ALICE 1.1 Released

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#1 Post by **PyTom** » Sun Dec 04, 2005 11:24 pm

A few seconds ago, I just uploaded ALICE 1.1 "Kanaria". This release includes a number of new features, including the ability to recolor the images that make up a doll.

This version of ALICE can be downloaded from:

http://www.bishoujo.us/alice/dl/1.1/alice-1.1.zip (3.9 MiB)

This contains ALICE and some of the libraries that it depends on, but it does not contain GTK+ as part of the package. So you'll need to install GTK+ 2.6 or higher before running ALICE for the first time. A prebuilt version of GTK+ for Windows can be downloaded from:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/glad ... e?download

Install GTK+ on your system, unzip alice, and then run main.exe to start ALICE.

New Features

The big new features is the ability to recolor the images that make up a doll. To do this, choose View >> Recolor from the menu. This will bring up the recolor window. Select some images to recolor, and then you can adjust hue, saturation, and luminance.

Please note that adjusting the colors of white or black regions can fail, as these regions do not have color information. Adjusting them can add in incorrect color information, leading to artifacts in some cases. (But it does work in many cases, and if you see artifacts, try reducing the saturation some.)

We also now track the license of the dolls we use. Choose View >> Credits and Copyright to see the license for the current doll.

Ren · #2 Post by **Ren** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 2:29 pm

Neat!
I tried it and it works really welll:3

ShiraiJunichi · #3 Post by **ShiraiJunichi** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 9:35 pm

Really cool! Once again, I think this would be a good place to use sliders

#4 Post by **PyTom** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 9:37 pm

I don't think sliders would work. Scrollers like what I used provide a repeatability that is basically impossible with sliders.

ShiraiJunichi · #5 Post by **ShiraiJunichi** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 11:04 pm

I'm not sure what you mean exactly... I don't think sliders should replace scrollers (text field with arrow buttons?), but simply add another way to change the same value- much the same way Photoshop does for several of its features. A slider would allow a quick way to see how the range of values affects the image. A text field would allow the user to enter an exact number, for accuracy...

Do I just not understand? Please, explain...

#6 Post by **PyTom** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 11:31 pm

Sorry, spinners rather than scrollers.

I could do a slider/text box thing... but that would require me to maintain the same value in multiple places, something I'm loathe to do.

We'll see if ALICE takes off... if so, then I might be willing to put a little effort into cleaning up the interface. I don't want to be the only one doing work on ALICE.

If you want, grab a copy of the gazpacho gui builder and edit recolor.glade with it, to put together a prototype.

ShiraiJunichi · #7 Post by **ShiraiJunichi** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 12:47 am

Yes, of course.

*hopes everyone in NanoReno will use ALICE, so PyTom will continue improving it*

#8 Post by **PyTom** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:34 am

ShiraiJunichi wrote:*hopes everyone in NanoReno will use ALICE, so PyTom will continue improving it*

%(deity)s, I hope not.

I think ALICE is a good thing, but I sure hope people will still go out and make their own images for games, or recruit artists. (The latter only after the script is done, or at least a detailed outline is completely done.)

If every game uses only ALICE, the all the characters will start to look quite similar. Sure, they will be wearing different clothes and such, but they will all look fairly similar, and there probably won't be as many poses as if someone drew the character by hand.

If anything, I think the big benefit of ALICE is to lower the bar for the initial "I _can_ do it!" phase of deciding to become a game-maker. And it will probably serve a purpose for games that have been released without graphics, or with stick figure graphics. And I think it will serve a valuable purpose for creating placeholder But I sure hope it doesn't cannibalize from the people who are willing to make their own graphics.

Best case... making ALICE packs becomes a back-door way of getting artists involved with our community. (Which needs to start treating artists better, not getting them involved with games that are early in development, and not likely to be completed. We've have some talented artists join up with projects that went nowhere, and then they seem to have left.)

Just throwing some ideas out there... I'm just the guy who makes paintbrushes, after all.

