out.
Why did you post that desktop picture?
Just... why?

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 18, 2005, 11:01:10 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Razor
I'm trying to figure it out.
Why did you post that desktop picture?
Just... why?

Good question.
I'll also suggest to neb87 to REDUCE a bit his avat pic.

Think at poor 56k users, they may want to kill you for this.
This is a techincal thread about generator tests.

Title:
Post by: GaryCXJk on November 18, 2005, 04:09:27 PM

OHMYGODWAAAAH!!!!

Not because the Battlechar Generator is up, but OMEGOSH look at how many frames there are!

So, this is my first suggestion. I know it may take up a lot of space (in terms of, you'll need to scroll more), but there are 48 frames, let's say devide the frame property chooser into groups of 16 (maybe 24 if we have to), using 2/4 rows per resource type. Now, this may be problematic, since now the property section will take up more space. So, how about, like, using CSS to reduce the size of the text of the dropdowns, maybe even the size of the dropdowns, to reduce the ammount needed to scroll from left to right.

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 18, 2005, 04:24:45 PM

Ehm... yes.
I knew about this.
But i failed doing some tests on the suggestions you made.

Reducing the size of dropdowns is nearly unuseful.
After all, there's 48 boxes there!
Evenif i'd find a way to work only of real frames (which are 33), 33 boxes are sill too much.
Now i'm working in 1280x1024, and i can see right to frame 19.
33 is nearly double.
And finally, a smaller font would be unreadable.

Yes, another way would havs been to "split" the box.
I thinked a lot about this, because a 2nd row for each layer would mean 4 rows instead of 1, because i should repeat also the headers (description) row.
For example:
row1: tr fr1 fr2 fr3.... fr24
row2: the values
row3: fr25 fr26 fr27.... fr48
row4: the values.

This would mean, in case of a full resource:
1 body = 4 rows
1 face = 4 rows
1 dress = 4 rows
1 hair = 4 rows
3 items = 12 rows
Total = 28 rows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A bit too much, maybe....

I don't really have magic ideas, this time...
Suggestions or other comments on what i said?

Title:
Post by: Prpl_Mage on November 18, 2005, 05:50:17 PM

Shrink that Avatar and remove that picture please, it is screwing up the topic.

Title:
Post by: Moosetroop11 on November 18, 2005, 07:30:42 PM

Good to see you're still alive, Alex :)

Title:
Post by: shadus on November 19, 2005, 07:34:58 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Bluhman
Shadus' is going to explode when he reads this thread.

What?

Title:
Post by: GaryCXJk on November 19, 2005, 01:57:11 PM

Okay, a sollution that might not solve it all, but can slightly reduce the horizontal scroll size.

SELECT, INPUT, TEXTAREA {
   FONT-FAMILY: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
   COLOR: #51485F;
   FONT-SIZE: 10px;
}

Font-size can be changed to 8px. This might reduce the visibility, but I believe even font size 7 Verdana is readable. Not sure about the rest though.

Oh, and maybe one final suggestion, which isn't really needed, but a GZipped split pack, for use in Game Maker (so that you won't have to split the images by your own).

Too bad PHP 4 and higher doesn't have the GIF license anymore, that would come really handy for Game Maker.

Title:
Post by: Xaliber on November 19, 2005, 02:43:20 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Razor
I'm trying to figure it out.
Why did you post that desktop picture?
Just... why?

maybe he want to say something like "you are number 1"?
take a look at the person in the picture. He raise his thumb

sorry if this is out of topic
just want to try to answer
sorry again if my english aren't so good

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 19, 2005, 02:48:41 PM

I tryed, but looks very awful with smaller fontsizes.

Now i made a different test, splitting the boxes.
More space on top required, anyhow. But go there and give a look, i need feedbacks an this. Let me know how you fell it.

About gif, will talk later. Now the new machine has the new GD library and php5, and.. gif is supported again! ;)

Title:
Post by: EvilShadowX1 on November 20, 2005, 10:28:41 AM

Sad to say I don't like it, I don't like any of the new generators!!!

They are WAY too complex, I like the old transparancey, place change, etc, etc. more because It was simple!

so bleh! if you could put both up then yeah I would use, but for now I ain't really gonna use it :/

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 20, 2005, 11:42:35 AM

EvilShadowX1, I'm sorry.

But the new generators are not only "more complex", they're also much more versatile.
The simpler version you're talking about had many limitation, compared with this version.
After all, generators are utilities, and IMHO more possibilities are better than less.
It's up to you to decide to use them or to create your sprites by yourself.

Title:
Post by: SaiKar on November 20, 2005, 03:07:23 PM

I love the the changed to the character set generator. Grouping like resources vastly reduces the amount of stuff to wade through. I can see a resource and check to see if it comes in colors I like better. Very useful, easy.

The bchar one... eh... there are a LOT of frames. Maybe you should have a frame for every row as opposed to every individual pose, and have changes to that row affect all three poses in that row. I can't imagine wanting to change something in one pose but not another.

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 20, 2005, 03:56:29 PM

This may be an idea!
I tryind grouping frames as poses. Plz check the result in the generator.
Now it has only 16 frames, evenif frames 8,10,12,14 and 16 are always empty.
Anyhow, with 16 frames, only one row for all boxes is fine.

Just give a look to the actual solution and comment, thanx!

Edit:
Please do not consider the flash preview for battlegen now, i will fix it when we'll decide how to actually use the generator itself.

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 20, 2005, 06:26:08 PM

A little update:
I changed something in my admin panel, now i can sert, for each generator, the frame order to use for flash preview.

So the"empty frames" of battlegen are now ok, they're not shown a all in flash preview!

Only thing is that, with the actual test settings (3 frames instead of 1) means that the flash preview frames are 3 frames as well.
In one word, it's an animation of the whole poses.

Anyhow, i'll wait comments on the "3 in 1" actual solution before trying something else.

Title:
Post by: GhostClown on November 21, 2005, 12:31:21 AM

I think it works fine that way, but can the animation be slowed down?

Title:
Post by: Alex on November 21, 2005, 09:54:04 AM

Of course, just reduce the FPS, pal! ;)

Title:
Post by: GaryCXJk on November 21, 2005, 01:11:23 PM

I do like the way it works at the moment, but mainly for another reason. Because each row is now grouped, you'll get a bigger range of how things would look like.

Title:
Post by: Tezuka on November 23, 2005, 03:46:57 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Alex

quote:

Originally posted by Razor I'm trying to figure it out. Why did you post that desktop picture? Just... why?

Good question.
I'll also suggest to neb87 to REDUCE a bit his avat pic.

Think at poor 56k users, they may want to kill you for this.
This is a techincal thread about generator tests.

Um.........Whoops?

Title: BattleChara
Post by: crossfire on November 24, 2005, 03:36:05 AM

Great job on the BattleChar generator, Alex.  Just have to add more resources and finalize it.

Title:
Post by: TMlunder on December 11, 2005, 04:47:01 PM

Have they even been working on the generater? I was seeing alot of inprovement each time I looked at it and now its like he stoped workin' on it. Dont get me wrong I understand that it takes awhile to fix, I was just wondering.

Title:
Post by: GhostClown on December 11, 2005, 05:20:34 PM

Quote

Originally posted by TMlunder
Have they even been working on the generater? I was seeing alot of inprovement each time I looked at it and now its like he stoped workin' on it. Dont get me wrong I understand that it takes awhile to fix, I was just wondering.

Alex is a busy man. And coding a generator isn't the easiest thing in the world. I'm sure that he's still working on it, but it does take a while. I'm sure he'll post next time he makes an improvement.