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Spriter B1 Release


lucid

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Hello again everyone.

Time for another pre-beta release. For those of you who didn't see the update for the previous release, we're working on building back the features from the previous alpha, due to a massive refactoring.

Remember, this is still beta, there are most likely still bugs and possibly crashes, so use this version with that understanding. Please report any bugs or crashes to our forums. There will be stickied thread in the Spriter sub-forum for each pre-release made especially to report bugs with the latest release, and until we're caught up, these will also feature daily (sometimes multi-daily, or semi-daily) releases to test on the Windows platform in between these wider releases. (Releasing daily builds on all 3 platforms would significantly impede progress, and the speed we can get to 1.0)

Today's build is mostly bug fixes, and there's been a bit more refactoring under the hood to prevent some bugs in the framework from manifesting themselves, which has undoubtedly led to a few more bugs, but I believe we've squashed all the reported bugs from the last version, so please keep testing and reporting! Also, special thanks to everyone who's been testing and reporting bugs, particularly those testing the daily builds. Their testing has been invaluable in finding and fixing everything in a timely manner.

Without further ado, here's the changelog:

feature additions/performance improvements:

    [*:1mjlpkjs]Improved performance when dragging in timeline to change current time in animation
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Spriter now remembers last accessed folder, and uses it as the starting point for the file dialog when opening a project or starting a new one
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Spriter now keeps a recent projects list accessible from the file menu
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Added activation dialog for entering serial keys to activate pro version. There are no pro features available yet, and you don't have your serial numbers yet, but this will come in handy later this month.
    [*:1mjlpkjs]The object properties widget has returned
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Copy/paste for timeline keys has returned

bug fixes:

    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed the bug where deleting a bone between frames would cause it's children to shift position
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Changed hierarchy view so dropping something onto a sprite will place the object into the same level of hierarchy as the sprite it was dropped on instead of ignoring the drop (aka, fixed what looked like a bug rejecting drops)
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug that didn't keep the pivot point settings for images in the root directory of a project
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug that left a 'ghost' object in the canvas if you dragged something through the canvas, and then tried to drop it in another window
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug where in a certain specific situation, Spriter was saving s pointed to the wrong 'key'
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug where default pivot points were not saving or loading
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug that prevented the file palette from defaulting to being on top of the persistent object widget
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug where starting a new project or loading a new one wouldn't clear the undo list, so undoing or clicking through history past the point when the new project was started would lead to unusual behavior and/or crashes
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed a bug where sometimes changing a sprites position/dimensions/angle etc would sometimes also change the image the sprite used
    [*:1mjlpkjs]Fixed several bugs in certain very specific situations of bone reparenting

Download Spriter B1:

Windows

Mac

Linux

On a side note...

For those of you who wondered how 'pre-beta' was any different from 'alpha'. It's a word we basically came up with to describe our unique state of affairs leaving the release lagging slightly behind the alpha in terms of features. After the arduous intervening refactoring since the alpha, we are definitely approaching the stability and speed of 1.0, and soon it will only be beta in the sense of the remaining missing features, so pre-beta is short for beta-prerelease until we're all caught up with the alpha feature-set.

Also, in case you missed the announcement elsewhere, pro serial keys will be sent out this month, and the first pro-features will begin appearing.

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Hi,

I just downloaded the Linux version. I would like really to thank you for the great effort.

Regarding this version, IK inheritances features seems missing (Anchor feature was quite cool) . I don't know whether its intentional or not. Animation timeline seems a bit squeezed. Generally the font size seems larger than space available, the UI needs some polishing.

Also, when right clicked on a key-frame, two interpolators appear (linear and instant), though instant doesn't function. Moreover, after creating then deleting bones, corresponding keyframes and entries in animation panel remain.

I hope that other interpolators for animation will be released soon.

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Hi,

I just downloaded the Linux version. I would like really to thank you for the great effort.

Regarding this version, IK inheritances features seems missing (Anchor feature was quite cool) . I don't know whether its intentional or not. Animation timeline seems a bit squeezed. Generally the font size seems larger than space available, the UI needs some polishing.

Also, when right clicked on a key-frame, two interpolators appear (linear and instant), though instant doesn't function. Moreover, after creating then deleting bones, corresponding keyframes and entries in animation panel remain.

