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Text File | 1992-07-25 | 20KB | 509 lines

WordUp Graphics Toolkit Sprite Creator Version 2.0 Copyright 1992 WordUp Software Productions ***********SHAREWARE************ Written by Chris Egerter Requirements: IBM Compatible computer VGA display Microsoft Compatible Mouse (at least two buttons) The Shareware Concept ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WGT Sprite Creator has been released for distribution as shareware. You are granted a 15 day evaluation period to examine and use the WGT Sprite Creator. If you like the program and expect to use it beyond the evaluation period, then you are required to register. WGT Sprite Creator costs $20 (Canadian) for registration. Please see the file called order.frm for more information. WordUp Software Productions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, WORDUP Productions can be contacted through BBS: Barry Egerter (EMAIL) Softnet BBS (NANET) (519)-457-0065 OR WRITE Barry Egerter 94 Andover Drive London, Ontario Canada, N6J 3X2 Table of Contents: To go to the topic desired, use the search command of your favourite word processor and search for the Page codes. Topic Page Code ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ Introduction.......................................P1 Installing the WGT Sprite Creator..................P2 Running the WGT Sprite Creator.....................P3 THE EDIT WINDOW....................................P4 THE COLOUR SELECTOR................................P5 SIZE WINDOW........................................P6 SCROLL BUTTONS.....................................P7 WIDTH AND HEIGHT INDICATORS........................P8 CONTROL PANEL......................................P9 SPRITE NUMBER INDICATOR............................P10 STORAGE SECTION....................................P11 TOOLS IN THE CONTROL PANEL.........................P12 CHANGING THE COLOURS...............................P13 ANIMATING YOUR SPRITES.............................P14 THE FILE SELECTOR..................................P15 ADDITIONAL COMMAND KEYS............................P16 Using PCX and CELs.................................P17 The Future.........................................P18 P1 WordUp Graphics Toolkit Sprite Creator A sprite editor built for gaming and graphic programmers. This sprite creator is part of the WordUp Graphics Toolkit 2.0 for Turbo Pascal and C. It is meant specifically for this package and therefore saves and loads files which are currently only supported by WGT. If you wish to purchase the WordUp Graphics Toolkit, please see the file called order.frm included. To demonstrate what WGT can do, the graphic procedures used in this sprite creator were completely from the Turbo C++ version of WGT. No BGI procedures were used! As well, a demonstration file called invader.exe is included. Please read the documentation included about that file. The WGT Sprite Creator is designed to give the programmer many tools for designing small pieces of graphics. These pieces can be saved in a common file to be loaded and displayed in your own programs. Version 2.0 of the WordUp Graphics Toolkit has special procedures for displaying the sprites. You can have up to 40 sprites on the screen at once, each moving and animating independantly. One line commands control all the movement and animation for the sprites, so once you set up the movement and animation, you don't need to worry about where they are. They move around on their own! WGT controls everything for you, so you can concentrate on other matters. P2 Installing the WGT Sprite Creator ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To execute the WGT Sprite Creator V. 2.0, first make a directory, and unzip or copy everything into that directory. P3 Now go to the correct directory and type SPRITE2. The main screen should appear and wait for your actions. If something goes wrong, you must make sure you have a VGA monitor and card, enough memory (remove some TSR's if necessary) and a Microsoft compatible mouse with at least two buttons. The Sprite Creator demands a LOT of memory because it can hold up to 200 sprites at once, plus a full screen buffer. Please make sure you have enough memory before you try using the program. WordUp Software Productions is not responsible for any loss of data, or damage caused by this product. If you do however find a problem with this program, please contact us so we can find and correct the bug. The screen is divided into several sections, which will be covered in detail below. The main areas are the edit window, colour selector, control panel, storage, and size window. P4 THE EDIT WINDOW ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The edit window is in the top left corner. It shows an area of the current sprite, in which all editting is performed. It has variable magnification depending on what you set the size to be in the size window. When you load the WGT Sprite Creator, the pencil tool will be selected as a default. Try clicking in the edit window. It will set the pixel you click on to the colour selected. Notice if you press the right hand button, a different colour is used. This is good for quick editting, in case you make a mistake. See the 'colour selector' below for more details. P5 THE COLOUR SELECTOR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ User definable colours range from 0 to 252. Colour 253-255 are used for the sprite creator's grey buttons. If you click on one of the colours, a box next to the mouse is filled with that colour and the number of that colour is displayed in the box as well. This is your drawing colour. You can have different drawing colours for left and right mouse buttons. Simply click on the right button to change the right mouse colour. If you click on the picture of the mouse between the drawing colour boxes, the colours will exchange with each other. This is useful for mistakes using the change tool. Below the mouse is a box called 'Edit'. Clicking on the box will bring up a submenu for changing the RGB values of the colours. P6 SIZE WINDOW ~~~~~~~~~~~ The maximum size for a sprite is 64x64 pixels. The minimum size is 2x2. A 64x64 buffer is used even if the sprite is