SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Well I have eventually finished Character Studio
https://grindalf.itch.io/character-studio
I also have a video showing me making a character with it

Sorry to all the people that actually watch it and have to listen to my voice
After 15 years of gamedev trying to make something good enough to sell, this is the first commercial item I have actually finished...... and its not a game.
I don't expect much from it to be honest(Its more of an RPGMaker type thing and they already have great asset bundles) but in reality I made it for myself and then thought, Hmmm other people might like this so I added a little polish. so even if I never sell a copy its still doing exactly what I made it to do

Some tiny suggestions:
- group elements: body parts, clothings, ...  (instead of having a big list of "elements")
- why does the "colorization box" cover the sprite (couldn't you use it as live preview?)
- why do I need to hit "apply" in the colorization box? Choose a color and immediately recolor the preview - so people could "quickly" iterate through options
- why are there different "mono coloured" belts, if you could recolor them in the app then? I assume to make it easier to create stuff (instead of "one belt.png" + "belt color profiles.txt" or so)
- maybe add a "background with border" behind the preview image when hovering elements (they do not pop out so much now)


Why didn't you use a "native GUI" thing ("windows GUI")? I know people like "dark mode" etc. Yet I can see a lot of benefits when using "existing" widgets. Thinking of drag'n'drop (layers) etc.


Good luck with your project - and may it help you as much as you planned (and more).


bye
Ron

Thanks for the great suggestions.
A couple of answers though

1-yeah better naming and collection of parts would be a good idea(the parts collection was growing faster than I could control it) I'm not sure what to do next in that regard but you are right it does need some organization.

2-I'm not sure how that would be better but I will have a look into it and see if you are right(I am so often wrong )

3-For the color apply button sometimes I make changes then decide against them so I don't apply. I will try changing it your way though and see if I prefer it.

4-As for all the different colors of items(Like the belts) I made a lot of different colored items before I made the recolor tool so in the case of the belts they were made before the recolor tool. The female tops were made afterwards(No extra colors for them)
I considered taking out a lot of the extra colors so as to simplify things but then I thought maybe people would like having them. And thought I would wait and see if people want more colors on the items that don't have as many or complain about to many colors filling the folders.

5-(back ground for preview) that is an excellent idea and I will try and add that asap(It annoys me how some things pop but others are almost invisible)

6-(native gui) its written in B3D, mainly because I know that language well and started out as just a tool for myself so I didn't mind that it had no gui options ect(I had to pretty it up a little for public release) but I want to port it across to Bmax mainly for the extra image options, fast scaling, rotation, color ect but max also has windows gui options

Thanks for the feedback Derron

pity it just for windows

Quote from: grindalf on November 30, 2020, 22:44:01
3-For the color apply button sometimes I make changes then decide against them so I don't apply. I will try changing it your way though and see if I prefer it.

So your only reason is ... lazyness then... right?

How to approach "live recoloring":
- on opening the "recolor" window: backup "current color setup" (all the colors you can change - keep it easy)
- while open, apply all colors "immediately" (for live preview)
- have two buttons: "OK" and "Cancel"
- OK finally applies the color, "Cancel" just does not apply (or applies the backed up color again ...but this is less clean than working on copies/modification stacks)

As you might need a simple "undo" system at the end too ... you might think about on how to add this stuff (history/modification stack with "do" and "undo" commands so you could store your "process" and ...even woul be able to "replay" automatically


Edit: as IWasAdam replied too, you might receive some ideas for it from I-WroteEditorStuff-Adam.

bye
Ron

I didn't think of changing it to a cancel button. That sounds much better.
Yeah I really need to get an undo system sorted as well.
Once I've ported to Max I can compile to linux and mac though as well cant I?

You need a Mac to compile for Mac ... or maybe - if you run a intel CPU - a virtual Mac OS machine will do too.

Linux the same, but current Windows 10 has a Linux subsystem available which you can utilize. @Hezkore (currently @Mayo on discord) could explain it a bit better to you.


bye
Ron

That may be a problem, we shall see. But that character studio is not an application and just a collection of components for animating characters inside another application. I don't know........
Either way I doubt they will even notice I exist

QuoteEither way I doubt they will even notice I exist

My advice here would be "Don't bet on it."
'Character Studio' was and is a huge part of 3dsMax

I did a quick google and guess what is top: Yep 3dsMax. It's one of their BIG solutions to character animation.

