Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

gif image support?

A topic by Goldenfreddy10 created May 31, 2024 Views: 212 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(1 edit)

Sometimes gifs will play in full and be able to be replayed but sometimes the gif refuses to load and no images load on character unless there is a alternative image the game could use.

Will there ever be animated image support in the future or will it just be a feature of using a gif instead of images?

Developer

I didn't expect animated gifs to work at all in the game.  That's kind of amazing that they do!  I am tempted to use them for undressing animations in the future or maybe finales, but there's a few catches:

  • Animations are a ton of work and time to create (both for me and my poor computer)
  • Animated images take up a lot of disk space, which will quickly inflate the size of the game download
  • The game will probably run out of memory if there are a bunch of these going on.  It's already a problem with regular images on some computers. New images stop loading successfully and you get a lot of black

I did see it go blank a few times on gifs which usually happens when an image fails to load or the system starts running out of memory, but it doesn't happen very often and I didn't see an error message, so I'm not sure what the problem actually is or whether I'll be able to fix that one.


I'm curious what you've been making with these now!

I completely understand, I was just wondering since I first encountered it in v 1.2, and I really just put gifs in place of images without rendering (majority of gif files work but either jitter or move slower than usual), and finally, I'm actually not cooking anything to be released because I am a furry, I use images and gifs using the system you've made and I'm pretty sure nobody would use or want to use/see said files.

Thank you for your answer, I thought it was interesting and wondered if you knew the issues with it.

Developer

I'm curious now. Did you actually make a set with a bunch of animated stuff? How did the game performance hold up?

As for the furry thing, just because it's not for everyone doesn't mean it's not for anyone.  And I like it when people use my product. I'd love to see a couple shots of what that looks like and maybe give set-making tips/feedback if you're up for it.  And I'm probably fine adding links to any sets you want to share to the bonus opponents sticky post, too.  

Come to think of it, a furry warrior wouldn't even be out of place in the medieval tavern sets, and the Jamal and Jong avatars are missing composites there. Things might be getting furrier around here.

Yes I have, I did a Blaidd from Elden ring by a the furry artist/animator Sollyz, at first, with the GIFs alone then I added the images for when the gif stopped loading (I'll go ahead and zip/post it for anyone interested).

What happens if played with just GIFs: The gif would play with minimal problems and clicking on the portrait will continue playing the GIF (or straight up crash, but as the AI goes back and forth with the clothing, sometimes the GIF would reload or need a few more clicks before it comes back up and the GIF would play normally (it's very back and forth))

With images and GIFs: In packs where it has both an image and a GIF, it would switch between the two as intended, however, if the GIF itself crashes, the image would take over and be the only thing playing (I think this is a great way to still have the player stipping even with the GIF crashing and I often make sure every folder with a GIF has an image backup to prevent only seeing a black screen)

The performance of the system: My computer isn't very strong and I often have stuttering when play games as is, however, the game itself will continue playing the game when their is GIFs and typically wouldn't slow down at all, BUT, the game would slow down if the character portrait is clicked one too many times.

Developer

Tried your set and it played pretty well.  Gifs seem to get dropped now and then, but normal gifs are doing the same thing at the same rate for me, so I'm guessing it's not because they are gigantic animated gifs, and just some intermittent bug with loading gifs. I'll see if I can track it down but no promises.

 I'm impressed at how well the system is handling those. It probably helps that you only have one per step and there's only 1 animated opponent, and cartoony things compress better than photo-realistic video, but still. And yeah, spam-clicking the portrait is going to trigger multiple loads of it at once, and that's bad juju for just about any machine.

The game does cache images once they load, so that explains most of the behavior you are describing.  That's also probably why the images seem to continue animating from where they left off when they cycle back.

(1 edit)

I did a 3 second animation of Miku waving and saying hello. It took 10 hours to render out the composite images and another 4 hours to layer them all together to make the animation. The files size was enormous.