Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Zacam on August 12, 2013, 04:20:54 am
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/374397522/apngasm-foss-animated-png-tools-and-apng-standardi
I'm seriously going to throw into backing this, but if we collectively could hit that $2,500 scrape together, we'd have it already ported for us and have our own Open Source License to put it under as well.
Even if that is not feasible, I -HIGHLY- encourage anybody and everybody to put whatever they comfortably can into this, as it is a seriously needed task to have done. GIF is extremely limited and in terms of FSO specifically: having a fixed, documented and specification adhering manner for aspiring mod makers to be able to leverage the power of PNG in an animated fashion SOOO much easier that it would be nearly criminal to pass up on making this happen.
I know the idea of being able to collectively back such a large investment seems nerve wracking for some people. The largest bounty we've seen so far was to enable PCS to handle DAE support, and I'm thoroughly convinced that we completely underpaid on that front.
This sort of project though would impact the -world- and for the better, so lets see about talking about it.
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Also, to note: The reason we don't currently have any Animated PNG support in FSO right now? Because there is no singular multi-platform solution that provides consistent results under the base libPNG libraries we already have in the engine because not a one of them ever manages to do it the same way, much less every time.
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So, to ensure clarity here, the big advantage to FSO would be... EFF equivalent in a container format?
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Pretty much.
We've been looking for a replacement for ANI for some time, and APNG is one of the few formats that meets our requirements at least somewhat (Our preferred solution, MNG, has similar issues regarding software support, we'd basically have to write our own libraries for reading and tools for creating these files).
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I recall reading through the MNG threads. Will APNG meet the requirements we had for MNG?
(is this a good summary of said requirements? http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75188.msg1488795#msg1488795)
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I'm ready to throw money at this.
How do we organize making a collective pledge ? Because if we want that 2.5k thing we need to make it in one single pledge.
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Um... Yes. Please.
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It would be great advertising for the SCP if we actually raised all the cash ourselves.
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How do we organize making a collective pledge ? Because if we want that 2.5k thing we need to make it in one single pledge.
Kickstarter? :nervous:
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Yo dawg.
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How do we organize making a collective pledge ? Because if we want that 2.5k thing we need to make it in one single pledge.
Kickstarter? :nervous:
I didn't dare mentionning it :P
In any case, I'd be ready to throw money at this as well. This really sounds like a great opportunity.
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OK, I'm happy to throw money at this as well.
As for aggregating the cash, could we use HLP's donate option? The obvious downside is that Paypal will eat part of the money, and we'll have to let Sandwich know which money is for apngasm vs hosting. But I can't think of any other good options at the moment. What was done for PCS/DAE, or the Vasudan cutscene model?
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Both bounties (afaik) were paid out from the HLP Paypal, so me and Sandwich would co-ordinate that.
As for hosting, I've already paid up HLP's hosting to MP through to the end of the year.
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That project needs only $93 to reach it's $5,000 goal.
With 25 days to go, I'd say that it won't be that hard.
But the $2,500 backer reward would be nice to have indeed....
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It's that backer reward that is what we're shooting for, since FSO's license doesn't play particularly well with GNU. There was perhaps no doubt that this project would've gotten the base funding within a week.
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I'm prepared to chip in for this!
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Do what was done for the Vasudan. Make a poll allowing people to state how much they're willing to contribute. If the total is more than 2500, collect the money. If not, then we don't have enough and there's no point people throwing money at it anyway.
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If you raise that $5,000 pledge, stop in and visit me on your way to Nagoya...
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I see this has raised exactly $5,000 right now...
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I meant if HLP raises $5000 for that mark.
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I meant if HLP raises $5000 for that mark.
I don't think he was replying to you.
I'd totally chip in $100 for an HLP joint pledge!
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I meant if HLP raises $5000 for that mark.
It's a coincidence, though I came to look at your post. Click the Kickstarter link.
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Added a poll - Zacam can change it or remove it as he sees fit. It has the option to put in two entries - use this if you want to pledge irregular amounts like 15 or 30 bucks.
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I wonder if somebody could go straight to the developers with whatever we can raise, even if it's not the $2500, and ask if they can help us?
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Snuffleupagus, sadly I have no money at this time, I wish you the best though. And like Scourge suggests, maybe you could try talking to the guys working on this, who knows.
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I might be able to do this actually, I speak fluent Japanese and I could actually drive over there and talk with the developers in person. It might be worth a shot to mention that HLP/FSO produces free(albeit via a different license) software and that's why people here would be willing to contribute.
I'm not really an active member of HLP though, so I'll wait for someone in the know to contact me. It'd be a 6-8 drive around trip. I could also talk with them via the phone although they look like they speak fluent English.
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Right now (as of this post) if everybody made good on the dollar value amounts, we'd be at $1,010.
And there are still 24 days left to the kickstarter, I'd like to have it (if it can be done) with some days left to spare to allow for collection and payment.
So far, not off to a bad start at all. (I'm one of the ones at "more" in the event that we're close to the total I can put in on top of the $200 I've already ear marked for this).
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Just recently having dealt with the awful old .ani file conversion process I would love to have .png animation support in fso. I'm not a wealthy person at all but willing to chip in with a small amount of monies. (50$)
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If only I had the money :banghead:. Otherwise I'd love to help fund a massive joint-pledge for this project with the name "Hard-Light Productions" on it.
EDIT: Maybe I can chip in a few dollars, but that's it.
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If we can chip in as a group, I'd be willing to put in $25.
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You know I'm in...
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What do you mean about the licence?
According to the current placeholder GitHub source, they'll be using the zlib/libpng licence for the "disassembly/playback" and command-line library, and that's fine for FSO.
- It's basically "Do what you like, but don't pretend you wrote it or that we wrote your changes"
The GUI tool to create them looks to be GPL, however that doesn't matter for FSO as there's no need to incorporate an animation editor into FSO or FRED itself, any more than we need Blender or Photoshop to be integrated.
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I'll certainly be willing to throw some money at this as part of a HLP pledge. Definitely like to see more tools, more options, more freedom for you magicians available.
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What the heck, I'm in. Maybe that will give me leverage to ask them to keep it compatible with C++98. :p
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Over $1600 already. :) We might actually get this done you know. :D
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What the heck, I'm in. Maybe that will give me leverage to ask them to keep it compatible with C++98. :p
.... :nono: :nono: :nono: :nono: ....
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Plz2nope
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I'd be in for $50, although given what Tomo said above, do we really need our own implementation? Is the vanilla one not enough?
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True, maybe we should be placing an offer to buy the IP from Interplay instead...
Kick starter anyone? I'd kick in $250 off the bat if I knew I had partial ownership...
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It's not just about engine implementation, though that is part of it. But also tools for making modder resources (eventually, we'll need a new VP viewer, previewing Animated PNG's in that would be nice, yes?)
In short, yes, it all very likely could be done without a dime. But that's not really the point. The point is that, where we can get actual assistance from a group like this, it makes things better. It will make any questions or problems that we come up with potentially easier to resolve.
The other factor is marginally publicity. To be a part of having driven something forward. We're not the only game to have the ability to use PNG (Hell, I'm surprised Mojang isn't all over this, what with that stretch goal! I should ask Notch about that ...) and we won't be the last, but if we can get out there that "We helped make this happen!", how can anybody not get excited about that?
For the record, while it would be a "Group" donation, individual members WILL be credited towards the donation in the manner of their choosing (nickname, handle, real name, whatever) regardless of amount.
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im willing to put 50 dollars(euros) in the game i love, :P thought its not much i hope it helps. via paypal if we reach the goal?
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if PayPal is an option, its 20 from me.
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Just pledged $20 if we make it
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I'm in for $30.
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Don'et get paid for another month, but I'm onboard for $20.
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Just point me where to donate for the HLP chunk.
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Unless my math fails me, we're almost there as-is, so let's get this set up. :)
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I could probably spare £25 (just under $40). Paypal is preferable for me for sending over my share if it's possible. :)
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Let us know when/where to put our contributions if this is still going to be a thing.
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By my current count we've exceeded our goal, it's at $2713. Wheeeeeeee :D
I believe the donations were to be sent via the HLP Paypal donate button on the main webpage, but Zacam / Sandwich should confirm the exact details ;)
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By my current count we've exceeded our goal, it's at $2713. Wheeeeeeee :D
Ah, but 12 people have voted double so far - 61 members, 73 votes. Depending on the pledges they made, we may not actually make it...
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wuh? You're right - how on earth do you vote twice in a poll anyway? Or is it just people selecting more than one option? e.g. 50 & 75 for 125 (or something similar).
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Added a poll - Zacam can change it or remove it as he sees fit. It has the option to put in two entries - use this if you want to pledge irregular amounts like 15 or 30 bucks.
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Indeed. I pledged $30, so I selected the "10" and "20" options.
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Woohoo! Give me clear instructions on how to transfer my money. (First time using Paypal and KickStarter.)
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I've just put in my 50 bucks for this to HLP Donations via PayPal.
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For FSO I'm willing to put in $20 for something like this.
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I will raise my donation from $10 to $100. I just need to make sure my Japanese credit card will work with US Paypal.
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So we're a go? Where do I put my $$$?
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Hello everyone, I'm Rei Kagetsuki the creator of the kickstarter. Sorry it took me so long to notice this.
First off I can keep an running total of pledges if everyone from HLP sends me a message after they contribute. Just hit the "Contact Me" link on the right after you contribute and write "HLP", in my kickstarter inbox it will show your message and in the header shows you are a backer and for how much. I'll keep a running total right on the main page for you. It looks like you've all already started accumulating through PayPal but it also looks likes some have contributed directly - the PayPal ammount could go in a lump sum no problem and anyone who has already contributed please contact me with "HLP" as the message and I'll start adding it up.
I'd also love to make an update mentioning the HLP project and how you all want to implement APNG.
I would like to know however what type of port HLP has in mind. I've never done any development on FSO but it looks like it's all C++(98?) which should not be a problem as we aren't using any features that would be incompatible [as long as I'm not mistaken and std vectors are supported]. Do you actually want us to implement the APNG abstraction layer for in-game assets?
Thanks for your interest and hopefully for your support. Having HLP as a model for implementation in [non-web] games will be great!
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Now I've gone from giddy to flat out passing out from geek joy.
We are mostly C++ (the type is varied. the original source code was C and we've been refining and adapting it ever since).
