The Mana World Forums

New to TMW but has followed a while on distance.

I am thinking of trying to help with the graphics and now I am wondering what the specifics are for the tilesets, sprites and such.

• Is transparency supported or will be supported?
  What size of tilesets are supported?
  How many colors are supported?
  Multi page images?
  Layers supported?
  File Types supported?
  How many frames are supported for sprites?

This could be stickeyd for morons like me to read so they don't need to find out that RTFM!

Is transparency supported or will be supported?

not at the moment for the tileset,but yea its in the game

What size of tilesets are supported?

32x32

How many colors are supported?

16-24-32bits.

Multi page images?

? i dont know what is this

Layers supported?

yep

File Types supported?

BMP.PNG

How many frames are supported for sprites?

if you mean animated tiles.nop buts its gonna be added later/

A few corrections:

Transparency is actually used for tilesets now,
we don't want BMP files (only PNG),
color depth should be 24/32 bit (alpha layer optional),
no framelimit for sprites but actually animation isn't implemented yet.

Most of this information can be found here:
http://themanaworld.org/wiki/index.php/ ... evelopment

I don't know what you mean with multi-page images either.

Ok. So if I make a Layered image with a transparent/semi transparent layer it will work in the game?

Alpha bit optional, meaning that I can use 32bit colors and have transparent pixels if wanted...good to know.

Well, it was like the charset I meant. So there is no limit, but you prefer 6 or 4 as someone stated in another post.
With animation, what do you mean? Animated images?

Multipage images are actually GIF's I believe, where they are almost as a "book" where if you have a game that supports them can have 1 GIF for several textures although they are different.


I'll start to try and make new monsters and characters (probably clothing for what I make to) and I'll be back about it in about 2-3 weeks.

Thanks for the help.

If multipage images are GIFs, I'd say don't use them. We're trying to go all-PNG. I post animated GIFs in the forums from time to time, but only as examples of what the finished, animated sprite will look like. Welcome aboard, by the way.

No problem with only using PNG's. I don't like gif's anyway ^^
But using animated gifs for showing how it would look sounds kinda smart ^^

What is the delay between each fram when a sprite is animated btw?

Thanks for the welcome ^^

Well in game the delay between frame is constant and depends on the speed of action, for example walking: 4 frames for a speed of 150, it means you have a delay of 150/4 ms

Bjørn wrote:A few corrections:

Transparency is actually used for tilesets now,
we don't want BMP files (only PNG),
color depth should be 24/32 bit (alpha layer optional),
no framelimit for sprites but actually animation isn't implemented yet.

Most of this information can be found here:
http://themanaworld.org/wiki/index.php/ ... evelopment

I don't know what you mean with multi-page images either.

About transparency:
-Will be used on every tile?

Only on those where alpha is used

Elven Programmer wrote:Only on those where alpha is used

I know. Then the question is how much will we use alpha transparency?

I should say the least as possible for performance problems, so only where's necessary to achieve special effect, like water transparency maybe or particular shadows in magic forests. Anyway I guess we can live without transparency as well...

Ok, so I should try not to use transperancy.

Well in game the delay between frame is constant and depends on the speed of action, for example walking: 4 frames for a speed of 150, it means you have a delay of 150/4 ms

Did not really answer my question...
I need to know how many FPS a character has as I want to make a smooth movement for my monsters and so on and not have as the current character where it seems you're running in one place...that is I want to be able to make it so it actually looks as if the character/monster is taking every step/slither or whatever for real and still not seem to not belong...

I should say the least as possible for performance problems, so only where's necessary to achieve special effect, like water transparency maybe or particular shadows in magic forests. Anyway I guess we can live without transparency as well...

Performance is very important, so I will then try to not use transperancy.
The water thing I think should be like that in RO with a SoM feel to it...
Shadows should be hardware stuff...meaning if Software mode was ripped out alot with the game could be easier made and then optimised for openGL instead...performance and looks in perfect harmony...using some kind of model instead of images and still have the feel of SoM with elements of RO...But then again...what I am talking about I believe would demand that the whole engine would be re-written...

Regarding performance:
I have a 871mhz P3 with 512mb SDRAM and a Radeon 9200 128mb PCI card. I have about 10-20FPS when playing software mode and 69-70FPS in GL Mode. I have to say that if Software is gonna stay in it should be re-worked ALOT.

m4ndr4g00n wrote: I need to know how many FPS a character has

Oh sorry then I don't understand what you're asking for...

Elven Programmer wrote:

m4ndr4g00n wrote: I need to know how many FPS a character has

Oh sorry then I don't understand what you're asking for...

Heh, ok, lets try to clarify:
What I need is How many Frames will go for a character or monster during 1 second. How many miliseconds between each fram. And saying that a sped of 150 and 4 frams means what it was earlier will just make me confused ^^

The animation speed is variable I think.
Until now we have a static number of frames (4 walking-frames for a creature), but the frames per second can be changed to the right value.

ElvenProgrammer explained that system as follows:
Suppose you have 4 frames in one animation and you set the animationspeed to 150, then it would spread out those 4 frames over those 150 milliseconds (or ticks, I don't know). That means 4 frames per 150 milliseconds, which equals 1000/150 * 4 = apr. 27 fps.

I hope this made it clear to all of us... if I'm right, that is.