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Depot Games: Allegro Sprite Editor

Current Version: 0.8.1

Project Status: Completed

Highest Popularity: #7 during September 2007

Links: Web Site

Category: Utilities

Developers: David Capello

Ports: Windows

Source Code: Available

Author's Description: ASE is a program specially designed with facilities to create animated sprites that can be used in some video game. This program let you create from static images, to characters with movement, textures, patterns, backgrounds, logos, color palettes, and any other thing that you think.

What's New:

0.8.1
* Now you zoom using the mouse wheel without pressing Alt key.
* Now tools are grouped.
* Color-bar is completely redesigned (see Quick Reference).
* Improved selection tools: Now you can move selected pixels dragging the selected area (like MS Paint). [work-in-progress]
* New ASE skin created by Ilija Melentijevic.
* New tools: Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magic Wand, Eyedropper (as an independet tool, Alt+click is available too), Hand, Move, (Filled) Countour, and (Filled) Polygon.
* Now the editor cursor displays pen preview (Ilija Melentijevic idea, like Animator Pro).
* Added compression to .ase/.aseprite format.
* Added support to zoom when you are drawing (e.g. you can use the mouse wheel when you are drawing a polygon or a long line).

0.7.1
* Added support to paste/copy text from/to Windows clipboard.
* Added support to process Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Ctrl+P keys in all entry fields.
* Fixed a bug where file names for new sprites are lower-case always (in Windows).
* Fixed a program crash when try to open a file in the middle of a thumbnail generation process.

0.7
* Added "Sprite Size" command.
* Added "Save Copy As" command.
* Copy & Paste use Windows clipboard.
* Added "Canvas Size" and "Rotate Canvas" commands.
* Fixed compilation support for gcc 64 bits.
* Fixed a bug with multiple editors and paste command.
* Fixed a bug in the File Open dialog when user presses ENTER key with an empty file name.
* Fixed critical bugs in rendering code.


0.6
+ Added 'Curve' tool (bezier-spline).
+ Added support to drag and drop colors in color-bar (feature request feature #2109224).
+ Added support to lock lines in special angles with the Shift key, useful to draw in isometric views (feature request #1961397).
+ Fixed bugs #1958760 and #1958932.
+ Fixed other serious bugs (Dead-pointers to palettes, Flatten Layers, File Selector, etc.).


0.6b2
+ Added the `Background' layer.
+ Added support to load and save PNG files (through 'libpng').
+ Transparent cel handling for the end-user (you can move a cel and
don't worry about its bounds).
+ Rewritten the "Color Bar" and "Color Selector" dialog.
+ Rewritten the "Animation Editor" (ex-Film Editor).
+ New tools: Eraser, Blur, Jumble.
+ Replaced the "List" menu with the tabs selector.
+ Rewritten the "File Selector":
+ Preview support.
+ Incremental search.
+ History of navigation (Back/Forward).
+ In Windows: you can visit Desktop, My Documents and My Computer
locations.
+ Optimized some operations like load/save files and "apply effect"
(convolution matrices, color curves, median, etc.)
+ Restructured all the menus (more user friendly options).
+ Enhanced GUI:
+ more borders for windows and more spacing between controls.
+ better mouse behavior (now in Windows the mouse is captured).
+ added tooltips.
+ Added screen pixel-scaling support (with double-buffering). This
means that you can use the program in a 320x240 resolution inside a
window of 640x480 (pixel-scaling x2).
+ Fixed other minor problems when you drawn in 'tiled mode' or 'paste'
the clipboard.
+ New XML format for the menus and keyboard shortcuts.
- Removed a lot of "complex" functionality:
- Removed mask-repositories (you can use .msk files instead).
- Removed menu scripting customization: the scripting support is
broken, next versions of ASE will contain a better set of routines
to create scripts.
- Removed screen saver.
- Removed sessions.
- Removed draw-text (it'll return in next versions like text-layers).
- Removed layer-sets (the Animation-Editor can't handle them right at
the moment).
- Removed map-generation utility.
- Removed linked-cels (were complex for the end-user).


