Short Factor Forums

[ShortFactor]

For the development of sprite movies here on out, I'm embarking on a quest.
A quest for the ultimate sprite animation program.
But you see, I am making this program.
The program will be kept to myself for a long time. I can only imagine the horrible monstrosities that could be created with it if fallen into noob hands.
The program is called Sprite Land. It allows one to create sprite animation in 3D space.
But its much richer than that. Here's a short briefing on some of the features:

Keyframe system similar to Flash... maybe better.
Library system, like Flash, but better organized.
3D space to work with. No support planned for terrains, but you can populate a ground plane with sprites as BG elements, and add decals, etc.
General 3D features such as fog and skydomes/cubes (no lighting system planned yet as it has turned out to be very buggy).
Of course, the sprites themselves. These can be manipulated with advanced transform tools (better than Flash as planned so far). They are automatically sorted with transparent BG colors, so no more mucking around with trace bitmap (you could edit and import quickly and efficiently, less discouraging than Flash for sprite edits). Sprites can also be billboarded to always face the camera, so no worries about flat sprites or constant manual rotation.
And speaking of camera, there will be 3D camera support of course, which can do all sorts of stuff.
Unlike Flash, you can keyframe and tween damn near anything. The way a camera views the world, a sprite's perspective, a sound's pitch...
Speaking of sound...
Support for "Sound Objects" which are icons that represent sounds that you can place in 3D space. Of course, volume and pan correspond with its position. Support for keyframing and tweening a sound's position, volume, and pitch will all be available.
Time slider controls. Now it works in a funny little thing I call vector time. Which basically means, unlike Flash, it is not bound by snapped frames. You could tween the speed of the time slider and have it universally affect everything at once (including sound pitch without pausing between frames. Authentic bullettime effects.
This program will have features like Flash such as stream sounds (except they won't lose sync through a long movie).
Naturally this program won't have swf export (ARE YOU KIDDING??). So instead the screen can be captured while the movie plays, then the movie can be imported to Flash where it can be reexported to an swf.
Populator tool, for creating large expanses of repeated elements randomly.
Particle systems than can be keyframed/tweened.
"Anchoring", or attaching points to other points (like a chain to a foot that dynamically moves).

Like I said, I'm afraid I can't give out this program to anyone. I'm sorry to get a lot of your hopes up, but I may release this some day in the future when its better developed and I feel I can trust everyone (or... when I quit sprite animation all together).

However if you have suggestions for this program be sure to add them to this thread.
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"Thinking is the hardest kind of work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."

-Henry Ford

[woopyfrood]

BAGHK. Out of all the freeware in the world that just HAD to be kept personal...I mean, look at TISFAT. The guy who made that must've known what he was doing, but I've seen some pretty slick animations with it (including some practice ones made by yours truly).

I'm still a nublet at sprite animation (My first two Mario parodies were a monstrosity among sprite anims), but there's just something that "clicks" with me and makes love me sprite animation...

Ironically, I'm better at frame-by-frame hand-drawn than sprite, but I really want to get better at spritemation...heh..."spritemation"...I patent that...
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Click this here link for hopeness of the Smash Brothers kind: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/mewtwo-back-to-smash-brothers.html

[Maverick Hunter Sonic]

I love sprite-animation, but I haven't been practicing recently ='(
I've been trying to improve my Game Maker skills and almost forgot I even had MF8 :/
Well....guess I better reboot ^^
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[Darkletrick]

too bad i dont even have flash,i just use ms paint and windows movie maker
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[McSir-KingCraze]

[SinRainyday666]

I've tried Sprite-Animation--but I used Jasc Animation shop and could only get 9 seconds worth of 'action'

{if you consider some random dude dropping from the sky to the ground action}

but it was still pretty good ;P

can't wait for the program.
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Actually, officer, if you factored the Earth's rotation, we were All speeding.

[Snover64]

[CriticalQuit]

I attempted flash for the first time when I joined the Lock Legion. I failed miserably at both.

I later learned the only things I can do that involve sitting in front of a computer for hours on end are World of Warcraft and yelling at idiots. Lucky for me this is the internet, so I can do both at once, sometimes.
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Regarding Kirby Super Star Ultra's Meta Knight mode:

"Why does Kirby get maxim tomatoes and I don't?"