gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

Beginners > General thoughts on sprite tools

#29149 - greyboy - Fri Nov 12, 2004 9:12 am

Hi,
I currently am using Usenti by TONC(Cearn) for drawing and converting sprites to arrays in .c files. I'd like to make a contiguous block of sprite data (of several frames in memory), and what pops into my head is saving out each sprite and appending the data in one big array.

Can someone recommend a good tool where I can open a number of sprite frames and save them out to be saved to one array, or perhaps give insight on a better way or perhaps what many people do?

I'm curious on what people's thoughts are on various sprite tools, since I'm sure most of you are seasoned and have had quite a bit of time to get a strong opinion of what works for you and what doesn't. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

#29155 - identitycrisisuk - Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:37 pm

Simplest way of doing this is to put all your sprites into one file, as a single column but only if all your sprites are the same size. So if you're working with 16x16 sprites and you have 4 frames then make a 16x64 image, which should be pretty easy to draw your sprites in, grids and rulers will help you tell which frame you are drawing in and when this is converted to one single array it will be the same as having 4 different sprites in a row when you put it into VRAM. You may get shouted at for using .c files by some people here, I always use .h for arrays - it just seems wrong to #include "something.c"

#29156 - MumblyJoe - Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:52 pm

Conicidentaly, I have a tool bieng released in a day or tow that does just this. Yo uwont remember it but the graphical version was on the front page like a year ago or so, but it was crap and I want a command line version for makefiling. It was called columniser, new version is columniser MX (just cos it's funny) and will be around shortly.
_________________
www.hungrydeveloper.com
Version 2.0 now up - guaranteed at least 100% more pleasing!

#29171 - sajiimori - Fri Nov 12, 2004 7:57 pm

I hope your code is typo-free! ;)

#29184 - MumblyJoe - Sat Nov 13, 2004 4:01 am

Hahaha, sorry, I had a couple of beers last night before posting that :P
_________________
www.hungrydeveloper.com
Version 2.0 now up - guaranteed at least 100% more pleasing!