Is there still interest for FLI/FLC based formats? The allgero fli player can't handle most of the files created by todays animation programs.

So I did a short google search (like "simple animation format") and all I got was FLI, FLC some FLI some pages on FLC ... oh and some pages even mentioned FLI

So I had a look at the current spec, and I think that a crude player dealing with most chunks (and ignoring the EGI extensions) should be not that much work. Maybe 2-3 evenings.

Is somebody else would be interested in such a lib, I'd make it less-hackish than if I'd just use it for mayself and release it.

I think anyone currently using them will be careful to keep them compatible with the existing player

As there is regular talk of ditching the buit-in support for Allegro 5, then that's when your library would become an essential add-on, so there's no need to make it too tidy just yet.

That's just my opinificating of course. I haven't used FLI/FLC myself although I am writing an animation prog so was planning to.

the problem is that there is not a lot of programs that export to .fli .......
it can be a good idea to add another format more usual like .gif (and its pentents are finished so why continuing to ban it?). It is really easier to make a gif animation and there is a LOT of graphic tools that support it compared to fli...
and when i export fli files i get bigger files than gif ones....
maybe it's a feature that could be added to allegro5...

ProMotion and Jasc Animation Shop eport to FLI.
And they import virtually everything.

It won't be very close to the allegro player, because I think it has some major flaws (like not being able to play several flis at the same time... which would be needed if you'd want to use FLIs for menu items, etc)

I'm interested. If you're gonna release a nice usable lib for allegro that can play movies, then mark me as down.

-Flecko

I'm not too fond of the FLI format myself.. but I've hardly used it.

There's plenty of programs which support it (including 3D Studio MAX), the problem is that allegro doesn't support it very well.

If you ask me, that's one portion of allegro that should be removed and made an add-on... and I hate having so many add-ons.

As Matt Smith said, I don't think you would get a lot of people interested in an add-on for allegro when allegro is capable of it already. Then again, fblend is in a similar situation.. but more people use blending than FLI's I would think.

Do what I did with APEG. Have open/play/skip/close functions that use FLIC* structs(or classes in C++), then on top of that, create a couple high-level functions that emulate Allegro's current flic implementation for those people used to it.

I've never used it and never plan to... I mean what's the point anyway? It doesn't support audio right? So it's no better than a series of images. In fact, worse, since a series of images can be used for a lot more, such as importing into premiere.

Marcello

Marcello: Except for the compression it provides. You could always include an mp3 along with the animation and play them side-by-side..

It provides 3d compression? Is it any good, say compared to png/mng, or whatever?

Also, the mp3 thing doesn't necessarily work if you need the audio to be synced.

Marcello

Yes. At least MPEG does, and I don't see why FLIC wouldn't. I can't say how good it is though, it's a pretty old, not really used anymore, format.

Why not? I dunno about flic, so if the video can't drop/skip frames, causing it to just fall further and further behind, you could just pause the audio until the video catches up(and tell the user to get a faster machine ). Or use something like mp2 audio. That'll give you some reasonable compression still and decode faster with a dedicated player.

I still using FLI/FLC. I have an old Autodesk Animator and also David's Targa Animator (DTA), both can create FLI/FLC files that works nice with Allegro's player, as far I used it. While I don't need more I still using it. I can play sounds and music breaking the FLIC in small pieces and playing the wav or MIDI or whatever I need.

Anyway, it can be nice if there are one or two add-ons to play other formats, as mp3, avi or others.

FLIC does provide support for audio (EGI extension).
But I don't see it as a video replacement. But it's a nice animation format.
Assume you want an animated menu item, or some simple bells and whistles somewhere without having to worry about it.

Think of it as some sort of animated gif. While you would not use to display a video, it's a pretty nice and simple way to do small and simple animations.

Let's say it's not better than a delta frame compressed series of images containing animation data (like inter frame delay, etc).
But mainly, yes. It's a series of images. Which is more or less true of any video / animation format, though.

I was also looking at MNG, but that's hardly a simple format, heh.

One could also create a new format which would be better than FLI in some areas or add new chunks to fli... the main problem here would be the lack of an editor.
ProMotion supports no hicolor flis, but allows you to set a inter frame delay.
AnimationShop allows you to use only the normal fli features.
DTA gives you lots of options... but I have problems finding a recent version of it

So... if anybody knows another bitmap oriented lossless animation format which has some editor support, let me know

ProMotion has SPR as well. It's just a bunch of non-compressed 8bit images in a row. But you can set induvidual frame lengths. It's quite handy actually. Since I draw my graphics in ProMotion I use it to store my sprites and then have a simple wrapper animation class that handles it all.

