Games of Daze

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Games of Daze / Infomagic - Games of Daze (Summer 1995) (Disc 1 of 2).iso / x2ftp / msdos / utils / anim256 / manual.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-10-13 | 17KB | 362 lines

Hi! and Thank you for using the 256 Color Sprite Animator! The main purpose of this program is to create and control smooth, fast, flicker-free animations with minimal effort. Besides for simple entertainment, this program has many uses: - Editing/Viewing 320x200 PCX files PROGRAMMERS! Use this program for the following: - Creating and testing sprite animations before writing any code. Great for games, title screens, and anything else you can think of! - Designing full color custom fonts - Creating bitmaps, backgrounds, and logos (for games, title screens, etc.) - Creating/Modifying VGA palettes REQUIREMENTS ------------ The minimum requirements to run this program are: - 286 or higher processor - 512K of RAM - VGA or better video card and monitor - Microsoft or compatible mouse INTRODUCTION ------------ What is a sprite? A sprite is a bitmap, or series of bitmaps to produce animation, that can move around the screen without affecting the background it is moving over. Most video games use sprites. For example, Mario, fighters in games like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, and Sonic the Hedgehog are all sprites. This program allows sprites to be created and tested, simply for entertainment or for the creation of video games. This program allows you to create sprites using the full VGA palette (256 colors), and save them to file (in PCX format). The resolution used is 320x200, which is on the low end, but one of the most popular for game design because of it's ease of use and high range of colors. This is the tradeoff, since the higher the resolution, the less colors available. (Unless you move up to SVGA modes - maybe in a later version). AREAS OF THE SCREEN ------------------- At the top of the screen is the menu bar. Features are discussed later. On the left half of the screen it the edit grid. It allows you to make draw or edit the currently selected bitmap. Each square on the grid is equivalent to one pixel. On the right half of the screen are the bitmaps available in actual size. Bitmaps can be selected by clicking on them. This makes it the current bitmap, and loads it into the edit grid. As changes are made in the edit grid, the changes are also made to the actual size copy so you can see how the change will really look. The currently selected bitmap is indicated by it's button being pressed. If more bitmaps are in use than can fit on this section, they can be accessed by clicking on the up and down arrows on the right side of the panel, or by using the page up and page down buttons. At the bottom right section of the screen is the palette. The current color is selected by clicking on it, and the current color is represented by being surrounded by a gray box. HOW SPRITES ARE STORED ---------------------- When loading a file, you are not loading a series of bitmaps, but a full screen image (320x200). Bitmaps are not individual items, but simply different areas of the same image. The bitmaps are grabbed from the image, allowing you to work on the image in small chunks. When you save a file, you save the full image - bitmap dimensions are not stored. For example, say you open a file and specify the sprite width to be 32, the sprite height to be 64, and the number of sprites to be 10. The image is loaded, and 32x64 'chunks' are grabbed from the image for use as individual bitmaps. When saving a file, these chunks are put back on the image and the image is saved. It is up to you to keep track of the width and height of your particular sprites, because you can open a file with other sprite dimesions, thus working on the file in different size 'chunks'. The default dimensions with a new sprite are 24x24, with 60 bitmaps. HOW SPRITES ARE ANIMATED ------------------------ Before you can animate anything, you must have at least one bitmap drawn. When drawing bitmaps, it is IMPORTANT to remember that color 0, the color at the top left corner of the palette, is NOT black: it is TRANSPARENT. This means pixels that are color 0 do not show up as black when the sprite is animated, but rather allow the background that the sprite is passing over to show through. If you actually want a pixel to be black on your sprite, choose another black from the palette, or if there is none, edit one of the colors not in use and make it black (see below). To give the illusion of movement, a series of bitmaps is displayed quickly, one after another. Each successive bitmap is slightly different from the previous one, to produce animation when the bitmaps are cycled. As a simple example, to create a sprite of a man walking to the right, the first bitmap could be the man facing to the right with his left leg forward and his right leg back. The second bitmap could be with both legs together, and the third bitmap could be with his right leg forward and his left leg back. To produce the illusion of the man walking, the sequence of bitmaps to display would be 1,2,3,2. Thus, when the sequence is repeated over and over (1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2, etc.) the man appears to be walking. The more bitmaps you can put in the sequence, the smoother the animation will be. The example