Messages

1

Feature requests / Force Feedback Support...

« on: January 16, 2016, 03:01:32 pm »

This is a feature request to add support for force feedback on game controllers.  A good example of this is the rumble pack on the old Nintendo 64 -- you can make the controller vibrate in response to game actions such as hitting an enemy, firing a gun, landing on the ground, or when nearby objects fall or explode.

Currently if someone is using SFML to handle game pad input and wants force feedback support, they suddenly must add an additional library.  For large open source games, the difficulty in making builds tends to be proportional to the number of dependencies.  This can lead an open source project to question whether force feedback support is worth it.

I realize that there are many combinations of game controllers and operating systems.  Perhaps a config or plugin setup could be used to handle this.  It would of course ultimately  have to address most major controllers and operating systems through this in order for cross platform projects to be able to use this in SFML.

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General discussions / Re: What art programs do you usually use for 8-bit style sprite creation?

« on: October 30, 2015, 01:15:42 pm »

I get the impression that Pyxel Edit does not support saving/loading of palettes from what I've read, which may be concerning for me.

Pyxel Edit does appear to have a nice feature where it automatically tiles a sprite in a grid so that you can easily see how the tiles bleed into each other.  You can edit it as you view it this way.

Both Gimp and Paint.NET support custom palettes.

Yes, but to my knowledge they don't let you view the animation within the tool itself or automatically tile a sprite for preview.

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General discussions / Re: What art programs do you usually use for 8-bit style sprite creation?

« on: October 24, 2015, 01:26:02 pm »

The big features I'd need are easy control of the screen resolution (probably only need to set the sprite image size), exporting to a sprite sheet, and being able to preview the animation.

It's also best if it supports setting a limited palette (though I might need to expand the palette on some images if I decide to break from the 8-bit style).  The basic tenets with 8-bit graphics are a limited number of colors in a palette and a limited number of palettes on the screen.  Finding a good way to limit the number of palettes on the screen in the game might be an interesting challenge; I'd usually follow it but might occasionally override it.  Changing the palette in the game code itself might make it a bit more cumbersome.

It looks like Pyxel Edit supports these features.  I don't think the Gimp does natively, and I don't get the impression Paint.NET does either.  Does anyone know of an open source free equivalent to Pyxel Edit?  Otherwise it doesn't look too expensive.

Thank you for all the suggestions.

4

General discussions / What art programs do you usually use for 8-bit style sprite creation?

« on: October 22, 2015, 01:41:58 am »

What art programs do you usually use for 8-bit style sprite creation?

I was wanting to make a game using this style and was just curious what other people found to work well.

If I want to be really exact, I'd need to use the correct number of colors per sprite and only so many sprite palettes across the entire screen, though I might occasionally deviate from these rules if it works in my style.

5

SFML projects / The Secret Chronicles of Dr. M - The SFML Port...

« on: October 20, 2015, 04:33:27 am »

We have been working on "The Secret Chronicles of Dr. M" (TSC), an open source platformer that is a fork of Secret Maryo Chronicles (SMC), which was formerly a Mario clone.  We've been moving away from Mario-isms and have been working toward a deeper story.  We recently created a new release for the game.

The game currently uses a version of SDL from the 1.X series as well as legacy OpenGL.  We are migrating both of these components to SFML.

If you have C++/SFML skills and would be interested in helping out with the project, we could certainly use the help.  It is a big undertaking.  Come join the fun and bring SFML to a new game fork!

The project website (with a forum) is: http://www.secretchronicles.de/en/
The branch in github for SFML development is: https://github.com/Secretchronicles/TSC/tree/feature-sfml-port
Our IRC channel is #secretchronicles on freenode.net

Screenshots: