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[Scott]

For sprite sheet export, what kind of file name wildcards do people want? Currently have, depending on context:
<animname>
<animnumber>
<sheetnumber>
<framenumber>

What else will be important to you all, if anything?

[Scott]

I have a lofty goal of knocking out a major feature per night for the next 7 nights prior to our imminent first real public release.

So, 17 days later (I know!), naive lofty goals aside, here are a couple of the latest additions This is really exciting!

This actually shows 2 very major features: animated OBB collision types, and per-frame events triggering (events can be anything you make them)


And these show, using a totally differently tuned workflow, animated AABB collision types for those who prefer a more traditional sprite based environment.



A new bone type - "attach bone". Used to, you know, attach things. They function quite differently from a normal bone in the editor. They are not a simple "bone parent" either because they can be used for many other purposes than that.



Oh yeah, also, z order is animated, but there is no gif animation for that yet. That was a huge thing to get in there, and we're still crushing the bugs that resulted from that, though it seems quite stable by now.

It feels so good to be making some tangible progress after developing for so long!

[Scott]

Someone is sponsoring the integration of Basis into their game/multimedia creation software of choice. Previously mentioned software is not particularly known outside of the UK and Amiga scenes... so it will be nice to give it some love anyway!

How EXCITING! I'm surprised how exciting an email such as that can be!

 

[eyeliner]

This is looking great! Is there any release planned?

[Scott]

This is looking great! Is there any release planned?

Yes. Soon. For free.

However, I think we will have to attempt to raise some (kickstarter?) money in order to continue working at the pace we have been the last couple months. Without that it is going to have to become a side project that gets worked on once or twice a week.

Either way, we definitely want it to stay free.

[Scott]

Z order animation in action.

[Scott]

Yeah baby 90% !
It's hard to define when a solid "1.0" version is for something like this that may keep evolving over time, but I think we have narrowed it down to certain sets of features which are for 1.0 and which are for after. Here are some latest features done and/or being worked on...


One day we will refurbish all icons to, you know, be more consistent with each other.
There are a lot of cool features here. Micro-timelines, interpolation curves, etc. The coolest is the repeat functionality: Do an action, then repeat that action in one of many ways on other frames/animations. There have been a few times when working on this software that when I tested the feature for the first time I was surprisingly excited. This was one of them. An entire, complex, animation was quickly edited in a drastic way with this. That 6 months of NO-PROGRESS time almost seems worth it now since it was spent re-building the action/undo system, which opened the door for this baby.



One big drawback with skeletal animation is trying to make things BEND that don't exactly have clearly defined joints. If the textures are drawn right, things such as arms or legs are even workable - people do it all the time. However, things like tentacles, tails, giraffe necks, etc are much harder. This is where the "tails" feature comes into place. It is heavily WIP but super exciting so far. This animation also shows the context sensitive "quick keys" help dialog.

Also, we have come up with a couple reference implementations with source+binary. Right now there are examples for Amiga, Linux, and Windows in a couple different frameworks, with more to come soon.

Honestly, I think this is to the point that I AM ready for others to start trying it out and get feedback and it can even begin to be used in games (one friend created a simple game in 3 hours on his first look at it - THAT was encouraging!). It feels SO GREAT to be satisfied with where it is at so far after 2.5 or 3 years, though still WIP, for others to try out... just waiting for a friend who is wrapping up the example animations to come with the program, and we'll be able to release!

Yay for it not becoming another dead project!

[CDLegasse]

Looking good!

[darkhog]

Can it export spritesheets?

[Scott]

@Indecom - Thanks!

Can it export spritesheets?

It is in the works. A couple other things get priority, then we will impl. sprite sheet export, and possibly other types of pre-rendered export.

We have found many tools used in 2d skeletal animation are desired for sprite artists. So, Basis is meant to provide a fast and helpful workflow even if you do not plan to use skeletal animation in your game:

Texture packing, frame-by-frame animation with varying speeds, hot spot marking, AABBs for collision, sprite export with meta data, and the list goes on. It all fits very well into Basis' workflow, and most of it is already there and ready to use.

[darkhog]

Thanks! I hope you'll release it soon. Anyway, could you put some current build on dropbox or somewhere else where you can update it without changing link? I'd love to help with testing, love tools like this.

[Scott]

@darkhog - PMed you

So my friend is still wrapping up his example animations to come with Basis. Busy with other things this week (silly real-life world), he only really got into it starting last night. I've taken the opportunity to implement some reference examples that use Basis animations. We hit up SDL, SFML, Allegro, HGE, .... that plugin for Hollywood (esp. for Amiga)...

Then for fun I hit up http://devkitpro.org/ and messed with a Wii build. Maybe... more than 2 nights of research and work and just forget it...

... surprisingly, after a few hours and becoming friends with GX, it was working! How fun!!


(the family Wii)

[Sam B]

Tell me about how it exports...

Will I be able to make a customer Game Maker extension for it, via XML or what's the format looking like?

[Scott]

Tell me about how it exports...

Will I be able to make a customer Game Maker extension for it, via XML or what's the format looking like?

The animation data is in a binary format. Soon it will export sprite sheets with user-definable meta data (xml, json, whatever and however you want - it's fully configurable). Eventually we plan to allow import/export plugins.

There is reference code though to load animations and play them. It is implemented in a few different frameworks and platforms. It would be very easy tweak one of these to create a gamemaker plugin. Maybe a night's work (I say this from experience).

[edit] We hope to release tonight. We'll see!

[darkhog]

[edit] We hope to release tonight. We'll see!

Cool! I'll certainly try it out!

[Scott]

Well, the first version is ready! We have a kickstarter page here with links to the download site.

Basis is completely free, but we have decided this is really the best chance we have of taking the software where we want it to go. It's explained on the page better than I could here, really. Anyway, anyone that is interested, keep in mind it is a very early release with some incomplete features and surely some bugs. If you find anything, we would be so grateful if you could report it on the Basis webpage forums, or even here if you'd like.

Even in this early version, it is quite capable of being integrated into a game. A friend was doing a 3 hour challenge and managed to figure out Basis plus use the plugin for his system and complete his game in that time.

All feedback is welcome. And thank you to everyone for your support! A lot of our encouragement came from here.

[darkhog]

I may try to make working Pascal source based on Allegro version of C source to include with samples. Interested?

[Scott]

Interested. Let me know if I can help in any way

[darkhog]

@achild, will try to do that after I'm finished with Super Heli Land. Need to focus on that one now.

Anyway, too bad I'm completely broken and have debt collectors over my head (fortunately legal ones, wasn't involved in any loan shark business so I don't have to worry about "accident"), otherwise I would certainly give some money.

[Scott]

It's been a while!

Basis released!
It's a beta and some features are not complete, but hopefully we'll get some feedback/testing/usage! It is completely free and available at http://achild.wikidot.com/basis.

Kickstarter failed
We realized some things that probably contributed to such a massive failure. Maybe we try again some time, perhaps on IndieGogo next time, maybe. In the mean while, due partly to the need we had for the funds, development has been very slow.

SDKs updated
Oh yes. SDKs have full documentation and will continue to from here on out. Also, we have re-implemented most of the framework/plugins as testing the in the real world has highlighted certain issues. All changes should be uploaded shortly.

Also, SDK build system is less cross-compiler-from-windows based, and is more centered to the systems. We build Amiga builds from Amiga, etc. Now we can support WarpOS and hopefully fix some AmigaOS4 issues we were having!!

Theming in Basis!
Old


New



My wife goes "Oh okay... NOW it looks professional!"

What next?
So it is clear more games need to be developed as this develops to get some of the SDKs right, and make them as useful and easy-to-use as possible. First, we'll make something small and easy in http://hollywood-mal.com/ since it was sponsored by someone to me - ensure that the plugin integrates well and is very simple yet flexible.

Then... it's been a while since I've really had fun and I'd like to make a Wii game. There is already a running demo in the SDK but it would be such a nice change of pace to work on an actual game, and on the Wii at that, and take a break from all this tool development.

Then, back to Basis and more SDK stuff