smaller. This way you can keep a whole sprite in memory, while zooming in closely for fine editting, and then zoom back out to the full size. The zoomed area shown in the edit window is defined by a box in the size window (top right corner). Clicking (and dragging) the mouse in the window will change the size of the box. Notice it only changes the bottom right corner. Below the size window is two buttons controlling the corner movement. By clicking on the left button, you can move the other corner of the box. Also note how the edit window is zoomed in and out when you change the size. P7 SCROLL BUTTONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Beside the size window are four buttons for scrolling the sprite in a direction. Simply click on the button and the sprite will move in that direction. P8 WIDTH AND HEIGHT INDICATORS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Below the size window are two lines showing the width and height of the current sprite. These are updated when you change the size of the sprite. P9 CONTROL PANEL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is located in the top middle part of the screen. It contains most of the tools you will need to control the WGT sprite creator. Each tool in the control panel will be described in detail later. P10 SPRITE NUMBER INDICATOR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Shows the sprite number the storage is pointing to. This is updated when you move through the storage. P11 STORAGE SECTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The storage section is basically a group of sprites, which can be moved around in the storage, copied from one to another and of course saved and loaded back in. Instead of having many files containing separate sprites and loading them in one at a time, you can put all the graphics in one file, and load them into your programs with one command. The palette is saved as well. This is much more conveinent than having lots of small graphic files. You will see three boxes in the lower right corner of the screen. The middle box shows the sprite you are working with. The boxes on either side show what is next in the storage area. The sprite number indicator shows the number of this sprite. The storage can hold up to a maximum of 200 sprites. Above the boxes are four buttons. Each has an arrow pointing in a direction. The buttons pointing left and right move the current sprite back and forth through the storage area. As you do this, the graphic in the edit and size window does not change. To get a sprite from the storage into the edit window, push the button with the up arrow. To put the sprite shown in the EDIT WINDOW (only what is shown in the edit window will be saved. Move the box in the size window to change what is saved) push the button with the down arrow. You can copy one sprite to another by getting it from the storage, moving to another sprite number in the storage, and finally putting the sprite into that number. Sprites do not have to be in any order, and you may leave spaces between sprites. For example you may have a sprite in number one, and then have one in number 5. This is perfectly acceptable. P12 TOOLS IN THE CONTROL PANEL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PENCIL: Puts a pixel where you click in the edit window. LINE: Draws a line from where you click to where the mouse is after you drag it. RECTANGLE: Draws a rectangle from where you click to where the mouse is after you drag it. BAR: Draws a filled rectangle from where you click to where the mouse is after you drag it. CIRCLE: Draws a circle from where you click to where the mouse is after you drag it, using the first point as the center. FCIRCLE: Draws a filled circle from where you click to where the mouse is after you drag it, using the first point as the center. SPRAY: Simulates a spray can where you click in the edit window. FILL: Fills an enclosed area with a colour. (Does not work perfectly yet!) * All of the above use the left and right mouse buttons to draw with different colours * GET: Works like rectangle. Gets a portion of the sprite so you can paste it back on in a different location. Has no effect on the buffer. PUT: Puts the last portion back on using an XRAY (or see-through) technique. Hold down the mouse button and move the image to where you want it, then release the button to drop it on. *IMPORTANT* You cannot get a portion of a sprite and then zoom in closer. You must either be at the same zoom level or less than when you grabbed the portion. If you try to put at a higher zoom, you will hear a beep. CHANGE: Changes any pixels in the edit window, from the right mouse button colour to the left mouse button colour. Works the same as rectangle. GET COLOUR:By clicking somewhere in the edit window, you can get the colour of the pixel you clicked on. This works for either mouse button. ROTATE: Rotates entire 64x64 buffer at once, counterclockwise. HORZ FLIP: Flips the entire 64x64 buffer horizontally. VERT FLIP: Flips the entire 64x64 buffer vertically. TRIM: Shrinks the sprite by changing the bottom right corner. If there is extra space (black) in the sprite, it will shrink it down to the edges of the drawing. By pressing the right button, you can trim all of the sprites in the file. This is useful before saving to save some disk space. *Only changes the bottom right corner, so it will not interfere any ofsets for animation.