I hope that other interpolators for animation will be released soon.

We're still playing catch up with the previous version's featureset due to version b0's long delay, but that will be appearing in b2 or b3. Also (and we will warn users again when the feature returns), this will no longer be a feature in the free version, so users who want that feature should either pre-purchase pro, or stick with version a4.1.

The font size problem, is that only in timelines, or all around the UI?, and which linux distro do you use because the problem doesn't occur on my system. When you say, 'instant doesn't function', does it do something buggy, or just tween the object as normal? Also, there should be a small vertical line that appears for 'instant' keyframes like this:

instant.png

does that appear when you select instant? and if you try to change the interpolation method again on the same keyframe does it show that 'instant' is selected when the context menu appears?

I'll look into the bone deletion key problem

Other interpolation methods will definitely appear on the way to 1.0, namely quadratic and cubic, which will have adjustable curves to achieve various degrees of fast in/out, ease in/out, or combinations thereof.

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Nice work lucid, but I have two things to complain about:

1. The sprites are not drawn in z-order which was read from file. This problem was still in the alpha release (and I already mentioned it in the bugtracker), but there Spriter has drawn the sprites only per keyframe in the right order, but not in an interpolated frame. Now every key draws the sprites in a wrong order. To show what I mean, here's a picture:

Here's a snippet of the z_index structure:

zorder.png































I think this issue is not that hard to fix (my plugin draws the sprites in a right order :P).

2. I don't know what you have changed, but this release runs much slower than the first B0 release. This means, that the animations are not played back fluently in my above shown project (which has currently about 40 different animations).

I hope you can fix those bugs ;)

See ya!

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Hi Trixtor. What was used to generate that scml? Spriter knows itself, and so simplifies the loading routine whenever it can by assuming certain things about the save file, and complicates the save routine in other places in order to hide certain editor or export specific information without having to bloat the file format. I will look into it, but fleshing out the features set is higher priority than loading scml generated outside of Spriter. That being said, I do consider this a bug, and there are definitely useful scml generating tools out there, such as the Photoshop layer exporter, and I want to fully support them. In the short term, however, I'd prefer to at least compare notes with the other dev first, and if it's something the dev of that tool can change more quickly than I can change Spriter (which is most likely the case, since by it's nature, exporting is usually much more flexible and adaptable that importing), it's the best route for users since it will get into their hands faster, and I can also continue focusing on the road to 1.0, and add more robust importing capabilities once more basic features are in. But if that isn't possible on their end, I will do my best to fix it editor-side as soon as possible.

If possible, can you send me the zipped project folder, and I can look into what bottlenecks there are slowing things down for your project, and try to fix them for the next build. Thanks for the bug reports.

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I created a tool which converts my old animation files (which where created with my bone animation tool for the Game Maker 8.0) into scml files.

The problem in the current build of Spriter is, that it draws the sprites in the same way it loaded them from the scml file. The "z_index" is not considered when Spriter loads a file. Spriter is just inferring the "z_index" from the order of the objects and this makes the variable "z_index" in the scml file useless. I think Spriter should just infer the "z_index" from the object order, if the objects do not have a "z_index" as an attribute in the scml file. Do you agree?

I do not know how strong the coupling between the classes in your code is, but to fix this you may need 5 minutes of work (just sort the objects by "z_index", and that's it). And if YOU would fix this problem, you would still support all other scml file generation tools, since this is a Spriter internal issue.

I will send you the project folder as I get back from university ;) .

See ya!

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@Trixtor, fixed the performance issue - at least on my PC, please try the latest release:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11880&p=17318#p17318

also, everyone, please use the bug report thread to report bugs, and reserve this thread for nonbug comments on the build like "Oh wow, this is the coolest thing ever", or "you still don't have onion skinning?", or even "ps: oh cool, when did you enable forum avatars?"

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glad you like it trixtor. btw, if you make your converter/exporter automatically name sprites as well, it will cut those load times to nearly instant (also if you just save from within spriter after loading it). Also it will maintain selections of your images when you switch animations. And lastly, cutting down the number of total objects from hundreds to 20 or so by giving each sprite's timeline the same name on every animation it will speed up the ui slightly (or drastically on an older system). If you're always using Spriter now, and done with the conversions you can combine the objects within the persistent object widget. Just select all the head sprites for instance, then right click and combine.