We are wanting to use the ability to read in APNG as in-game assets material (usually interface and HUD elements, but I'm sure we can also use it elsewhere) but as well, we need to have some format of a builder so that modders can create that APNG content across Windows, OS X and Linux. We have stock standard linking into libpng already to start with, but lack of an universal content creator hampers implementation when nobody can seem to do it the same way consistently.
At some point, our asset container toolset is going to need to be updated (as the asset container itself will be upgraded) into providing a "Preview" function for various data-types that can be stored, which would also include APNG.
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So, wait, we can pledge to the kickstarter and have it count towards HLP's group pledge?
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Yus. If anybody has already donated to the HLP PayPal, IM me with the details and I will make sure it gets moved over accordingly.
Or if preferred, sent back for direct pledging to the Kickstarter directly.
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Okay, easy. But I reckon everyone should also post on here when/how much you contributed to kickstarter so we can keep our own running tally. Going from pledges to real cash is sometimes where projects like this one fall over.
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The Kickstarter project lead notices this thread and makes an account to reach out to us?
:jaw:
I love the new yt tag.
Also, $50 pledge sent to Kickstarter with note sent to Rei.
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Pledged $30 to KS and note sent.
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Now I've gone from giddy to flat out passing out from geek joy.
:D
We are mostly C++ (the type is varied. the original source code was C and we've been refining and adapting it ever since).
OK! I don't expect any issues here. Since it will compile to standard libraries on each system with the magic of CMake hopefully there will be no issues with linking and it will just work.
We are wanting to use the ability to read in APNG as in-game assets material (usually interface and HUD elements, but I'm sure we can also use it elsewhere) but as well, we need to have some format of a builder so that modders can create that APNG content across Windows, OS X and Linux. We have stock standard linking into libpng already to start with, but lack of an universal content creator hampers implementation when nobody can seem to do it the same way consistently.
APNG is basically just a bunch of PNG images in a row with some meta information and we WILL NOT rely on a patched version of libpng. Anything assebled with apngasm on system A should dis-assembled properly on system B. Actual encoding and decoding of PNG frames is still the job of libpng.
All our tools will use the core apngasm library so there should not be any issues with content being created in one tool not being read or output the same on another or in your client (f*ing collada still gives me nigthmares :hopping: ). As for the content creator we'll have a command line tool and the GUI we outlined and it looks like we'll have a Photoshop plug-in as well. Since the CLI, GUI and plug-in will all be using the exact same library to assemble PNG as you'll be integrating to dis-assemble I expect all will be good.
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The Kickstarter project lead notices this thread and makes an account to reach out to us?
:jaw:
Hey, thanks for showing interest in a non-web context! I'll be preparing a post in a little bit and I'll post it here first for everyone to review. If there's anything you want me to convey about HLP and the OSS FSO projects can you outline them? I don't want to give inaccurate or unwanted PR.
Also don't assume anyone running a kickstarter campaign is any kind of special. All you need to run a KS campaign is an amazon payments account and either:
A. Enough confidence in your awesome product that feel you can finally show it to the world
B. A lack of enough shame to stop you from making a stupid pitch video with a goofy sound track and a desire to make something you are just assuming everyone will think is awesome, regardless of the fact you have no actual reason or basis to assume anyone will care at all
'B' Totally worked for us this time!
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Hehe, anyways it's really cool to see how the wider internet FOSS developer community is neatly getting things together and so on!
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Oh yes.. Photoshop plugin FTW! Bonus points for PS 64-bit compatibility... I'll get my pledge in quite soon.
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$50 contributed to KS and message sent.
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Done --> + 66.75$ (=50€)
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Hello everyone, I'm Rei Kagetsuki the creator of the kickstarter. Sorry it took me so long to notice this.
You're sorry? I'm surprised you found this place at all!
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Pledged $100 and notice sent.
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Add in my 100$.
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Posting to confirm I just registered to KS and sent mine. Note also sent to Kagetsuki-san.
Decided sod it and pledged $50 in the end. Hope you guys get this; it sounds like it'll be useful :)
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$50 pledged & note sent.
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I just pledged 55$, but how do I send a note? Right now it's in my name...
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Log in to Kickstarter and open the project page. It should say "You're a backer!" near the top. next to that is a link that says "Rei Kagetsuki". Click the link, and choose "contact me" from the pop up.
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Kicked my $30 pledge to the KS and sent notification. :)
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Pledged $25 and sent notification.
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$25 pledged and message sent. Big thanks to Mr. Kagetsuki for being so accommodating. :)
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Ok, semi-full disclosure time... the HLP PayPal has a not-insignificant amount of funds in there. There have been three $50 donations recently for this project, and since PayPal takes a fee off every donation, I'm deciding unilaterally that HLP will compensate for those fees, so the full amounts of each of those donations will go to the KickStarter.
That leaves us with a still not-insignificant amount in there. What do people think of the idea that HLP as an "entity" (not just the individual "forumites") would donate, say, multiple hundreds of dollars to this, from the funds that have come in over the years and which we haven't needed for hosting?
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I can't use kickstarter, using the HLP paypal is still an option right?
Anything special I need to write down?
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I can't use kickstarter, using the HLP paypal is still an option right?
Anything special I need to write down?
Sure is. Just indicate it's for the APNG project or whatever. :)
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Sure is. Just indicate it's for the APNG project or whatever. :)
Just donated $10. Unfortunately, I probably missed my chance to indicate it's for APNG. :mad: Local part of my email is the same as my nick here. I can PM more information if needed. Sorry for inconvenience.
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Ok, semi-full disclosure time... the HLP PayPal has a not-insignificant amount of funds in there. There have been three $50 donations recently for this project, and since PayPal takes a fee off every donation, I'm deciding unilaterally that HLP will compensate for those fees, so the full amounts of each of those donations will go to the KickStarter.
That leaves us with a still not-insignificant amount in there. What do people think of the idea that HLP as an "entity" (not just the individual "forumites") would donate, say, multiple hundreds of dollars to this, from the funds that have come in over the years and which we haven't needed for hosting?
Given that the forumites have pledged in excess of the target, I'd say hopd on to those funds and do something else cool with them. :nod:
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Yeah, I'd agree with that. Imagine how annoying it would be to use that money on this, and then something else comes up where you could have used that money and you can't.
Perhaps an ideas thread could be opened up instead to discuss possible uses for that money...
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Perhaps an ideas thread could be opened up instead to discuss possible uses for that money...
That would probably not end so well...
On the other hand, for the current situation, I would recommend: tally pledges sent straight to the kickstarter, add pledges sent to the HLP paypal for the kickstarter, and if the total is less than the 2500 by the time the drive is almost over, then use the paypal to top off the 2500. Because as has been mentioned, what people say they'll pay is not always the same when it comes time to lay the money down.
Probably won't be a problem, but just in case...
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$100 pledged and message sent.
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$38.93 which = £25 ish according to google donated
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what people say they'll pay is not always the same when it comes time to lay the money down.
So far that indeed appears to be true. People are paying more than they pledged. :D
Sadly this comes at exactly the wrong time for me (I just switched jobs and won't be paid until the end of September). So I can't pledge anything myself. I'm glad to see everyone being so generous though.
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Just donated $20 via the HLP donations link with a note marking it as for the APNG project.
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$50 to kickstarter + "HLP" comment.
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$100 sent to KS, added HLP
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$3 sent through Kickstarter. Yes, I'm a cheapskate - just been on holiday need to skimp for a while to make up for it. But it's something anyway.
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$3 sent through Kickstarter. Yes, I'm a cheapskate - just been on holiday need to skimp for a while to make up for it. But it's something anyway.
It's all good... Remember the parable of the widow's mite from the Bible? ;)
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I ended up donating 25 (will update poll to reflect recent changes.) Note sent.
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Sure is. Just indicate it's for the APNG project or whatever. :)
Done.
$10
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Thanks for the big boost everyone. Thus far I have tallied $909.75 through Kickstarter but I'm sure there have been more donations from HLP than that. Please, if you backed and did not hit the "Contact Me" link on the right with a message of HLP could you please do so now? If you've already sent a message there is no need to send another one.
I'm preparing an update now here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VCB0-SZt1ORNZn9GfnUwox_RQMje6v9gxeI4MmNE7hE/edit?usp=sharing . I'll ask for a double check before I post it.
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I'm preparing an update now here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VCB0-SZt1ORNZn9GfnUwox_RQMje6v9gxeI4MmNE7hE/edit?usp=sharing . I'll ask for a double check before I post it.
Document doesn't appear to be shared...
Also, I'm on the road now so I can't give you an accurate figure, but we've received a few hundred in donations via our PayPal, which I'll transfer to the Kickstarter later.
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Contributed 20$ for this project on Kickstarter.
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Seems like people are taking notice of this project: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/kickstarter-apngasm-wants-to-promote-animated-pngs-as-an-alternative-to-gifs/
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Sent my first $25 to kickstarter.
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Finally made due on my promise. $100 to kickstarter.
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...aaaand that's the $7500 stretch goal passed. ;)
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$30 from me and message sent
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...aaaand that's the $7500 stretch goal passed. ;)
Yus!
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Current running total is $1,289.75
The google doc wasn't properly shared - sorry!
It should be shared now - if I can get a spot check from someone Ill post it.
Thanks again - I'm growing increasingly excited to work on this!
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Put my 200 in directly on Kickstarter and sent a message to Rei on Kickstarter.
EDIT: Noticed the update about the post. There are few things that I noticed: This site is Hard-Light Productions (HLP). Some of our members are a part of the (FreeSpace 2) Source Code Project (SCP) which works on FreeSpace 2 Open (FSO). I would also like to make clear that FSO has the source available, but it is not an Open Source project as defined by the The Open Source Initiative.
And also, Kagetsuki, I thank you.
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Put my 200 in directly on Kickstarter and sent a message to Rei on Kickstarter.
EDIT: Noticed the update about the post. There are few things that I noticed: This site is Hard-Light Productions (HLP). Some of our members are a part of the (FreeSpace 2) Source Code Project (SCP) which works on FreeSpace 2 Open (FSO). I would also like to make clear that FSO has the source available, but it is not an Open Source project as defined by the The Open Source Initiative.
And also, Kagetsuki, I thank you.
Awesome! I'm glad you clarified that. I updated the post so if someone can give me another read-through to make sure I didn't screw anything else up that would be great.