* ANIMATE: Brings up a submenu to see how your sprites look in animation. See below... TRASH: Deletes all the sprites in the storage. Double checks beforehand CLS: Clears the sprite buffer completely. DEL: Deletes a sprite from the storage buffer. All sprites after the one deleted will be moved to fill the empty space. INS: Inserts an empty space into the storage buffer. Sprites after the one inserted are moved. If there is a sprite in space number 200 when you insert, no space will be inserted. LOAD: Brings up a file selector and loads in a sprite file. SAVE: Brings up a file selector and saves the sprite file. To load sprites into your own Turbo Pascal or Turbo C programs, get the WGT Library, from either your local BBS, or write to us. QUIT: Ends the program. UNDO: Recalls what was last placed in the undo buffer. Use this to correct any mistakes you made. NOTE: The sprite buffer is copied into the undo buffer when you click on a tool. Remembering this will help you control what is stored in the undo buffer. FILES: The sprite creator has a full screen buffer which can be used for loading in pictures, saving pictures, grabbing sprites from it, putting sprites onto it, and resizing sprites on top of it. This tool will show a submenu of choices. Choose one of them to load or save the screen buffer. BLK and PAK are picture types specific to the WGT library. PCX is a widely supported format, which has many versions. The PCX pictures must be a fairly new version, and must be 320x200x256. GET SPRITE:Displays the screen buffer, and waits for a mouse click. Click on the top left of the portion you wish to cut out, and move to the lower right. Click again to grab it and place it in the sprite buffer. A right mouse click will take you one step back. PUT SPRITE:Displays the screen buffer and pastes the sprite in the sprite buffer onto the screen when you click the left button. If you click the right, it will cancel. When you first click on the tool, the button you press determines how the sprite will be pasted on. Left means xray mode, and right means copy mode. Xray mode does not copy any black spaces. RESIZE: Allows you to shrink or expand the sprite in the sprite buffer. The top left corner of the sprite always starts in the top left corner of the screen and the bottom right is where you click the left button. Again, click the right to return to the main screen. If you click on this tool with the right button, the whole screen buffer will be resized instead of the sprite. CLB: Clears the screen buffer with the colour associated with the mouse button you press when you select this tool. P13 CHANGING THE COLOURS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once you have clicked on the edit button underneath the mouse icon, a submenu will appear allowing you to change the red, green, and blue values for the palette. It will look like this: ---------------------------------------- Red, green, and blue values | R - ----I---- + 40 | are shown on right, and a | G - --I------ + 23 | graphical slider (I) shows | B - --------I + 63 | the amount of each in the | | middle. Clicking on the | ----- ------ ------- ------ ------ | - and + will change the values | |SET| |COPY| |BLEND| |LOAD| |SAVE| | or you can click and drag | ----- ------ ------- ------ ------ | the sliders to new positions. | | Next are some control buttons. | | | Copy 10 | This line show where copy and | To 40 | blend operations will take | | place. | ------ | | | OK | | To finishing changing the | ------ | colours, click here. ---------------------------------------- Choosing set, copy, or blend will activate the colour selector. Press the left button to choose a colour or the right button to cancel the operation. Blend and copy require two colour selections. Load and Save will bring up a file selector for selecting the palette. (These are compatible with Autodesk Animator's .COL files) P14 ANIMATING YOUR SPRITES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once you have clicked on the animation button (running person) a submenu will appear allowing you to change the animation order and speed. ---------------------------------------- | CLEAR ALL | Clears all values |--------------------------------------| | | | Slot : - 1 + | Click on the + or - to change | Sprite: - 0 + | the values. You can animate | Delay : - 0 + | up to 40 sprites at a time. | | Change the sprite number to | | include that sprite in the | | animation. For example, | | to animate sprites 1 and 2 set: | | Slot 1 Sprite 1 Delay 3 | | Slot 2 Sprite 2 Delay 3 |--------------------------------------| | ANIMATE | OK | Click OK to end, or to animate, |--------------------------------------| click and hold the animate button. ---------------------------------------- Note: The delay speed is not the same as the delay in the animate command in the WGT library. P15 THE FILE SELECTOR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Any time you need to save or load a file, a file selector will appear. At the top is a line which says "Type Filename:". If you click on that top line, you can type in the filename instead of pointing and clicking with the mouse. This is necessary when you want to save a new file which doesn't exist yet. On the right side are some buttons with arrows. The double arrows move to the top and bottom of the directory listing. The single arrows move up and down one page. When you find the file you want, simply click on the name. Notice how the names are highlighted when you move the mouse over them. This is so you don't click on the wrong name by accident. In case you don't want to pick a file, click on the button labelled CANCEL. Currently, you cannot change drives from the file selector. P16 ADDITIONAL COMMAND KEYS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ While on the main screen, the following keys can be pressed: M : shows how much free memory is left F1: Displays version number and registration D : Goes to DOS shell. Type exit to return. P17 Using PCX and CELs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The WGT Sprite Creator allows you to edit pictures using high quality paint programs and grab sprites from the pictures created. Popular formats available are PCX and Autodesk Animator's CEL. PCX pictures can be directly loaded in from the WGT Sprite Creator. CEL pictures must be converted to BLK first. CEL2BLK is included for this use. Once converted, the BLK pictures may be loaded in directly. P18 The Future ~~~~~~~~~~ REMEMBER: The WordUp Sprite Creator is shareware. When you become a registered user, you will receive the latest version of the sprite creator, with the first shareware notice removed. You may also receive some new software from WordUp Software Productions, for free. So please, register and support the shareware concept. Future improvements: -Support for more file formats! -Including text into sprites -New line styles, and other special features!!!! If you register, these features will be included into the next version, since I know you like the product.