Spriter/C2 4/5 bug fix

[lucid]

Hello everyone. I'll reply in to everyone in greater depth when I get a chance, but there's some great news coming soon regarding the performance and efficiency of the plugin.

If it's a new update then cheers!

[lucid]

indeed @chadorireborn,
It will most likely still be at least a week until the release, but it is an update to the current plugin (and Spriter itself). In the meantime I can give a little information for anyone who's interested. First, this update will enable a new mode for the plugin that operates in a completely different way, and hasn't had extensive testing yet - so upon release, the new mode will be considered alpha, bugs and quirks should be expected, and it should be used with caution. Also at this time, the new mode does not work with sub-entities, and potentially other features.

The new mode for the plugin draws itself instead of using separate sprites. For games that don't make use of individual sprites, this new mode eliminates quite a bit of overhead, resulting in greatly reduced cpu and ram usage. In addition, as far as I can tell, Construct 2's spritesheets don't utilize trimming (removing transparent border pixels of each image) or rotation(rotating images to make them fit in a smaller space). Because of this, Spriter's generated spritesheets, which are used by the new plugin mode, may also use significantly less vram depending on the images used in the project. Finally, since this is a new mode and not a separate plugin, it will be possible to convert your C2 projects using the current plugin, without having to replace objects or events (though it will require a fairly painless manual import process).

Here's an example of the types of speed differences I'm seeing on my machine: (bottom image is using the new mode)

@lucid - I'm exited to try this out - and thanks for your continued support of the c2 plugin! In addition to the performance gain (or, rather, the removal of the performance overhead) I imagine that this will also make sprite sheet animation import into c2 far easier for updating during development than is currently the case with the native sprites. Will it be possible to simply over-write the Spriter files in the c2 project folder each time, or will they have to be dropped into the c2 editor for this to work? Either way it'll be interesting to compare the performance with that of native sprite animation.

As an aside, are you able to give an update on Spriter mesh deformation development?

@lucid - I'm exited to try this out - and thanks for your continued support of the c2 plugin! In addition to the performance gain (or, rather, the removal of the performance overhead) I imagine that this will also make sprite sheet animation import into c2 far easier for updating during development than is currently the case with the native sprites. Will it be possible to simply over-write the Spriter files in the c2 project folder each time, or will they have to be dropped into the c2 editor for this to work? Either way it'll be interesting to compare the performance with that of native sprite animation.

As an aside, are you able to give an update on Spriter mesh deformation development?

Hah this immediately made me think "hey, this sounds closer to mesh deformation integration."

@lucid I have a pretty high amount of animated characters in my game, so I look forward to trying out the new mode and providing feedback.

Damn i am so eager to get mesh deformation in spriter. It will blow away all the alternatives if it also had that. But the speed ups are much welcome too

@lucid - I would also like to try it out. I thought the current scml plugin was fast enough, I didn't imagine it will get faster not to mention the vast difference of performance. Good to know you guys keep improving C2 integration of spriter. This is a very good news for me since almost all my animations are made with spriter and ran using the scml plugin. I'll be happy to try and test it out.

Hah this immediately made me think "hey, this sounds closer to mesh deformation integration."

lol - I have had my fingers crossed for a long time now.

@lucid Great to see the Spriter plugin doing so well.

Now to hit you with a problem...I'm sorry. I was putting together Spriter Art Pack for the store based on some zombie animations I did last year. In the middle of animating, I thought I would test out the Character Pack swap and got the attached problem. Kind of a bummer. The transparent art on the right picture is just a guide image. Not sure why the art isn't matching up. I went through a lot of trouble getting all of the body parts to match up exactly so I wouldn't think that's the problem. I'm using Version 7. Any help is appreciated.

@lucid I did a couple of tests with just a few images thinking that the larger guide images might be the problem. Turns out that I don't have the problem if I don't change the Default Pivot Point. Should I not be doing that and also using bones? Thanks.

-Ben