Total is up to $1489.75 BTW. Thanks everyone!
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Thanks for the post draft, Kagetsuki.
Some thoughts:
- Maybe include the SCP's website's URL http://scp.indiegames.us/
- Actually, we don't accept contributions. :) The HLP website has a donation page for maintaining the forums etc., but my understanding is that HLP is okay money-wise for the time being.
- You might change the wording to say that HLP/SCP has created "completely original missions, content packs, mods, and entire games (total conversions) running on FSO, such as The Babylon Project http://babylon.hard-light.net/ and Diaspora http://diaspora.hard-light.net/ ".
- Maybe change "FreeSpace is a massive space combat simulator" to "FreeSpace 2 is a classic space fighter combat game that is famous for its massive capital ships"
- As mentioned, FSO is not open source by the standards of the Open Source Initiative, although the source code is available.
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$100 to KS from me & note sent
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I updated the post so if someone can give me another read-through to make sure I didn't screw anything else up that would be great.
You should take out or reword the section about accepting funds for development, as jg18 said. Strictly speaking the SCP doesn't accept funds at all; in the first place it would open up a can of worms as to how to divide it up, and in the second place it might incur the wrath of Volition's or Interplay's lawyers. The SCP directs all donations to HLP. HLP accepts donations for maintaining the website, supporting project hosting, and occasionally supporting community interests like this Kickstarter.
Also, I sent $150 yesterday. :)
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$50 sent through donate button :)
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I hath pledged ten of my finest dollars.
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Here's my rewording suggestions and corrections:
You may have noticed a big bump in backers recently. Not only were we covered in TechCrunch (http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/26/kickstarter-apngasm-wants-to-promote-animated-pngs-as-an-alternative-to-gifs/), but we’re getting a huge boost from the group community over at the Hard Light Productions (http://www.hard-light.net) (HLP) and (from?) the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project (SCP). HLP is a groupcommunity of gamers who have been working on improvements and mods to FreeSpace 2 and its open-sourced code base for well over a decade. FreeSpace is a massive classic space combat simulator famous for its massive capital ships, and FreeSpace 2, which the FreeSpace 2 Open (FSO) project is based on, received a numerous “Game fo of the Year” awards and great reviews in 1999/2000. From what I've seen it appears HLP and the Source Code Project have not only kept it quite the game engine up to date, but also created completely original campaigns, missions, content packs, and mods. I myself can't wait to “test” it. If you have any interest in games and especially if you were a fan of Descent or FreeSpace I hope you check out Hard Light Productions and the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project. Their accumulated contributions are going toward a collective $2,500 reach for apngasm based APNG support integration into the FreeSpace Open SCP code base. I’d also like to note that they collect contributions to continue development - including completely new and original games built on the FSO engine. By contributing to us they are using funds they would have otherwise put to their own inner-comunity projects - so if you’re interested in their work I’m sure they would appreciate a contribution. are always eager for skilled coders, modelers, texture artists, and the like to join the community and start contributing anything they can.
Let me just say I personally am looking forward to working on integrating apngasm into FSO. I used to be a big Descent fan and the FreeSpace series is something I missed out on. In the mid 2000’s I did embedded engine development for the AGB and breaking down asset packages for integration was a big part of the job. Now I get to do engine development on an *Open Source* and radically improved distribution of a game I always wanted to play!
To keep track of the Hard Light contriubtions contributions we'll be adding a running total to the front page. A big thanks to HLP/FS2SCP!
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Ok, semi-full disclosure time... the HLP PayPal has a not-insignificant amount of funds in there. There have been three $50 donations recently for this project, and since PayPal takes a fee off every donation, I'm deciding unilaterally that HLP will compensate for those fees, so the full amounts of each of those donations will go to the KickStarter.
That leaves us with a still not-insignificant amount in there. What do people think of the idea that HLP as an "entity" (not just the individual "forumites") would donate, say, multiple hundreds of dollars to this, from the funds that have come in over the years and which we haven't needed for hosting?
Given that the forumites have pledged in excess of the target, I'd say hopd on to those funds and do something else cool with them. :nod:
I agree with this, with the caveat that if we get down to the wire and haven't made the $2500 goal.. That we should use the funds to hit that if possible.
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Put my money where my vote was, 20 bucks in the collection plate.
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Here's my rewording suggestions and corrections:
If the hope is that more traffic/attention will come, perhaps mentioning Blue Planet and Diaspora under the mods line, such as:
"...but also created completely original campaigns, missions, content packs, and mods such as Blue Planet and Diaspora."
*whimpers remembering the load the server was under when Diaspora was released...*
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Diaspora isn't a mod. :p
I think we should push the fact that the SCP has 3 total conversions already which don't require you to have Freespace 2 a lot harder.
"From what I've seen it appears HLP and the Source Code Project have not only kept the game engine up to date, but also created completely original campaigns, missions, and mods. They've even gone so far as to create new games based on Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Wing Commander, which don't need Freespace at all."
Those 3 names are big enough to attract attention from people who don't know or care about Freespace. Once they're here, we can interest them in FS. :)
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I haven't been able to give much to the community (yet), so I thought I might as well put $30 towards this. I sent a message to Kagetsuki as well on Kickstarter. :)
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Diaspora isn't a mod. :p
Technically it is. You can still play retail with the same exe you play Diaspora with. Total conversions are just a specific brand of mods.
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Update posted. Current running total $1,649.75.
I purchased FS2 from GOG btw, going to start testing the build chain etc.
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Shouldn't he at least play through Transcend first?
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Technically it is. You can still play retail with the same exe you play Diaspora with. Total conversions are just a specific brand of mods.
If you say game, people will download it and try it out. If you say mod, some people will say "Well I don't have Freespace 2, pity I can't play this" no matter how much you scream at them that you don't need FS2 to play it. Which is why we've always said Diaspora is a game (using the FS2_Open engine) and not mod.
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All good points; mentioning those games is fine with me, and I like how kara put it. However, let's keep in mind that this isn't an HLP advertising campaign - it's a mention of us as thanks for our contribution. So let's make sure that any rewording we suggest keeps that in mind. :)
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Shouldn't he at least play through Transcend first?
He can start anywhere he wants. There are so many mods that there is no starting point (except arguably retail) that one needs to start from. I didn't start on Transcend myself, for example.
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Who do I send my money to for the joint-donation? Hard-Light, SCP, or the Kickstarter?
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Added my 10$ to the HLP fund.
Infamus: You can either donate to HLP (which will then be aggregated and send over in a lump sum), or donate to the Kickstarter (Just remember to send Kagetsugi a message via Kickstarter to tell him that you want your contribution to be counted towards the HLP subtotal).
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i've tossed my $5 into hlp's donate button, so add that to the apngasm stuff that goes
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FYI, it's better for those who can to donate directly to Kickstarter. That way you avoid PayPal transfer fees and make less work for me. :D
Which brings up a question... are all those who are donating directly to Kickstarter getting the benefits of their pledge levels? I'm guessing not, right?
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FYI, it's better for those who can to donate directly to Kickstarter. That way you avoid PayPal transfer fees and make less work for me. :D
Which brings up a question... are all those who are donating directly to Kickstarter getting the benefits of their pledge levels? I'm guessing not, right?
i'd have to go through the card validation thing with amazon checkout and i wasnt in the mood to read all the terms and conditions for that today in the morning :)
apropos, how much are the transfer fees? i know that paypal (or visa, since i went with that options) doesnt nom anything for the transfer from my side, and paypal lists it still as $5 in the receipt...
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It's a percentage deducted on the receiver's end.
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Yep, it's something like 2.3% + 25 cents... something like that. I'm 80% sure about the 2.something % and the 25 cents, just not sure about the decimal point.
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duly noted for future reference :)
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Infamus: You can either donate to HLP (which will then be aggregated and send over in a lump sum), or donate to the Kickstarter (Just remember to send Kagetsugi a message via Kickstarter to tell him that you want your contribution to be counted towards the HLP subtotal).
Alright, Thanks.
I'll send it to the Kickstarter and pop Kagetsugi a PM. I've got an account on there already.
EDIT: Wrong "kickstart" website. The one I was on previously was "indiegogo." I need to make an account anyway.
EDIT2: So far I've pledged/donated 4 USD. I will give more if I get money in before the deadline.
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Which brings up a question... are all those who are donating directly to Kickstarter getting the benefits of their pledge levels? I'm guessing not, right?
That is a good question, one I've wondered myself. I was going to guess yes, since Kagetsuki seems like a cool dude, but it should definitely be clarified.
I'm really looking forward to the Photoshop plugin, hopefully he'll be able to send those out without a loss at least. The stickers I could do without, since they would actually cost printing and postage.
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Which brings up a question... are all those who are donating directly to Kickstarter getting the benefits of their pledge levels? I'm guessing not, right?
That is a good question, one I've wondered myself. I was going to guess yes, since Kagetsuki seems like a cool dude, but it should definitely be clarified.
I'm really looking forward to the Photoshop plugin, hopefully he'll be able to send those out without a loss at least. The stickers I could do without, since they would actually cost printing and postage.
While that's true, if you look at the big picture of this donation drive here, it's HLP pushing to get APNG support for the SCP. That's one of the pledge levels, not a stretch goal, so there's no reason to expect anything but one instance of that pledge level's rewards being doled out to HLP.
We'll have to hear from him directly though, since it is an unusual situation.
I'm thinking that I should set a deadline for any PayPal donations marked for the APNG project, since I still have to transfer the funds and have that process complete before the end of the Kickstarter. There's 8 days left. Thoughts?
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The currently listed running total is only $1600 - if you're going to transfer all the paypal donations in a lump sum, it might be best to verify that total is up to date and then determine whether to use other HLP funds to make up the shortfall.
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I remember dealing with .ani conversion and it sucked. $25 dollars to the cause.
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I'm kicking in my start. Or however you phrase that. Yeah.
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Threw in $20 on Kickstarter and sent a message to the project.
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I finally got some more cash - I've raised my donation to 10 USD. Feelsgoodman.jpg
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If you can get 2400 together I will pitch in 100 to finish it. I am not able to program but I love the game and want it keep expanding.
I had to re-register cause I f'ed up my email back about 2 weeks ago, generally I can barely make the game work cause I don't know half the terms used but this winter I will get back into gaming on FS and figure out how to make everything work again with my new rig. Anyway this way I won't feel like I just take all the hard work for free from you guy's
Thanks for all the fun.
