Using .gifs instead of sprites?

[RaulCortez]

Hey guys,


This question might have been asked countless times in the past, but I would like to know if it's possible (and if so, the steps to) replace static .png sprites with .gif files. I'd like to have animated pokemon, but i'm absolutely against the idea of having 1 GB worth of just Pokémon animation strips.

So i figured it'd be easier to just get the .gif files and double their size in game (like Luka's EBS does).

I know both are possible since i remember a time where you could use .gifs for the battlers, and like i said I know it's possible to double the size of the sprite in game. What I don't know is, how to do both at the same time?

Any helps is greatly appreciated, thanks guys!

 

[Luka S.J.]

Fun fact: the animation strips take up less space than .gif sprites would

Might want to check up on your facts there buddy.

 

[Marin]

Fun fact: the animation strips take up less space than .gif sprites would

Might want to check up on your facts there buddy.

I love when Luka makes these awesome pictures with text above them

 

[RaulCortez]

The detail is, I wasn't referring to the ones in your project (or wherever those are from), Luka ;)

And in any case, 419 mb is still less than almost 850 mb.

I don't know how heavy the ones i was referring to would be as GIFs, but still i'd like to know if there's a way of doing it.

 

[Luka S.J.]

Look, I'll be honest. I'm not an expert when it comes to the actual data structure of .gifs and how many different compression algorithms they have and use; and of course I can't speak for resources I haven't provided (the ones you're referring to). What I can speak to is my experience though.

RMXP does not natively support .gifs. The support for those has been hacked on with Essentials and the gif.dll library. An assumption you could draw from that, and that you'd actually be correct in assuming, is that the support is not flawless. From my experience, I've noticed that RMXP has a problem loading .gifs and dealing with them in general, and with continued accumulation of loaded .gifs in the BitmapCache, can even sometimes cause the game to crash. This is one of the reasons why for EBS I devised an alternative. Because I've had plenty of experience using .gifs in my own project, and I came to the conclusion that that method wasn't working out.

Now, as for your concrete question of getting down to the main business of your thread. You can just plug .gifs into your Battlers folder and they will work fine and be nicely animated (apart from a few functions in the battle system that lack the proper updates). This goes only if you're not using EBS. EBS will never support .gifs. As for the resizing part; I would recommend not applying the zoom onto the sprites in battle, but rather apply them at the source of rendering the bitmaps; as changing zooms for the sprites causes a whole slew of other issues concerning the animation player and all the other animations in the battle system. This is a bit troublesome it seems. The nice thing about EBS was, that I was making my method for displaying the sprites from scratch. So I could do whatever the heck I wanted to. Tracing back what's in Essentials for animating .gifs though I found

class AnimatedBitmap -> class GifBitmap -> goes through the .dll and the bitmap class

Problem with that is that both the Bitmap and BitmapCache classes are hidden RGSS classes, so I have no idea what they look like or where'd you even go about adjusting them. And from what I've seen in the AnimatedBitmap and GifBitmap classes, they don't perform any sorts of .blt or .bitmap transformations in them that I could point you towards altering. So it looks like you might have to construct your own alternative to the AnimatedBitmap class, as I have my AnimatedBitmapWrapper.

 

[RaulCortez]

Fair enough, and thanks for the detailed explanation, Luka.

Now, as soon as i got out of the thread when i last posted, I did some extra research and found out a way that works for me at least - yeah, GIFS do work by just putting them in the battlers folder, and also a simple way of doubling the sprites without all the scripting hassle is just to double the size of the frames in Photoshop. Takes two clicks. I tested it, haven't had any issues and it works just fine.

I'll do some more testing, as you are more experienced with the inner workings of Essentials than I am, and I haven't let's say, had a full party of .GIF pokémon or something of the sort, so i'll do heavy testing with my method and see what comes out of it, but that will happen privately.

Thanks again for the info.

 

[Black Temple Gaurdian]

The detail is, I wasn't referring to the ones in your project (or wherever those are from), Luka ;)

And in any case, 419 mb is still less than almost 850 mb.

I don't know how heavy the ones i was referring to would be as GIFs, but still i'd like to know if there's a way of doing it.

You realise that's a compresses .rar file and thus not their uncompresses file size right?