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Is there a list of keyboard shortcuts or even a documentation for using this app?

To call this a beta, well...... :-/ To me it looks more like a release to keep the people quite from bitching because there were no new releases for a long time. I slowly can understand why some of your backers started to create their own stuff or went to the competition. For an example I try to change the hirachy via dragging the entries in the list box. Besides then something disappearing in the list, nothing changes. How do you create and modify frickin bones? Overall I am pretty disappointed by Spriter, not impressed anymore at all.

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MikeHeart: It's not called a beta yet. (Look at earlier threads for the history of the thing and reasons for delays.) Regarding documentation, it's not written yet, but if you look in the "Help and Tutorials" section in the forum, you'll find videos in the sticky posts at the top that explain how the program works.

(Oh, and dislike the program if you want, but that rude tone is uncalled for.)

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Hi Lucid hi BrashMonkey,

no way I can download the prebeta: as soon as it reaches the 1,8/2,0 Mb .. it stops and my browser said "Operation not completed" (Network timeout).

Is there anything wrong with my connection ?

Is anyone else experimenting the same experience :-) ?

Tx !!

Riccardo

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MikeHeart: It's not called a beta yet. (Look at earlier threads for the history of the thing and reasons for delays.) Regarding documentation, it's not written yet, but if you look in the "Help and Tutorials" section in the forum, you'll find videos in the sticky posts at the top that explain how the program works.

(Oh, and dislike the program if you want, but that rude tone is uncalled for.)

Remember, this is still beta,....

Mmmh, Lucid himself described it as a BETA version in the very first topic, sooo it is a beta. I don't need to link you towards the definition of a beta state of software, do i?

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Hi Lucid hi BrashMonkey,

no way I can download the prebeta: as soon as it reaches the 1,8/2,0 Mb .. it stops and my browser said "Operation not completed" (Network timeout).

Is there anything wrong with my connection ?

Is anyone else experimenting the same experience :-) ?

Tx !!

Riccardo

I've tried downloading all 3 (server is not onsite)

and all the downloads work for me

Is there a list of keyboard shortcuts or even a documentation for using this app?

To call this a beta, well...... :-/ To me it looks more like a release to keep the people quite from bitching because there were no new releases for a long time.

From the previous update

At this point in development, however, given the delay, the demand for a more stable and speedy version, the need for a greater volume of testers, and especially our promise to release it today, we are providing this version in it's current state."
There were I slowly can understand why some of your backers started to create their own stuff or went to the competition. For an example I try to change the hirachy via dragging the entries in the list box. Besides then something disappearing in the list, nothing changes. How do you create and modify frickin bones? Overall I am pretty disappointed by Spriter, not impressed anymore at all.

Please post bug reports to the bug report thread, and help requests in the help forum. This is the proper forum for feedback however. Please refer to the tutorials on the front page (soon to be replaced with more up to date tutorials) to learn the basics of operating the software.

Were can I find the most current night builds for OSX? I see you posted newer version for windows but the links in the first post still point to the April 8th version.
.

In the initial post of the daily builds thread, you can read about why the daily builds are windows only:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11880

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@MikeHart

Are you the same guy from the Monkey forums?

If so I find your attitude a bit shit considering the amount of changes/fixes needed to the code in your

book to make it compile. You should understand the pitfalls of coding, delays, bugs etc better than most.

If you don't like it, don't use it - which is what I did with your book and I got it for free...

I didn't come on your forums (if you have one) with an attitude telling you how bad I thought it was and trying to belittle your work.

Yes there have been delays, problems and issues along the way, but Spriter has come on a LOT over the last month or so and is heading in the right direction now.

Take a chill pill and come back when v1.0 is released.

PS. If you're not the same guy then you still need to lose the shitty attitude, but ignore all the stuff about the book.