of the man walking is pretty choppy, and can be improved by adding 2 more sprites, such as a fourth with his left leg forward and right leg back as in the first bitmap, but not as far. The fifth bitmap could have his right leg slightly forward and his left leg slightly back. The sequence to produce the smoother walking effect would then be 1,4,2,5,3,5,2,4. Note that the sprites do not have to be drawn in order - you simply specify the order when it comes time to try out the animation (see the animation section of the menu bar below). Near the end of this manual are some sample sprites included with the program that you can load, try out, modify, and use in your own programs if you wish. MENU BAR -------- The first item in the menu bar is 'File' (Alt-F). It allows you to: - 'Open' an image. You specify sprite width, height, and number of bitmaps. The minimum width or height is 2, and the maximum is 64. The maximum number of bitmaps you can load is 99, howevern, if you specify more than can fit on one display, the maximum of bitmaps that will fit is used instead. For example, with a maximum size of 64x64, only 15 bitmaps can fit. With dimensions of 32x32, 60 bitmaps can fit. Note that width and height do not need to be the same. For example, you can load a file with bitmaps of dimensions 50x30, and 36 bitmaps will fit (6 across (7 across is to wide for 320 pixels) and 6 down (7 down is to tall for 200 pixels)). - 'New' image. You specify sprite width, height, and and number of bitmaps, and start with the default VGA palette. - 'Save' the current image to file, along with the current palette. - 'Save As' - save the current image with a new file name - 'Open palette' opens a new palette. Palettes are saved as part of the image, but you can also load and save palettes separately. WARNING! Opening a palette when you already have some bitmaps drawn can really mess up your colors. Individual pixels in a bit map are assigned a color number (0-255, for a total of 256). For example, let's assume an area of a bitmap is red, and the color number for that particular shade of red in the palette is 76. When a new palette is opened, those pixels don't know that they were red, they only know they were color 76. Color 76 in the new palette may be blue, changing the color of those pixels. Palette have the extension .PAL - 'Save Palette' and 'Save Palette As' save the palette to a file. - 'Exit' the sprite animator. The second menu item is 'Bit-Map' (Alt-B). It allows you to: - 'Copy' one bitmap to another. Each bitmap has a number, as displayed on the bitmap displayer on the right half of the screen. This can save you effort, since you don't have to start a new bitmap that is similar to another bitmap from scratch. - 'Clear' the current bitmap to color 0 (the top left color on the palette, usually black). - 'Color Fill' the current bitmap with the current color. Same as 'Clear', but allows you to specify which color to use. - 'Scroll Left' the current bitmap 1 column. The right-most column of pixels gets wrapped around to the other side. - 'Scroll Right' the current bitmap 1 column. The left-most column of pixels gets wrapped around to the other side. - 'Scroll Up' the current bitmap 1 row. The top-most row of pixels gets wrapped around to the bottom. - 'Scroll Down' the current bitmap 1 row. The bottom-most row of pixels gets wrapped around to the top. - 'Flip Horizontal' - flips the current bitmap horizontally. - 'Flip Vertical' - flips the current bitmap vertically. - 'Invert' all the colors of the current bitmap. This is not true color inversion (eg. yellow becomes blue, black becomes white, etc.), but rather a palette flip for the current bitmap (eg. pixels that are color 0 become color 255, pixels that are color 3 become color 252, etc.) The next menu item is 'Colors' (Alt-C). It allows you to: - 'Edit Color'. Use this to edit the current color. In video, all colors are made up of different amounts of red, green, and blue. In basic VGA, these amounts are represented by a number in the range 0-63, which gives us 64 shades of each color to mix together. Although we are limited to only using 256 colors, we can choose from a total of 64*64*64, or 262144! WARNING! Beware of editing the first 16 colors in the palette. When you edit a color, EVERYTHING that is that color changes. The menu, the grid, the mouse cursor, etc are drawn with colors from the first 16, so changing these colors may make it difficult or impossible to read menu-items, see the mouse, etc. However, with a little care, you can customize the colors of the animator to your liking by adjusting these colors. For example, black is represented by the red, green, and blue values being 0, 0, 0. White is 63, 63, 63. A nice burgundy has values of 40, 10, 20. The next menu item is 'Animation' (Alt-A). This is the fun one: - 'Quick Animate' allows you to specify one animation sequence, which is played over and over until ESC is pressed. To specify a sequence, enter the numbers of the bitmaps in the order you wish to cycle. Use commas or spaces to separate the numbers. You can also use the minus sign to indicate ranges. For example, 5-15 will cycle though all the bitmaps from 5 to 15 inclusive. You can combine ranges with individual numbers, for example 1,6,12-15,7,6-2. Once you have entered the sequence you want displayed, a panel appears with the animation. While this panel is displayed, you can press '+' to increase the speed, '-' to decrease the speed, and 'CTRL-S' to reset the speed to default. When you are finished, hitting ESC will stop the animation. - 'Full Animate' is similar to 'Quick Animate', except it allows you to specify not one, but four sequences. One for each direction (Left, Right, Up, Down), plus you can specify which bitmap to display when you want no movement. Once the sequences have been entered and 'OK' is clicked on, a panel appears. You can use the arrow keys to move the sprite around, and use the space bar to stop it. Like in 'Quick Animate', '+', '-', and 'CTRL-S' affect speed. You can also adjust how many pixels the sprite moves for both directions in between each bitmap change. Hit lowercase 'x' to decrease the number of pixels moved when the left and right arrows are used. Capital 'X' increases the number of pixels in the left and right directions. Likewise, 'y' and 'Y' decrease and increase the number of pixels moved in the Up and Down directions. By adjusting the speed and the pixel step size, you have alot of control over how the sprite moves. The last menu item is 'Misc' (Alt-M). The features in this menu are: - 'Grid On' - Turns the edit grid on. - 'Grid Off' - Turns the edit grid off. This is good for sprites with larger dimensions. As larger dimensions means the edit grid has smaller squares, having the grid on can make it hard to see what you are working on. - 'View' - Let's you see the current image. DRAWING BITMAPS --------------- There are a couple of handy features you can use when drawing bitmaps. One is the ability to find out exactly what color a pixel is by moving the edit cursor to that pixel with the mouse and hitting the right mouse button. The current color in the palette will change to the color of the pixel. Another feature that is useful is the ability to replace one color in a bitmap to another color. For example, say you wanted to change all the red pixels to blue. First, select the blue you wish to use. Next, move the edit cursor with the mouse to the any of the red pixels that you want to replace. Last, hit 'CTRL-R' to replace that current pixel and all pixels of the same color in the current bitmap to the new color. If you run out of bitmaps and need some more, simply save the image and re-open it with more bitmaps. You can also use the keyboard to move the cursor and place pixels if you prefer. To use the arrow keys to move the cursor, first move the mouse to the grid you want (either the edit grid or the palette). The arrow keys then move the cursor, and if you are on the edit grid, SPACE or ENTER places a pixel of the current color on the grid, ESC sets the current color to whatever the color of the current pixel is (works the same as the left and right mouse buttons). FILES INCLUDED ______________ The program file is: - ANIM256.EXE Data files that ANIM256.EXE requires are: - ANIM256.DAT Some sample sprites are included. They are listed here, but described in the next section: - SPACEMAN.PCX - LIFTER.PCX - BOMB.PCX - DANCER.PCX - DIVER.PCX - BANANA.PCX The following palettes are included with this program: - RGB.PAL - 64 shades of red, 64 shades of blue, 64 shades of green, 48 shades of grey, and the standard EGA palette (first 16 colors) - DEFAULT.PAL - the standard VGA palette - 6ANDGRAY.PAL - shades of the 6 basic colors (red, green, blue, yellow, purple, cyan), gray, and the standard EGA palette - GREAT.PAL - just a all around great palette I found. somewhere. Good colors, and the standard EGA palette SAMPLE SPRITES -------------- Here is a list of sample sprites you can learn from, modify, use in your own programs, etc. 'Open' the files with the specified width, height, and number of bitmaps, and use either 'Quick Animate' or 'Full Animate', with the specified sequence(s): Filename Width Height Number spaceman.pcx 48 48 10 Full animate: Left = 5,6,7,6 Right = 8,9,10,9 Up = 3,4 Down = 1,2 lifter.pcx 50 25 6 Quick animate: 1-6,5-2 bomb.pcx 40 40 30 Quick animate: 1-30 dancer.pcx 25 25 8 Quick or Full animate: 1-7,6-2 or any random sequences diver.pcx 30 22 13 Quick animate: 1-13 banana.pcx 24 24 7 Full Animate: Left = 1,2,3,2 Right = 5,6,7,6 Up = 1,2,3,2 Down = 5,6,7,6 Stop = 4 THIS VERSION IS SHAREWARE! -------------------------- Feel free to copy this program, give it to your friends, upload it to BBSs, etc., as long as all files listed above are included. I'll send you the next version of this program which allows you to save bitmap width and height, number of bitmaps, and animation sequences so you don't have to remember and re-type them in all the time. Also, I'll remove the delay timer on the title screen, and send you some really cool animations (not like the simple ones supplied with this shareware version). If you use this program to create a game, or anything else, you don't have to pay royalties, but I'd love a copy! If you have any comments or ideas for this or other products, I'd love those too. To register, send $25 + $5 shipping and handling (Canadian funds if you're from Canada or US funds from everywhere else, cheque or money order) to: ╒══════════════════════════╕ │ Brian Tegart │ Be sure to include your name and │ Suite 1119, │ address, whether you want a 5¼ or │ #194 3803 Calgary Tr. S. │ 3½ diskette, and please indicate │ Edmonton, Alberta │ that you are registering the 256 │ Canada, T6J 5M8 │ Color Sprite Animator! ╘══════════════════════════╛ Thanks & Have Fun!