Well, as you all know, there are plenty of freeware GIF animator programs out there. However, I’m looking to make a new one. The basis for the design of this one is spritesheets–it’s designed to load a single image file, either automatically find specific-color boxes around the sprites or allow the user to draw them manually (or perhaps both). Of course I plan on having all the other usual features–except dithering and the palette options, since it’s supposed to be for sprites. Have you found anything like this, and do you think everyone would make use of it if I made it? Also, what are other additions you might like to see in it, et cetera? My current plans are here, here, and here if you feel the need to look at them.
*(Updating post because he doesn’t want people to need to look through the whole topic for info.)
Kinesis Animator has to be run as an administrator the first time you use it. Running it once registers the ActiveX controls it needs in order to run, so you can use it as whatever user you want after that.
Do not click in the left box after editing a comment or name. It’ll copy the comment/name to the frame you click on if you do this. I’m kind of trying to figure out how to fix that.
Editing a spritesheet in Paint will result in the original file you loaded being changed, unless you loaded an animated GIF, and then it’s the temporary bitmap in the program folder, so you should rename it and load it with its new name if you want to keep it.
The “Sprite Selector” (first link to plans) was programmed differently than shown, named “Auto-Find Boxes,” and is usable in several ways (doing the whole spritesheet, doing just inside a specific area, and starting from one pixel). It now requires that there not be actual lines between the sprites, but rather, the background color you select should separate all sprite rectangles by at least one pixel. However, you may select the color of the lines between sprites as the background color, and it theoretically should work fine as long as you only use the “from pixel” mode.
Zooming works anywhere from 1x to 8x at intervals of 1. It does not go to 10 as the second plans link shows.
There are more buttons on the right in box mode than there were in the second plans link.
The “optimize” option shown in the third plans link was forgotten. There’s a small chance it may be added some day.
I haven’t written a help file. If someone wants to get me started with what they know, I’d be happy to finish it and put it in the program with the appropriate credit given. Otherwise, I may eventually write the help file.