Hello! I am now in a position where I can try looking into how sprite styles work, yay! What's your process to make a manifest file? I figure I could do it by hand and trial and error it but is there a simpler way, maybe with Stipple Effect?
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Hey again!
I’ll be 1) documenting the scripting API and 2) making tutorial videos about creating and editing sprite styles in the next few days, so stay tuned!
The manifest.tds file is just code, so it’s just a plain text file. I use VS Code to write them. I’ll be publishing a VS Code extension that adds syntax highlighting for TDSM scripts imminently as well.
The primary use case for Stipple Effect when it comes to making sprite styles is programmatically separating and saving assets from project files, which I’ll be covering in the tutorial videos.
For now, I’d recommend using the Pokémon sprite styles as examples to study how sprite styles work. Have look at how their manifest.tds files and other subdirectories are structured, if you haven’t had the chance to do so already. You can also experiment with modifying the script or CVS files and assets in the bases subdirectories in the if you feel confident.
Thanks for your continued interest in the program; let me know if you have any other questions!
Oh hey one thing: if you fuck up the manifest the program only says you encountered errors, not what the errors were. An error log would be helpful to know what the problem is... :')
I figured out how things work, defining animations is pretty easy to understand (some pattern recognition and a lil bit of counting!), on the other hand layer logic is a bit overwhelming. I think I'll figure it out, but a basic layer example would be pretty helpful (suppose I don't need any offsets or anything like that for instance)
It doesn’t give you an error log if it’s a syntax error, but it does if it’s a semantic error. That’s because I didn’t write the code for syntax error checking myself; it’s handled by ANTLR, the parser generator library that I used. I can probably find a way to address that though.
If you can, please file a bug report describing what’s happening and what you feel should be happening instead, with the ZIP you are attempting to upload as a sprite style attached, and I’ll have a look and debug it myself.
Thanks!