UPDATE 8/1/2012 - HUGE update

[lucid]

MOMENTUM.

That's the word that best fits whats going on here at BrashMonkey.

First, as promised, the long wait for a new Spriter build is over. While not yet ready for production use, this new version is definitely something you don't want to miss. From this day forward, not only does Spriter run on PC, Mac, and Linux, but this build also introduces the foundation for Spriter's tweening support. Spriter's revolutionary interface for controlling what's tweened, and when, and it's asset usage tracking allows for an exquisite workflow that simply must be seen to be understood:

Expect more innovation that makes animation and game design exciting and easy as Spriter continues to develop from this early state.

More good news? Now that the foundation for this new cross-platform Spriter is finished, update builds with new features, tweaks and bug-fixes will be drastically more frequent, with an official update build at least once every two weeks.

For those already using the previous beta of Spriter, don't uninstall it just yet, as this new alpha is not yet ready to take its place. Because this release is so completely new under the hood we've left out the ability to save to avoid potential loss of work. But fear not, with your help reporting any bugs, we should have this new Spriter running stable by our next release at which point we'll unlock the saving features. After that, top priority will be to add in the remaining features to make this new Spriter the ultimate game animating tool as quickly as possible. Skeletal Animation, you're next to be revolutionized!

(image property of Code 'n' Web)

And just when it seems Spriter news can't get any better, we're proud to announce that BrashMonkey will be collaborating with Andreas Löw, creator of the industry standard texture-atlas(sprite-sheet) generation tool, TexturePacker. The plan is to have texture-packer be able to export to a Spriter-specific format that can be embedded into your SCML file, and for those of you whose platform of choice already has excellent support for one of the many texture atlas formats Texture Packer uses, you'll be able to keep the atlas files separate, and Spriter will provide the necessary information in the output file to reference your TexturePack'd textures.

(image property of Code 'n' Web)

And Spriter itself is not the only thing picking up steam. With the final default data format revealed, all Spriter plug-in developers can get to work creating fully featured Spriter plug-ins for any and all game authoring systems and game engines starting immediately..meaning its highly likely fully features Spriter plug-ins will be ready for several game authoring systems even before the release of Spriter 1.0. So far it looks like we've reached a workable final file format and I encourage all developers to get going so we can all take the 2d world by storm. We'll leave this unmarked as final until the next release 2 weeks from now, so anyone can ring in with last minute suggestions, and we'll have a little more time to explain/discuss some of the new stuff, but any changes made in this final stretch should be insignificant to development time.

http://brashmonkeygames.com/spriter/FinalSpecCandidate.pdf

But that's not the last of the good news. Art Pack production is also about to get turbocharged! Several great artists have signed on with us to insure that not only will several art packs will be ready for the release of Spriter 1.0. but they will contain even more premium quality content. One of those great artists is a professional game artist you might know by the alias StOven. For years the visual quality of his sprite-work and his exceptional animating skills earned the respect and admiration of the entire game making community and his fellow game artists. We couldn't be happier to be working with him to make superior game art available to all game developers, no matter how small their budget. You can see his online portfolio here: http://spriteart.com/ (best viewed with Safari or Firefox)

And here are a few samples of some of his past works:

(past work by Stoven.. all characters are the sole property of their respective copyright holders)

And finally, in closing : of the many developers who've come to us with their secret Spriter animated game projects, one project that's not so secret is an interesting 2d moddable sandbox game about to get funded on Kickstarter: Crea! By Siege Games

(image property of Siege Games)

We chose to use Spriter to help push our mod support to the next level. Spriter has enabled Crea to have fully customizable playable characters. Through the mod-friendly content scripts there is a mapping to the character images, which makes it possible to easily swap out images, such as changing the hair style of characters, or the clothing color, or even their entire equipment set. Character creation is completely dynamic meaning new character customizations (parts) can be added. This also means entirely new playable races are very possible. Modders will use Spriter to create their own races and animations. Thanks to Spriter, all of the assets and animations only have to be made once - not dozens of frames for every single piece of armor. We plan to use Spriter beyond just their characters; for our bosses and other animation intensive creatures.

(image property of Siege Games)

Check them out at Kickstarter and spread the word if you like what you see.

Thanks everyone for your extraordinary patience while we caught up this new version rebuilt from the ground up, you can all now look forward to regular updates, and we can all look forward to our impending 2d revolution!

Oh yeah, and about those new versions:

Windows

OS X

Linux

OS X and Linux users, please let me know if there's an ideal way you'd like your releases packed from here on out, and I'll do my best to make it happen.

[robpearmain]

Awesome to be able to use it on the Mac! I guess if you are including sample files etc, it would good to have those as a separate download, or have the Mac download as a DMG with a Package that installs the app and sample files.

Do you have a sample file we could download to use with the new version?

[nascode]

Hi, congrats for your new release!

However i must remind you that whenever i downloaded this preview version with chrome in Windows 7 x64, chrome will complain that this application could be dangerous. I must choose 'keep' manually to keep the application

And the worst part happens for whoever use Norton Antivirus, Norton will delete automatically the exe. It is similar with Texture Packer's past problem http://www.codeandweb.com/blog/2012/06/ ... developers

Hopefully this info could help the devs

[Charles]

nascode, chrome does that with most files, it's nothing that Edgar can fix on his end. As for norton, you should probably switch to a less terrible AV program, like Microsoft Security Essentials.

As for the update, I was looking at the spec doc finally (I'm a high tier backer from Kickstarter). I was wondering if you had a document to explain the concepts you are using in the spec itself? I was thinking about busting out an implementation, but based on the SCML document alone I'm left mildly confused.

[lucid]

@robpearmain & nascode

as for the Windows errors, I'll zip the next release, so at least a few less virus programs and browsers will panic that you're downloading an exe. And thanks for the tip about TexturePacker having the same issue, so I least know it's an ongoing problem with Norton in general.

Charles. Yes we will expand the format spec document into full documentation. I'll be building and releasing that gradually over time, beginning with the basic features so people can start making implementations as soon as possible.

For anyone else who's already made an implementation with the previous format, alot of it will probably be familiar.

[djkat]

Great to see things moving along!

It would help a LOT though for us looking at implementing this in our own engines if you had some samples in the next release, preferably from very simple to something that uses all the features. Not a bad idea to have on your end anyways for "unit testing".

Thanks!

[Ray]

Excellent news on the integration with TexturePacker!

The update was indeed HUGE. I definitely should have watched the video first, but have been having a lot of fun with it so far.

[lucid]

glad everyone's enjoying it.

Ray we're working on getting an up to date sample file in the new format. We aim to have this by the next release scheduled for mid-august

[t4udner]

Finally Mac version. I didn't use Spriter before so it's my first look opinion:

* crash a lot, for example every time I drag object from current frame list

* arrow with object details in current frame list don't work

* no icon

*save/load icons always inactive

I prefer to buy final version in Mac Appstore.

[lucid]

hi t4udner all of the bugs and crashes you mentioned are fixed for the next version (8/15)

[robpearmain]

Mac App Store for me too please

[lucid]

We'll probably hold off on the Mac app store until 1.0, and keep the alpha/beta via direct download.

[JohnnyFlash]

You're not allowed to post Betas on the AppStore anyway.

[PR Simmons]

Hey Lucid,

Do you have an ETA on the next release?

You had mentioned we'd be seeing an update two weeks after the last release...

thanks!

[lucid]

update is out now: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=693