0.5
- Added features-requested by Carl Olsson:
+ better "snap to grid" support for box-like tools (rectangle,
ellipse, etc.).
+ floating selection now "snap to grid" also.
+ added a subpixel movement for zoomed-cursors in the editor, to
known where we are inside the pixel.
- Better support for the mouse wheel and middle button in the
sprite-editor (to scroll and zoom).
- GIF support to save file fully supported by default.
- Fixed compilation with Allegro 4.2.3 SVN (and fixed a bug in Allegro
with key_shifts).
- Now the full-screen or windowed state is remembered (thanks
to Manuel De Miguel Moreno to report it).


0.4r1
- Removed the console mode.
- Changed Film Editor shortcut: TAB key.
- New feature: Each animation frame has duration.
- New Palette Editor (F4 key).
- Now sprites support multiple palettes: Each frame can has its own
color palette.
- Added support to load GIF files (by Elias Pschernig).
- Added a combobox to file-selection to handle the bookmarks.
- Added rotation!!! Now you can scale and rotate what you paste from
the clipboard.


0.3.1
- Fixed the creation of session files when an exception (fatal error) happens in Windows.
- Added es.po and tips.es files.


0.3
- Added session manager (if the program crashes the session is saved
automatically).
- Added a tool to draw text (finally).
- More documentation and tips.
- Improved the frame adding process.
- Fixed important bugs.
- Added a mapgen utility (original code by Johan Halmén and Anders
Andersson).
- Spanish language support (now works in Windows too).
- Internal code improved (mainly GUI parts, and functions names).


0.2.4
- More stable undo: with limit and without redo-after-undo feature.
- New median filter to despeckle images.
- Updated alternative support to load/save JPEG files with JPGalleg 2.3
library, thanks to Angelo Mottola for this.
- Fixed problems with non-US keyboards: the Alt key can't be used for
shortcuts. Some combinations changes:
+ <~> to <`> (open film editor)
+ <Ctrl+/> to <?> (mask by color)
+ <Ctrl+~> to <Ctrl+4> (close current editor)
- Added Cut, Copy, Paste!
- Added AutoCrop (before known as Trim).


0.2.3
- Fixed routine to save JPG files.
- Fixed and improved various parts of GUI.


0.2.2 beta
- Added some documentation to write Lua scripts.
- Film Editor was improved.
- Fixed errors with the graphics cursor, some keyboard problems, and
various minor bugs.
- New tips with text and images. This will be very useful for
beginners.
- Onionskin feature is done.
- Added (optional) ordered dithering to render RGB images in 8 bpp.
- New actions: Merge Down, New Frame, Copy Frame, change Image Type!,
Load Script File.
- Optimized the drawing speed with tiled mode.

0.2.1alpha
- Fixed in Windows version: spray and some errors saving file-names in
the configuration file.
- Added libintl support and the Spanish translation (only for Linux,
but I have planned make this usable in Windows).
- More undo support: insert/remove layers and mask modifications.
- Filters Convolution Matrix and Color Curve are back.
- Added more basic operations (with undo support): flatten layers,
duplicate layer, duplicate sprite, horizontal/vertical flip, crop
frame.
- New .ASE format (in alpha status, please test it!).
- Easy script routines: now are a high-level layer of routines (easy
to use and understand), and the low-level routine's set (for
internal or more specific works).
- Removed all the interpolation stuff between key-frames: yes, after
thinking, this make too hard the animation edition (so the "fancy
spline interpolation" was removed).
- Optimized the editor's speed in scroll movements.
- The Film Editor is almost done for layers and frames handle.
- Fixed filters using mask with displaced layers.
- Support to apply filters to various frames/layers at the same time.
- Added differents screen layouts in main.jid (see FAQ.txt to see how
change between them).
- The tool bar is back!


