In the long term, I think I can speed up loading times in the spritese browser another 2x. That will be after a rewrite of how slices types work (which should speed up creating/cloning slices). And the textbox browser could become much faster just by caching the textbox previews.
As well as working on Fufluns bugs (which I'll post about in the release candidate thread)...
We should generalise sprite dissolve animations to include distortions/effects including ones which can be looped. Only a subset of distortions will usable as dissolve/appear animations. I whipped these up quick after someone suggested they won't happen "anytime soon". There are so many possible variants that I'll have to add adjustable parameters.
These are not in nightlies and won't be in Fufluns. I'll probably get them into nightlies in a week or two.
Last edited by TMC on Sat Jan 04, 2020 4:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
Yes, I certainly want to allow use of dissolves/effects in sprite animations. So you could even use them in the idle animation.
What I'm wondering is in which order rotation/scaling/flips and dissolves/effects should be applied when drawing a sprite. Is there any strong reason to prefer one order?
Flip > Scale > Rotate > Dissolves seems like a reasonable order to me. At least, as far as I'm aware, that order of transformations is generally from least to most sprite deformations/distortions. Flipping doesn't cause any distortion, for instance, although scaling and rotating would be hard to compare on that front. Unless, of course, there is a way of measuring that aspect.
Yes, I'm pretty sure scaling should be done before rotation (actually, rotation, scaling and flipping at all done as a single transformation for efficiency, but it's equivalent to doing them in a certain order), because otherwise the unequal x and y scaling results in a strange rotated skew, which is not what you want.
I can see a couple reasons to prefer dissolves last, in most cases.
This year we'll be at the final dungeon for Axe Cop and this would look absolutely amazing for the dungeon how we have it designed (it's like a big Stranger Things, Upside Down area). This will look great. Keep up the EXCELLENT work dudes.
Dungeons?
Hmm, I'll have to try allowing effects on map layers too, since that would be pretty nice (apply to a water layer!). Unfortunately it's going to be a lot more complex, and inefficient.
Say, why isn't it possible to equip heros from the reserve? Did this have old reasons?
Also, why do the locked heros have slot positions of 40 counted backwards (as returned by the command "find hero")? Can't this lead to confusions in groups with more than 20 characters when using "hero by slot"?
Swapping a hero to the reserve party puts it in the last available party slot, counting from 40 backwards (I need to change that to remove the party size limit). That's nothing to do with whether the heroes are locked.
Players can't always freely swap out heroes in/out of their reserve party, so they shouldn't be able to freely equip them either.
But we could add a preference bit to allow it. Maybe "Allow equipping reserve heroes" should default to on if "Hero Swapping Always Available" (which by default puts the Team option in the main menu, but I guess it's obsolete now) is on?
Last edited by TMC on Sun Jan 12, 2020 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
Difficult. That only comes into play when having a big party of like 20 characters. Walthros would have profited from that, for example. But in some games, there is just a temporary lock for some characters, just to unlock them later and still have their stats, equipment, exp points, etc. So locked characters shouldn't be able to change equipment. But for other members of the reserve, why not? I mean if they can be reordered, they can be also equipped.
Bird wrote:I mean if they can be reordered, they can be also equipped.
That's the point. In general you can't reorder heroes in the reserve party. You can only do it when the Team option is available.
So only allowing equipping reserve heroes when Team is available in the same menu that the Equip menu appears (whether it's the main menu, another user menu, or a shop) would ensure that that change doesn't change anything significant in existing games.
Of course that sounds terribly over-complex (that's my specialty!) just to ensure existing games gain the improvement. Instead we could just either add a bit to say whether you can equip reserve heroes, or have two different menu options "Equip (whole party)", "Equip (active party)" (shops could have them too). They would both appear as just "Equip" to the player.
