Standardization Exchange

Squall Systems will now take care of all templates created under Project Rothera. The said templates will also undergo an update following discussions with Circle Cosine. The goal is to create the following templates:

1.) Character Design Template
2.) School Uniform Template
3.) Map Templates (Icon and scale stuff I guess)
4.) Game Design Document Template

The aforementioned templates might be released as "safe" versions for local community use.

LSF Sprite Study Results

Raw data is available right here.

Ever wondered what's the average cost of commissioning a sprite at LSF and what assets it contains? Don't worry. Squall Systems has you covered (for now). 

Too lazy to explain things by the way so I'm leaving a screenshot instead.

*Note: Median is the middlemost value of a sorted data set. 

I guess the table speaks for itself except the adjustments section. Well, most threads didn't explicitly name prices for additional assets so it'd be shitty to divide it by the sample size (100). Out of 100, 76 posted prices for additional expressions, 57 for poses, and 61 for outfits. 

It's easy to notice that most artists treat a new pose as a different sprite though, but I didn't assume that because... just because. Jesus I need to review my statistics subject.

Well, I hope this helps you plan how much you should expect to spend and get if you don't have a particular artist in mind.

Fucking A: Why ban surveys at LSF again?

Ah, when there's one easy way to do research other than going by threads one by one to gather information.

11.) Poll-Like Threads
Poll-like threads are open-ended threads that ask a user for their personal opinion, without requiring that they justify that opinion.

The administration asks that you not post poll-like threads on the Lemma Soft Forum. When such a thread is posted, we will change, edit, or lock it as we deem appropriate, to ensure that polls do not take the place of discussion. There may be exceptions for "get to know your fellow forum members" type threads.

I'm doing  a "market research" of sorts, trying to determine the following:

Average price for a base sprite per commission (1 pose, 1 outfit)
Average number of expressions per commission

Average cost of an additional expression
Average cost of an additional pose
Average cost of an additional outfit

Average package, meaning how many expressions, poses, outfit per commission.

It would be easy if it were allowable to post a poll-like topic but no.  Maybe I can if I phrase it cleverly enough.  Not to mention there are multiple "how much should I charge" threads in the forums itself.

This probably isn't enough to vent my frustration.

In hindsight, I realized that surveys aren't necessarily polls. Case in point, the LSF demographics survey.

Using Ren'Py's Movie Sprites Ft. Live2D, Part 1 and Part 2

You can read about movie sprites here. It's basically a movie object treated as an image.  Sorry if I confused you even further.

In this discussion, I used Live2D to produce a 2.5D animated object, (which is actually just another 2D movie, sadly).

Part 0: Things to consider/install
-Live2D and Quicktime 7
-Your Live2D models and animations (motions) and expressions.
-FFmpeg, which is kind of tricky to install.


Part 1: Prepping your Live2D model for use in Ren'Py

Skipping the texture mapping and the animating part.  Once you've saved your animations as scenes:

1. Go to File>Export>Still Image (Sequential Number).  It should look like this once it's done exporting:

2. Now, for the .png to .webm conversion.  We are going to do this twice, the second time is for the alpha mask.  But first, do the following:

-open a command prompt

-change the current directory to where the .pngs are stored

-test ffmpeg with "ffmpeg -version" command

-input the following command:

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i epsilon-idle_%3d.png epsilon-idle.webm

%3d.png  = triple-digit numbers.png, if it's 4 digits e.g. epsilon-idle_0000.png, then it's epsilon-idle_%4d.png

epsilon-idle.webm = output video

-press enter and watch it convert the .pngs to a webm.

-for the alphamask, input the following code in the same command prompt:

ffmpeg -r 30 -i epsilon-idle_%3d.png -filter:v alphaextract epsilon-idle_mask.webm

And we're done with Step 2.  Expected output should be like: 

Actually, we're done with Part 1.

Part 2: Using the .webm file in Ren'Py

1. Okay.  Open your respective Ren'Py project's images folder and place the .webms in there.  Then declare the movie sprites as show above. 

2. Use the movie sprites just like how you would with a normal sprite, with the "show" statement.  As you will notice, the movie sprite will keep on repeating.  I don't know a direct fix for this behavior (maybe there's a repeat=False parameter in there but I don't know) so I made my own fix.  This will be explored in another blog post.  But if you totally can't wait, the components that are to be discussed are right here.

Special thanks to Nyaatrap for the .png to .webm idea, otherwise I'd still be stuck with .gif.  Epsilon Standard is a sample material from Live2D Inc.

 

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I replaced the default blogger comments with Disqus comments so that users can easily keep track of their comments on this blog.