acord's Forum Posts

  • 13 posts

  • Vector graphics are easier for storage purposes, but they are terrible in a couple of other crucial aspects that makes them problematic as an end-all-be-all graphics solution.

    First, it is very very difficult to create a high level of detail with vector graphics without using several layers. If you want grunge, you do that one, lighting, shading, several masks and gradients later and you have something acceptable.

    With bitmaps, you just paint it, and it's always one layer. Which brings us to my next point:

    Vectors are much, much harder on the machine. Calculating them and redrawing them - especially when there are multiple layers involved(such as with one shape with a little shading) is time-consuming and severely limits how much detail you can allow.

    The best solution to this is to simply draw in vector, and then render it to raster for performance purposes.

    This is fine in theory, especially for simple shapes that do not require a lot of animation. But when it comes to animated vectors? Can't do it. You're back to loading it all onto the CPU or pre-rendering every animation sequence at the desired FPS.

    My favorite middle ground is Anime Studio. Good cheap vector animations that can be rendered out to raster, but usually need a little clean up.

    I'm going to have to look at SVG though - I've got something that has some odd collision detection requirements I'm hoping it can help with.

    Considering that's the tag for bicubic sound interpolation I'm thinking something they've done recently has caused it not to interface right with the sound hardware.

    Also: 32-bit or 64-bit?

    I'm getting the same issue, actually - Same deal too, 64-bit system. It won't play multiple fx and generally sucks.

    ...And the media.use_cubeb=false thing actually works - thanks Potato!

    Here's the weird part: I'm on 7, not Vista, and those forums seem to assume it's a vista only problem...

  • I just use an array to keep track. I might knock out a relevant tutorial when I finish this project.

  • Wow... Has this company considered buying a digital photo frame perhaps?

  • Here I've actually cut the whole sheet up to use import strip on the resulting images. Doing everything in one image helps because you keep the relative sizes correct and if you're using a limited palette you don't wind up have to reload it over and over...

  • Lol - nope, I mean slice tool! I'm quite used to doing art in powers of two, but not every sprite will necessarily be the same size!

    http://i45.tinypic.com/2unvjh3.jpg

  • So I just got done dicing up a sprite sheet in PS with the slice tool w/grids on, and it occurs to me that it would be a good feature to add in to the image editing since that's going to be the focus soon. It's also something that, last I checked, GM and MMF did not have. Both still use ridiculously simple editors.

  • Yep - working on the paid version, but I didn't have any luck finding a reference to it - my bad.

    I never use search bars in apps, just in browsers. Old habits die hard I guess!

  • Pretty self explanatory - MMF2 is interesting in that you can filter things out based on the object in it's event sheet, which is really helpful when chasing down bugs. A similar feature that would do something like highlight events with the object involved in C2 would be really helpful.

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  • Looks are required to draw the attention. Gameplay helps to keep it, but most of all it has to fire a player's imagination - whether they live vicariously through the eyes of a weenie turned supersoldier or are somewhere so weird that it invites exploration.

    That third part is the most important. Books, movies, films, music, games - the ones that people go back to are the ones that capture their imagination.

    Capturing the imagination can be as simple as appealing to the right hormones for the right age group, so it's actually not a necessity for the game itself to be original. In fact, if the player has to spend a lot of time familiarizing themselves with it, it destroys the immersion.

    This is why "me-too" FPS games and warrior hotties swinging swords as big as cars and wearing chainmail bikinis continue to dominate the shelves despite an utter lack of anything new or cool about them in the last ten years...

  • This looks excellent, thanks!

  • Hi - I'm trying to figure out a way to draw on the background instead of laying down individual sprite objects.

    Right now I'm working on a terrain generator. It makes heavy use of arrays and subdivision to create a random terrain and then provides a menu so you can alter it, but each pixel/block is a full sprite object, which chews up the performance really fast - especially on phones, which is sort of what this is intended for.

    Link here:

    http://textureshock.com/miscellaneous/Woldgen/

    (currently only new terrain/alter terrain work)

    I know there has to be a better way to do this, but I'm not having any luck finding it. Any thoughts?

    Thanks!

  • 13 posts