0.2pre
The 0.2 pre-alpha version only for test was released. Some
important functions aren't implemented yet: like load and
save .ase files, "film editor" (before layer-window or
layer-bar), and various menu options like the convolution
matrices.
The changes are:
- Text tool. (WIP)
- Improved the interface to make animations with a Film Editor. (WIP)
- Fixed a lot of bugs.
- Added optional support for JPEG with JPGalleg 2.0 library.
- Added draw mode: Opaque (normal), Glass (transparent), Semi
(pattern).
- Added brush types: Circle, Square, Line.
- Implemented a fake-palette system to make the GUI usable with any
sprite palette (mainly to avoid "black-screen" situations when open
sprites with ugly palettes).
- The palette editor has more improvements (like the possibility to
move the selection range).
- "menus" file modified a bit. Some keyboard bindings have change
(and new ones added), you can see the "docs/QuickHelp.html" file for
more help. Anyway, I try to leave the compability in the more used
commands.
- Full scripting support with Lua-5.0. Sprites and GUI controllable
from same scripts, to give you an idea, various of menus actions are
programmed directly with scripts.
- Complete selection handle (mask regions). You can select irregular
areas (add, subtract, intersect, by color), save and load them in
the .MSK Animator Pro format.
- Multiple editors. Now you will be able to edit an image with zoom
and see the results in other editors (updated in real-time).
- New Gfx-core. All sprite/image/layer/prop/key stuff was
reprogrammed. The more big change, was to property/keyframe level
(the properties can be with lineal or spline interpolation, also,
have a ending flag to make circular movements or patterns of movement).
- New GUI. The look and the internal code was reestructured
completelly, I made a new GUI library: Jinete (rider).


0.1.2
The best copy of ASE 0.1 that I have, I upload it before the next ASE generation (0.2), so you enjoy it. (it has some useful features like trim_sprite, and a fast gaussian blur).

0.1.0a
- Removed the `move' tool to displace layers (it was redundant).
- New interface to load Plug-Ins in a dynamic way (DLL, .so).
- Complete new support for JPEG files (RGB/grayscale) load/save:
athwart the Independent JPEG Group's JPEG Library.
- New actions:
+ trim_layer_bitmap: trim the current layer to the selection bounds.
+ merge_down: to merge the current layer with the next one.
+ make_undo_animation: to make an animation from the undo
operations (to see all the progression of the graphics).
+ undo_history: to undo/redo various operations.
+ color_curve: to make color conversion effects pixel by pixel.
- Improved the `Color Replace' command (with `tolerance' and `preview').
- A new optimized layer-bar, to handle all the keyframe/properties stuff.
- Various things rewritten to Plug-Ins:
+ file formats,
+ actions for menus (also, now these actions can be used from scripts).
- Replaced the old `color depth' system to the new `image types':
From now, an image can be: RGB, Grayscale, or Indexed type.
- New ASE Library, with a complete new design to handle:
images, layers, bitmaps, properties, keyframes, etc.
- Source code to GNU style: with configure.in, Makefile.am, etc.


0.0.7
- New scripts routines: request(), apply_filter(), load_sprite(), and save_sprite().
- Support to load FLI/FLC and to save FLC files. Yes! Now with ASE you can make FLC animations with a good compression performance.
- Added the posibility to load/save sequences of bitmaps: like ani00.pcx, ani01.pcx, ani02.pcx, etc.
- More undo functionality. I re-wrote the entire `undo' system.
- New rectangular-selection tool: Now you can cut, copy, paste and clear.
- New RLE compression for 8 bpp in .ase files.
- Support to load .ase files of `0.0.6' and `0.0.7 CVS (important stage)': I recommend you upgrade all your .ase files to the `0.0.7 release' version.
- New properties for keyframes: now each keyframe has its position and alpha, with this you can make animations of objects moving only the keyframes (all the intermediate frames will be calculate automatically).
- Now the program remember the configuration (through `ase.cfg').
- Added a new draw-tiled mode.
- New full-screen editing mode. With resizable layer-bar.
- Added an options to draw the previous frame in transparent mode.
- Removed the `background' properties of layers: from now, a layer will be transparent (masked-blitting) ever. With this are fixed a lot of problems with load/save routines in old versions.
- New `reload_menus' command.


Screenshots
Main screen
Main screen
Public Opinion
Overall Rating: 9.3
  • 100.8.1: Excellent! Now sporting all of the tools I need.
  • 10(Version 0.3.1) This really is a great editor for pixelling animations, very easy to use (once you know the keys). The previous frame is transparently shown behind the current one, and you can switch around frames simple by using the cursor keys. Also the drawing is made very easy - you can select colors from the palette on the left or from the image, and you can change the brush size on the fly with the + and - key. And of course, there's loads of additional features (even scripting).
  • 100.2.4: This is an excellent sprite editor packed with useful tools and other features. The GUI looks simple but is very quick and efficient and even though this program is still a work in progress and tends to crash occasionally, it is already a great tool that really should be on every Allegro developer's hard drive...
The Developer
David Capello
David CapelloNo bio given. (View Profile)