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Tools & Tips Sticky

A topic by Jacob Peltola created May 03, 2020 Views: 332 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 2
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Got any tips or tools to share with fellow jammers? Do so here!

Submitted(+1)

I made a free tool that all my fellow animation enthusiasts are welcome to try! Spasm is a simple batch photo editor specifically for stop motion that I created after the last Stop Motion Jam. It allows me to resize, crop, and green-screen any number of photos at once while seeing a real-time mock-up of how my finished animation might look. It has saved me literally hundreds of hours of tedious grunt work on the stop motion projects that I've done since the last jam. Because of Spasm, I will be able to do a more ambitious project this year than last.  Here is a video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlHRSuZR7U0&t=1s  Spasm is available for free on my itch page for anyone who wants to give it a try. I've included the source code in case any jammers want to make their own fancier custom version.

Hey did you make the tool with the RAD Embarcadero Delphi/C++ compiler? I am curious, I have been working with it in C++ and it is great... but getting VS libraries to be included has been difficult.

Submitted

Wow! This is my first time meeting someone else on itch.io who uses Embarcadero's RADstudio. I use it for all my games, coding in Delphi. I love everything I am able to do with RADstudio but finding information and support is tricky because so few people seem to use it. I don't know anything about adding libraries so I can't help you there.

I don't use it for game development, but I have used it for tools (I use C++, not delphi... but that is because I know C++). I think the UIs can be done really quick and effectively with it. You could use a theme on your application and it will make it look native to windows (they have some really slick themes). Let me know if you need help!

Submitted

One thing I would love help with, anegri: do you know how to build an application in RADstudio that then end user can find without digging in the win32 > debug folder? I've had no luck with that in three years of trying. I've tried making a shortcut with a relative path but that has never worked.

You should not be providing the debug version of your tool ;-). For a release you should the following:

1.  Under the project view > Build Configuration (expand) then right click on the Release and make it active  by selecting Activate.
2. Then run the Make command to build the executable.
3.  Go to project > deployment and you can find all the locations of the required dlls to bundle next to your executable.
4. [ Optional ] Use NSIS to make an installer

Is this what you meant? I struggled at first to find and deployed builds, but after doing it over a project I streamlined the work to this. Now if you mean that you want a single click solution to get your files ready for deployment you could write an application that you point to the project folder and then is able to copy, move, and bundled your deployment tool (I have not made one for my RAD projects).

Submitted

It works! It works! Thank you so much!

Awesome! If you need help with the installer let me know, I could write a tutorial (not sure where or if it would be helpful).