So... Change it and do it FAST.

My other suggestion is to always google your choice of name first - if it clashes with ANYTHING big or studio related - change it - they WILL (at some stage) start with the cease and delete...

A godd suggestion would be something that best represents your app. 'Bitmap Figure Creator' says exactly what it is

Yeah GfK and Adam are correct to be cautious on this, change the name now and always always do a Google search for potential name clashes.

Ok I have changed it to Pixel Character Maker. Does that sound acceptable? I can always change it again I guess.
And thanks for the advice guys. I did do a search and when I could not find any actual app called character studio I thought that would be fine(I saw the autodesk thing but when I looked it said it is just a set of components) but you guys make really good(and scary) points.

I can confirm that Dave is right, these companies protect everything that surrounds their brands, be it image, trademarks to naming conventions... I had a game on Android called Asteroid Dodge, it was a vector thing, didnt play like the Asteroids we all know and love... There was asteroids and you dodged them... But, Atari lawyers found me, and a C&D was issued. Someone said to me why dont you called it "Meteor Dodge"?

I was like "Cos their not meteors, they are asteroids, and there's only one real word for an asteroid... And... Its asteroid... So why shouldnt I name it Asteroid... If thats what they are in the game!"

And to be fair, if I did change it I'd only have some other twat come out of the wood work with a C&D because I used a capital "M" in the title! :/

So I just pulled it and took the huff with Atari, it's amazing because it was all them years ago that people like us started this whole industry by tinkering away, and now they want to sue us years later... Boils my piss that one!

Quote
It's amazing because it was all them years ago that people like us started this whole industry by tinkering away, and now they want to sue us years later... Boils my piss that one!

Yes, and especially as Atari aren't the true Atari Company that made Asteroids in the first place!  Just some company that bought the Atari name looking to make a few bucks.

You cannot name a game with asteroids "Asteroid".
You cannot name a movie about extra terrestial livings "Extra Terrestrial (or E.T.)" ... or "Alien".

You cannot name your bread "bread" ... stop ... of course you can. This is a generic term - for exact this kind of product, but you cannot forbid others to name their bread "bread" too - you cannot register/protect the brand "bread" for a product like "bread".

But if you made a game (not a bread!) and named it "bread" you could possibly protect the title. So this possibly happened to the game "Asteroids" (or other games). They did not name an asteroid "asteroid" and want you to no longer name your identified asteroids "asteroid" too. They created a game.


Yet the whole thing is ... kind of a mess. Eg for movie titles there is a kind of ... "minimum creativity" to be able to "secure rights" on a title. So a movie "The Car" can have a "The Car 2" done by someone else (title not "protectable" - at least I think so). Maybe this is the reason for "Titanic 2" (albeit there is something about "pop culture" and allowing registering stuff etc).
Also interesting are "popular persons" (so name a movie after a historic person). You cannot claim "trademarks" on such stuff.

So why can someone register "Asteroids" for Asteroid-fighting games, but not "The Ship" (I think this is not able to get registered). Surely here it is all about the money (company + laywers vs some dudes).


@ character studio
The components of "character studio" had a "registered"-sign next to their names ("biped" etc). "character studio" did not have that in the documents I saw, maybe they left it out there accidentally or ... they did not register the name (I am to lazy to check - I only know how to scan trademarks/picturemarks/wordmarks stuff for Europe/Germany).

Regardless of legal issues it is always a bad idea to:
- use something "generic" as title ("let's google for 'bread' bread...")
- use a term which has a meaning in a different language
- use a term which is used by something way more popular than you (exception is you get more popular than the other "rapidly") (just google for "steam" ... first hit is NOT - at least not for me - the wikipedia entry about the gas-thing, and I am not using "steam services" or look for often)


bye
Ron

pixel people studio
I think Derron is correct. The user interface is VERY important. If people find it at all inaccessible they will drop it (and never try it again no matter how hard you try to get them back)