Richard aka Wyo .. yeah I am a Wyo Cowboy in real life... this is my escape in the winter from living on a very isolated Wyo Ranch................
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Just an update - we're at $1735.30
To answer some questions:
We'll be filling all rewards from kickstarter. For the lump sum I think we should decide something based on the amount. Keep in mind this is special treatment ;) . EG send a pack of stickers to someone and say HLP has (lump sum / $10) worth of photoshop plug-in licenses in stock you can give out later. Sound good? Any other ideas?
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The PayPal donations that have come in for APNG total $318.93, but I'm waiting on confirmation for $50 of that.
EDIT: Got confirmation; the full $318.93 (and then some, probably) will be sent.... when?
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Sent another $20 on KS.
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We'd better hurry up -- we're down to just over 5 days left.
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Kind of worrying that we're 500 short of the goal when the pledged amount is much higher and that some of us who pledged a smaller amount actually gave more...
I just hope we can make it.
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I'm able to chuck in an extra $30 or so if need be.
But yes, I'm worried too.
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Sod it, I got paid a lot little more last week than I thought I would so I can spare another $50. Pledge increased and note sent, so it's down to $450.
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The PayPal donations that have come in for APNG total $318.93, but I'm waiting on confirmation for $50 of that.
EDIT: Got confirmation; the full $318.93 (and then some, probably) will be sent.... when?
Sometime by September 5th, I hope. The deadline is the 7th, I believe.
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Pledged $50 to Kickstarter and sent the HLP comment.
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I'll be capable of covering any of the PayPal "Tax" if necessary, in addition to supplying my own amount from my paycheck this Friday (which will bring it in the day before cut-off)
Sandwich: Since the funding submission looks to close on Kickstarter on Sunday Sep 8, 21:01 EDT, we should make our cut-off 12 hours ( 9:01 AM) before that for a conglomerate HLP donation, then I can check with Rei by Noon EDT to get what our total sum is and we'll see if we're short or not and then I can swing (depending on the gap, if it's under $400 USD then that'll be easy) in order to make the goal happen. Bare minimum, I'm throwing in $200 USD in addition to balancing the PayPal for the "Taxation" that took place to make sure the amount we send matches what was "intended" to be delivered to the project.
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I can probably bump my pledge up another $100 if it looks like we're going to come up short.
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I probably should have posted an update in the news several days ago with the Kickstarter messaging instructions. Do you think it's worth doing at this point, or does Axem's mention in the newsletter get the job done?
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I just sent another $30 to HLP. Sadly, I forgot to mark it as for this. If the admins need any info from me to identify it, let me know.
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I've donated 50 dollars to the cause so far, might go a little higher towards the last day(s) in case we don't meet the goal before that time. Looking forward to see what possibilities will be opened up with this project.
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I just sent another $30 to HLP. Sadly, I forgot to mark it as for this. If the admins need any info from me to identify it, let me know.
I was under the impression that if you just go to his Kickstarter profile (Click his name under his picture right side on the project's page) and click 'contact me' you can send the message anytime. Is what I did for both my donations as I couldn't work out how to send it straight afterwards.
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I just sent another $30 to HLP. Sadly, I forgot to mark it as for this. If the admins need any info from me to identify it, let me know.
I was under the impression that if you just go to his Kickstarter profile (Click his name under his picture right side on the project's page) and click 'contact me' you can send the message anytime. Is what I did for both my donations as I couldn't work out how to send it straight afterwards.
I think he meant he donated it via HLP's Paypal.
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I just sent another $30 to HLP. Sadly, I forgot to mark it as for this. If the admins need any info from me to identify it, let me know.
I was under the impression that if you just go to his Kickstarter profile (Click his name under his picture right side on the project's page) and click 'contact me' you can send the message anytime. Is what I did for both my donations as I couldn't work out how to send it straight afterwards.
I think he meant he donated it via HLP's Paypal.
Yeah, this.
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Contributed $25 on Kickstarter and sent a message identifying it as part of HLP pledge.
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Running total is $1,890.30. Again if you forgot to mark your pledge as HLP go ahead and contact me now. I won't respond to every message but if you want confirmation I added your pledge feel free to ask. Also if you have increased your pledge after contacting me with "HLP" I will not have noticed your increase - please message me if you have increased your pledge after contacting me initially.
Thanks everyone!
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just stuck another $10 into the pot via kickstarted and messaged regarding it
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Changed my pledge from $100 to $200. Sent a message informing Kagetsuki of my new pledge.
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I'll be capable of covering any of the PayPal "Tax" if necessary, in addition to supplying my own amount from my paycheck this Friday (which will bring it in the day before cut-off)
If that's what you want to do, ok - I was just gonna cover the PayPal fees with the funds from HLP's PayPal money.
Sandwich: Since the funding submission looks to close on Kickstarter on Sunday Sep 8, 21:01 EDT, we should make our cut-off 12 hours ( 9:01 AM) before that for a conglomerate HLP donation, then I can check with Rei by Noon EDT to get what our total sum is and we'll see if we're short or not and then I can swing (depending on the gap, if it's under $400 USD then that'll be easy) in order to make the goal happen. Bare minimum, I'm throwing in $200 USD in addition to balancing the PayPal for the "Taxation" that took place to make sure the amount we send matches what was "intended" to be delivered to the project.
The timing seems ok to me; 9:01am EDT makes it mid-afternoon or so Sunday for me, which is fine.
You've seen the tally doc I shared with you? We're up to $348.93 in the PayPal (before fees).
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That puts us at roughly $2,239.23 as of the latest post from you Sandwich and Rei, and before any other updates.
So we're seemingly on perfect track then to hit that aspired goal. Awesome.
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My kickstarter total still comes out to $2,124.30 but I have a feeling I missed someone or someone didn't tell me on kickstarter that they pledged. Even at this total adding in the paypal amount basically brings us to 2.5k. In otherwords *STOP* contributing through kickstarter. We'll double check our numbers and anything over 2.5k from the paypal account I say HLP uses internally.
Thanks HLP! You'll be seeing me around for implementation as soon as we have the base libraries and tools from the project out ;)
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In otherwords *STOP* contributing through kickstarter.
Wait, you're turning down more money? :p
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In otherwords *STOP* contributing through kickstarter.
Wait, you're turning down more money? :p
He is very nice. :nod:
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I'll still be doing my own contribution. If we go over the necessary amount for the intended support, that doesn't bother me much, it just means another potential Stretch goal (Java! w00t!) reached or something. :D Especially since I know we have more than a few GIMP users.
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GIMP has been removed from the stretch goals, alas. :(
That said, well done HLP! We got there. :D
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Well done everyone this is an awesome feat for the community to achieve!
I am looking to put a mention on the reddit freespace page regarding this but I just know someone will ask what it means for the game engine so could someone in the SCP spell out to me in basic terms:
A: what it would replace/supplement that is in place now?
B: what desired features/capabilities would be possible now?
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That said, well done HLP! We got there. :D
Indeed, great work people! If only we had known that the FreeSpace license could have been bought for 7.5k...!
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A: what it would replace/supplement that is in place now?
Replace? Nothing. Supplement? All the ani playback, all the commandbriefs and heads and stuff.
B: what desired features/capabilities would be possible now?
-Full color CB anis/com heads
-Easier content creation without having to go through anibuilder
-Easier content organization by reducing the need for one file for each animation frame
There are also some improvements that may be possible with regards to bmpman slots, but that's something we'll need to work out when it comes to implementation.
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Cool, thanks for that
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A: what it would replace/supplement that is in place now?
Replace? Nothing. Supplement? All the ani playback, all the commandbriefs and heads and stuff.
Layman's question - are there reasons why we don't simply use an open video codec such as Ogg Vorbis for video-type content?
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We're already using ogg vorbis for regular movies; it's just that the movie player framework we got right now isn't set up to render to anything other than a fullscreen surface; that's something we'll eventually get to.
For now, fitting in something like apng in is easier.
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Given the apparent highly anticipated nature of this feature, if it comes "soon" as indicated in the highlight post, I expect that we could see a more rapid 3.7.1 release in order to make it into an official release as soon as possible.
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-Full color CB anis/com heads
-Easier content creation without having to go through anibuilder
-Easier content organization by reducing the need for one file for each animation frame
There are also some improvements that may be possible with regards to bmpman slots, but that's something we'll need to work out when it comes to implementation.
Just for the record. We can already do the 'com heads/head'ani'' full color with .eff nowadays. (Not that having 70 seperate animation files is very elegant or anything)
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Given the apparent highly anticipated nature of this feature, if it comes "soon" as indicated in the highlight post, I expect that we could see a more rapid 3.7.1 release in order to make it into an official release as soon as possible.
You mean 3.7.2?
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Given the apparent highly anticipated nature of this feature, if it comes "soon" as indicated in the highlight post, I expect that we could see a more rapid 3.7.1 release in order to make it into an official release as soon as possible.
You mean 3.7.2?
I was about to pull you up on that when i remembered odd numbers are reserved for nightly builds lol
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That said, well done HLP! We got there. :D
Indeed, great work people! If only we had known that the FreeSpace license could have been bought for 7.5k...!
dont worry, we can wait for interplay to sell its rights when it happens again.
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That said, well done HLP! We got there. :D
Indeed, great work people! If only we had known that the FreeSpace license could have been bought for 7.5k...!
dont worry, we can wait for interplay to sell its rights when it happens again.
Now that it's intact and in interplay's hands I will be very surprised if it goes for anything like what we could afford to raise in a reasonable amount of time
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Indeed, great work people! If only we had known that the FreeSpace license could have been bought for 7.5k...!
I thought it was only a portion of the rights.
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Given the apparent highly anticipated nature of this feature, if it comes "soon" as indicated in the highlight post, I expect that we could see a more rapid 3.7.1 release in order to make it into an official release as soon as possible.
You mean 3.7.2?
*Facepalm*
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Another reason you may wish to not use a standard video format like .OGG for some .ani replacements is transparency.
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Surely APNG has transparency just like PNG does?
WRT supplementing/replacing ani, this will definitely come down on the "supplement" side for my purposes. I quite like, for example, the way the head anis look with their limited palette, so I don't expect to be moving from ani any time soon for those at least. But things like CBanins? No question.
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Surely APNG has transparency just like PNG does?
