Gif makers and sprite sheets (simple animation software)

Bendystraws

I'm currently working on a project of my own; however, for the time being I am using sprite sheets from other games in order to test my program. Cutting up each individual frame of an animation from a sheet is time consuming and i never seem to match the sizes up correctly. Is there a program in which I can import the sheet into to cut it up automatically? What are some good gif making programs (that are free) in which I can test these animations out.

The animations are pretty simple, just the standard walking and running (its an adventure game).

bash

Uh, with a sprite sheet you can store it in memory and just move a "window" over it is sequence to perform the animation. Say your sprites are 32x32 pixels and you need 20 frames of animation, you just use a sheet that is 32x640 and interate the view frame 32 spaces for every frame of animation. If the sheet is multi-dimensional you have to add an extra loop but it's a relatively simple process. That way you don't need to build the animations by hand from the sheet, you just move the view port over the sheet to simulated multiple successive frames.

Aroduc

Tough it up, soldier. Unless the sprite sheet comes directly from the game, there's little rhyme or reason to how they're laid out, let alone any way that you're going to find direct consistencies between different ones that will make automation even possible.

And GIMP is probably the best free one, but I've never used it, nor do I have any reason to use it since I like playing with gifs in ways that GIMP can't handle at all. If you do have a decent program though, you can cut the gifs haphazardly, and then just throw them all into the compressor, set the background as transparent, and then let the automatic compresser trim away the blank space. You'll still need to set the offsets, but that's the best way to get working animations like so.


What you -want- though, is what bash is suggesting, but sprite sheet rippers pretty much never make anything with such nice dimensions, so you're going to have to rip the sprites, and then probably make your own sheet out of them along those lines.

Good luck.