Ren · #9 Post by **Ren** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 2:31 am

I agree with Pytom on thatU_U
Sure one or two games wouldn't hurt, but mostly iv'e always thought of Alice as something that people could use as place holders.
I've readden in a forum that they have seen many game makers recruiting not only artist to join a progect(many projectsT_T) that was never completed.

TwT And i'm evil, i'm planning to try and ask some friends that are more talented than me if they want to join in the Alice dolls making, with a bit of word of mouth it could even become a fad!

*dreams of a "Alice dolls" cathegory in dA*

monele · #10 Post by **monele** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 7:42 am

I concur with ShiraiJunichi about the sliders ^^;.. I tried it and as cool as changing the color is, it's very tedious. Clicking hundreds of times is not fast enough to jump from one hue to the other, and input of the exact number leads to... unknown colors. With a slider, you'd just slide away and immediately see what color you're on while you're sliding.
And for precision, sliders usually allow the use of arrow keys to add/subtract 1 to the value (and I think shift+arrows adds/subtracts 10 or something). I compare to the Java sliders, so of course things might be different

Of course it shouldn't be used as "official" art for games, but if the tool gets too tedious to use in the long run, people might stick to not using placeholder graphics... and that'd be um... sad ô_o

#11 Post by **PyTom** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 9:53 am

A problem, though, is that the range is nonlinear, at least for the multiplier. The multiplier can be (IIRC) anything between 0 and 10, but it's most useful between 0 and 1. A scrollbar being linear has trouble representing this properly.

Hue doesn't have this problem, so I may be able to use a scrollbar or scale widget for hue.

With the spinner, one can hold down the buttons for a while to keep increasing or decreasing the value. So it's not necessary to keep clicking.

The previews aren't immediate, as there's a half-second or so delay before a preview is drawn. This is because the UI goes nonresponsive while a preview is being rendered, so I wanted to delay the preview while the user is still adjusting controls.

ShiraiJunichi · #12 Post by **ShiraiJunichi** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:53 am

Maybe I should've thought in more detail...

*hopes everyone in NanoReno will create images to use with ALICE, so PyTom will continue improving ALICE, and the library of images will increase*

I hate to think of all those wonderful graphics going to waste, being used only as place holders until commissioned artwork becomes available...

rioka · #13 Post by **rioka** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:56 am

Speaking of graphics, I'll be making some changes with Alice (reason why packs are not yet up). For maximum versatility, I'm going to seperate the body parts; head, torso, hands, and feet; plus have the option of having images with or without lines (so folks can have the option of having AP-style character CG or standard style - hope you don't mind, PyTom. ^_^; ). There will be other minor changes (making all hair a uniform color and not having solely black or white in clothing so hue's can be changed...)

Anyways, back on topic, for now I can see folks using ALICE art for placeholders but once there's enough variety, I would hope it will become more than just placeholders. Seriously, I'm in it for the long haul... (and consider it my art contribution for not being able to work in a specific team anymore). Besides, I don't think we'll reach the state where massive newbie's will start randomly- generating- games- every- other- week- making- all- the- ALICE- artwork -look- repetitive anytime soon. But, I guess we'll see how it pans out this coming year...

#14 Post by **PyTom** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 12:28 pm

I have no problem with anyone releasing anything for ALICE, and your suggestions for packs seem appropriate to me.

Once a central archive for ALICE packs has been established, I will probably stop distributing packs as part of ALICE proper. Are you planning on setting up such an archive as part of renaigames.net?

I will probably go and put together a small page for the ALICE core program, just so that we don't have the current state where people are being linked to 1.0a for a while after 1.1 has been released.

rioka · #15 Post by **rioka** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:07 pm

PyTom wrote:Once a central archive for ALICE packs has been established, I will probably stop distributing packs as part of ALICE proper. Are you planning on setting up such an archive as part of renaigames.net?

For now I'm willing to archive others' packs BUT there will come a point when there will be a lot of packs that I may not be able to handle/or end up taking over the site. At the moment, renaigames.net is fairly balanced between all the pages, imo but the ALICE section may quickly overtake everything else quite rapidly depending on artist participation. ...But thats in the future. For now, if you have any packs for ALICE, send them over and I'll host them. (That means you Junichi... ^_~)

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