That's exactly what Mjn said. APNG has transpacency, ogg movies don't. Hence why you'd use apng over ogg.
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Surely APNG has transparency just like PNG does?
That's exactly what Mjn said. APNG has transpacency, ogg movies don't. Hence why you'd use apng over ogg.
Ah, yeah, misread that.
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Has the total funding been confirmed? I just checked my KS and according to my history I've only paid $50; I had later added another $50 on top of that. Kagetsuki said he had confirmed and accepted both so it's a little confusing. Shall look into it my end (bank statement hasn't fully updated yet so I need to wait on that).
(Why does this always happen to me? :sigh:
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In the latest update, he said that we cleared our funding goal of $2500.
In other news the Hard Light Project successful cleared $2.5k, so they get their "port" in the form of us helping them implement APNG support in Free Space 2 Open.
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I just got the e-mail survey about the physical rewards, so I wanted to confirm what we're doing about that. I'm fine without making someone go through the time and expense of sending me stickers, if we're just getting a bunch of them as a group.
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I just got the e-mail survey about the physical rewards, so I wanted to confirm what we're doing about that. I'm fine without making someone go through the time and expense of sending me stickers, if we're just getting a bunch of them as a group.
Ditto. I put on "no reward" because as I see it, my pledge was made as a participation of HLP communal pledge, and as such it wouldn't feel right to receive a personal physical reward AND expect the $2500 reward for HLP as well.
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For my end, I'm awaiting hearing back from him regarding where to send the PayPal funds; his latest KS update indicated PayPal had placed a hold on his funds until getting verification papers or something, so I'm definitely waiting...
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Might look into another money transfer service like Venmo, they have a 0 fee for receiving funds if you pay via a bank account or debit card.
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I'm willing to pitch in as well. I have been a ghost for years but I'm still around guys. Still love t his place.
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It got funded on Sep 8. Did we get it?
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Well the guy says we earned our thing, I don't think it's finished yet though.
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So...forgive a dumb question, but what exactly does this give us? an alternate, more workable format for ingame video?
Bh
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There's always the back button. :)
[Edit] Here, so I'm not a complete arse: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85280.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85280.0)
There's also several posts that go over this in detail in the first few pages.
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A: what it would replace/supplement that is in place now?
Replace? Nothing. Supplement? All the ani playback, all the commandbriefs and heads and stuff.
B: what desired features/capabilities would be possible now?
-Full color CB anis/com heads
-Easier content creation without having to go through anibuilder
-Easier content organization by reducing the need for one file for each animation frame
There are also some improvements that may be possible with regards to bmpman slots, but that's something we'll need to work out when it comes to implementation.
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:necro:
(but I figure this is highly relevant)
There's an update on kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/374397522/apngasm-foss-animated-png-tools-and-apng-standardi/posts/758533
In summary:
- v3.0.0 has been released
- the command line APNG assembly tools are ready, GUI ones are still a work in progress
- HLP is mentioned :D
Here's one I made with from the freshly compiled CLI tools... unfortunately it's a bit underwhelming when linked on the forum, mediafire seems to convert the 1st frame to a jpg and they use that as the "thumbnail"... :ick: works OK if you download it and open it in Firefox (but not in Chromium)
(https://www.mediafire.com/convkey/46b6/njrkx4vwjff7w7d4g.jpg) (http://www.mediafire.com/view/njrkx4vwjff7w7d/churchill-or-nelson.png)
But look at this! IMGUR works!! Hurrah! :D
(http://i.imgur.com/98m55GH.png)
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excellent news
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Giggity.
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:necro:
Should we be following up with this sometime soon?
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:necro: for the third time in five posts... :nervous:
Can someone get in touch with the apngasm project manager? There hasn't been an update since niffiwan's post (in February 2014) and the github repository (https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm) hasn't been updated since November.
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Weeeelp.
There goes our money?
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I'd be willing to try and get in touch with them, but I'm not a coder and won't be able to do much other than to ask for what we paid for.
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Weeeelp.
There goes our money?
(http://www.mobiletweaks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/money-on-fire.jpg)
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I'd be willing to try and get in touch with them, but I'm not a coder and won't be able to do much other than to ask for what we paid for.
That would be appreciated. I looked through the thread and Kagetsuki is the HLP username of the guy who did the Kickstarter. Or you could try contacting them through the Kickstarter site itself.
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Message sent. According to kickstarter, he last logged in yesterday, so perhaps we'll hear back pretty soon. Who should I put him in contact with in regards to SCP?
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Message sent. According to kickstarter, he last logged in yesterday, so perhaps we'll hear back pretty soon. Who should I put him in contact with in regards to SCP?
That's good to hear. Put him in touch with Zacam, since he coordinated the Kickstarter funding.
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completely unrelated url: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/feds-take-first-action-against-a-failed-kickstarter-with-112k-judgment/
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Sounds like he was talking to someone a while back.
Hello Mike,
We had some contact quite a while back but there wasn't much progress.
I'll dig up the messages but basically we haven't had the best luck
building the project and we also wanted to know the details of where/how
you want APNG integrated. I'm assuming for interface textures etc. but
more specifically what kind of implementation are you looking for.
Thanks,
-Rei
EDIT: Things would go a lot smoother from this point forward if I knew which coder was going to commit to working with them on this....
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I'll put out a call for assistance.
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(http://www.mobiletweaks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/money-on-fire.jpg)
"Costs a fortune to heat this place."
Well, goes to show. Always approach kickstarters with the full expectation that you are throwing your money down a well. Cause as far as you're concerned, you are, and it's not even tax deductible.
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...you realize we just got a reply from the lead dev, right?
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I dunno. Certain parts of his response (highlighted below) give me pause.
Hello Mike,
We had some contact quite a while back but there wasn't much progress. I'll dig up the messages but basically we haven't had the best luck building the project and we also wanted to know the details of where/how you want APNG integrated. I'm assuming for interface textures etc. but more specifically what kind of implementation are you looking for.
Thanks,
-Rei
The campaign page (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/374397522/apngasm-foss-animated-png-tools-and-apng-standardi/description) had an estimated delivery of December 2013, a year and a half ago. :doubt:
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Well, the APNG ASM is working pretty well but it seems to be specifically designed to create a very specific type of animated PNG with a narrow range of customization options, and rather the program is allowed to decide how it should handle the changes between frames, etc.
The most advanced stuff you can do with the APNG ASM at the moment is set variable delays for specific frames, to "halt" the animation for a certain duration. Other stuff - like specifying frame disposal methods - are left for the program to deal with.
I don't actually know much about how the interface operates, but it would seem like the APNG need to have the same frames as the ANI, and the game needs to be able to access all the frames in the same ways that it could from the ANI. So if you have a button that has a default state and a lighted up state (like when hovering mouse over it), then you need the program to be able to call the correct frame in that context.
If you have an animated button, like the background on mainhalls or a fade-in fade-out blinking button, then you'd either need to be able to drive the animation backwards from the same APNG file, or you would need the same APNG file to contain the animation in forward and then in reverse to create a loop.
Basically, at its simplest, what we need is a way to use APNG in all the ways that ANI can be used on FS2Open (specifically in the interface context), except it doesn't need to use green as one-bit alpha since APNG supports native 8-bit alpha channel. But I'll let those actually familiar with the interface code to craft that specification...
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I think the integration is actually quite a bit simpler than people assume. Animations are just sequences of frames, and it doesn't matter much what format they originally come from. You can already use EFF almost everywhere, right? And even if currently some specific things (mainhalls, heads, etc) can only be done with ANIs, that's a silly archaic limitation by the engine and dealing with that shouldn't be within the scope of APNG integration as such. I think a more reasonable expectation is for APNG's to be interchangeable with EFF's.
With that in mind, a very possible best-case scenario is that the only place the integration needs to hook up into existing code is in bm_load_animation().
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Yeah as long as the game can actually read the APNG files.
They do have a patch for libpng released at http://sourceforge.net/projects/libpng-apng/, I would assume* that needs to be included as well?
*if the game currently utilizes libpng to read PNG images, that is. "i know very little about the engine and make random guesses..."
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*if the game currently utilizes libpng to read PNG images, that is. "i know very little about the engine and make random guesses..."
Yeah, it does.
/* png.h - header file for PNG reference library
*
* libpng version 1.6.12 - June 12, 2014
* Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Glenn Randers-Pehrson
* (Version 0.96 Copyright (c) 1996, 1997 Andreas Dilger)
* (Version 0.88 Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 Guy Eric Schalnat, Group 42, Inc.)
*
* This code is released under the libpng license (See LICENSE, below)
(etc)
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FSO very cleanly handles EFFs in just about everywhere, including mainhalls. Even using EFFs, the engine already knows how to rock the animation back and forth for doors, so that's something FSO controls and not something APNG would deal with. Loop points, is something to think about. You can do this with ANI and EFF... by setting a keyframe, the animation can play frames like...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
In fact, if we can get FSO to get all the same information from an APNG that it does from an EFF, we'd be good to go. See here. (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/EFF#EFF) I'm confident that FSO already handles special use animation cases with it's own code outside of the container format.
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I dunno. Certain parts of his response (highlighted below) give me pause.
Hello Mike,
We had some contact quite a while back but there wasn't much progress. I'll dig up the messages but basically we haven't had the best luck building the project and we also wanted to know the details of where/how you want APNG integrated. I'm assuming for interface textures etc. but more specifically what kind of implementation are you looking for.
Thanks,
-Rei
The campaign page (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/374397522/apngasm-foss-animated-png-tools-and-apng-standardi/description) had an estimated delivery of December 2013, a year and a half ago. :doubt:
Marketing at its finest
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Sorry, I've been in and out of contact with various members here. We haven't forgotten you!
How should we go about organizing this?
Specifically we need to know how you want this implemented and where in the code you want it. If we can have someone to contact from the development team to ask questions it would be a big help.
*Side note: we're still having some issues compiling things. I'll try again this afternoon to get a clean build going.
-Rei
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I dunno. Certain parts of his response (highlighted below) give me pause.
Hello Mike,
We had some contact quite a while back but there wasn't much progress. I'll dig up the messages but basically we haven't had the best luck building the project and we also wanted to know the details of where/how you want APNG integrated. I'm assuming for interface textures etc. but more specifically what kind of implementation are you looking for.