I have a somewhat in progress format.. its more of a container format itself but the lib kinda likes the stuff to be played right now its just a big array of bitmaps etc.. but it allows more flexibility, like interleaving the audio (right now audio is in a separate "frame" of the file, and is read in all at once), etc.. In fact, right now, theres two methods to use an animation, 1st: you load in all in, and say "PLAY", 2nd: open it, and say "PLAY".. and it'll load in the animation as it needs. that part needs work though, I need(ed) to figure out a nice way of buffering the animation as it could/would stutter allot as it was.

I even had/have a nice editor planned.. heh. Maybe If I get bored enough

i wrote a class for FLI,FLC a long time ago, maybe 2 years, so i can have lots of FLICs running at the same time.

i have also added detection for unrecognized blocks, but in the end i just ignored them. as most of them weren't really needed.

i would be interested in a standalone FLC,FLI,FLX player lib, with or without the audio.

if someone is willing to manage/start the project; i will give some of my time to testing, bug fixing, code suggestions, etc.. but i think desiging the architecture of the lib is really a one person (resonsibility) job. which i am not going to do.

i think FLIC is a good format; coz adding your own blocks would allow many interesting features; like embedded MIDI data

You could always have a conversion tool.
You could create an extremely simple editor (one which grabs frames and tacks them on the end), and be able to import other formats.

If the format is really good, it would be worth it.
I could see using it if it had a clean API, a simple editor which grabs frames and/or audio, and is well optimized.

I'd be willing to help, too.. but my meager programming abilities would be of little use

We need that Allegro Flash player

we do. With an opengl renderer as well.

Marcello

FYI..

www.compuphase.com/flic.htm

describes the FLIC format quite well.
(added the link for future reference, if anyone is looking for FLIC info.

?

I had a look at the flic section of the docs yesterday and didn't like it, it doesn't fit with the rest of allegro.

So I think you should do something with a different interface and all, unless someone can explain to me why it should look like it does.

After going through that, I started thinking along the lines of making allegro animation routines using ALLAN objects
I'd like to know if this is something I should dig into or is that wheel already invented?

it fits nicely with allegro.
it has since way back in allegro 3.12 and possibly before that!

i think FLX would be a good feature to add.

I'll start my lib really soon now.

It will allow you to create and play FLIs (and derived formats).

I'm not sure if I add all of egi's extensions (esp. I don't see the "small" scripts coming) but I might add some extensions of my own.

i'd like to see the FLX >8bit images
the rest can be added later.

The big and fat AVI without compression. And AllegAVI (I think) can play it... with sound!

^__^

The avi library that Oscar Giner has worked rather well for me. I made a small movie player that was about 10 lines long and worked flawlessly, at a reasonable speed. I even tested it on my 133 at 640x480x16. It ran, but pretty choppy.

The movie I used was about 10 minutes. Was around 100MB, uncompressed AVI and uncompressed PCM Audio.
From a dial-up user's perspective it's evil to include that... but who cares about them?

Mind you, I was just checking it out for the "proof of concept" that allegro could play AVI's easily.
I won't be including movies in my games for quite some time..

Well, my lib can't do miracles

You can use divx: it compresses a lot and with high quality. And actually most users have the codecs installed (you can include the codecs with the game, anyway).

I'd like to make a linux port, but I have no time

The avi lib is great But I think that FLI targets a different niche.

My final plan is to build upon FLI anyway. The main thing I'll want to include is sprite support.

Sprite Info chunk
- sprite id
- count frames
[ count frames Sprite Chunks ]

Sprite Chunk
- compression format
- w,h
- offset to main spr pos

The main reason for the compression format is so one could allow PNG/JPEG compressed frames (support for these formats needs to be enabled at compile time, since you'll need libjpeg for jpeg and zlib/libPng for png support)

This way you can have a normal frame and overlay it with sprites:

Sprite Display Chunk
- sprite id
- x,y
- frame

Besides your normal uses for sprites, you could use it also to display scrolling backgrounds.

Another gimmick:
You can acces all sprite data from outside the lib.

So you could use a FLI to store your sprite / bg data.

Possible use cases: A tutorial video containing all elements of your game which also serves as repository for your graphics (and sounds, maybe).

what about, make it XML, then zlib the XML, so its way small. the data could be stuck on the end of the XML file.

My little grain of salt:

The GIMP can read-save FLI / FLC files.

ASE (Allegro Sprite Editor) also can read-save FLI/FLC files.

With ASE, you can make many images, like 0001.pcx, 0002.pcx, 0003.pcx, etc; then open the first in ASE, and ASE will ask you to load the others (2,3,4,etc) and will make automatically the animation for you (that you can save then to a FLI / FLC)

Thats the way that I do my FLI/FLC animations (as seen on Kraptor cinematics).

The best thing is both programs are free, open source, and multiplatform.

XML is a no-no for binary data.
Animations consist more or less of binary data.

XML is meant to be user readable.
Compressing XML doesn't really make it readable.

The point is:
a chunk based format is very well suited for the task (see PNG, MNG, AVI, FLX and LBM)