Lou Carcolh MOD PAGE

[simplex]

Trying out anims atm.

 

 

● Baby beefalo has the same problem. Tested it ingame just now. [image shows green 6 (snail shell) behind orange 3 (fuuuuuu... sprite)]

● Don't think the beefalo_shaved or beefalo_heat builds will be any different.

● Slurper, i'll have to study it a bit more. Size makes it a bad candidate in principle.

● Clockwork Castle, couldn't spawn it with test tools (didn't try console). Can't be sure its animation states are compatible with a Snailking. Also the chessmonster_ruins build contains all 3 monsters in one atlas which is weird (and confusing).

● Koalefant might work with some crazy workarounds, but i'm fretting the fact that it has the same structured body with 2 sprites as the Beefalo. Didn't test yet.

● Crawling Horror i can't find its build, also very unfamiliar with it, never fought one. Do you happen to know if its animation is particularly interesting?

● Slurtle is our fallback plan. Won't be able to make a very distinct Snailking with it and the behaviour will be exactly the same as a slurtle which is very disappointing.

● All other mobs either have legs, hover, or are too small to be rescaled.

 

I'm going to sleep on it...

 

PS

---

Forgot to mention the Hound, which is on par with the Slurtle, though a slightly better option in my opinion. Despite the fact that it has (small) legs, the animation would allow you to make a Snailking with a behaviour that's different from a Slurtle.

This is sooo frustrating. We are running out of mobs with interesting animations. :/

The Crawling Horror is certainly not interesting. Just 2 animations, from what I can tell: idle and attack.

The Koalefant build is based on the Beefalo one, so I don't think you need to test it at all.

To spawn the Clockwork Castle (the Rook), enter

DebugSpawn "rook"

in the console. I'm hoping at least it will be a viable candidate, since it's more interesting.

[lifemare]

No luck on the Koalefant either...

 

 

Damn! I really wanted to make those ears into twitching claws. Only has 3 behaviours though, would make a boring Snailking...

 

My next attempt would be the Clockwork Castle, do you happen to know how to spawn it ingame, simplex? I've had no luck with Test Tools or console...

[lifemare]

To spawn the Clockwork Castle (the Rook), enter

DebugSpawn "rook"

in the console. I'm hoping at least it will be a viable candidate, since it's more interesting.

 

 

Synchronicity!

 

Thanks! I'll try that right now.

[lifemare]

Well, regarding its animation, i'm happy! There's some variety there and i could definitely picture a Snailking acting like that.

 

 

Only issue is the hopping around... would it be possible to get rid of it by deleting the state or is would it break its ability to move around in another state?

I still have to study the video and compare it with the atlas, to be sure there's no obstacles.

I'll keep you guys posted.

 

Chin up! This is still happening!!!

[simplex]

Only issue is the hopping around... would it be possible to get rid of it by deleting the state or is would it break its ability to move around in another state?

Don't worry, I'll do a complete rewrite of its stategraph.And I'll package another one of those testing mods to help you out. I'm really hoping he's the one.

[lifemare]

Very very tricky.

 

 

There's a fuuuuu sprite aswell in the atlas (the back piece), and i almost cried there a bit. But then i noticed there's some background body textures that could serve as the real body if i deleted the uncooperative sprites. The result is a far cry from the Beefalo, and i still need to run some adjustments to be sure every sprite can be aligned, but it may be possible to use the Rook.

Don't want to get your hopes up, this has been a rollercoaster so far...

 

This trick has also reduced a lot of animated body parts and made the Snailking look terribly one-dimensional which is bumming me out.

The head needs to be completely different so you can have an animated mouth in the gap between the head sprite and the body sprite, but it will be hard to connect them in a way that doesn't make the head look like it's hovering over the body.

Also, this approach made the Rook a lot smaller and therefor harder to rescale decently.

With all that in mind, it might be time to test a Hound for comparison, before moving on to trying to solve all the issues with the rook.

Edited August 18, 2013 by lifemare

[simplex]

Ok, let's investigate our possibilities. We don't want to have work wasted again.Just note that the default Rook is actually downscaled (to 66% of its real size). So we can upscale it further without distorting the image.If all else fails, we could just work on the Cave Spider Queen, which certainly works on top of the Spider Queen build, and leave this one on the shelf until we get some anim support. :/

[lifemare]

Ok, let's investigate our possibilities. We don't want to have work wasted again.Just note that the default Rook is actually downscaled (to 66% of its real size). So we can upscale it further without distorting the image.If all else fails, we could just work on the Cave Spider Queen, which certainly works on top of the Spider Queen build, and leave this one on the shelf until we get some anim support. :/

 

Nothing wasted Simplex. Not the way i see it.