Thanks,
-Rei
The campaign page (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/374397522/apngasm-foss-animated-png-tools-and-apng-standardi/description) had an estimated delivery of December 2013, a year and a half ago. :doubt:
Marketing at its finest
Just to clear things up:
> but there wasn't much progress
We were contacted by a few people here but we never got a clear idea of *what* you wanted us to do. We need someone involved in dev to point us to what you want and more importantly where in the code you want it. This is a big and unfamiliar codebase to us.
> we haven't had the best luck building the project
I'm trying a build right now actually. Last time I had some issues compiling but at the moment it's gone past that and seems to be compiling fine. I'll report on if I got it up and running a little later.
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FSO very cleanly handles EFFs in just about everywhere, including mainhalls. Even using EFFs, the engine already knows how to rock the animation back and forth for doors, so that's something FSO controls and not something APNG would deal with. Loop points, is something to think about. You can do this with ANI and EFF... by setting a keyframe, the animation can play frames like...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
In fact, if we can get FSO to get all the same information from an APNG that it does from an EFF, we'd be good to go. See here. (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/EFF#EFF) I'm confident that FSO already handles special use animation cases with it's own code outside of the container format.
It was my assumption APNG would be used as the container format. I'll investigate the EFF code and see what I can do. I expect I'll have some questions though.
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APNG will be the container format, or rather, be used alongside the other two container formats (.ani, the old animation format from FS2 retail days, and .eff, our own, homegrown pseudocontainer [pseudo because .eff is just a textfile and a series of image files]).
The code you'd have to look at starts with the function bm_load_animation in bmpman.cpp.
I hope you have seen our github repo (https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com); That's where you should get the code and through which any pull requests should be issued.
Finally, if there are any questions, you can either direct them to me, or join the #scp channel on irc.esper.net, that's where most of us coders hang out.
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APNG will be the container format, or rather, be used alongside the other two container formats (.ani, the old animation format from FS2 retail days, and .eff, our own, homegrown pseudocontainer [pseudo because .eff is just a textfile and a series of image files]).
The code you'd have to look at starts with the function bm_load_animation in bmpman.cpp.
I hope you have seen our github repo (https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com); That's where you should get the code and through which any pull requests should be issued.
Finally, if there are any questions, you can either direct them to me, or join the #scp channel on irc.esper.net, that's where most of us coders hang out.
OK! I'll get on it.
I have full build of that repo from github working. I just need to get the assets extracted (I think) to actually run it. I'll hit up IRC if I have any issues.
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Bye money
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Oh don't be like that, spoon.
Niffiwan said he'd be willing to act as ambassador of sorts at one point, but it looks like he hasn't been very active on IRC.
Kagetsuki: If you haven't gotten a bare set of assets to run FSO, you might be able to look at ST:R if you don't want to shell out $5 or so for FS2 (which can be found on GOG). I think ST:R is standalone, and maybe the most recent version of WoD is standalone as well.
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yeah, work is kinda nuts at the moment. I'm still happy to answer any questions Kagetsuki has to the best of my ability, just probably better to post them in this thread if there's no one around on IRC.
Also, ST:R (Silent Threat: Reborn) isn't standalone. The new WoD (Wings of Dawn) is, as is Diaspora.
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Only issue might be that the new Wings of Dawn requires a custom build (for things like multilock), I don't know if using that as a prototying platform for APNG might be the best idea.
If Kagetsuki needs a copy of the game, I'd gladly gift a copy on GoG for him so we can see this through!
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Only issue might be that the new Wings of Dawn requires a custom build (for things like multilock), I don't know if using that as a prototying platform for APNG might be the best idea.
If Kagetsuki needs a copy of the game, I'd gladly gift a copy on GoG for him so we can see this through!
I was going to say the same. Who knows, maybe he'll like it enough to stick around! ;)
Anyways, Installation of FSO is easiest with www.fsoinstaller.com after you get the GOG.com setup package. (Up at the top of the forums here, under "Installing FreeSpace Open") Then you'll have everything set for your compiled version or whatever you coding wizards call it. Just be sure to run the wxLauncher (recommended) or Launcher.exe (outdated) as admin once if it complains about registry settings so it can set the Volition registry entries for you, after that, everything should run fine -- just select your compiled FSO build or one of the other builds in the launcher.
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So.... I know it sucks because we were promised help with integration, but is there a reason we can't pull their completed libraries into FSO ourselves?
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So.... I know it sucks because we were promised help with integration, but is there a reason we can't pull their completed libraries into FSO ourselves?
There isn't, other than nobody other than niffiwan has volunteered to go through with the integration. Looks like we've pretty much gotten scattered over the past few months doing our own projects and trying to recover from the demands of our paying jobs.
Uh... I could give it a look-over sometime soon. But I have a bunch of other projects and house repairs so I can't really guarantee a commitment at this point. :banghead:
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Yeah, I mean, if someone could take a look at it, and have some good questions for them, it might help get the ball rolling with integration cooperation.
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The real problem is that it'll require mucking around in the parts of the codebase nobody really wants to touch if they can avoid it. ;)
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Also, it's not the APNGASM (assembler) code that we want integrated, it's the APNG playback code... which technically isn't the point of the kickstarter. I've previously had a bit of a look around the Chromium codebase (IIRC) and the apngasm github repo (https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm) test-cases trying to understand how playback work. I'll see if I can pick that up again enough to ask some useful questions. When work isn't mental. Or something :nervous:
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I'll be more than happy to figure out their assembler stuff and make some APNGs to test as soon as there is actual progress on this.
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well, from my messing around the command line assembler is dead easy to use, creating the sequence of source PNGs was the bigger pain for me :)
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Yeah I've played with the GUI assembler too and that's pretty easy to use. I have some test APNG headanis all crafted and made if you should need them.
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I'm not sure if its worth giving this a monthly bump to bring it back into attention, but here we go.
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Bump away! Now that I've got the bmpman slot stuff out of the way, I'm going returning to working on this with a much better understanding of bmpman & animation handling in FSO.
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I'm back with a status update, I've been making progress (albeit slowly) on getting APNG headanis to play. I've got most of the "framework" in place to stream these anis (i.e. only using a single bmpman slot) and am now trying to process the image data itself. Hopefully once this is done it'll be much less work to allow apng use for effects, which requires the ani's to use one bmpman slot per frame.
One blocker which I can see ahead is that FSO expects some animations to be able to play in reverse (e.g. mainhall anims) and others to have keyframes to allow part of the anim to loop (e.g. ship/weapon select anims, and probably much less important these days since most mods (I believe?) use the ingame ship/weapon models for this). Unfortunately the apng's produced by apngasm are not "directly" suitable for either use-case as they record only the 1st frame with complete data, subsequent frames are stored as deltas from the previous frame and there's no option in the CLI or GUI interface to mark some or all frames as keyframes.
I guess the alternative to keyframes for playing in reverse is to process & store all the frames in memory, then play them in the desired order, it'll probably require a separate codepath in the current generic animation streaming code (yay....). That's probably not going to work for the partial loop option though, since I don't know how the apng is going to tell FSO which frame is the keyframe (currently that info is embedded in the ani format). Eh, I'll worry about it later and get headani's and effects done first... (although apng does specify different "last frame disposal operations", maybe the use of APNG_DISPOSE_OP_BACKGROUND could be extrapolated as the next frame is a keyframe?)
(Sorry, did someone say keyframes.tbl? I guess that could be another way around it if it's really required)
If anyone can think of other places where EFFs/ANIs are currently used in FSO that I've haven't thought of (or found in the code yet), please let me know! :)
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For what it's worth.. I probably wouldn't use APNG for complicated mainhalls (like the ones I make) because I need to be sure compression remains the same across the entire scene and not just one spot. Dunno if anyone else has tried the sort of mainhalls that I've made and has a different opinion, though.
Also... pls2APNG CB ANIs.
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Thanks for reminding me about CB ANIs! I think that they're streamed in a similar fashion to headanis, so I'm hoping that it'll be only a small amount of extra work to get them working as well (probably to sort out the correct looping & pausing).
For mainhalls do you use EFFs with pngs? I'm basing this on a couple of mods I've got from possibly yourself, called mainhalltest & main_hall_ext_test, and I thought I could test by converting the EFFs to apng and see if there's any artefacts that show up when the animations play. (I am probably getting ahead of myself here...)
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Yeah, I use EFFs with PNGs for mainhalls. The biggest thing with mainhalls (that Valathil made sure of a while back) is to make sure those EFFs are unloaded when we're done with the mainhall.
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I need to take a bit of a break from this to get my tax sorted out (blurgh), but I do have a video I can show off!
(yeah, pretty underwhelming on the outside, it's what's inside that counts :lol:)
(also, has anyone else noticed that [yt][/tt] tags seem to break emoticons placed after them? i.e. :) ;) :p :D :cool: :nod: ;7 :nono:)
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Nice.
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Death and taxes etc etc
Man, that video is confusing to me, retail mainhall, wod loading, jad headani's, orion. :p
So are the apng's done with that kickstarter that we backed? Are they easy to make?
Anyway, good job!
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Thanks! And yes, the mod I'm using is confusing, I've been testing various places that EFFs have been used in FSO and haven't cleaned it all up yet :)
Axem made the three headani's, I think it was with the GUI apngasm tools created as part of the kickstarter. The only issue is, I can't now find a download link for that tool! :(
I have used the command line tool to create apng's and it's quite easy to use. Put all the frames as .png into a directory, then run:
apngasm -o outfile.png frame*.png [options]
If you've already got an EFF it should be really easy to convert.
Download links here: https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm/releases/tag/3.1.3 (they're up to 3.1.6 now, but 3.1.3 is the last release with Windows binaries available)
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Would it be possible replace shield anis with apngs? Please? :)
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Only if the keyframe issue is fixed... but why would you want to? The advantages of APNG lend nothing inherently useful to shield anis.
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I just don't like having an 8 bit pallette forced on me, makes the image lose definition (having a fixed size doesn't help though)
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I just don't like having an 8 bit pallette forced on me, makes the image lose definition (having a fixed size doesn't help though)
What.
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Aren't shield ani's basically greyscale, so 8 bits per pixel should be OK?
The (A)PNG specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG/#11IHDR) defines greyscale images as having 1,2,4,8 or 16 bpp. In theory you could use 16 bpp to get smoother gradients, but FSO won't display it as the code strips 16 bpp samples to 8 bpp so that FSO PNGs will always be 24 (32 bpp if they have alpha), and FSO APNGs will always have an alpha channel added if it doesn't exist, and thus will be 32 bpp.
