Spine: 2D skeletal animation

Engines, Libraries and Tools Tools Discussion
#101

I tried the editor and it seems pretty good, so I’m thinking about writing a runtime for the animations produced - any ideas on how this would be best done? How final is the actual file format at the moment? Is there any documentation on how the runtime should behave?

Porting over the libgdx runtime sounds like a good start, but I’m worried I’ll have to constantly update it if there’s new features etc. going in. Particularly if there’s no actual documentation, just a ‘de facto’ standard of whatever-the-libgdx-runtime-does. (It’d be Ruby all over again! >:( )

#102

@Orangy Tang

Not sure if Nate will be making documentation for the runtimes, but if I know him right, he probably will. We will support some of the major frameworks/engines, but I can’t give you a concise list yet.

#103

I think it is best to maintain “official” runtimes for various game libs rather than carefully spec out the data format and hope people implement it right. Also I don’t see the format changing dramatically. The official runtimes could easily be used as a reference to support esoteric or one-off game libs. Developing a runtime solely from a spec of the file format would be a pain. The math for transforms itself isn’t hard, but tricky to get it exactly right. The animation timelines are a little tricky to get right too. Most of the libgdx runtime isn’t actually libgdx specific, you can reuse almost all of it and for the most part just swap how you draw attachments. This means if the format changes or features are added, re-porting the runtime is easy. To give you some sense of the size, the libgdx runtime is 1600 LOC, which includes both the JSON and binary loaders.

The format itself has already gone through some iterations and I feel that it is pretty stable as is. Attachments have a type, so when we add bounding boxes (relatively soonly) it won’t change the format. There isn’t any short term plan to change the format. Actually implementing some games with it may highlight any weak parts of the API though, so I can’t claim everything is set perfectly in stone. :slight_smile:

#104

That makes me happy.

I’m beginning to think that that’ll be downfall of Spriter… :-/ There’s been several attempts at getting their format working in java, but people disappear, don’t have time, only implement what they need, use different libraries etc.

#105

Aye, it would hobble a tool like this to not have good game library support so I think it should be part of the core development. We won’t work on runtimes for game libs other than libgdx until the kickstarter though.

#106

[b]Oh my God!

You and people like you disparage the whole work of Open Source community, this is a shame.
Although it is really great what you’ve done, but this just is not fair, that you take someone’s work and willingness to share their work to the community, and with that you want to earn money.[/b]

#107

Ha! I probably shouldn’t take your obvious troll bait seriously, but I’m a sucker. :wink: Maybe you should click the OSS projects link in my signature? I’m the author of libgdx upon which Spine is built. I give away libgdx, Kryo, and many other projects for free. I also maintain and support users of my projects for free. People who write OSS know what they are doing when they choose a license that allows others to profit for their work. Who are you to judge people who would follow the author’s licensing to profit? There is nothing wrong with wanting to be paid for my efforts. Software engineers need to eat too.

#108

Actually, I AM THE AUTHOR of libgdx, Nate is just one of my many minions. In any case, i approve of Spine (as long as i get my cut)

#109

Haha WE are the authors. Can’t let me just make one little point… :stuck_out_tongue:

#110

Hee, :persecutioncomplex: ::slight_smile: :o

So, who is the real author of the libgdx.

#111

the two above are of course the main contributors, but the projects has as many other open source projects lots of authors. I also contributed some lines to it(like 5 or so) :slight_smile:

#112

hFbCS4a14J4

#113

Great man, does that mean that you also have your share(cut) in the “Spine” !?

#114

And finally, just to mention:

“It abstracts away the differences between writting desktop, Android and HTML5 games based on standards like OpenGL ES / WebGL, JAVA”

Just suppose that:

OpenGL ES / WebGL = $ 6000
JAVA (Eclipse IDE) = $ 500

SPINE = $ 7000 / or never written !

Sorry for the hard words !

PS: I forgot to mention “lwjgl”!

#115

I don’t get that

#116

Even worse than m77. At least m77’s entertaining sometimes. But your bold text is just taking up space on my screen.

#117

If you’re actually sorry, you can click the “Remove” button next to your post. Otherwise, don’t blow smoke up my ass.

#118

What the hell are you blabbering about dedara? What is your point? Nate is making Spine paid so, you know, he could actually eat something every day.

#119

Dedara what exactly is the point of your posts? Now if you’re complaining that we are charging for software largely built on OSS you are forgetting a couple of things. First of all spine would never have become public, we would have kept it to ourselves simply due to the fact that it would have been unpolished and pretty much impossible for others to use. By making the choice of charging for it, we have forced ourselves to polish everything, and by that needing to put far more work into it. Secondly, Nate is in fact one of the main contributors on libgdx together with Mario, hell even I have contributed things to libgdx, however limited, I am by no means an author though. I’m the guy behind most things artsy in spine, and many design decisions, if we had gone our original way, things would have been very different, and just to be able to use the runtimes you would have needed softimage to export the data from and trust me when I say it would have been far more expensive than spine will be.
If you still don’t approve of this, then by all means feel free not buy it and use something else, but please do not derail this thread with unfounded bile.

Reading your posts again, I realize that you’re probably trolling, I simply do not believe that you can be that naive, to expect everything to be free, in your eyes all games released using libgdx should be free as well?

#120

There’s nothing wrong with making money from OSS. You are simply factually incorrect. I like RMS but he’s not trying to create a world in which software engineers can’t make money, he’s trying to create a world in which software cannot restrict your freedoms.

I’d suggest you learn a little about OSS before you open your mouth again. And quite frankly, as the author of some great OSS software which other’s have profited from, I think you should apologise to Nate.