APNG file format support for RMVXA etc.

[Spoopy]

Hi Guys. I'm new to the RM community. There is a "newish" file format called APNG, an animated version of PNG.


Not many applications have support for it, I know GIMP has a plugin for it.


So I was thinking that this could be useful for portraits, battle animations and sprite sheets in general.


One sprite sheet could contain multiple animations on different frames.


The idea is to have a script run between frame numbers depending on an event, resulting in more fluid animations and also allowing for more variation.


It's just an idea which could lead to some interesting effects, more engaging dialogue and battles. Such a feature would be great across all versions of RM.


Some web browsers have also started to implement support for the format, so it should work for MV users in the future.


Links for devs interested.


Wikipedia link


Mozilla APNG specifications


APNGgasm project GITHUB


Structure of APNG in Ruby(Japanese - use Google Translate?)


Looking forward to reading the communities thoughts on this.

 

[Andar]

Scripts is for presenting scripts you wrote.


I've moved this thread to Script Request. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[Shaz]

RPG Maker already allows you to have a single spritesheet with multiple frames for animations.  How is this different?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

The idea is to have a script run between frame numbers depending on an event, resulting in more fluid animations and also allowing for more variation.


It's just an idea which could lead to some interesting effects, more engaging dialogue and battles. Such a feature would be great across all versions of RM.


Some web browsers have also started to implement support for the format, so it should work for MV users in the future.

There are already scripts out there that allows you to use different frame counts for sprite animations, if that's what you're looking to do with APNG files. You can also "manually" play animations of different frame counts via events or scripting. Battle animations can use any number of frames so no need for apng for battle animations too, and the animation editor provides an easy way to make different animations using the same base file/s so I don't think replacing the current process with APNG files will be better (assuming you want to use APNG files for animations so that they're plug-and-play image files instead of needing to use the editor to load image files to make your own animation),. That will also possibly cause bigger file size than the current set-up since you will then be having one .apng file for every animation even if they are just variations of the same base. If you want sprites animated in battles, I think Yanfly's plugins also already cover it.

 

[Shaz]

The other thing is that Ace is an "old" engine now.  Lots of people are moving to MV, including the scripters.  So it's going to be harder than it was before to find someone who will write a script for you in Ace, especially if there are other ways already of doing the same thing.

 

[Spoopy]

@Engr. Adiktuzmiko @Shaz I chose VX ACE specifically for the Ruby scripting, mainly for practice, since I use JS in web development. I'll move onto MV later on. The idea behind the APNG format is too have variations for animations on different layers, so the game does not always use the same repeating sequences. I know it can be done with a single spritesheet, but can become confusing to work on a large canvas. I understand that the file size would be bigger as well, which concerns me as it could cause performance issues.


I guess it is not worth the trouble in the end, maybe it would be simpler to switch out tile sets for variation. Thank you for the advice.