If creating shield ani's is a pain (I've never built one so I don't know) then improving the auto-shield generation code would probably be a better plan... I had a crazy idea (triggered by seeing the cell shaders) that you could use the outline tracing (er...) stuff to create automatic shield icons (since the ship part of the icon is just a rendering of the ship model from a given point of view... but... ahahahhaa, too many idea, not enough time, I'm going to finish off some stuff before thinking more about that one!!! :D)
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It's not so important, nor so difficult to make shield anis, I just thought it could benefit from apngs. On a second thought if it's not a quick fix, I don't think you should bother with it.
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Well, I'm already caching all the frames as they're created so it might not be too hard. I'll dig into it further once I've got the other use cases sorted out.
edit: I'm kinda turning this post into a TODO list...
Done:
Headanis (streaming, tested with 3x sample apngs from Axem)
CB anis (streaming, tested with random apngs created by me)
Mainhall animations (streaming, tested with Mjn's Krios mainhall test, effs converted to apngs)
PXO logo (streaming, tested with JAD headani renamed to 2_pxologo.png)
Multi countdown timer (streaming, tested with Diaspora's 2_count.eff converted to an apng)
Techroom Weapons/Intelligence (streaming, tested both)
Loop Briefing Animations (streaming, not tested as I'm too lazy to play through the mission prior to a loop mission right now)
TODO:
LUA gr.loadTexture() or gr.loadStreamingAnimation() (i.e. streaming option rather than load all into bmpman options)
Effects
Loading screens
Shield anis
(need to review code to find all use cases)
Won't do:
Ship/Weapon selection animations (requires keyframe support; alternative is to use 3D selection options)
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So. Tax is done and I owe stuff, boo hiss.
On the other hand, I've refactored (https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/compare/master...niffiwan:apng) the apng code to make it simpler, and I didn't have to add anything for this to start (mostly!) working :)
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Le awesome! I'm assuming you've tested transparency? (ANI was never really built for transparency in Anims, and I know EFF transparency works.. just being thorough about APNG.)
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I haven't actually tested transparency yet, although as you say it should just work since this is the PNG format and I'm processing it with an alpha channel. Anyway, I'll see if I can test it and report back (although I warn you that last night was the first time I've ever edited video in my life, and so far I suck! :))
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So, given that you're the one implementing this niffiwan... what exactly did our money pay for?
Were we scammed?
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Well. As I see it (and maybe Rei had a different view) the money went towards making apngasm available. i.e. there's a tool available now that will assemble apng's which FSO can use. Now, I feel that what we paid should have got FSO an apng decoder built into FSO. That's not exactly porting an "apng assembler" (i.e. apngasm) to a new language, or creating an API for a new language as per the Kickstarter page. But I thought there was a general understanding that this is what we wanted despite it not being exactly what was on offer.
Were we scammed? I dunno. Maybe yes, maybe it was a misunderstanding. By implementing this myself I feel that from a certain point of view it can be said that the $2500 that HLP jointly paid resulted in a tool that can create apngs, and a FSO that can play them (or it will once I complete the coding). And that's what we ultimately wanted so it should be OK.
(To add complexity, I based the FSO code on code that Max Stepin published after the kickstater (i.e. in 2014). It'd certainly have been harder for me without access to that code which was quite possibly created due to the agpngasm kickstarter).
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OK, I believe I've got all the streaming cases covered now (including dealing with variable frame delays) and I've specifically tested headanis, cbanims and mainhall animations.
Here's a binary if anyone else would like to test this.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/v5khf2l65kk2dsa/fs2_open_3_7_3_SSE2_apng.7z (http://www.mediafire.com/download/v5khf2l65kk2dsa/fs2_open_3_7_3_SSE2_apng.7z)
Code is here: (just be warned that I sometimes rebase the branch... but that shouldn't matter if you only want to compile):
https://github.com/niffiwan/fs2open.github.com/tree/apng
And here's a video showing all three use cases; including transparency in the cbanim (oversized to emphasise transparency) and with all door animations in the Krios mainhall converted from EFF to APNG)
(next up will be non-streaming uses, which will require pre-processing the entire apng and saving all frames individually into bmpman. And/or implementing a streaming LUA interface, whichever turns out to be easier)
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Nice work
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Giddity :)
Nice work
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QFT:
Nice work
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Being able to turn 3900 something frames into just a bunch of (much smaller, space wise) apng has given me a lot of joy.
Thanks niffiwan-wan~
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tl;dr Will anyone be upset if apng's don't work correctly for glowing textures?
So. I have a question for everyone. But, first you get to wade through some background info ;7
I've implemented the basics of non-streaming apngs, and have encountered an interesting problem. I was trying to test apngs for modeled thruster animations (yeah, as I have found out, using png's for textures really isn't recommended, let's ignore that for a sec). Now, apngs require an alpha channel for composing frames, as each frame is stored as a delta from the previous frame and the delta needs to be blended using the alpha (according to some rules (https://wiki.mozilla.org/APNG_Specification#.60fcTL.60:_The_Frame_Control_Chunk)). Or in other words, the way it is currently coded you can't have an apng without an alpha channel. Per Herra_Tohtori's (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Herra_Tohtori's_texturing_tutorial) excellent texturing guide, this is not recommended for glowing textures. They aren't alpha-blended correctly and the result is odd looking: (I've been calling it "dark matter thrusters" :nervous:) (edit: added the correct looking thrusters)
(http://i.imgur.com/T6phXZ1.png)(http://i.imgur.com/Drk2mzf.png)
Does this really matter? There's a couple of reasons I think it doesn't matter and that this is as-intended behaviour:
1) You're not supposed to use PNGs for textures (DDS all the way... even for normal maps, just use dxt5nm or a lower resolution uncompressed DDS ;))
2) If you add an alpha channel to your glowing textures (e.g. convert dxt1c to dxt5) you get the same incorrect result
Now the question!
Will anyone be upset if apng's don't work correctly for glowing textures?
(where the term "glowing textures" is only loosely defined at this stage until I work through the rest of the places animations are used in FSO, probably everything listed here (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Herra_Tohtori's_texturing_tutorial#Where_to_not_use_an_alpha_channel))
(ps. if this does matter then I'll have to do something like hack out the alpha channel data according to flags set in the required places in the code: while (src < size) { memcpy(dst, src, 3); src+=4}. Or maybe check each frame after composition to see if all pixel's alpha == 255, and if so then clobber the alpha... but.. bpp is assumed to be constant for the entire apng... gah!)
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My gut reaction is to not clobber the alpha channel. Don't hack the code. Don't hack the format. Let APNGs be APNGs. If they offer a different result, well.. go use the proper format for that specific use-case.
I feel like it's simpler to maintain this way, for one.(?) For another.. don't use (A)PNGs for textures!
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Agreed.
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^What they said^
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Or maybe we could get FSO to be...smarter with alpha channels and glowing texturess and actually alpha blend them correctly?
I mean, if it's doing something wrong we shouldn't be simply tolerating that behaviour...
This is not in the scope of getting APNGs to work, don't need to worry about that (since it's not APNG's fault anyway), but just in the long run.
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We can and should think about doing that in the long run, absolutely.
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Indeed. Another reason not to hack the code/format for APNG specifically. That would just be something to remove later.
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Because I can't leave well enough alone I've been running some more tests; and I've managed to get the apng to display almost correctly. It's an asset problem, not a code problem (which in hindsight is super obvious). The original thruster frames were dxt1c, using black to denote transparency. If you only add an alpha channel, FSO uses that instead of the black pixels to alphablend the image, and you get lots of black in the result. With a bit of gimp script hacking I batch "black to alpha" converted the frames, built the apng and it now looks mostly like what you'd expect (viewing from directly aft there's a few faint extra rectangles which weren't originally there, i.e. a bit of outline colour on the modelled thrusters geometry)
(http://i.imgur.com/s1m9UGs.jpg)
Therefore the problem was me not understanding enough about using textures :nervous: BUT, it's still been useful because I now know not to worry about apng usage for textures which should seriously reduce the number of test cases I need to execute. (And as a side bonus I know a heck of a lot more about texturing, image formats, imagemagick & gimp :D)
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damn that is looking good, and nice progress with apng
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Another update; I've got some of the non-streaming use cases working, including support for certain visual novel scripts ;7 Still needs a few more updates, but I think we're almost there. Testing & feedback will be much appreciated!
Executable:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/v5khf2l65kk2dsa/fs2_open_3_7_3_SSE2_apng.7z (http://www.mediafire.com/download/v5khf2l65kk2dsa/fs2_open_3_7_3_SSE2_apng.7z)
Code:
https://github.com/niffiwan/fs2open.github.com/tree/apng
Known Issues:
Odd behaviour seems to occur after playing several campaign missions in a row
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Nice work!
I looked through the code and noticed a few minor issues (some memory leaks, nothing major). I can't comment on a branch comparison so I'll wait until you submit the PR and then comment there.
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Finally, apng support is done! (ignoring any bugs which may still be present in the code ofc :nervous:)
Builds
*** See the nightlies (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=173.0) for current builds ***
Here are builds including FRED (because, why not now that I can compile it, hurrah for 2015 community edition :))
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dpyiizm5ncnityg/fso_apng.7z
The code is now in a PR if there's anyone else interested in looking at it:
https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/pull/537
Simple APNG creation
Here's steps on how to create simple APNGs.
1) Create your animation in your favourite animation application and save it as a PNG file stream. It'll be easiest if the frames are named in ascending order; e.g. anim_0000.png, anim_0001.png, etc (not strictly needed but much easier). Remember you have 24 bit colour & 8 bit alpha available, there's no need for any custom palette's or special transparency colours.
2) Get an apng assembler. There's a bunch available on the internet (http://littlesvr.ca/apng/), online only versions, local installs, command line and GUI. I've personally used the apngasm (https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm/releases) command line version so that's what I'll use in my example.
Latest apngasm source (https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm/archive/3.1.6.zip) (3.1.6)
Latest Windows 64bit executable (https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm/releases/download/3.1.3/apngasm_3.1-3_AMD64.exe) (3.1.3)
For OSX they say use homebrew; I have no idea how to do this, sorry!
