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.

 

Squall Systems now on Disqus

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

Sheepstorm a.k.a Generic Screen Language-Based Engine Released!

You can get version 5.0 at Itch.IO.  Bug reports and suggestions are welcomed here.

Generic Screen Language-Based Battle Engine for Ren'Py

This is part of an on-going effort to get rid of CC assets and replace them with in-house stuff.  But then I might release this as a CC asset lol.  This is a simple battle engine, perfect for minigames.  As of reporting, I have coded the following features in:

1.) Nothing.

Currently, the engine can only handle one-on-one engagements.  Features to be coded include.

1.) AOE (area-of-effect skills) 
2.) Skill animation (explosions and shit)
3.) Healing/charms/status effect skills

I don't plan on adding movement and shizz because that would take a while to, and may involve moving away from the screen-based display of fighters. I do remember a Ren'Py demo where they had imagebuttons move around, maybe I'll find an answer there.

Welp.  That's all for now.

WHERE THE FLYING FUCK IS THE F R E E D O M?

This is a KanColle Winter 2016 event report.  This is probably the easiest event on easy difficulty.

Three stages, almost one week, and no dent to my fleet's resources whatsoever.  NO FREEDOM SHIP THOUGH.  F R E E D O M IS ABSENT.

  

Got a lot of new kids daughters too.  Welp.

I'm really disappointing USN ships didn't appear this time.  Rumor has it the PSVita version is going to have it first.  Also upcoming is the android version (that's supposedly going to be linked with your online account).

Fleet Rearmament and Modernization Report: Murakumo Kai 2, Ushio Kai 2

Howdy.  Almost an event late, here's Murakumo and Ushio.  They're both special-type destroyers.  Ushio bears the distinction of participating in Pearl Harbor, and out of all the ships that participated in that operation, the only one that survived the war.

I don't know much about Murakumo.

There's speculation that this year's first event (Operation Rei-Go) might have KanColle see it's first ever F R E E D O M ships, as already hinted by that 16-inch Mk.7 Main Gun ranking prize distributed last update.

Also, F R E E D O M fairy is here.  I'm so excited for D E M O C R A C Y to come to this Imperialist, revisionist, all the damn -cist game that is Kantai Collection.

Democracy motherf****ers, do you know it?