This back-and-forth, if nothing else, allowed me (a complete n00b) to become familiar with DS texture maps. Knowledge i value very much and will be helpful down the road (i have plenty of other ideas for mobs that might be simpler to integrate).

It also allowed us to perfect the Snailking, and all that work is safe in my hard drive just waiting for the right template.

 

I feel that with the tools at hand we simply don't have the required flexibility to adapt our ideas into the existing animations. That may soon change with updates and if we DO come to the conclusion that it's best to wait for them, well, there's no real urgency in this, is there? Aside from our personal anxieties and desires, of course.

 

No matter what, i think we should persist and try to release a beta of this (even if it's just an OP slurtle), with all its shortcomings and flaws. And hope that with time we'll have a second chance to make an even greater Snailking, embodying all the expectations we had for it.

[lifemare]

What about realitymeltdown's Binary Editor?

Would it allow us to introduce small changes to the anims (ie:modding the way that beefalo sprite is used by the game)?

I tried to run it, but get a missing dll error (MSVCP110D.dll)...

[lifemare]

PS: And speaking of waste, that test tool you developed is extremely helpful to anyone trying to mod DS texture maps. I know it was probably very easy for you to do it and you might think it's not worth it, but my guess is there's tons of artists around this forum who stay away from modding precisely because they lack such helpful tools. I would consider releasing it in a format that allows users to plug any anim build to its stategraph. Though i may be seriously underestimating the amount of work it would take to make it that flexible and useful...

[simplex]

PS: And speaking of waste, that test tool you developed is extremely helpful to anyone trying to mod DS texture maps. I know it was probably very easy for you to do it and you might think it's not worth it, but my guess is there's tons of artists around this forum who stay away from modding precisely because they lack such helpful tools. I would consider releasing it in a format that allows users to plug any anim build to its stategraph. Though i may be seriously underestimating the amount of work it would take to make it that flexible and useful...

It wouldn't be too much trouble to extend it to work with just any prefab (though I think manual listing of all animations would be required, as I don't suppose automatically fetching them in the general case would be very successful). I had started doing just that when you started messing with the rook build.But making it user-friendly enough to make it useable without a programmer overseeing it might prove tricky.But anyway, where do we stand on here? Are we going to attempt to create some Snail King? Are we skipping to another project for now?@MilleniumCount, @Lord_Battal, @Symage, what are your thoughts on this?

[simplex]

What about realitymeltdown's Binary Editor?Would it allow us to introduce small changes to the anims (ie:modding the way that beefalo sprite is used by the game)?I tried to run it, but get a missing dll error (MSVCP110D.dll)...

Based on its source, it can be compiled locally, since it doesn't really have any dependencies (it just uses the standard C++ library, so any C++ compiler will do). However, even though I haven't tested it myself, it seems like a simple reverse engineering tool. It might be useable for inspecting anim files, but I don't suppose properly generating one will work out well. But then again, I have yet to test it.If his findings are accurate, a more full-featured tool could be written based on them, using Bison or some other parser generator. But this is really something that Klei should provide. Having to reverse-engineer stuff to build content for their game is a bit nonsensical to me. I'm already writing a cross-platform TEX <-> {PNG, JPEG, TIFF, SVG, ...} converter (it's almost done), since I don't know when Matt will release his. Edited August 19, 2013 by simplex

[TheDanaAddams]

I'm already writing a cross-platform TEX <-> {PNG, JPEG, TIFF, SVG, ...} converter (it's almost done), since I don't know when Matt will release his.

I haven't said anything in this thread yet, because, well, I haven't had much to say, outside of "Wow, this looks really great, guys! I am super impressed, and can't wait to see it finished!" but... CROSS-PLATFORM TEX <-> PNG CONVERTER!?

 

I COULD JUST ABOUT KISS YOU RIGHT NOW!!

 

[ahem]

 

In terms of animation, I'm actually a trained 3D animator. If I'm not mistaken, Don't Starve basically has a bunch of floating, textured, flat polygon planes animated in 3D space.

If it were possible to export the animation rigs/data to Maya, I would be able to tweak, or create entirely new animations in the software... but converting from the game's format, to a Maya-compatible format, and then from the new Maya files back to a game-compatible format...

 

I don't have the slightest clue if it would even be possible.

 

I'm technically a film animator, not games... (my degree is in film...) but the principles of animation remain the same. As I understand it, game animation just needs to be done in segments of looping actions, and whatnot.

 

Animation is a time-consuming process, and difficult to do well, but if there were a set of tools, I do have the skills.

Edited August 19, 2013 by TheDanaAddams

[simplex]

@TheDanaAddams

Just don't expect something as user friendly as Matt's tools . I'm writing it as a Lua library, and plan to distribute it with a simple command-line Lua script implementing it. I don't suppose I'll make a GUI for it (at least initially, but since Matt is working on a cross-platform version of his tools, and his will certainly have a GUI, I think that field should be covered).

Also, since I don't own a Mac, I can't really package for it in point-and-click form. It will need to be compiled and installed, which also means installing the dependencies first: libsquish, ImageMagick and a minimal GNU environment (GNU Make and GNU getopt, both used only during compilation). Under Linux, that's basically granted (so that installing it amounts to typing "make && make install"), but I don't know how convoluted that process might be under Mac. Though some programming-oriented Mac user could always help with that.

And I really appreciate your offer to help with the animations. Having a professional animator on board would sure mean a lot! But I suppose that'll depend on when Klei releases the anim tools. What Ipsquiggle said (in the Mod System Roadmap) was

[*]More complicated, and may not happen: tool for creating new animations.

[*]If this happens, it would likely be in the form of handling output from Spriter or Spine in a small converter tool. This would implicitly handle making builds as well. In the end, we may not have the time to build this. At a minimum we’d provide documentation for our animation system so others can create the pipeline.

But that was before the "update schedule overhaul". Now it seems the release of the anim tools is quite certain. But... it may take a while. Edited August 19, 2013 by simplex

[MilleniumCount]

But anyway, where do we stand on here? Are we going to attempt to create some Snail King? Are we skipping to another project for now?@MilleniumCount, @Lord_Battal, @Symage, what are your thoughts on this?

I say we gathered around the idea and started with it. Now we will finish the Snail King at least in some sort of Alpha witch can be tweaked later on. It is good to finish something, it gives the feeling to have achieved something. I will never forget Butter the Ursapine ^^.

And the problems aren't without any hope.

Someone thought about asking some Devs about our problem? Ipsquiggle or another who could at leat tell us what this weird backward part is used for and why?

[TheDanaAddams]

@TheDanaAddamsJust don't expect something as user friendly as Matt's tools . I'm writing it as a Lua library, and plan to distribute it with a simple command-line Lua script implementing it. I don't suppose I'll make a GUI for it (at least initially, but since Matt is working on a cross-platform version of his tools, and his will certainly have a GUI, I think that field should be covered).Also, since I don't own a Mac, I can't really package for it in point-and-click form. It will need to be compiled and installed, which also means installing the dependencies first: libsquish, ImageMagick and a minimal GNU environment (GNU Make and GNU getopt, both used only during compilation). Under Linux, that's basically granted (so that installing it amounts to typing "make && make install"), but I don't know how convoluted that process might be under Mac. Though some programming-oriented Mac user could always help with that.And I really appreciate your offer to help with the animations. Having a professional animator on board would sure mean a lot! But I suppose that'll depend on when Klei releases the anim tools. What Ipsquiggle said (in the Mod System Roadmap) was

But that was before the "update schedule overhaul". Now it seems the release of the anim tools is quite certain. But... it may take a while.

I've tried compiling stuff before... and was never able to do that...

 

I'm okay using command line stuff, as long as I know the command I need to run... but I'll probably fall flat on my face when it comes to compiling.

I just want to be able to convert the images myself. Hate asking my friends to do it all the time, and it's frustrating when I can't get hold of any of them after I finish some art...

 

I expect the animation tool - if/when it is released - will be Windows-only. Which will be frustrating, since I probably won't be able to get that to work, either.;n;Either way, I hope there's a solution eventually - new animations would really kick mod capabilities up a notch!