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Lucid, thanks for the info. I am not a Kickstarter backer but BOUGHT your software through your website. I wasn't aware that I have to go through video tutorials to get the information I need. And did you mean your bug tracker or a specific topic in your forum? I see people posting feedback and problems in this topic, in some other topics and on the bugtracker.

rIKmAN: Yes I am and I find it very strange that you misinform people about a total nonrelated thing to Spriter just because you didn't like it that I critize the development of it. As you have just started to use Monkey let me tell you that the code that shipped with the book ran fine when the book was released. Changes in Monkey over the year broke it at some points. Till v69 it where 4 or five lines of code you needed to change and with V70 and the removal of list.Remove it now broke more. And update of the code is on its way to PacktPub. Everyone, and I mean everyone (about 5-6 people) who approached me about these got helped right away. There is the issues section of the goodle code site, the monkey forum and I have a support place too. So far no one have posted erratas to the book to PacktPub so I guess people are fine with it anyway. Issues with the code inside the book should have been found by the technical editors, but hey, guess they didn't do the job right, or?

And yes, I am not satisfied with the state of Spriter after the rewrite. If it is labeled as beta, then it should be feature complete and only bugs are an issue. I waited to use the software till it is in beta state.

But if you need to warch videos to find out how to use the software, then at least the UI needs a strong face lift so you can do things from the menu or buttons. Am I as a paying customer not allowed to voice my disappointment? Is the use of "fricking bones" to much for your soft soul. Give me a brake. :roll:

Lucid, sorry that I needed to take the topic slightly offtopic but I didn't want to let the misinformation of this kid unanswered. I won't write more to it if he is motivated to go one with his little war.

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@MikeHart

It's nothing to do with Spriter, or your book, but more your attitude in the post, and it wasn't only me that called you on it so I'm not imagining it.

I would have also called you on it if it happened on any other forum I use, but I notice you are super polite and helpful on the Monkey forum...how strange...got a book to sell there have we?

I bought the software late through the website too, and I voiced my opinions on what I was disappointed with and what I wanted as a paying customer - but not in the way same way you did with loads of attitude and rudeness where there was really no need.

Have you read about why it's delayed, and why this "beta" is not to your very high standards?

Would you prefer to have nothing to use until it got to official "MikeHart Approved" beta status?

How is me saying your book had errors "mis-information" when you then say in the same sentence that it has errors, whether they are being fixed or not I was not lying - when I tried it it didn't work so I moved on.

I could have contacted you or posted in public saying that "this book is rubbish", "how can you print a book that has errors in it, no code works" etc etc, but why would I?

You have worked hard on it and who am I to come and start belittling your work in front of other potential users?

The same way who are you to start belittling lucid's work, and if you do your homework you will see he has been through a painful injury since dev started.

I didn't like your book, or fE so I moved on, I didn't leave a trail of bad karma behind me trying to put people off your book, I have better things to do.

Also, calling me "kid"...because I have just started using Monkey, or again just to be argumentative and try to sound big and clever?

Your reply just makes you sound like a dick - which as I said is a sharp contrast to the MikeHart from the Monkey forums (from what I have seen so far) who is polite, helpful, obviously a good coder and a seemingly decent guy.

If you want to carry on, PM me as yes this is taking the thread OT, but don't throw stones if you live in a glass house.

PS. I don't have any affiliation to Spriter, lucid or anything like that, I just don't like rude ignorant people, and I'd call out anyone who posted in the way you did which was uncalled for.

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I've done a search, but couldn't figure out how to create a hierarchy of sprites. I can link them to bones, but I don't really need to use a bone system. Seems like an extra step at this point anyway since there is no IK yet.

Some suggestions

- It would be nice to have an option to snap to keyframes when scrubbing the timeline. It's sometimes difficult to pinpoint where a keyframe is.

- Sometimes it's difficult to rotate bones. I end up moving them or selecting another bone by accident. Maybe make the selection point to rotate a little larger.

- During bone setup, I want to scale the bone, but then default the scale to 1...if that makes any sense. Similar to resetting the transformation in other animation programs.

- I'd like an option to lock the layout. I keep moving the timeline by accident.

- In 3D Studio Max, you can drag spinners (the up and down arrows) to change the values. It would be a good timesaving feature to have here too.

- Also from 3D Studio, shift draging keyframes to copy them would be nice.

PS - this is the first time I'm checking out Spriter since the A4.1 version...nice job overall. Can't wait to see the pro version.

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