Sprite making for FPSC, also looping particles

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Belseth

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Posted: 28th Nov 2006 22:50

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I've done searches several times but there isn't much information other than to recommend the sprite pack. Is there anyway to make sprites for FPSC? There obviously is some way but I'm wondering if there's a process or utility for getting sprites into FPSC?

Another more general question does anyone know of a particle generator that will do looping animations for sprites? I picked up Exgen assuming it would but it sadly doesn't. A nice little utility but it doesn't do what I need it to do. I have several high end softwares that can do particle animations but none allow for cycling they all are random. Very bizzare but two utilities that I would think every game maker would need don't seem to exist. The first is a particle sprite generator that loops and the second is a utility for creating sprites from still frames. I did find a freeware one that seems to limit you to extremely low resolutions so it's useless for me but that's been it so far. Right now I'm building sprites in Photoshop but it's a long slow painful process. You'd think there'd be a utility out there for creating tiles from a series of sequential frames. If there is I'd love to get my hands on it. It'd save me a lot of hours and headaches.

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gps

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 05:57

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Would this be any help?

http://www.wondertouch.com/index.asp

Unfortunately, I don't know of anything else that's similar.

Cheers

- Graham

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Avenging Eagle

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 08:54

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With enough money....one day....

AE

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KeithC

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 13:38

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Have you looked at using ExGen? It's listed in the TGC Store.

-Keith

Ozark Games

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BULLSHOCK 2

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 14:30 Edited at: 30th Nov 2006 14:31

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@keith

he said he already picked it up

but i would think that would do what you needed it to...im not sure, i wonder what the sprite pack was made of...

http://www.seqoiagames.com/seqoiacorp/

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KeithC

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 14:38

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Serves me right for not reading the whole post first.

I am downloading the demo of Particle Illusion though; nice looking app.

-Keith

Ozark Games

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Belseth

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 19:29

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Sorry, no one responded the first few days and I lost track of the post. I bought the sprite pack and it's pretty interesting. They work really well and are extremely easy to set. All have ambient lighting so you might want to make sure there's source lighting especially for the fire. I checked them out and all seem to have started out as .X files so it looks like it's possible to build them just not sure how to set up the image file since the source will be a tiled sprite. Guessing it was done in a 3D software just not sure which. Not sure if Gamespace will allow for sprite animated textures? Have to check that out.

I took a quick look at that particle generator. Pretty interesting. I'll email them and see if it can loop. I downloaded a demo for Mirage. It's a 2D animator with a built in particle system. I emailed them and they claim you can adjust the timeline and get it to loop. They have a 30 day demo I'm trying so we'll see if it works. The bad news is it's $400. It's a nice 2D animator but I mostly need the particles. If it works I may have to bite the bullet early next year. I'm working with Torque Gane Builder and it has a nice particle generator in it but if you don't have the best video card it can choke the card pretty easy. I'm trying to replace most of the particle effects with sprites since I'm after commercial games with it and you have to build for the worst not the best with low end games. It's one of the reasons I got the sprite pack the DBPro version has PNG files so I should be able to use them in Torque as well as FPSC. The joke is I have to install DBPro just to unpack the set since the auto install.

If I get any answers I'll post an update. I think the sprite issue is solveable. If I can get a particle system to loop it should be fairly easy to do high quality smoke and fire sprites. I just realized I should do a search for muzzle flashes. The process should be the same. I think I did already but I'll check again.

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Belseth

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 20:07

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Just wanted to make another quick post. Kind of a review. I highly recommend the sprite pack. Best $20 I spent in gaming. Most of the effects I'd class as excellent. The slime is disgusting but beautiful. All the fire and smoke effects are very nice and extremely useful. The biggest shortcomings are for some bizzare reaon the small fire is 2' in the air limiting it's usefulness, looks nice just floats. If you want to tile the floor effects it's tricky since there's just a placement marker, trial and error. The water effects are a bit frenetic for my tastes but I don't need them so I don't really care. Some of the special effects are pretty wild but really need to be scripted in. They'd be great if you could rig them to trigger. Overall I was blown away. I tried stacking floor effects and never got any morie patterns and they worked great with overlays which helps kill the hard edge. Can't recommend it enough.

I will say Exgen was a disappointment. Works great for the money but it didn't cycle and worst yet didn't support PNGs or any 24 bit format with transparency which made it useless for me. If you need an inexpensive BMP,GIF or JPG particle generator it works great it just didn't do what I needed. Too bad because it's a cool little utility. I'm hoping he adds PNG support. I did write and he's working on cycling but it's hard to say if or when. Not knocking it just be aware no transparency and no cycling for sprite use. Otherwise cool program and well worth the money.

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Belseth

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Posted: 30th Nov 2006 20:36

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Oops, major correction. Turns out the small fire I mentioned comes standard with FPSC. My fault for not knowing FPSC better. Never really checked out the decals before. I think everything else applies. Really need to dig around in FPSC more. There's a lot there you just have to look.

An odd one I found digging is there's a few things like a Humvee model which I can't find in the menus. Not sure if you have to manually install it because I believe it was an .X format. Just funny that there are models buried in the files.

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