Spriter B7 Released!

[lucid]

Hello everyone, This is the official release of Spriter B7. Spriter B7 features a number of improvements and new features.

Timeline Improvements and Snapping

The timeline has been completely redesigned with better performance, and a visual overhaul. New timeline features include a more useful ruler, and the ability to snap keys and playback to a predefined interval.

Metadata - Variables and Tags

The new metadata feature allows you to create and animate variables and tagstates for playback during your game. Dynamically control damage, effects, dialogue, or any other variable value you wish. Gameplay programmers can load up an animation and use a visual interface to easily tweak variables and time them visually with the character's movements.

Lastly, as of this version, we are also officially supporting 32 bit Linux for the first time.

Download Spriter B7 here.

Full Changelog:

Additions and Enhancements:

[*:10psmxhf]Timeline completely rebuilt for better performance, and more flexible ui capabilities.
[*:10psmxhf]Added the ability to display and collapse sub-timelines.
[*:10psmxhf]Add variables and tags to the feature set. Access these by expanding an object's timeline and double clicking the metadata timeline.
[*:10psmxhf]Added build for 32bit Linux.
[*:10psmxhf]Added snapping feature to the timeline to set intervals to lock keyframes and optionally, playback framerate.
[*:10psmxhf]Improved the ruler on the timeline. Now displays nicer, more useful, and more evenly spaced numbers. When snapping is enabled, the rulers are numbered to multiples of the snapped interval.
[*:10psmxhf]Added the option to set the units for the timeline ruler to the snapped frames, instead of milliseconds.
[*:10psmxhf]There are new save options to enable or disable prettify, which was previously on by default. Turning it off will result in a slightly smaller file. Turning it on allows the file to be more human readable.

Bug Fixes:

[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a few crashes that would occur under very specific circumstances.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a save bug for sounds that would cause issues when attempting to reload certain projects with sound.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a save bug in the .scon save routine where it wouldn't properly save additional data for authoring tools even if that option was set.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed the object properties window so it updates immediately when dragging the time in the timeline or using the 1 and 2 shortcuts to switch keyframes.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a bug in the object properties window that prevented you from dragging it when no objects were selected.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a bug where an IK-locked bone's children would shift angles after releasing the parent bone, if the child had angle inheritance turned off.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a bug where the right click popup wouldn't show up for ik-locked bones if they weren't selected.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a bug that prevented the children of IK-locked bones from being edited.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a Mac specific bug where if OpenGL was enabled, Export to PNG had garbled output.
[*:10psmxhf]Fixed a bug where cancelling a 'Save As' operation before saving would cause Spriter to lose the location of the project folder, causing the program to behave unpredictably.

Thank you everyone for your patience, and thank you to everyone who helped us test the pre-release. Enjoy!

[eli0s]

Dear lucid,

Thank you very much for the new version and the direct support!

Concerning the new Ruler Units option of displaying the timeline in snapping frames (which I really dig -thank you again!), could you please clarify how can I divide -let's say one second (1000ms) into exactly 24 snapping frames?

My limited intelligence :oops: dictates that I should do a 1000/24 and put the result as a Snapping Interval but this gives an irregular number (41,666...) that can't be set as an interval. If I round the number either up or down, I get an uneven end on the right side of the timeline (forgive my poor explanation, my English are in par with my intelligence :cry: ), so I am a bit confused on how I should approach this new snapping frames option.

On the same note and, again forgive me for being so bold to ask, is it possible to add in the final release an option to change the timeline from displaying milliseconds to frames globally?

Again, thank you,

Elias

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Just set the FPS to 24 (second item in the dialogue)

You can also lock the actual playback FPS to match.

Also, setting ruler units to "snapping frames", sets the ruler's ticks to represent the "frames"

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

[lucid]

I'll add to Mike's answer that if you're trying to set the total number of frames to an amount.

Multiply the Snapping Interval(in ms)

times the Total Number of Frames you want

to get the new Animation Length in milliseconds:

I will probably add the ability to view and set the current time and total animation length in snapped frames in a future version.

[eli0s]

Dear Mike hello and thank you for your reply!

I never thought using the second field :oops:

lucid, thank you for the advise and for the possibility of frame based viewing in the timeline!

One little nuisance that I discovered is that if I select the numbers on the second field (by default ~10,00fps) and try to type lets say 24, instead of erasing the digits it adds to the preexisting value the first character and the number that gets inputted is 210.00 (the "4" is ignored). In order to input a new number I must delete or back space the existing ones. On the first field the input behavior works as expected.

Now, to more serious stuff :P

I can't wait to see a tutorial on how the Metadata works and how can someone implement this functionality within Construct with real word (err gameplay/game design-wise) examples!!! :o

Lastly, (I will also report this on the B7 bug thread) I think that something is wrong with the skins functionality, I know it's still in experimental stage but I tried to follow your presentation (

) and nothing worked as it should.

1) When small sized sprites are drawn to the canvas (e.g. 18 x 65), the bone binding is very flinchy, you have to click around the edges of the sprite (especially if is not a blocky texture and has transparency on the edges) for the binding to happen.

2) After that, the supposed segmenting by dragging the arrow isn't working at all! First, the side of which the arrow is appearing is unreliable (sometimes from the left, some times from the right and, even more bizarrely some times along the child bone but with an offset from the mouse cursor that makes it lag behind, thus impossible to click on!

If by any chance I manage to segment the sprite, other strange things occur:

a) The segment is right on the edge with its vertices overlapping the preexisting ones and the little red (x) as well as the arrow is for ever gone, never to come back on this particular skinned sprite.

b) The segment is showing fine but if I click the little red (x) to remove it, the previously segmented part disappears (it's beind cropped off).

3) Finally, if you select and delete everything from the canvas (as you might imagine my frustration made me repeat this process many times) some garbage stuff remain on the Hierarchy and the Z-Order Panels, even though nothing is visible on the canvas.

I am sure I troubled you enough already, thanks again and keep up the great work!

Elias

[lucid]

thanks for the report eli0s. The skinning is in very early proof of concept stages, and a lot of the controls for skinning are unintuitive and have issues, as they are just placeholder ui. Many of the issues with skins will be resolved when there is a more permanent ui for skinning, which will come some time after 1.0.

[deleted_999]

finally, that snapping!

[PSI]

Any idea of when sound will be implemented in C2?