[HELP] Invisible Paddle

[Ysulyan]

Because I want to make my character compatible with SW, now I had to add a few more sprites, including the paddle.
As much as I love Wes' ability to row his boat with an invisible paddle, my custom character needs one anyways.
For some strange reason, while looking into the atlas-0.tex file, the paddle is not there but I have added the paddles into the exported folder for don't starve tools to compile the sprite altogether and create the .zip for the anim folder. Weird is the fact that the paddle was ignored while compiling. Anyone out there who uses the compiler and could give me a hand?

I appreciate any kind of help.
Ysu.

[Arkathorn]

Could you please post a screenshot of your file structure?

[Ysulyan]

10 hours ago, Arkathorn said:

Could you please post a screenshot of your file structure?

Sure thing,
Also, thanks a lot, you've been helping me with both my problems.
Thanks for your selflessness.
Anyway, here's the files that I considered relevant to show. I can share more if you wish, or simply the whole mod folder if needed.

 

Spoiler

Here's the mod folder, with the exported folder expanded, showing the paddle folder inside it. On the top layer is the lua where you can see that the code is fine.

Here's what's inside the zip folder. I've noticed there's no atlas-1 but I think that belongs to DST, am I right? At any rate, the tex file shows no paddle inside... Let me show you how it looks like...

atlas-0

 

[Mobbstar]

Can you give me the exported folder itself? I want to try and compile it myself (eventhough that normally works worse than for others).

EDIT @Ysulyan maybe you want to follow this topic

[Ysulyan]

Alright, let me send it to you VIA the dropbox. I'll send a PM

I was thinking about compiling on my own too, with the TEXtool and whatnot, but if you can do it I'd appreciate it, I have to go to classes in a couple of minutes.

[Mobbstar]

Try to autocompile with either of the attached spriter projects. They reference the paddle texture. "optimised" additionally does not reference any blank images to reduce the atlas size.

-removed-

EDIT: @Ysulyan

[Ysulyan]

What the darn?! Every time I see this topic I Follow it and when I come back I'm not following it anymore D:
Anyway, thanks for your time and efforts TuT
I'll test it when I get home from work :3

[Ysulyan]

Okay update time! The compiler worked with your scml!
That's excellent news! That's one more thing to scratch off the list!
Thank you so much for your help, man. I'll have to understand what did you do so I can learn the thing. 

[Mobbstar]

7 hours ago, Ysulyan said:

I'll have to understand what did you do so I can learn the thing.

Alright, this will be a bit complicated at first, but stay with me... Nah, it's not that bad.

*DISCLAIMER: I am not to be held responsible for any damage or confusion caused by potential misnomers*

First off, Banks and Builds: The DS animation system uses two independent parts of an animation: The symbols (textures, images, etc.) are saved as a file called atlas-0.tex (and atlas-1, etc. if more space is needed). To read the atlas, the game needs the Build (build.bin), which is essentially a table of contents for the atlas.

The animations themselves (i.e. the position, rotation and scale of the symbols at any "key time") is stored in the Bank (anim.bin). Without it, not a single symbol would even appear in-game. If you want to decompile banks for your study using the magnificant Krane by Simplex, be aware that it might mirror symbols.

"Why is that? It sounds kinda dumb." As you already noticed, your animation file doesn't even require an anim.bin file. That is because the base character already has a whole bunch of banks loaded. It only tries to load and apply the build you give it.

 

Now that this is out of the way, the actual solution to this problem:

This is the rough structure of an SCML file (spriter project):

• Folders
  • Images
• Entities (usually just one)
  • animations
    • Main Timeline
    • Timelines of individual objects

It's in a readable text format, so feel free to take a look (unless you're allergic to HTML). If it isn't clear already, the compiler interprets the first bit as Build and the second bit as Bank.

So all I had to do was adding the paddle folders and its images to the list at the beginning. Yes, that was the whole fix. I optimised the project afterwards in a similiar manner, removing all unneeded references from that list. (Admittedly, spriter can't open the file anymore, but the autocompiler worked anyways.)