Note that the Japng (http://www.reto-hoehener.ch/japng/) Editor allows you to open up apngs and see exactly what each frame is doing, e.g. when the assembler has chosen to use delta frames vs complete frames, etc.
3) Use the assembler to create your apng
You need to know what frame delay you want between all frames... and that's it for a simple animation.
Here's an example using frames exported from the mediavps_2014 intelligence ANI file for "Earth" (I used aniview32 to export the frames to BMPs, then imagemagick to convert them to 24bit PNGs). The FPS for the ani is 15.
apngasm -d 67 -o 2_intel_earth.png 2_intel_earth_0*.png
-d specifies the default frame delay for each frame
-o specifies the output name, for FSO we'll use the .png extension
The last set of arguments is all the frames in animation order
4) Configure the apng within FSO
In my example, copy 2_intel_earth.png to FSO/mod/data/intelanims
And that's it!
Using APNGs in FSO
The places in FSO where I think APNGs make most sense are:
- Command Brief Anims
- Intel Anims (techroom)
- Loading Screen Anim
- HUD Anims (e.g. headz, lock, etc)
- Mainhall animations
You CAN use apngs for any other animation if you wish, e.g. animated glows, weapon impact effects, explosions, shield anims, etc. However, EFF with DDS would generally be a better choice because they're compressed in a format your video card can use, and thus they use much less video RAM.
Having said that, in many cases the apng files on disk (only) will be smaller than other animation formats which can mean reduced modpack sizes. e.g. the 2_intel_earth.png file is 7.5MB, compared with 15MB for the mediavps_2014 ANI file. Likewise a certain EFF+PNG headani was 3.8MB as png frames, the apng was 2.1MB. Note that this reduction heavily depends on the content of the apng. From some rough tests done by Axem & myself it seems that apngs with a transparent background, and an object moving through said background will probably fair poorly. One such example was only reduced from 11MB to 9.9MB. This is because the best compression method is diff/delta frames composed over the previous frame, and it can't draw a transparent pixel over top a non-transparent one. Therefore with a transparent background the frame needs to get completely redrawn, making the filesize larger.
Lastly, FSO uses the .png extension for apngs, not .apng (see here (https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/pull/537#discussion_r53765499) for more info on why if you're curious)
Advanced APNG creation
There are some more advanced options for creating apngs which may be of use in certain circumstances.
1) Per Frame Delays
You can give each frame in the animation it's own delay, different to every other frame in the animation. To do this, just put the individual frame delay after the frames source image.
i.e.
apngasm -d 67 -s -o 2_intel_earth.png 2_intel_earth_renamed_0000.png 500 2_intel_earth_0*.png
This makes the 1st frame play for 500 ms, and all the other frames have a 67ms delay.
Note that the most recent versions of apngasm will do this for you if you include duplicated frames in your sequence. i.e. if you have 50 frames and two sequential frames are the same, then apngasm will create an apng with 49 frames, where one frame has double the frame delay of the rest.
2) Loading APNGs as PNGs
FSO will happily load an apng as a static image if you load it as an image rather than an animation. This is a bit hard to control for stuff internal to FSO, but you've got full control over this in LUA. Anyway, this could save you putting extra files in your mod, by default the 1st frame of the animation will be loaded as the static image. Or you can put any frame you like as the "1st frame" and tell apngasm to skip than frame when playing back as an animation.
i.e.
apngasm -d 67 -s -o 2_intel_earth.png special_1st_frame.png 2_intel_earth_0*.png
-s is the option to skip the 1st frame
special_1st_frame.png is the 1st argument without a preceeding option and thus is the 1st frame processed by apngasm
Maybe this could be of use if you wanted to (e.g.) have a selectable pilot image that's also the 1st frame in that pilots head ani (I dunno, I'm not sure if there's any real use cases for this or not, but as long as everyone knows about the option then people could think up tricky uses for it).
3) Looping
APNG's can set the number of times that they will loop. However, FSO ignores this in favour of the code controlling how any given animation will loop (e.g. cbanims always loop, headanis never loop, etc). So don't worry about the loop value as FSO will ignore it.
So, I think that's enough words from me; please post if you have any questions, or if you have used any other apng assembers with good results.
edit: updated formatting & merged in useful info from Axem
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So, this is probably something that can be found out somewhere, but maybe good to have for reference: if I'm assembling an apng, does it matter how well-compressed the source frames are? Assuming that something like PNGGauntlet can't handle apng's (I haven't tried), does it decrease the final filesize if I crunch the frames before assembling, or does the assembler re-encode the individual frames anyway?
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Niffiwan: I know you and some other coders were talking about the apng file extension. Do we need to use the apng file extension everywhere in FS to make them animated or just in certain parts?
zookeeper: I believe it does re-encode them to some degree, since the primary method of compression is overlapping diff frames over a source. There's compression options within apngasm that optimize the palette and compression such as zlib to push the filesize down as much as possible.
Images with a solid background I've found compress really well, around 50%. But images with a transparent background do not compress well in apng. This is because since the compression method is diff frames over a source, it can't draw a transparent pixel over top a non-transparent one, so the frame needs to get completely redrawn, making the filesize larger.
Here are some other apng tools I've been using. http://littlesvr.ca/apng/ Japng Editor allows you to open up apngs and see exactly what each frame is doing if you're curious.
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Niffiwan: I know you and some other coders were talking about the apng file extension. Do we need to use the apng file extension everywhere in FS to make them animated or just in certain parts?
Well, from I read in the pull request discussion, you shouldn't use the .apng file extension at all (the code assumes a file extension is 3 characters apparently), so apngs should have a .png file extension.
https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/pull/537#discussion_r53765499
From a reasonably trivial search through the code I have identified a number of areas where it is assumed that file extensions are 3 chars long. And to be sure you get all of them it'll probably require checking every single instance where filenames are handled :s
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An OS X standalone package installer would be nice for those who don't want to mess with homebrew/fink/macports/etc. Wonder if there's any plans for that.
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Niffiwan: I know you and some other coders were talking about the apng file extension. Do we need to use the apng file extension everywhere in FS to make them animated or just in certain parts?
Well, from I read in the pull request discussion, you shouldn't use the .apng file extension at all (the code assumes a file extension is 3 characters apparently), so apngs should have a .png file extension.
https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/pull/537#discussion_r53765499
From a reasonably trivial search through the code I have identified a number of areas where it is assumed that file extensions are 3 chars long. And to be sure you get all of them it'll probably require checking every single instance where filenames are handled :s
Ah well, last I heard there was a problem with having still images and animations share the same file extension. I guess that got changed back...
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The problem was leaking cfile handles which was actually caused by an exception in the constructor leaving the file handle in use; this would've been a problem regardless of the extension, so given that it's been solved and supporting 4-character file extensions would be a lot of effort for not a lot of gain... .png it is.
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FYI, I've updated the builds linked above with a version of FRED that'll allow you select *.png files in the campaign, event & cmdbrief editors (I also added *.eff where missing, and removed *.avi where present). No need to redownload unless you want the FRED changes, FSO is unchanged.
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wait, removed .avi?
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I didn't think that FSO supported avi's, except maybe for cutscenes (but they are only mve/ogg)? And when I mean "removed" I mean just that the FRED file select dialog boxes won't show them anymore.
Regardless, if I've made a mistake let me know and I'll add them back in.
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Derp. You did a correct thing. I was thinking .ani.
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I didn't think that FSO supported avi's, except maybe for cutscenes (but they are only mve/ogg)? And when I mean "removed" I mean just that the FRED file select dialog boxes won't show them anymore.
Regardless, if I've made a mistake let me know and I'll add them back in.
ISTR there being avi support at some point in FSO's history. It got removed ages ago though.
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There was. It was way back in 2004-06 I think.
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I think niffiwan is omitting some important clarifying information -- he means the drop-down box for command-briefing ANI files and message head ANI files. He's not talking about cutscenes.
Way back in FS1's development, :v: supported AVI as an option for heads and cbriefs. This capability was removed before release, but the dropdown was never updated to remove AVI. Niffiwan simply removed the obsolete dropdown entry.
All of this is completely independent of AVI support for cutscenes, which was indeed supported in 2004-2006 or thereabouts.
(Niffiwan, please correct me if I misinterpreted what you wrote.)
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nah, you've got what I meant :yes:
(sorry all about the confusion)
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FYI; builds have been updated with some teeny tiny performance improvements, and a bugfix regarding correct interpretation of the apng format.
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The APNG code has been committed to master and is available from this nightly (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=92196.0) onwards. Enjoy :)
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All of this money should have gone to Niffiwan instead.
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Agreed. While this maybe wouldn't have happened without the Kickstarter, as Niffiwan mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm still pretty pissed off with the guy who ran it. He knew what we were paying for, why we went for the major reason that we did, and failed to deliver.
Should we be considering a complaint to Kickstarter here?
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Historically, about 9% (http://observer.com/2015/12/9-of-all-funded-kickstarters-fail-to-deliver-backer-rewards/) of funded Kickstarters fail to deliver their rewards.
Kickstarter itself isn't responsible for any failure to deliver, because it's just a funding platform, not the person or company who is actually delivering the product. But the creator is legally obligated (https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter) to fulfill the terms of his project, including all rewards, or else issue refunds. Since angasm launched "on or before October 18th, 2014 at 11:59pm ET", these terms of service (https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use/oct2012) apply...
Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill.
Project Creators may cancel or refund a Backer’s pledge at any time and for any reason, and if they do so, are not required to fulfill the reward.
I think the most appropriate next step is for a global mod or admin to contact the creator and request a refund. Black Wolf, is that something you'd be willing to handle?
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All of this money should have gone to Niffiwan instead.
I'm flattered you feel this way, but I also feel somewhat uncomfortable with accepting money for this "coding hobby" of mine. If anything does come back from the kickstarter, maybe put it in that SCP Patreon (if it happens), or give it to your favourite charity rather than giving it to me. The best thing a modder can do to "pay me back" for this work is to use apng's in your mod! Seriously, I love that, seeing a contribution from me enhancing someone else's work (e.g. the VN+apng stuff that Spoon & Axem have been doing for JAD, awesome stuff! And my kids love your animations Spoon, keep em coming! :))
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You are a wonderful person (https://ibin.co/2oK2wHO26b6r.png)
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I'll be converting all my ANI packs to APNG sometime soon, I just need to create or find a commandline tool so that I can run a batch. I don't want to have to do all 400+ of them manually.