Sprite Lab

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Wed 19 Oct, 2005 6:14 am

I have just released a calculator graphics utility that may be useful to those who need help drawing sprites. It is called Sprite Lab and it lets you browse through 8x8 sprites, as well as edit and save or load them. It is an assembly program for Ion. Please tell me what you think of it.

Screenshot:

kalan_vod · Post by **kalan_vod** » Wed 19 Oct, 2005 6:22 am

axcho wrote:I have just released a calculator graphics utility that may be useful to those who need help drawing sprites. It is called Sprite Lab and it lets you browse through 8x8 sprites, as well as edit and save or load them. It is an assembly program for Ion. Please tell me what you think of it.

Its nice not relly hard to use and seems useful

, but a little offtopic: you can join the forums

. Also I believe this goes in anounce your projects forum.

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Thu 20 Oct, 2005 6:55 pm

Okay I joined the forums!

I'm going to start collecting sprites I've made with Sprite Lab. If you want to use some, please ask me first. I'll just keep updating the image at this link, so you might have to refresh the page to see new changes.

Sprites from left to right:
warrior portrait, wizard portrait, infantry, archer, cavalry

I am interested to see what anyone else has come up with. Do you have any suggestions to improve the program?

I know of one bug: when you move the cursor off the side of the screen to appear on the other, the zoomed version is incorrect. This doesn't interfere with anything else, and when you move there again it displays correctly. It should be easy to fix.

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Thu 20 Oct, 2005 8:54 pm

Those are REALLY good. Can we use them freely?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu 20 Oct, 2005 9:19 pm

Those are REALLY good. Can we use them freely?

Thanks, and I hope that Sprite Lab will allow you to make nice sprites too. It's not as good if you're looking for a specific sprite, but you can find all sorts of interesting sprites while just messing around. And editing is essential to finding good ones. So I think that collecting the interesting sprites will let people find specific graphics more easily. I encourage other people to post their sprites here too.

You may use them freely! I probably wouldn't be able to use all of them. And sharing is good. I'd like to know what you are using them for, though.

Maybe someone could make a site like Flickr, except for free calculator sprites. I don't know much about Flickr, so maybe it's not what I am thinking of. But some system where people can submit and organize and rate images would be nice.

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Thu 20 Oct, 2005 9:26 pm

Argh! I'm not used to being able to post while not logged in...

Could someone absorb that Guest post into this one for me, thanks.

To expand on the Flickr idea, those soldier sprites would be in a category for 8x8 monochrome sprites, and for soldiers, and each one would be in a infantry, archer, and cavalry category, respectively. They would also be grouped, so you could get all of them in a set - if you clicked on one, there would also be a link to the group with all three of them. And of course these categories could be created by users instead of hard coded.

If anyone has the web programming knowledge to make that happen, I'd appreciate some help with it.

Post by **Kozak** » Fri 21 Oct, 2005 11:42 am

It looks like a great program. How does it output the sprites for use in ASM or BASIC games, or doesn't it?

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Fri 21 Oct, 2005 8:57 pm

Sprite Lab doesn't automatically output sprite data. You have to manually add the sprites into the program you are making. If you can think of a good way to output sprites, though, I'll try adding it.

I talked about this a bit in the Sprite Lab topic at United-TI.

And the bug is now fixed, so if you are a perfectionist you can download the new version at ticalc. But personally I don't think it's necessary.

DarkerLine · Post by **DarkerLine** » Fri 21 Oct, 2005 9:28 pm

Or at UnitedTI.

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Fri 21 Oct, 2005 10:08 pm

Yes, thanks Sir Robin, er, DarkerLine?

I was looking around and it seems like Wikispaces might be a good place to start a sprite collection. It's free, you can post images, and you can attach tags to pages. I think it is also possible to restrict access to registered users. Do you think I should start a sprite collection at Wikispaces?

KevinJB · Post by **KevinJB** » Fri 21 Oct, 2005 10:24 pm

I've always thought a sprite database would be cool. Stored in .db format and saved to MySQL, with images generated by PHP. It could have advanced options like Authors; Categories; Size; etc. If I didn't have so many durn things to work on atm I might do it. For the moment it's in the 'Reserved Projects' section.

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Sat 22 Oct, 2005 10:21 pm

That's what I was thinking of. Since you are too busy to work on it, I started one at Wikispaces. It is called sprites.

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Sun 23 Oct, 2005 10:30 pm

On the wiki show the sprites at regular, double, and triple size as well as the ASM .db's that would hold the sprite data.

axcho · Post by **axcho** » Mon 24 Oct, 2005 3:46 am

Right now they don't support resizing images, so I am waiting until they do before I add zoomed versions. I am still designing the pages and there is more work to be done before I announce the site.

I'll start adding the .db's right away.

[EDIT]
It is ready for use. If you want to help and add your sprites, please join Wikispaces and send me a PM with the your Wikispaces username so I can let you in.

MaxCoderz

Sprite Lab

Sprite Lab

Re: Sprite Lab