General spriting question

[ClashPDG]

I'm a programmer, working on my first full featured game. It's a simple 2D sidescroller - platformer. It'll look and play similarly to megaman.

I know there are tools out there for spriting (I did look at the resources I promise!) however, I am trying to edit and adjust pre-existing sprite sheets. Some sheets are made in such a way that they show all the poses for a character, but they're not really conducive for using them for games. because there's no organization. Are there any easy ways to adjust them? I've tried doing it manually with gimp, but man it's a pain! I realize that if it's the only way, then my best options to either to man up and do it in gimp or to just rip the sprites myself and make a new sprite sheet.

Any suggestions?

[triptych]

well
i'd assume what you mean by "doing it in gimp" is taking the sprites and organzing them in strips/sheets or .gifs yourself


if so, yes, that's the only way to do it
you can try other programs but you'd essentially be doing the exact same thing

[Vipershark]

Yes. There is no "sprite sheet arranger" program. You have to do it yourself.

[Sengir]

And it's a big pain in the ass, what with having to know each frame size and the sprites being inconsistently placed.

It makes some of them unusable.

[Vipershark]

To be honest, as much of a pain in the ass as it is, the best way would be for the rippers themselves to arrange them correctly before submission.

Chances are that that will never become standard, though.

[Sengir]

What about A.J. Nitro's star spirit sheet? That was organized really well, I was honestly surprised when I saw that.

And those sheet's I ripped are organized quite nicely.

[Vipershark]

I'm not saying nobody does it, I'm saying that chances are correct arrangement for animations to match will never be a submission rule here.

[ClashPDG]

Wow, I was worried that I was going to be flamed hard after this one. I appreciate everyone taking this post seriously and respectfully. It would probably be easier to chop up a sprite sheet into individual bmps rather than trying to fix the sheet. I think a guide on how to make sprite sheets that are easier for programmers to utilize might be a worthy endeavor, especially for spriters who want to see their sprites in a game, if an experienced spriter felt so inclined.

I'm feeling rather inspired. While I keep working out the kinks of SDL with my game, maybe I'll try to write a little tool that may be of some benefit for this issue.

[ClashPDG]

I have been trying to fix the sprite sheets I'm working with. I'm trying to cut the sprites out of the image, and paste them into a new sheet. Using gimp, is there a way to paste an image at specific coordinates rather than just dragging it? I think this is kind of a spriting question, even though it's about gimp.

[Vipershark]

Try looking on Google. I personally don't use gimp, so I wouldn't know.

I think dragging would be your best bet.

[Gors]

Programs such as Game Maker has an option of doing equally-sized boxes so you can easily turn sprite sheets into animations. But that won't work if the sprites aren't arranged in boxes, in the animation order (that means, in most of cases).

It'd be hella nice if everyone made perfectly-arranged sprite sheets, but making it is very time-consuming and boring as hell.

[Dire]

This might be a little handy thing for you, depending on how you're trying to set up the sheet.

http://registry.gimp.org/node/1771

You may need to check your gimp install and do some extra things installed to use python-fu in gimp if you don't already have it set up:

http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html

So long as the canvas you are working with is the size of the largest frame, you can arrange your images to properly animate frame by frame (going layer by layer) and then tell the script to arrange the layers into a new image with all of the frames laid out evenly spaced.

Couple things to worry about though:
I forget if it orders the layers top to bottom or bottom to top (there's another sprite strip script for script-fu that only arranges in a straight line and goes in the opposite layer order).

Also: you don't 'technically' have to shrink the canvas size down as it uses the size of the layers to organize the sprites. I suggest the canvas resize so that you can easily go through each layer and resize it to the size of the canvas for proper dimensions (i really need to see if there's a script for that too).

[ClashPDG]

That sprite tape is so beautiful I might cry just a little. I was thinking of making a program similar to that.

[Alpha Six]

A much easier way would be to use a very good spriting program called GraphicsGale.

They offer a free version on their site but it can't export to GIF.

But it does have a neat feature that will automatically export your animations as a strip.

[Cobalt Blue]

if everything else fails, just use a grid.