[simplex]

I say we gathered around the idea and started with it. Now we will finish the Snail King at least in some sort of Alpha witch can be tweaked later on. It is good to finish something, it gives the feeling to have achieved something. I will never forget Butter the Ursapine ^^.And the problems aren't without any hope.Someone thought about asking some Devs about our problem? [Member member=Ipsquiggle] or another who could at leat tell us what this weird backward part is used for and why?My guess is that without it the build would look weird, as we could tell by just erasing it.

I've tried compiling stuff before... and was never able to do that... I'm okay using command line stuff, as long as I know the command I need to run... but I'll probably fall flat on my face when it comes to compiling.I just want to be able to convert the images myself. Hate asking my friends to do it all the time, and it's frustrating when I can't get hold of any of them after I finish some art... I expect the animation tool - if/when it is released - will be Windows-only. Which will be frustrating, since I probably won't be able to get that to work, either.;n;Either way, I hope there's a solution eventually - new animations would really kick mod capabilities up a notch!

The compilator itself is simple. What might be annoying is having to install all dependencies manually (since installing from source code under Linux is common practice, over here we have a lot of tools to make the process quite simple). Ideally, I'd distribute a version statically linked to all dependencies for Mac. But... I'd need a Mac to do that. (my sister has one, but she lives in another city).Though I have to say, the library itself is quite user-friendly. Probably much more than whatever command-line tool is built from it. For example, writing a program to transform a TEX into a PNG looks like:

local kleiutils = require 'kleiutils'local img = kleiutils.image()img:read("somedir/sometexture.tex")img:write("someotherdir/somename.png")

I also implemented some features, such as rescaling, cropping, etc., but that's just for if I get to implement support for atlas processing.

Edited August 19, 2013 by simplex

[MilleniumCount]

My guess is that without it the build would look weird, as we could tell by just erasing it.

I'm not satisfied with this! ^-^

[simplex]

@TheDanaAddamsAnd by the way, I just finished the TEX -> whatever conversion.

Edited August 19, 2013 by simplex

[TheDanaAddams]

The compilator itself is simple. What might be annoying is having to install all dependencies manually (since installing from source code under Linux is common practice, over here we have a lot of tools to make the process quite simple). Ideally, I'd distribute a version statically linked to all dependencies for Mac. But... I'd need a Mac to do that. (my sister has one, but she lives in another city).

Maybe someone will be able to make a version like that for the people who aren't able to get it working.

 

I've tried a few times before, and never been able to compile something from source.

 

What cruel person made it so you had to use the OS itself to make a standalone version of a program you've already coded to be cross-platform? >.<

 

@TheDanaAddamsAnd by the way, I just finished the TEX -> whatever conversion.

Good to hear! Just hope I can use it. |D

[simplex]

Maybe someone will be able to make a version like that for the people who aren't able to get it working. I've tried a few times before, and never been able to compile something from source. What cruel person made it so you had to use the OS itself to make a standalone version of a program you've already coded to be cross-platform? >.<

Apple is more restrictive on that than most, but for compiled things that tends to be the case, since you rely one way or another on system libraries (at least).An oh, in your quoting of me I meant compilation, not compiler. A compiler is certainly not simple.  

Good to hear! Just hope I can use it. |D

I hope so too! Especially since I just finished the rest. (ok, I still have to write some utility functions and do more extensive testing)EDIT

---

And I know this is barely relevant to the end user, but since programmers tend to take pride on it I can't help it: it's so fast! It's taking ~0.85 seconds (in my PC) to read the Beefalo atlas, convert it into PNG, save it, reload the PNG and turn it into TEX again.EDIT 2

---

Ok, I'm derailing this thread. I'll stop. Edited August 19, 2013 by simplex

[lifemare]

oooh, this thread has been busy.

It wouldn't be too much trouble to extend it to work with just any prefab (though I think manual listing of all animations would be required, as I don't suppose automatically fetching them in the general case would be very successful). I had started doing just that when you started messing with the rook build.But making it user-friendly enough to make it useable without a programmer overseeing it might prove tricky.But anyway, where do we stand on here? Are we going to attempt to create some Snail King? Are we skipping to another project for now? [...]

 See? Even if we do end up a little disappointed with our SnailKing (for now), a bunch of good things came out of this. Hope you can make it work.I'm still all in. Snail King must live! 

Based on its source, it can be compiled locally, since it doesn't really have any dependencies (it just uses the standard C++ library, so any C++ compiler will do). However, even though I haven't tested it myself, it seems like a simple reverse engineering tool. It might be useable for inspecting anim files, but I don't suppose properly generating one will work out well. But then again, I have yet to test it.If his findings are accurate, a more full-featured tool could be written based on them, using Bison or some other parser generator. But this is really something that Klei should provide. Having to reverse-engineer stuff to build content for their game is a bit nonsensical to me. I'm already writing a cross-platform TEX <-> {PNG, JPEG, TIFF, SVG, ...} converter (it's almost done), since I don't know when Matt will release his.

 Well, that sounds like too much work and a bit nonsensical indeed.All we need is one sprite to change one variable. 

[...]In terms of animation, I'm actually a trained 3D animator. If I'm not mistaken, Don't Starve basically has a bunch of floating, textured, flat polygon planes animated in 3D space.If it were possible to export the animation rigs/data to Maya, I would be able to tweak, or create entirely new animations in the software... but converting from the game's format, to a Maya-compatible format, and then from the new Maya files back to a game-compatible format...[...]

 Hi DanaAddams! Welcome to the thread! :DVery happy to have someone with your skills volunteering to help!From what i could gather of realitymeltdown's tool, it converts the anim binaries into text, and from what i could see in this thread, that text is relatively easy to interpret. It shouldn't be very hard to just switch the "layer_name" for one back-sprite to another, so that sprite 1 is below sprite 2 instead of above it. It would probably be overkill to convert it to Maya for this simple task, and probably hard as hell, but wow, that would make one powerful modding tool!

ANIMversion 4anim{ name open face_right 1 face_up 1 face_left 1 face_down 1 root ui_chest_3x3 framerate 30 frame{  x 0.0254999995232  y -0.0995000004768  w 338.348999023  h 25.2989997864  element{   name frame   frame 0   layer_name Layer 1   a 1   b 0   c 0   d 0.075927734375   tx 0   ty 0   tz -5  } } frame{  x 0.0254999995232  y -0.399500012398  w 345.648986816  h 104.698997498  element{   name frame   frame 0   layer_name Layer 1   a 1.02171325684   b 0   c 0   d 0.314239501953   tx 0   ty 0   tz -5  } } frame{

I say we gathered around the idea and started with it. Now we will finish the Snail King at least in some sort of Alpha witch can be tweaked later on. It is good to finish something, it gives the feeling to have achieved something. I will never forget Butter the Ursapine ^^.And the problems aren't without any hope.

 My thoughts exactly.I should be able to post some updates on Lou around midnight today (GMT), work schedule allowing. I'm trying some different designs for Lou on paper to see if i can fit it better over the Rook, haven't been lucky so far. I'll try to align the sprites i've already done if that fails. And maybe even try a Hound for comparison. 

@TheDanaAddamsAnd by the way, I just finished the TEX -> whatever conversion.

 Woooh! gimmy gimmy! 

Ok, I'm derailing this thread. I'll stop.

 This thread need more derailing like the one that just happened! Lots of ideas bouncing around is a recipe for great achievements  

---

PS: sorry for the wall of text!

[lifemare]

I should be able to post some updates on Lou around midnight today (GMT), work schedule allowing. I'm trying some different designs for Lou on paper to see if i can fit it better over the Rook, haven't been lucky so far. I'll try to align the sprites i've already done if that fails. And maybe even try a Hound for comparison.

 

Blog update: Sorry, i won't be keeping that promise (got sidetracked with other stuff today)... But only because i'm expecting to have a couple of free afternoons this week to fully concentrate on pushing this forwards. Probably will be without internet starting from tomorrow, but i expect to have a finished Rook/Hound design before Thursday to show you guys.

[simplex]

Blog update: Sorry, i won't be keeping that promise (got sidetracked with other stuff today)... But only because i'm expecting to have a couple of free afternoons this week to fully concentrate on pushing this forwards. Probably will be without internet starting from tomorrow, but i expect to have a finished Rook/Hound design before Thursday to show you guys.

No problem. When you have the time.

[lifemare]

Just thought i'd give you a little notice, i'll be offline for a while and didn't want you guys to think i was abandoning this (after all the latest bad news). Quite the contrary, still very pumped to get this across the finish line.

See you in a few days (unless i find some internetz at the place).